Radio Days (Part II):the First Gig, Fish Radio and Florida

During much of the 80s and 90s, I enthusiastically pursued a career in radio broadcasting. The following is the second in a series of essays about the time I made a living at talking behind a microphone. This story recalls my first radio job in Florida. Time Frame: 1982-1983

It was mid-to-late October, and as is typical for St. Louis, the first nip of winter was in the air. However, this was October, 1982, and it was memorable for two reasons: First, the St. Louis Cardinals had just won the World Series after a 15 year drought. Second, I just landed my first radio gig.

Actually, I learned about landing the job while the Cardinals were battling the Milwaukee Brewers during the fall classic. I remember the Broadcast Center calling to tell me that they had some very good news. They asked me to come to the school and talk with their placement director as soon as possible. I, of course, obliged.

When I arrived, the placement director (for the life of me, I can't remember his name...) asked me, "how does Florida sound?". I think I responded by saying something like, "awesome". He told that he played my air-check for Jim Allen, the Program Director for 'Fish Radio' in Niceville, Florida.

In my subsequent phone call, Allen came right out and told me that the station wanted someone who could do both the evening air-shift and sell advertising time during the day. He told me that Fish Radio (WFSH) was a stand-alone AM station with 'block' formatting. This meant that listeners could hear the formats of Country, Big Bands or Top-40. It all depended on what time the listener would tune in.

Fish's format block for the 7PM-Midnight shift was Top-40 and Allen asked if I'd be interested doing it. Of course I would. I accepted his job offer and began working on November 1st.

One can make the journey from St. Louis to northwest Florida in less than a day if he or she really leadfoots it. But time was on my side. I decided to visit my brother Tim while making an overnight stop in Nashville, Tennessee. After an enjoyable reunion with Tim (These have been far too rare.), I drove the rest of the way. When I entered Florala, Alabama, I knew I was close. At last, I crossed the Florida border and spotted a huge billboard with the following message: "Welcome to the Emerald Coast..Florida's Best Kept Secret".

And the marketers using this description in their advertising strategy were not exaggerating, not in the least. As it turned out, Niceville was less than a 15 minute drive to Fort Walton Beach and Destin, places where one could find the most pristine, snowy white beaches complemented with alluring gulf shore waters in various shades of turquoise, aqua and blue.

(Recently, some of this idyllic quality to the area's beaches has been lost because of two factors:

1. The tourism industry has been relatively late to capitalize on the area's beauty. Back in the early 80's, college spring breakers converged on other party locales, such as Daytona and Fort Lauderdale.
2. Last year, the British Petroleum oil spill left a devastating and catastrophic mark on the entire Gulf region, including the Fort Walton Beach, Destin and Niceville area.)

Even though Niceville was physically just a hop, skip and a jump away from all this splendor, culturally, however, it was a world away. It was off the beaten path. Few, if any, tourists visited Niceville. (Although it did provide excellent sunning and fishing with access to the Choctawhatchee Bay.) It was swampy, bayou country that offered nearly 100 percent daily humidity during the summer. The county courthouse flew a Confederate battle flag...and local residents referred to the area as 'L.A.'...lower Alabama.

'Fish Radio' targeted this Niceville demographic of rednecks, less prosperous retirees and Air Force military personnel. Yes, I almost forgot to mention that Niceville and the entire 'Emerald Coast' are completely surrounded by Eglin Air Force Base...which is nearly as large some U.S. states in area. Niceville had many radio choices with at least a dozen stations beaming in from Fort Walton Beach, Pensacola (home to a great rock station, TK-101!) and Panama City. But, 'the Fish' was THE Niceville station.

On my first day, Jim Allen handed me a pile of roughly three dozen 45 records which appeared as if he had just bought from the record store just before my arrival. He told me to 'mix these up along with a few songs from their 'oldies' collection. And he added," don't forget to play the news and the legal I.D. at the top of the hour...and of course,the commercials on the log!" That was the extent of my prep.

I can still remember the first song I played. I openend the mike, and nervously said something like, "hello ladies and gentlemen. I'm Joel Wells and here's the Steve Miller Band with Abracadabra, here on the Fish." (Those last four words became somewhat of a crutch for me as I recall.)

This was 1982, and MTV had pretty much become mainstream. Video hadn't really killed the radio star, but it definitely had his or her attention. Our playlist basically consisted of tracks that wer hit videos at the time. I believe the number one hit at the time was "Up Where We Belong" by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, which, of course, we played into the ground. Another monster hit of the time was Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane."

And lest we forget, this nauseating hit from Toni Basil:

This lasted until March 1983, until 'Fish Radio' experienced, shall we say, an inside revolt.
I seems the morning guy, who played country during his show, had convinced the station manager to change to an all-country format and to hire his son-in-law, Gary Gray, as the new PD. Gray came in from WPAP of Panama City, which he told me often was a reporting station for the now departed Radio & Records magazine. (I wasn't sure of the significance of this at the time, but I knew it had to be good since Gray, more or less wore it as a badge of honor.)
Nonetheless, Gray seemed to take to me as I was able to hang on to my job. Allen, they guy who originally hired me and the midday guy who played Big Band music didn't fare quite so well. They got gassed.
I was relieved to still have a job, but I soon had to get acclamated to the fact that I was required to play Country music. Since I grew up in St. Louis, my only real knowledge of the genre didn't extend much beyond Glen Campbell, Hee Haw and Porter Waggoner, all of whom I knew from watching television. Gray told me to act as if I had been playing country all my life and to have fun with it. It worked. As a matter of fact I actually began to acquire a taste for it.
The following are some of the country songs I remember playing:
1. Johnny Lee/Cherokee Fiddle

2. Waylon & Willie/Just to Satisfy You

and 3. Shelly West/Jose Cuervo

but by June of 83, it seemed that that there was a lot inside politics going within the station...and with the station itself and town merchants. It seemed my meager commission and pay checks were beginning to bounce. Gary Gray just suddenly didn't show up for work one day with no explanation. I later discovered that he got busted for dealing drugs. I decided it was time for me to exit. I quit WFSH, but decided to stay in the area and party my ass off for about a month. I had a girlfriend who was gracious enough to late me stay at her place. I realize that it wasn't one of my most responsible moments, but then again I was 25, single and living near the beach.

Coming up: Part III, Back on Track, Oklahoma and Culture Shock

Annotated Portfolio: A Collection of My Recent Work

I've just completed a course called 'Document Design' in my online studies with DeVry University. I, emphatically, believe that this class, so far, has been the most worthwhile. I believe I've really learned some marketable skills that will help me move ahead with my newly chosen career in technical communications.

The following is my final project for the course. It's called "Annotated Porfolio". As the title implies, it's a collection of the design work I've completed. I used MS Publisher to complete most of my samples. However, I produced some using MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

I submitted "Annotated Portfolio" as a PowerPoint slide presentation. (I'm anxiously awaiting a grade from my professor.) The following eight pictures are uploaded JPEG images of the presentation:











































































Well, there you have it! My next course, which begins February 28th (next Mon.), is 'Advanced Technical Writing and Editing'. Perhaps, I'll be able to add some more additions to my portfolio after I complete this class.

Radio Days (Part I): The Broadcast Center

It seems like ages ago, and perhaps, it was. During my early adult years, I pretty much ate, breathed and lived radio broadcasting. The following is the first of a series of essays about the time I spent having fun behind a microphone. It recalls how I decided to get into radio. Time Frame: 1981-1982

My life had become confusing, unclear, and somewhat melancholy. I was 23 years old and back at home living with my parents. This situation had arisen because my academic adviser at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, where I had been attending, had politely suggested that I take some time off or pursue a different major. It seems that the J-school had learned about my grades falling below the minimal GPA requirement of 2.0. (It was the “D” I received from taking an introductory news-writing course called ‘News 105’. This course was a bear of a class the school used to weed out students. Several years later, by the way, I retook the course and ‘aced’ it.)

Living up their loving and nurturing roles, my parents, particularly my mother, expressed concerns about my uncertain future. Periodically, they offered ideas on schools and career paths they thought suited me. My father fancied the idea of me attending a school that offered a degree in hotel and restaurant management. Being the child of privilege, I took their offerings for granted. In retrospect, I realize how lucky I was to have all these opportunities.

Perhaps it was due to their advertising saturation of the St. Louis television market or perhaps it was because they offered something that, at least on the surface, tied in with my journalism education. Whatever it was, my mother, unexpectedly, suggested I ought to look into what the Broadcast Center had to offer. The Broadcast Center was and is, mostly, a local trade school that trained people how to be radio disc jockeys. I paid them a visit and they sold me. They appeared to have a proven record of accomplishment as they boasted having graduates working all over the country. Additionally, they had some well-known St. Louis deejays working as instructors, such as ‘Radio’ Rich Dalton of KSHE 95. Moreover, the Broadcast Center had some well-known speakers come to the school to present seminars on various broadcasting topics. (I met Bob Costas, who is a St. Louis area resident, when he conducted a seminar on sports announcing.)

The school won over my parents with their implicit promise of finding graduates an actual job in the broadcasting industry with their free placement service. Thus, I started attending the Broadcast Center. For ‘class’, I recorded myself reading aloud samples of both news and advertising copy. After doing this repeatedly, an instructor would come into my booth and review my annunciation. Before attending the Broadcast Center, I used to say ‘hunerd’, doubie-yuh and ‘couny’ instead of ‘hundred’, ‘double-you’ and ‘county’. The school also had a studio that could almost pass for a real-life deejay booth. I learned how to operate and record cartridges, cue up records (this was still the early 80s, folks!) and talk into a mike. After doing this for about a year, I earned a ‘Certificate of Proficiency’.

I was ready to start working.


Coming...Radio Days (Part II): Florida and My First Gig

Utter Hypocrisy

The utter hypocrisy those on the right display never ceases to amaze me. This fact has become especially more evident lately as their mouthpieces on talk radio and Fox News steadily rail against the labor protesters in Wisconsin, who are voicing their opposition to a proposal to ban collective bargaining for some 300,000 workers.

Right wingers rant about the so-called "excesses" that unions have won through many years of this legal process. Yet, most of these same people don't bat an eye when Wall Street moguls still collect 7-figure bonuses after getting their asses bailed out by taxpayers.

Why is it that whenever we begin talking about curbing the deficit the first option always seems to be slashing spending on programs that benefit the poor and middle class? Folks, there's lots more fat to trim at the top.

Instruction Manual FAIL!

The most ineffective set of instructions that I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to use was a printed-paper document that I received inside a package of an off-brand cell phone, which I bought about ten years ago. Now, the instructions appeared to be legitimate as they came with step-by-step, chronological sketch drawings explaining how to activate the product. The problem, however, was that the accompanying text was written in KOREAN! (I think.)

Unfortunately, I know only English. Therefore, I had to rely on the sketchy drawings and my common sense. As it turned out, luckily, that combination proved to be enough as I was able to get the cheap phone to work.

Rethinking Big-time Sports…

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m as intense as one comes when it comes to following marquee professional sports in the United States. Since I was a young child, I’ve passionately followed the ebb and flow of sports seasons by fiercely declaring allegiance to my home team. Those teams operated exclusively within the realm of St. Louis during my youth, but more recently, my list grew to include teams from Indiana as well. One sure fire way one could get on my bad side was to speak ill of one of my teams.

Lately, however, I’m beginning to suspect that big-ticket professional sports have skewed many peoples’ priorities and values. I feel several recent events have given me reason to question how our culture has placed so much prominence on it.

I think Super Bowl XLV put the wheels in motion. Yes, I had low expectations for this year’s extravaganza from Dallas as neither the Pittsburgh Steelers nor the Green Bay Packers elicit anything more than yawns from me. In all fairness though, it wasn’t the quality of play in the game as it was quite good.

No, I think what actually changed my perspective actually happened before the Super Bowl in what seemed to be a never-ending pre-game show. Sometime during FOX's parade of corny and overly sentimental packages about anything even slightly relevant, I began to notice how the Super Bowl has become an event by, for and of the super-rich. I realize that this is hardly a new development. Perhaps, it became more evident to me this year because of my indifference to the game.

I believe this revelation came to me while FOX’s sports commentators were serving up a monumental softball interview to Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, to discuss his relatively new $1-billion-dollar toy built mostly at taxpayer expense called Cowboys Stadium. This 95,000-seat cathedral is a shrine to corporate excess and its amenities would make King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the entire House of Bourbon feel right at home. I’m surprised FOX’s reporters didn’t address Jones as “your majesty” during the sickening interview. (It’s too bad President Obama didn’t get anywhere close to that kind of respect during his subsequent interview on FOX.)

It just seemed to me that this self-congratulatory, pampered owner and these admiring, seven-figure income sports announcers were a little too out of touch singing the praises of a stadium that provides access to other people from the same wealthy class. The average ticket price for Super Bowl XLV was $3500 dollars!

I realize that it’s the Super Bowl. But, seriously…$3500 dollars to attend one football game?!? What percentage of the American people can afford that? I think I could treat my family to a weeklong vacation in the Bahamas or buy a decent used pickup truck for less.

Of course, stratospheric ticket prices aren’t exclusive to just the Super Bowl or NFL football. And Cowboys Stadium isn’t the only overpriced facility built on the backs of working Americans, most of whom will never be able to see a live game at one of these venues unless they win the lottery.

And this is what I really find disenchanting and downright appalling about professional sports these days: the fact that these billionaire team owners receive massive amounts of public funding to pay for their stadiums and arenas. Never have authorities transferred so much public money for so little economic benefit to so many billionaires who don’t need it. Meanwhile, states and municipalities are slashing funding for much-needed social services to the bare bones.

Like other realms of corporate America today, it seems professional sports has gotten too big to fail. The owners have no incentive to lower ticket prices so that regular working class American can attend. Using ticket purchases as tax write offs, corporations have paid off luxury suites years in advance for their CEO’s and upper management. Plus, team owners have the added income bonus generated from television advertising revenue.

I really enjoy watching sports. But lately, it seems it has become a reeking cash cow for the filthy rich. Perhaps, I’d be better off investing my emotions in something else.

Ice Storm 2011: A Few Thoughts and Reflections

Local weather forecasters began talking about it almost a week before it arrived as two huge low-pressure systems began forming over New Mexico and eastern Texas respectively. As it became clear that most of the nation would start the month of February off by being slammed with a major winter storm, people prepared for the inevitable by depleting stores of food, milk and supplies…and by forming social networking, groups called “Snowpocalypse 2011” on Facebook.

As it turned out, my home in west-central Indiana lay at the southern edge of the winter storm, but apparently, that wasn't "southern" enough to escape the mayhem. Instead of the thick blankets of snow, which most of the Midwest experienced, our show, here at home, was an inch-and-a-quarter coating of ice over everything.

Unfortunately, electrical engineers still haven't designed power lines that can sustain the weight of such huge quantities of ice. Moreover, it was about 7:30 on Tuesday night (February 1st) amid heavy freezing rain, sleet and high winds when I noticed about a half dozen flashes of light. I first thought it was lightning, but then reluctantly acknowledged the flashes were due to transformers blowing out. Within minutes, our lights began flickering and then ceased to work at all. No more TV, microwave, lights, heat, hot water…and OMG, internet. My family, neighborhood and town were feeling nature’s rage as it decided to make a statement that night.

After 36 hours, we finally had our power restored late Thursday morning (February 3rd). When we arrived home from our overnight stay at the Holiday Inn, we could see our breaths while sitting in our living room. It got down to around 10 degrees the night before and I think our dog and our cat were happier about our return than we were. (The motel stay was rough with the indoor pool, hot tub and room service...LOL!)

Seriously, it is good to be home and at least the food in the fridge didn't go bad!

“Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right.” – the Beatles