Radio Ga-Ga, Part II

The saga continues...

After the demise of the Mighty 1030, I interviewed at a few radio stations within shouting distance of home.  I actually turned down an offer to work at a Country music station in Knob Noster, MO, about 45 miles from Raytown, because I didn’t know squat about Country music, and I felt part of my strength in being a DJ was my working knowledge of Top 40 music, plus the town was too damn small for me—it would have been culture shock for me to live there.  Knob didn't even have a McDonald's.  They do now, tho...

After about three months on the shelf, I managed to snag my second radio job—a part-time weekend gig 50 miles away in St. Joseph, MO with the rather ironic call letters KKJO (as opposed to the station I’d just left, KKJC) doing the graveyard shift from Midnight-6AM.  Actually, it was an AM/FM combo station that did a mix of oldies and current soft Rock on the AM side (very similar to KKJC) and Country on the FM side, which was automated at night, so while I was on the air on the AM side, I had to babysit the FM side as well and make sure the commercials were all plugged in and the music tapes were all cued up and update the weather forecasts.  A bit of a challenge at first, but it was fun once I got the hang of it.  I made the 90-minute trek up I-29 to Joetown on Fridays and Saturdays (and the occasional weeknight fill-in shift) throughout the spring and summer of ’88 until my big break came along when the morning DJ went AWOL and was fired.  The graveyard shift became mine six nights a week, beginning in late September, and I got an apartment in St. Joseph moved there in October.

I went by my real name on the air initially at K-JO (as I also did in Blue Springs), but because of my devotion to the Kansas City Comets indoor soccer team, I obtained the nickname "Captain Comet" with some of the K-JO staffers, so I started using it along with my real name for a while, and eventually went by the nickname exclusively when I went full-time.  In addition to my air shift, I also got to run the board for St. Louis Cardinals game broadcasts that ran late, as well as tape-delayed hours of the "Tom Snyder Radio Show" which was actually a lot of fun to listen to—a helluva lot more exciting than Larry King’s nightly drone-fest.  There were some nights I wouldn’t even get on the air until four or five in the morning if the Cards game ran late because of rain delays or they played on the West Coast (or both), followed by three hours of Snyder, but I kept myself entertained all the same.  Unlike in Blue Springs, I also got to do some commercial spots and a few promos from time to time, and I ran through the ball scores a couple times a night on the air too.

A few other noteworthy things happened during my stint in Joetown.  I was on the air the night singer Roy Orbison died, so I had the honor (if you want to call it that) of breaking the news before the networks did.  I even got on TV during our charity softball game that pitted the K-JO staff against the KQ-2 TV staff (or "I.Q.-2", as we called them), in front of a whopping throng of 52.  They showed me hitting a seeing-eye single past their weather tart at second base—and thankfully they cut to another shot just before I damn near fell on my ass as I rounded first!  I also got to meet singer Ray Stevens backstage at a concert we promoted heavily on the station.

The fall and winter of ’88-’89 was a fun time for me, but changes were on the horizon for the radio stations as they were sold to a radio mogul from Sioux City, Iowa who came in and changed everything around.  In March, he moved the very profitable Country station from the FM to the AM (which pissed off a lot of loyal listeners) and changed the FM format to Top 40.  This was the beginning of the end for me, because my on-air delivery style is fairly low-key (think Dick Clark, for example), and Top 40 requires a more energetic style.  I kept my same air shift on the new FM and gave it the old college try at being a screamer.  Even though we did play some cool stuff like Def Leppard, Guns ‘N’ Roses and Van Halen, I was never comfortable with that format because I found it damn near impossible to feign enthusiasm for playing crap like Milli Vanilli, New Kids On The Block and Tone-Loc, ad nauseam, so I only lasted about three months and change trying to sound like Rick Dees.  In a mutual parting of the ways, I resigned in early June and the last words I uttered on my last air shift were, "I am history…" and I was.  Thus endeth my radio career.  I knew I shoulda made that left turn in Albuquerque—er uh, Knob Noster...

I shopped myself around a little and interviewed at a couple other stations over the next few months, but I soon came to the conclusion that I really wasn’t cut out for a long career in the radio biz.  As a DJ, I’d describe myself as adequate, and maybe over time I would have improved, but to be honest, I didn’t really excel at it.  You have to be quick on your feet to be a really good DJ, and there were many times I would have something clever to say, but during the transmission of that thought from my brain to my mouth, it would come out all garbled, or my mind would just go blank altogether, and I'd sound like Bullwinkle!  This still happens in normal conversation too. I’m pretty good with words and grammar, but just not verbally.  In retrospect, you’re looking at the field I should have gone into—writing!

Anyway, I also feared falling into a pattern of my radio gigs only lasting a year or so, and I heeded the words of the singer on the "WKRP In Cincinnati" theme who "got kinda tired of packing and unpacking", so I bagged the radio career in favor of getting a real job.  It was fun while it lasted and I do miss working in radio now and then, but there’s just too much instability, and it’s a very funny business (not in a good way) sometimes.  There are too many egos to deal with (that was my other downfall—I had no ego, to speak of), and a lot of phonies too.  Don’t get me wrong—I encountered a lot of GOOD people too, but there’s about a 2-to-1 phonies-to-good people ratio in radio.  To put it in "WKRP" terms, for every Andy Travis in radio, there are TWO Herb Tarleks, and I grew tired of dealing with the majority real quick.

It’s a very cutthroat business, too—not nearly as glamorous as people think—and it’s gotten even worse in this era of multiple-station ownership by these big corporate monsters like Entercom, Susquehanna and Cumulus, et al.  I read about mass firings all the time at these broadcasting entities, and it makes me glad I’m not a part of it now.  I plan to delve into all that in a future chapter...