After reading yesterday’s post, you may find it a little strange that a DJ could be critical of some of the records he plays on the air. I don’t think I’m any more or less critical than any of my radio brethren, but I’d like to submit the following proposition for you to consider: whether a DJ likes the music he plays or doesn’t, it makes no difference.
When I was a kid, worshipping at the altar of Top 40 radio legend Larry Lujack, I was surprised to learn that his true love was country music, and that he didn’t like rock much at all. It seemed incredible to me. How could do what he did so well without liking the music he was playing? It didn’t compute. I wanted to be in radio at first because I liked the music I heard on WLS, and I wanted to be around it all the time. (The other stuff the DJs got to do eventually began to seem like it would be fun, too, but I didn’t feel that way immediately.) Then I actually got into the business and learned a big truth: Music does not a radio man make. My first paying job was at a country station, and I soon found that radio could be just as rewarding when you were playing Waylon Jennings as it was when you were playing the Doobie Brothers. I learned that the proportion of good music to swill is about the same in nearly every genre. And I learned a major life lesson that applies to much more than merely radio: It’s easier than you think to take your pleasures where you find them.
It’s not just DJs who can adapt. One of the best program directors I ever knew, who was also one of the best jocks I ever heard, once shocked everybody in his market by taking a job programming a highly rated country station. Yet hepicked up right where he’d left off, both as a programmer and on the air—successfully. Another of the heroes of my youth, Fred Winston, worked briefly at a country station in Chicago after leaving WLS. It was odd hearing his voice up against that music, but it worked. Fred was Fred wherever he went, because, more importantly, radio was radio.
Today, I wouldn’t seek a country radio gig (probably), and I don’t plan to ask about getting some hours on the hip-hop station in our group. Since radio is no longer my primary career, I have the option to pick my spots. But I didn’t have that luxury as a young broadcaster, and it was a good thing. I might never have learned that it was radio I really loved.
Shout Out: Yesterday I heard from another person I’ve written about on this blog—Denny Will, a member of the Bells (“Stay Awhile”), joins the list that also includes Kurt Maloo from Double, Rod Novak from King Harvest, Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan, and former Milwaukee DJ King Zbornik. (The Google, she is mighty.) Thanks for checking in, everybody.
Technical Notes: The studio monitor list and WNEW.com feeds at the left haven’t been working for days. I am guessing the studio monitor problem may have something to do with an incompatability between my LastFM software and the new version of Firefox; Studio monitor is working now, but the WNEW feed is still FUBAR’d. Stand by for further updates, if you care.
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Hey JB,
Greetings from sunny Florida. Hope all’s well in the north country and at Magic 98.
Rod
King Harvest
PDs and DJs who do a 360 turn seem to be at a career impasse. Here in Pittsburgh, the first hard rockers who crossed over to the country format in the 1980s did so to keep working in this area.
Jimmy Roach was part of the top rated WDVE morning team in the 1980s who went to our major country station WDSY after leaving town for Florida with his partner Steve Hanson for a few months, and failing to regain audience when they came back to town. Hanson left radio for print and public TV gigs. To a 15 year old kid at the time, it was a betrayal to us, for him to do mornings without his other half, playing a music that he said he always preferred. He did their morning drive for a long time, and now does the same for a group of the local :”Froggy” stations on simulcast.
A few years later the demise of “Jimmy and Steve”, an overnight jock by the name of Chris DiCarlo left the WDVE over musical differences, although there were rumors of more personal issues. It didn’t hurt that she also posed in Playboy. She then convinced a small FM station on the outskirts of town to let her program it as heavy metal. The station was always changing formats (and automated to boot) so it didn’t matter much that the 10 people in their audience tuned it out. But the publicity chased off the local feed store ads and the hassle she brought convinced the owners to go back to country thru a satellite feed. Think she filled in at the 2nd level hard rock station for a while, but soon took a job at the same country station as Roach. She’s been the PD there for most of the last 20 years, with all the bravado about playing “our music” forgotten. By then, I understood it was payin’ the bills, not the music, that was most important.