Crad was the Program Director at K108FM when I started working there. I had actually first met him during a journalism class my sophomore year in college. I remember that he had been selected to be one of the weathercasters on the school news broadcast that semester. However, he stopped coming to class and he never did the news. I guess he had been promoted to Program Director early in the semester and decided he didn't need school anymore.
He was retained by new owner Jid to continue in this capacity after we made the switch to KZZO. Everything was really cool with Crad before we made the change. But Crad's attitude toward me took a turn for the worse after the launch of the new format.
I was completely unaware of all the stress that Jid was causing him. If one of us DJs goofed up on the air and Jid heard it, he would call Crad up and tell him about it. Crad would then have to get on our cases about those mistakes. But it seemed like Crad was getting on my case more than anyone else. At one point, we had weekly air staff meetings in which he would go over airchecks with us. While he generally had something negative to say about everyone, he was more harsh on me. I never really could understand what I was doing wrong. Once after a meeting, Crad said he needed to see me in his office. When I got in there, he told me I had to stop breaking format.
"Breaking format" is a very broad term, as I found out. It could be anything from speaking on the air at the wrong time to playing the wrong type of song at a certain position on the clock to playing something we didn't have on the play list. I asked Crad what it was I was doing. All he would tell me was to stop doing it.
And this would happen every once in awhile. He would call me up while I was on my shift and tell me he heard me do something wrong or that I was breaking format. This really disrupted my ability to do a good show. All I could worry about was him hearing me do something wrong and getting fired for it. I guess he was doing it on purpose so that I would get fed up and quit because he really didn't have any valid reasons for discharging me.
However, I would always hear Crad breaking format himself. When I happened to be listening, I could tell he wasn't adhering to the clock. Once, I heard him talk into and out of the same song. Jid told us specifically we were not to do that. We could talk into a song or talk out of it, but we couldn't do both with the same song. I knew Crad was full of it, but there really wasn't anything I could do about it because I enjoyed being a DJ.
What really burned me up was that every time we had a part-time position open up, Crad still would not take me out of the midnight shift. Whoever he hired got the six to midnight shift and most of the time, these guys were worse than me. I had mentioned the "radio circuit" in an earlier post. Crad was hiring people he was already familiar with. This wouldn't have been an issue, but those he gave jobs to were twerps who had started working in the local radio stations when they were in high school. I think one of them supplied Crad with his weed and that's how he gained favor. However, that guy came in one night to work a shift and he was so drugged up, he couldn't get actual words to come out of his mouth. This guy also had a tendency to break format by playing music he brought in from home. The General Manager tried to fire him for that, but he told him Crad had given him permission to play those songs.
I think that in order for me to have gotten on Crad's good side, I would have needed to provide him with some weed or other intoxicants from time to time. That had to be what the others were doing. Even if I knew this at the time, I still would not have sunk to the level that I was risking my neck to buy him an illegal substance just so I could get a better shift.
About a year after the format change, Crad found work at a radio station in Huntsville, TX. It had a Country/Western format. One of the other air personalities told me that Crad was better as a C/W jock. He also said that Crad was constantly paranoid that someone was going to come along and take his job. I also found out later that he wasn't really the Program Director. Jid was actually the one calling all the shots and determining what music the station played. Crad had all this control before the format change and it was all taken away from him. All he had was the title of Program Director and was forced by Jid to discipline the staff. This explained to me a little of what was going on with him, but I still don't know why he decided to direct all his esteem issues toward me. It really didn't matter. I knew that things were going to improve at that point. They did, but it wasn't for a long time afterward.
Crad's attitude toward me had a lasting impact among Jid, the General Manager, the next Program Director and a couple of other program directors after that. Crad had basically told them how cruddy I was, and no matter how much I was improving on the air, all they could hear was crud. The only thing working in my favor was that I always showed up for work on time and sober.
Crad paid a visit to the station about a year later. He actually seemed happy to see me and appeared surprised that I was working there full-time. I really didn't talk to him much that day.
Sometime after that, an unusual thing happened. I had just started my midnight shift when the phone rang. It was a woman who identified herself as being from another station. She was calling to get a reference for Crad, who had applied for a job there. I don't know why, but I didn't think it was odd for an employer to call after midnight to verify information. She asked me about my experience with Crad, and I just unloaded all this bad stuff about him. I thought if I could keep him from getting a job somewhere, it would serve him right. The next night, I got another call after midnight. It was some guy supposedly calling from the same radio station. He asked if someone at my station had been saying some bad stuff about his station. I told him that wasn't the case and he got off the phone. To this day, I don't know if that was Crad and his wife trying to find out what I might tell prospective employers. At the very least, it probably made him think twice about letting potential employers contact KZZO.
I never heard from Crad again, but I know what happened to him. He eventually wound up working as a DJ for a classic rock station in San Antonio. But about four months ago, he was let go by that station. He had worked there for at least 14 years. His photo that was on the station website made him look really old and out of touch. I have a feeling he never tried to be a Program Director again.
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