I met Dr. D the first night I started training at the station when it was K108FM in the summer of 1984. I was coming in to train on the overnight shift and he was finishing up his six to midnight show. I thought he was about 25 years old at the time, but I later found out he was only a couple of years older than me. I also found out that he had dropped out of high school when the station he was working for at the time offered him a full time job.
Dr. D was that extraordinary talent. He had a great voice and was a real pro on the air. When the station turned into KZZO-FM, Jid moved him to the afternoon drive slot. In addition to being THE voice of our station, he was also THE face as he was considered very attractive by a number of women. When our TV commercial was re-edited, he was the only DJ on the staff to appear in it.
Dr. D was also a master at producing commercials. He could do things with analog reel-to-reel tape and splicing that some people can't even do with computers. AND he was really fast at production. All he had to do was announce the copy once, and it was perfect. He didn't have to do any re-takes. There was one period when we had to repair the studio and run our shows out of the production room. If something needed to be produced, he would play the music bed, read the copy live on the air, record it and it would be good to use the next time the spot came up. We all wished we had his abilities and we admired him so much.
In a little less than a year after the format change, Dr. D had managed to land a job at a station in Abilene, TX. Apparently, Jid had helped him get that job when he wanted to move into a larger market. A few months after that, Program Director Crad quit the station. At the time, we didn't have anybody else on the air staff that Jid felt was even capable of becoming the Program Director. A call was made to Dr. D to come back and take the job.
The first time I saw Dr. D after he returned to the station, he told me that he left for Abilene because they offered him twice as much as he was making here. He said when KZZO told him about the Program Director position, they offered twice as much as what he was making in Abilene. I guess Jid figured he was worth it.
Jid did something with Dr. D that he didn't do with Crad: He gave him full control of the music and programming. Dr. D made a lot of changes when he took over. He felt like he had received a real education about how to sound more like a large market station while he was in Abilene. He was also quicker to add new songs and he put some songs in Recurrents that we didn't play on our station the first time around. It was thrilling to see how much our sound was improving. I felt like we were finally getting on the right track after all the hassles with Crad.
However, that didn't last long. I don't know for a fact that this happened, but I think Jid came into town and REALLY didn't like what he heard. He probably yelled at Dr. D and told him he was reining him back in. Jid then likely went back to the old way of figuring out the weekly playlists, dictating his tastes to Dr. D.
Dr. D was very supportive and encouraging toward me, way more than Crad was capable of being. He was always telling me that I was sounding good. The day finally came that he hired a new part-timer, Ked. He scheduled Ked to work the Saturday night midnight to six shift and put me in the six to midnight slot. I felt like I was finally moving up at the station.
Then he posted the schedule for the next weekend. He put me back on the midnight slot. WHAT? I made a special trip from Portales to Clovis during the week to talk to him. I asked him why he shafted me back to midnight after he had been telling me that I had been doing a good job and sounding good. He couldn't look at me when he responded and he didn't really give me a straight answer. What I didn't know at the time and what he didn't tell me was that programming was being revamped. Our morning DJs, the J Team, were not going to be a team anymore. Dr. D was going to take JE's place. This meant that Dr. D was no longer going to be doing afternoon drive and he had hired Ked to be full-time in his old slot. I guess that was all a big secret that I wasn't privvy to.
There were brief periods during the summer of 1985 that I wasn't in school. When I drove up from Artesia to work shifts, he allowed me to stay at his house. He and his wife had a guest room that I was able to crash at after my shift. I almost never saw them when I came over. They were either sleeping or left the house while I was sleeping.
One time, he said I could come over, but when I went there, no one was home. I went around to the back of the house and found their garage was unlocked, so I let myself in. (Boy, I was not aware of boundaries back then.) When they returned he seemed a little surprised and irritated at first, but he didn't say anything. I told him I had to hope I had picked the right garage out of the duplex. He said, yeah, the person next door would have probably shot me if I broke in there. They probably started locking their garage after that.
When we moved the station to a new location in Clovis, Dr. D had a hand in designing our new studio. In Abilene, the DJs worked at a stand-up control board. Dr. D said that standing up would increase our energy level over the air and we would all sound better. However, someone brought in a stool for us to sit on during those times that we weren't announcing on the air. I always stood up when my mic was on, but everyone else just sat on the stool the whole time during their shifts.
Eventually, Dr. D found a better-paying job in Amarillo, TX. When he was leaving, I think he was a major influence in getting me on full-time. I have to be thankful for that. If not for him, I probably would have had to move back in with my parents after I graduated from college and drive up every weekend until I found gainful employment.
I would see Dr. D from time to time, but not always in Clovis. He did TV commercials for a car dealership in Amarillo. He looked like he was raking in the money. And he was never totally gone from our station. Once, the head of the Associated Students Activities Board at ENMU bought some airtime to promote a big concert they were holding. We produced the commercial, but they never liked any of the versions that we did. One of the salespeople had to drive to Amarillo (about 90 minutes away) and get Dr. D to produce the spot. He did it, did it fast and it was exactly what the client wanted.
A few years later, he worked at a station in Washington, DC and became the Program Director there right when they ranked #1 in the Arbitron ratings. Tod sent me a copy of the "Radio and Records" article that featured his photo. I was living in Denver at the time. I called and left a message and he returned my call. I congratulated him on his success. Tod said he never called him back. I never got to talk to him again.
I don't know how long that gig lasted and I don't know what radio stations he may have worked at after that except for a job in Orlando, FL. A few years ago, I located him and tried to e-mail him. He never e-mailed me back. However, we are now connected via LinkedIn. According to his profile, he now works as a voiceover talent in New York.
This means his career has had ups and downs, but probably a heck of a lot more ups than I've ever had.
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