I first met Siz in the fall of 1985 after she had been hired to be our newscaster at KZZO-FM in Clovis, NM. She came in to train in the studio because she was also going to take on some DJ duties. She was a couple of years older than me. She was somewhat cute, had medium-length red hair and was a little overweight. But she had a very perky personality. She grew up in Florida and was married to someone who was stationed at the Cannon Air Force Base. She had gotten married fairly soon after high school.
She had come to our station from KTQM. I didn't really have that much contact with her at first because she worked Monday through Friday. There were a few times I saw her when she worked Saturday mornings at 6am as I was ending my shift.
One morning, Siz came to work and had a guest with her. It was her older sister, Jaz. I found myself oddly attracted to Jaz. I didn't know why, because she wasn't really very pretty and had nowhere near Siz' cute personality. (The term today would be "Butterface.") I got to know her better later that night when I went to some station function at a restaurant. We were alone and talked for a good period of time. However, Jaz was just visiting from Florida, so it wasn't like I could date her or anything.
Some time later, Siz would talk about Jaz and all her boyfriend problems. I know I kept thinking that she should get her to move out here and hook me up.
After a while, Siz stopped working at the station and did the TV news for the local ABC affiliate. She told me that she went to the scene of a murder in which the victim had been burned to death. She said that the detective she was speaking to pointed out the body. She saw the charred remains and threw up on the spot.
She came back to KZZO to be a DJ. This was after I had become full time and had graduated from college. She worked six to midnight and I came on after her. Very soon after she started working, she became pregnant. It would be her first child. Since I didn't have much human contact outside the station, I started looking forward to coming to work, spending time and talking with her. Yeah, it was a crush, but I knew I couldn't do a thing about it. All I could do was enjoy the time we spent together.
But that doesn't mean I had her all to myself. As it turned out, Tod
had a similar crush on her. I would often come to the station before my shift and find Tod hanging around talking to her. I got really jealous, but I knew I couldn't let on what was happening inside my mind. Another time, I bought some blueberry muffins at the store and brought some to work to share with her. However, she spent the whole time talking to this guy on the phone who was interested in getting a job at the station. She was talking to him in the smae manner that she talked to me and Tod. I got so angry that I ate all the muffins myself. (We hired that guy. He wound up breaking format and he got fired. I was glad to see someone actually get the boot for that.)
Daz used to work with Siz at KTQM. Daz said that she was rather mean toward her. She said that right before a shift, something unsettling happened and the person working the KWKA side told her he would cover for her. She said Siz gave her a mouthful about taking the night off when she was supposed to work. Tod didn't believe her, but I was aware that almost everyone at KTQM had a tendency to start conflicts. Not only did they target competing radio stations, they would turn on each other from time to time.
Prior to giving birth, Siz took a leave of absence. She had a girl and never came back to the station. I called her a few times and we were supposed to meet for lunch once so I could meet her daughter, but she canceled at the last minute. About a year later, I was at the mall and I ran into her and her little girl. She was already walking. That was the last time I saw Siz.
Some time later, I was walking through the Walmart across the street from my apartment. I saw a familar face. It was Siz' sister Jaz. I said, "Hi, Jaz!" after she walked past me. She turned around and didn't recognize me at first. I had to refresh her memory. She said she was wondering who in the world knew her there in Clovis. We didn't have much of a conversation beyond that. I never saw her again, either.
Years have gone by and I was able to find Siz on Facebook. She stayed married to the same guy and had two more children. They're all grown up now. They currently live in Lusby, MD. But I have no idea what they do there.
I was also able to find Jaz. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It doesn't look like she ever got married or had children.
I have no interest in contacting either one.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Work Friend: Dr. D
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Mornings on The Zoo
When KZZO-FM was K108FM, it had a wacky morning duo called the J Team. I first became aware of them during the Spring 1984 semester, which was a few months before I started working there. Another student was talking about how they were trying to call Michael Jackson. They called up directory assistance in Indiana and got the number for a "Mike Jackson" and gave him a call. At the time, and for as long as I worked there, no other station in the area offered this kind of lunacy in the morning. The J Team continued its antics after the station switched to KZZO.
The J Team consisted of two men I'll refer to as JE and JF. JE was the station's General Manager and his father owned the station before it was sold to Jid. JF was one of the salespeople, although he later became the Sales Manager.
JE was also the anchor on the local ABC affiliate KMCC's nightly news program, but used his real name for that. This was something that was kept out of the general public's knowledge. In TV commercials and photos promoting KZZO, JE always wore sunglasses and a hat, so the wacky person wouldn't be recognized as the serious newscaster. However, it really wasn't that big a secret. I had seen JE make several radio-related appearances without the disguise. One thing I didn't know about JE was that he was about 24 years old when I first met him. I also didn't know at first that his father owned the station. I had wondered how he had gotten into a prestigious position at such a young age, but finding that fact out answered it for me. It would surprise me to find out that his father had allowed him to control the station a couple of years earlier and that was when they went with the AOR format. When that failed miserably, he was forced to switch to a format that was capable of producing revenue.
JF was about nine years older than me, and looked it. He had gone to high school in Clovis and graduated from Eastern New Mexico University. He probably came to the station because of his ability to announce high school football games on the air. He had a passion for it. He also did well in the sales department because he knew everyone in town.
The J Team proved to be very popular. A lot of people would talk about the stuff they had done that morning. It was exciting to hear people buzzing about the place where I worked. It made me feel proud to be a part of that.
Interestingly enough, the J Team was like a large market morning duo in that they split up and got back together. In 1985, JE decided to stop doing the mornings and concentrate more on being the General Manager. Dr D (whom I will go into detail about in tomorrow's post) teamed up with JF to create "The Morning Zoo." They were still funny, but it wasn't like it was with JE. He and JF had a much better chemistry. After Dr. D left in 1986, JE returned and re-established The J Team, but it didn't last long. JF eventually left and moved to Amarillo. He told me at the time that he felt like radio was a young man's game and he wasn't a young man anymore. He was 30 years old at the time.
JE left about a year after that, when Mr W had come in as a partner. While we continued to have morning comedy teams, it never really was the same. JE and JF actually had a stake in their show. Everybody else who worked were just employees paid to keep the station running and on the air without any concerns for whether or not they could produce something that was marketable to advertisers.
I had been lucky enough to be a part of the show on Friday mornings. Dr. D had invited me to take part when it was him and JF running it. They actually felt like I was contributing something funny to the show. I rather liked that. I was able to continue when it was back to The J Team. However, I got a stern lecture from JE when I said something out of line about one of the advertisers. The way he was talking, he sounded like he was going to fire me on the spot. That would not be the first time he would act like he was going to fire me. I'm surprised he let me back on the show after that. But I did learn my lesson.
After JF left, he continued in radio there, announcing high school sports. He continued to do that until he passed away six years ago. I never really understood why he felt he was too old to be a regular radio guy. Maybe there was something going on at KZZO that he didn't fill me in on. We weren't really that close, but I did look up to him.
But I have no idea with happened to JE. A year and a half after leaving the station, I contacted one of the partners who lived in Los Angeles. I happened to be in the area. He told me that JE and his father ripped off Jid by flat out lying about the station's signal when the station was changing hands. He asked if I knew anything about the transmitter readings, which are supposed to be done every three hours. I told him that we were told not to do those readings, that they were done by the people who worked at the transmitter. I was asked to write them a statement about that, but I never got around to it.
From the times that I'd been back through the area and listening to the radio in the next few years that followed, no other station even attempted what had been accomplished by the J Team. That's probably because no other station wanted to waste money having to pay two people to be on at the same time. It's just as well. I would have hated for every station in town to try to out-wack each other.
The J Team consisted of two men I'll refer to as JE and JF. JE was the station's General Manager and his father owned the station before it was sold to Jid. JF was one of the salespeople, although he later became the Sales Manager.
JE was also the anchor on the local ABC affiliate KMCC's nightly news program, but used his real name for that. This was something that was kept out of the general public's knowledge. In TV commercials and photos promoting KZZO, JE always wore sunglasses and a hat, so the wacky person wouldn't be recognized as the serious newscaster. However, it really wasn't that big a secret. I had seen JE make several radio-related appearances without the disguise. One thing I didn't know about JE was that he was about 24 years old when I first met him. I also didn't know at first that his father owned the station. I had wondered how he had gotten into a prestigious position at such a young age, but finding that fact out answered it for me. It would surprise me to find out that his father had allowed him to control the station a couple of years earlier and that was when they went with the AOR format. When that failed miserably, he was forced to switch to a format that was capable of producing revenue.
JF was about nine years older than me, and looked it. He had gone to high school in Clovis and graduated from Eastern New Mexico University. He probably came to the station because of his ability to announce high school football games on the air. He had a passion for it. He also did well in the sales department because he knew everyone in town.
The J Team proved to be very popular. A lot of people would talk about the stuff they had done that morning. It was exciting to hear people buzzing about the place where I worked. It made me feel proud to be a part of that.
Interestingly enough, the J Team was like a large market morning duo in that they split up and got back together. In 1985, JE decided to stop doing the mornings and concentrate more on being the General Manager. Dr D (whom I will go into detail about in tomorrow's post) teamed up with JF to create "The Morning Zoo." They were still funny, but it wasn't like it was with JE. He and JF had a much better chemistry. After Dr. D left in 1986, JE returned and re-established The J Team, but it didn't last long. JF eventually left and moved to Amarillo. He told me at the time that he felt like radio was a young man's game and he wasn't a young man anymore. He was 30 years old at the time.
JE left about a year after that, when Mr W had come in as a partner. While we continued to have morning comedy teams, it never really was the same. JE and JF actually had a stake in their show. Everybody else who worked were just employees paid to keep the station running and on the air without any concerns for whether or not they could produce something that was marketable to advertisers.
I had been lucky enough to be a part of the show on Friday mornings. Dr. D had invited me to take part when it was him and JF running it. They actually felt like I was contributing something funny to the show. I rather liked that. I was able to continue when it was back to The J Team. However, I got a stern lecture from JE when I said something out of line about one of the advertisers. The way he was talking, he sounded like he was going to fire me on the spot. That would not be the first time he would act like he was going to fire me. I'm surprised he let me back on the show after that. But I did learn my lesson.
After JF left, he continued in radio there, announcing high school sports. He continued to do that until he passed away six years ago. I never really understood why he felt he was too old to be a regular radio guy. Maybe there was something going on at KZZO that he didn't fill me in on. We weren't really that close, but I did look up to him.
But I have no idea with happened to JE. A year and a half after leaving the station, I contacted one of the partners who lived in Los Angeles. I happened to be in the area. He told me that JE and his father ripped off Jid by flat out lying about the station's signal when the station was changing hands. He asked if I knew anything about the transmitter readings, which are supposed to be done every three hours. I told him that we were told not to do those readings, that they were done by the people who worked at the transmitter. I was asked to write them a statement about that, but I never got around to it.
From the times that I'd been back through the area and listening to the radio in the next few years that followed, no other station even attempted what had been accomplished by the J Team. That's probably because no other station wanted to waste money having to pay two people to be on at the same time. It's just as well. I would have hated for every station in town to try to out-wack each other.
Monday, April 6, 2015
The Music-Go-Round at KZZO
With today's post, I'm going to fill you in on how we worked the music at KZZO-FM during the time I was there. In order to provide a well-rounded mix of current and contemporary hits, the songs came in the following categories:
A - This designated the hottest hits and had the heavier rotation.
B - This was applied to songs that were trending upward to becoming hot or going downward after being hot. These received medium rotation.
C - This was used for our newest music. We would play one C per hour at about the :50 minute mark.
D - This was applied to songs between one and five years old.
E - For songs more than five years old.
A/O - This was short for Album Oriented Rock. Hard rock and heavy metal songs in the Top 40 would only be played at night. If they became really big hits in the A and B categories, we would only play them after 3pm.
A/C - Short for Adult Contemporary and they would be really soft songs that we only played between 9am and 3pm.
R - These were Recurrent songs that we would put back into rotation after we had stopped playing them for a few months.
L - This stood for "Lady" and was the label for love songs, although there were exceptions. Owner Jid also put songs referred to as "Freaks" in this category. "Freaks" were songs that EVERYBODY liked.
Any given week, we had about 12 A songs, 12 B songs and 4 C songs. We played about four A's and three B's an hour. This meant that during a six hour shift, we would typically play every A song twice. All the DJs screamed about this. However, Jid pointed out that in the larger markets, the hottest songs got fully rotated every two hours, so he was already being lenient on the rotations.
(A side note: A radio DJ has to be able to withstand hearing the same song hundreds of times. I had a pretty decent tolerance level for that. However, in all the time I was a DJ, there was only one song I ever got sick of. That was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." Don't get me wrong. It's a great song about something that matters, but I couldn't stand the same melody line being played over and over. I vowed to never play that song again. And if I hear it on the radio today, I immediately change the station.)
I need to point out that most radio stations have their own systems for getting new music on the air. You've probably seen movies and TV shows in which a radio DJ will get a new record in the mail and put it on the air right away. That almost never happens in real life. Most radio stations will play the new songs in rotation on Monday and change the playlists on a weekly basis.
Our competitor, KTQM, had all its Top 40 music recorded on reel-to-reel tape and was provided by a music service. The station would have several tape players that would play songs in an alternating order through an automated system to simulate some illusion of a mix of new and old songs (similar to what I dealt with at KENM/KNIT, but that station used cassettes instead of reel-to-reels). This meant that it could take up to two weeks before newly released songs were played on that station because the service provided reels with the latest hits on a weekly basis.
I had posted earlier about how KZZO couldn't meet everyone's expectations about what a "really good" station should be like. It also didn't meet mine. When we launched, I thought we were going to be Top 40 radio that led instead of followed. I thought we would be quick to play new songs that would obviously be hits. The weekend we made the switch, we started playing Prince's "Purple Rain" before it was released as a single AND we played the album version. It helped us appear to be pro-active in terms of new music.
Despite that beginning, Jid kept a tight control on the new music in the weeks that followed. The routine was that he would meet with Program Director Crad and get out the newest copy of "Radio and Records." He would look at the Top 40 chart and see which songs were new, which ones were moving up and which ones were moving down. He would designate the songs that would be A and B each week. He would then ask Crad to play the new songs for him so he could figure out which ones he wanted to add to the playlist as C's. If Jid didn't like a certain song, he would just have Crad sit on it until the next week.
In all reality, it wasn't a big deal if we didn't play certain songs that were only going to hit the lower depths of the Top 40. However, there would be some songs that would slowly climb up the charts and Jid wouldn't add them until he was practically forced to. One prime example was Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget about Me)" in 1985. We didn't start playing that song until AFTER it hit #1, and Jid still HATED it. Everyone else at the station, including Crad, knew the song was a hit and that we should be playing it. Waiting to play songs meant that KTQM was getting them all on the air at least two weeks before we did. If they were beating us at this, that means we weren't really in the new music game.
When I finally got to be the Music Director, I saw firsthand what everyone else had to put up with. When we did our music meetings in person, Jid would make these sour faces anytime I played a song that he didn't like. Most of the time, these songs would go on to be big hits. It appeared that Jid didn't have much of a grasp on what was becoming popular and equated the experience to his 60s and 70s heyday. However, more than the previous Program Directors, I was successful in convincing him to add the top new artists out of the box, like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. But anybody else, ESPECIALLY new artists, I just could not get him to budge. Every once in awhile, he wouldn't call because of some prior commitment and that permitted me to add what songs I wanted. However, that happened maybe once every two months.
The final month I was at the station saw me with COMPLETE control of the music. This was because he decided to no longer be involved in the programming, but he never told me that. He just stopped calling. Even though he was still part owner, he had apparently given up on radio. On the surface, it was great, because I could finally do the playlist the way I wanted and could transform the station into one that led as opposed to followed. Unfortunately, without Jid, the rest of the air staff decided to go rogue and play whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted without any regard to the clocks. It wasn't really worth being Music Director on those terms.
So I couldn't enjoy being Music Director with restrictions and the position was worthless when I was free to do what I wanted. That's just one of countless ways I feel like I've been forced to live life as a loser.
A - This designated the hottest hits and had the heavier rotation.
B - This was applied to songs that were trending upward to becoming hot or going downward after being hot. These received medium rotation.
C - This was used for our newest music. We would play one C per hour at about the :50 minute mark.
D - This was applied to songs between one and five years old.
E - For songs more than five years old.
A/O - This was short for Album Oriented Rock. Hard rock and heavy metal songs in the Top 40 would only be played at night. If they became really big hits in the A and B categories, we would only play them after 3pm.
A/C - Short for Adult Contemporary and they would be really soft songs that we only played between 9am and 3pm.
R - These were Recurrent songs that we would put back into rotation after we had stopped playing them for a few months.
L - This stood for "Lady" and was the label for love songs, although there were exceptions. Owner Jid also put songs referred to as "Freaks" in this category. "Freaks" were songs that EVERYBODY liked.
Any given week, we had about 12 A songs, 12 B songs and 4 C songs. We played about four A's and three B's an hour. This meant that during a six hour shift, we would typically play every A song twice. All the DJs screamed about this. However, Jid pointed out that in the larger markets, the hottest songs got fully rotated every two hours, so he was already being lenient on the rotations.
(A side note: A radio DJ has to be able to withstand hearing the same song hundreds of times. I had a pretty decent tolerance level for that. However, in all the time I was a DJ, there was only one song I ever got sick of. That was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." Don't get me wrong. It's a great song about something that matters, but I couldn't stand the same melody line being played over and over. I vowed to never play that song again. And if I hear it on the radio today, I immediately change the station.)
I need to point out that most radio stations have their own systems for getting new music on the air. You've probably seen movies and TV shows in which a radio DJ will get a new record in the mail and put it on the air right away. That almost never happens in real life. Most radio stations will play the new songs in rotation on Monday and change the playlists on a weekly basis.
Our competitor, KTQM, had all its Top 40 music recorded on reel-to-reel tape and was provided by a music service. The station would have several tape players that would play songs in an alternating order through an automated system to simulate some illusion of a mix of new and old songs (similar to what I dealt with at KENM/KNIT, but that station used cassettes instead of reel-to-reels). This meant that it could take up to two weeks before newly released songs were played on that station because the service provided reels with the latest hits on a weekly basis.
I had posted earlier about how KZZO couldn't meet everyone's expectations about what a "really good" station should be like. It also didn't meet mine. When we launched, I thought we were going to be Top 40 radio that led instead of followed. I thought we would be quick to play new songs that would obviously be hits. The weekend we made the switch, we started playing Prince's "Purple Rain" before it was released as a single AND we played the album version. It helped us appear to be pro-active in terms of new music.
Despite that beginning, Jid kept a tight control on the new music in the weeks that followed. The routine was that he would meet with Program Director Crad and get out the newest copy of "Radio and Records." He would look at the Top 40 chart and see which songs were new, which ones were moving up and which ones were moving down. He would designate the songs that would be A and B each week. He would then ask Crad to play the new songs for him so he could figure out which ones he wanted to add to the playlist as C's. If Jid didn't like a certain song, he would just have Crad sit on it until the next week.
In all reality, it wasn't a big deal if we didn't play certain songs that were only going to hit the lower depths of the Top 40. However, there would be some songs that would slowly climb up the charts and Jid wouldn't add them until he was practically forced to. One prime example was Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget about Me)" in 1985. We didn't start playing that song until AFTER it hit #1, and Jid still HATED it. Everyone else at the station, including Crad, knew the song was a hit and that we should be playing it. Waiting to play songs meant that KTQM was getting them all on the air at least two weeks before we did. If they were beating us at this, that means we weren't really in the new music game.
When I finally got to be the Music Director, I saw firsthand what everyone else had to put up with. When we did our music meetings in person, Jid would make these sour faces anytime I played a song that he didn't like. Most of the time, these songs would go on to be big hits. It appeared that Jid didn't have much of a grasp on what was becoming popular and equated the experience to his 60s and 70s heyday. However, more than the previous Program Directors, I was successful in convincing him to add the top new artists out of the box, like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. But anybody else, ESPECIALLY new artists, I just could not get him to budge. Every once in awhile, he wouldn't call because of some prior commitment and that permitted me to add what songs I wanted. However, that happened maybe once every two months.
The final month I was at the station saw me with COMPLETE control of the music. This was because he decided to no longer be involved in the programming, but he never told me that. He just stopped calling. Even though he was still part owner, he had apparently given up on radio. On the surface, it was great, because I could finally do the playlist the way I wanted and could transform the station into one that led as opposed to followed. Unfortunately, without Jid, the rest of the air staff decided to go rogue and play whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted without any regard to the clocks. It wasn't really worth being Music Director on those terms.
So I couldn't enjoy being Music Director with restrictions and the position was worthless when I was free to do what I wanted. That's just one of countless ways I feel like I've been forced to live life as a loser.
Friday, April 3, 2015
The Tower of Babel
Sometimes you just feel like everyone is out to get you without even trying.
I guess some doctors' offices don't care if they lose their patients.
I guess some doctors' offices don't care if they lose their patients.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Radio Tease #1: Mitz
(What's a Radio Tease? Click here!)
I will preface this post by stating that there are a lot of women who enjoy calling up and talking to DJs at radio stations. We all have sexy voices that give off a visual image that we're tall, good-looking studs. The reality is that most of us are pretty goofy-looking. Now, there are good-looking DJs, but they don't need to get their dates through the request line.
I had several conversations with women callers during my shifts at the station. Most of them just wanted to hear my voice talking directly to them. Mitz was the first one I came close to actually meeting. (This REALLY makes her a tease.) She was thin, had medium-length strawberry blonde hair and freckles.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I had seen Mitz once before. I was at the station for an air staff meeting. One of the other part-timers was Chid. His girlfriend had come with him. It was Mitz. He was having some kind of conversation with her outside the front door. He started coming inside and she just stood there and gave him the evil eye. I guess he told her she couldn't come in and she got upset about that. After she left, he started laughing to himself a little.
(A side note: Chid actually happened to be very good-looking. So much so that even Denz admitted to being attracted to him, even though she referred to him as a "mannequin." I don't think he picked Mitz up through the request line.)
Mitz would call me up from time to time. She would talk kind of flirty. It was rather flattering. However, I was never able to actually meet her. The closest I came was when she called and said she was going to be driving by the station when I was playing our Sunday afternoon syndicated programs. She told me what kind of car she would be driving and about what time she would be driving by. I looked out the window of the studio. I saw the car drive by and she stuck her hand out the window and waved at me. She drove by the station a second time and waved again. We had a very strict rule at the station about letting non-employees inside the station outside regular business hours. This was why Chid couldn't let her come in during that meeting and why I couldn't just let her come visit me in the studio. She was aware of the rule, so she didn't even ask. The bad thing was that she couldn't bother to park in the station lot at 6pm so I could meet her in person. It's possible she didn't like what she saw. I don't know, but she never did call me again.
But her story doesn't end there. About a year later, she became romantically involved with Tod. Tod's roommate Ked (who also worked at the station) once said that he tried to get Tod to go do something in town one night, but Tod didn't want to leave the house because Mitz said she was going to call. Ked theorized that Mitz was Tod's first real girlfriend. I guess the real issue was that Mitz still lived with her parents and she and Tod kind of had to sneak around behind their backs for them to be together.
He had told me that she had been involved with Chid before, along with several other local DJs. I was actually rather thankful I never met her in person. A little rule I had was to not get involved with any women who had hooked up with other DJs in the past. It's bad enough that the "radio circuit" in Clovis was rather competitive without hearing how good a kisser some other DJ from another station was. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that she actually did that.
I think Tod and Mitz broke up when he decided to return to Florida for a few weeks in the summer of 1986. I never heard him talk about her much after he came back. I can only guess she found another DJ to latch onto.
Even though I remember her full name, I was not able to locate her on the Internet. I can only imagine her as some cougar now trying to call and connect with the DJs in Clovis. Sometimes, you think some people will never change after you haven't seen them in almost 30 years.
Like I said earlier, Mitz was the first woman who called the station that I came close to meeting. There were others that I actually did meet and one that became Girlfriend #2. I will get to them in later posts.
I will preface this post by stating that there are a lot of women who enjoy calling up and talking to DJs at radio stations. We all have sexy voices that give off a visual image that we're tall, good-looking studs. The reality is that most of us are pretty goofy-looking. Now, there are good-looking DJs, but they don't need to get their dates through the request line.
I had several conversations with women callers during my shifts at the station. Most of them just wanted to hear my voice talking directly to them. Mitz was the first one I came close to actually meeting. (This REALLY makes her a tease.) She was thin, had medium-length strawberry blonde hair and freckles.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I had seen Mitz once before. I was at the station for an air staff meeting. One of the other part-timers was Chid. His girlfriend had come with him. It was Mitz. He was having some kind of conversation with her outside the front door. He started coming inside and she just stood there and gave him the evil eye. I guess he told her she couldn't come in and she got upset about that. After she left, he started laughing to himself a little.
(A side note: Chid actually happened to be very good-looking. So much so that even Denz admitted to being attracted to him, even though she referred to him as a "mannequin." I don't think he picked Mitz up through the request line.)
Mitz would call me up from time to time. She would talk kind of flirty. It was rather flattering. However, I was never able to actually meet her. The closest I came was when she called and said she was going to be driving by the station when I was playing our Sunday afternoon syndicated programs. She told me what kind of car she would be driving and about what time she would be driving by. I looked out the window of the studio. I saw the car drive by and she stuck her hand out the window and waved at me. She drove by the station a second time and waved again. We had a very strict rule at the station about letting non-employees inside the station outside regular business hours. This was why Chid couldn't let her come in during that meeting and why I couldn't just let her come visit me in the studio. She was aware of the rule, so she didn't even ask. The bad thing was that she couldn't bother to park in the station lot at 6pm so I could meet her in person. It's possible she didn't like what she saw. I don't know, but she never did call me again.
But her story doesn't end there. About a year later, she became romantically involved with Tod. Tod's roommate Ked (who also worked at the station) once said that he tried to get Tod to go do something in town one night, but Tod didn't want to leave the house because Mitz said she was going to call. Ked theorized that Mitz was Tod's first real girlfriend. I guess the real issue was that Mitz still lived with her parents and she and Tod kind of had to sneak around behind their backs for them to be together.
He had told me that she had been involved with Chid before, along with several other local DJs. I was actually rather thankful I never met her in person. A little rule I had was to not get involved with any women who had hooked up with other DJs in the past. It's bad enough that the "radio circuit" in Clovis was rather competitive without hearing how good a kisser some other DJ from another station was. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that she actually did that.
I think Tod and Mitz broke up when he decided to return to Florida for a few weeks in the summer of 1986. I never heard him talk about her much after he came back. I can only guess she found another DJ to latch onto.
Even though I remember her full name, I was not able to locate her on the Internet. I can only imagine her as some cougar now trying to call and connect with the DJs in Clovis. Sometimes, you think some people will never change after you haven't seen them in almost 30 years.
Like I said earlier, Mitz was the first woman who called the station that I came close to meeting. There were others that I actually did meet and one that became Girlfriend #2. I will get to them in later posts.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Work Enemy: Crad
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.
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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