|
Kelly Batchelor Jared Brumbaugh
Megen Tom Mallison (Tom the Jazzman) Karen Nelson
Friday Afternoon Request Concert The Three O'Clock Mix Adagio New Directons Finley Woolston Announcer and Host for The Morning Classical Concert The Blue Plate Special The Choral Tradition |
 First day on the job as a professional broadcaster? It's the early 80's, and I open the door one Sunday morning before 0600 at the Greenville AM station that was desperate enough for bodies to hire me. First thing I notice is our program director, asleep on the floor, because the job paid so poorly he couldn't afford to heat his apartment. I left that evening at 2030, a 14 hour air-shift. What did I learn that first day? Broadcasting has weird hours and little money. I stuck with it anyway. It seems my North Carolina public school education could have taught me better (Havelock High School graduate 1977). After dropping out at East Carolina University, I went on to the University of South Carolina and got a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. It was there I got my first taste of non-commercial radio, working for the student-run station WUSC, where we featured then unknown bands like REM, the Police, and the Go-Go's. I loved every minute of it, and if they'd have paid me minimum wage, I'd still be there. Sadly, they didn't pay me anything, so after I graduated it was on to the world of commercial radio. Some of the stops including a stint for a small Garner station whose general manager would wander back into the control room on occasion and wonder out loud if anyone was actually listening, about five months at WGBR in Goldsboro (Carl Kassell worked there as well, though not at the same time), and morning drive with WAZZ in New Bern, which was at one time THE country music station in eastern North Carolina (there was a time before WRNS). All of those stations are now under new ownership (several times over in some cases) and some just aren't there anymore. That is the world of commercial radio. Anyway, after WAZZ, I got my first PAID non-commercial gig with WTEB, where, working 41 hours on-air each week, I was part-time. A few years of that, then I went on to WUAL in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to work as their jazz coordinator. That was a great place. The station was in a (barely) refurbished old house on the edge of campus, so we were the only radio station I've worked at which had a full kitchen (every so often Miss Cookie would make meatloaf), cats, a cellar, a bath-tub, and a ghost. I came back here in the early 90's. Working as a producer doing features and interviews for Morning Edition, I've had the chance to meet some fascinating individuals and hear some great stories. The best story was Jane Gillman and Darcy Deaville's tale of pulling off on the side of a road out west trying to figure out where they were on the map when they were suddenly engulfed by an honest-to-God cattle drive. Any story that ends with "...and the car was covered in cattle spit" has to rank as a classic, no matter what circle you run in. I'm also now hosting and producing The Sound on weekday evenings on the Public Radio East News & Ideas Network. I grew up listening to great singer/songwriters like Jim Croce, James Taylor and Harry Chapin, so to play the music of some of their contemporaries and heirs has been fun, to say the least. I've also had the chance to work with some good people past and present. I've inhaled bits of old Sonex into my lungs working with Charles Wethington as we made studio renovations. I've played electrician in the middle of hurricanes trying to get the station back on the air with Brad Bailey, who holding the flashlight from a distance, informed me that the human body is an excellent conductor of electricity. In group photos I always got to stand in the back with Jeanne Kennedy as we looked down on our vertically-challenged cohorts. And every time Finley Woolston tells people I taught him everything he knows about broadcasting, I refuse to take responsibility, and will continue to do so in the future. It's been an interesting ride, and I thank everybody on both ends of the radio for letting me do this thing I do. |
