Southern Maryland Radio Personalities
- Thread starter CarolinaKid1214
- Start date
CableChick
Loved
IrishGal said:Ken King said:Well if he's the smart techie type with a great personality, killer smile and gorgeous brown eyes... That's my hubby.
Fifteen years, and they said it wouldn't last.
Where is my date???
He's Sys Admin out here and seems to know what he is doingIrishGal said:Well if he's the smart techie type with a great personality, killer smile and gorgeous brown eyes... That's my hubby.
Fifteen years, and they said it wouldn't last.
Congrats on the 15 years, I'm hitting 10 years with the wife tomorrow.My experience working in SoMD radio 1 of 3
I was doing a search for the addresses of WMDM and WSMD radio stations for a job application I was filling out and came across this posting. I worked at both of those stations in the early '90s. My name is Brian Magee. I was the news director at WMDM/WPTX and later at WSMD/WMOM, following an attempt to become a full-time DJ which didn't come about.
In case anyone cares, I'll revive this thread and fill you in on my experiences and interactions with people – at least as much as I can remember. This contains more personal things about me and my memories about the way the radio stations worked internally. So, it may not be for everybody. I will post this is three sections, to keep it below the restrictions of this board.
In 1991 WMDM (Power 97.7 FM, as it called itself) was a contemporary rock station. They didn't like the label “Top 40,” although sometimes it could seem that way. It soon changed to “Legendary Rock,” an attempt to be “classic rock” with a few more recent hits thrown in. The station was not on 24 hours a day; there was no overnight broadcast. Except for some of the weekly top 40-type shows and other features like religious broadcasts and Dr. Demento on the weekends, all the shifts were with live, local DJs. Even the religious shows were from local churches, either taped sermons from the previous week's service, or a live feed over a phone line, which meant really bad quality of sound. There was even a local full-time news director (not me yet) named Jeremy House. (The last I heard from him a few years ago he was working for SRN – Satellite Radio News - in DC).
Most people probably don't know this, but the “network” shows like the Top 40 Countdown and Dr. Demento were not via satellite or phone line – they were delivered each week on vinyl records and later on CDs. The local DJ played the record and stopped it to put in local commercials and when the record needed to be flipped.
There was no official play list, just the vinyl records, CDs, and tapes in the broadcast booth. There was an attempt to control what was being played by a formula, but it rarely was adhered to. The records, CDs and tapes were broken into 5 categories based on how recent the song was popular. Each hour a chart was supposed to be used to determine which category of song should be played in what order. The more recent popular songs got more “slots” per hour. There were usually more slots than could be played in an hour to allow for the chance that a bunch of short songs could be randomly selected. I remember that the top of the hour was always supposed to be a song from the second category – a song that was a hit within the last year. Throughout the hour the DJ was just supposed to take the next one in the bin for that category and play it. Each hour there was a new chart. Most of the time the chart was the same from hour-to-hour, but there were subtle changes for the mid-day vs. late evening times, for example. When the song was over, the DJ was to put it in the back of the bin for that category.
Rarely, if ever, did this formula actually get used as designed, though. It was still the days when the DJ's personality and preference mattered. One of the competing radio stations in Calvert County even used as a sales technique the pitch that their DJs had no personality to worry about! They were ahead of the game, I guess, trying to get people to buy ads based on the fact that the radio station sounded the same no matter what DJ was on the air.
As the economy got a little better the station began to broadcast 24 hours a day, but still with local DJs. That overnight shift seemed to have no one listening except those from PAX River, and that was before base consolidation made the place as populated as it is today. There was a call-in line, but, believe it or not, it was just one line! Later it changed to two, but for a while there was literally only one incoming phone line for the public to make their song requests and to call in for contests. The DJs were actually okay with that because answering the phone was a major part of the DJ's job, and a pain in the butt. There was no engineer or assistant of any kind. It was just one person in the booth playing songs, talking on the air, and answering the phones. I used to tell people who wanted to get into radio, “Don't even try if you don't like talking on the phone to the public. You will spend at least half of your time doing that.” No DJ ever had a call-in contest where the winning caller was any higher than 5. You had to answer and hang up that many times to get a winner with only one phone line. We had no tape delay of any kind, like stations of today, so rarely did callers go on the air live. The phone calls of contest winners, for example, were taped then played back after the end of the next song (also the DJ's job with no help.) If there was a really popular song, the calls were constant requesting it, even if it was being played as they were talking! The one that comes to mind at that time is “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. Even if I liked it, I would have ended up hating it because for about a month young kids requested that song continuously. “Do The Bartman” was similar in its short-lived intensity for requests.
During this time the morning DJ was John Price, who was also the program director. He eventually moved from Maryland to a station in North Carolina, and died later. I don't know the circumstances. He was a huge man (400 lbs. or better I would guess), but one of the funniest people I have ever met, even until today. He took on a morning co-host for a while, someone who had worked at WJFK in DC when it played all comedy routines. I don't recall his name, though.
The mid-day personality was Beverly Farmer, who later became the program director and who now does traffic reports in DC, as I understand it. The evening personality was BFD (Big Fu**ing Dave). He was mentioned earlier in this thread. I don't know what happened to him. He drank more coffee than anyone I think I have ever met. He had the best “radio voice” of anyone there, so he did most of the commercials and other voice work.
Now that I've mentioned commercials, almost all of the local commercials and PSAs (Public Service Announcements) were engineered by the on-air staff after their shifts were over. Some businesses would get them done professionally elsewhere, but the vast majority did not. There was a small library of vinyl records with background music and some sound effects, but little else to help make those commercials and PSAs.
Buddha (also mentioned earlier) did the overnight shift when the station went 24 hours. He also died a short time later but I don't remember the circumstances. His name, Buddha, came from his appearance. He was of some sort of Asian descent and was pudgy, resembling to some the Buddha statues that most people have likely seen.
There were a few part-time DJs, including myself, that picked up shifts now and again during the week, but mainly on weekends. I don't remember all their names, unfortunately. There was a woman who went by KT and dated BFD for a time.
The pay was terrible. For part-timers it was minimum wage, $4.35/hr., I think. So for a 4-hour shift you would make less than $20. When the minimum wage rose to $5.00/hr., management got made when John announced on air that everyone at the station got a raise that day, which was true, but, of course, not known to the public. The full-timers didn't make much more.
For a period of time there were weekly live broadcasts from various places on Friday and/or Saturday nights. Either at a roller skating rink or a bar in Lexington Park or Solomons Island, or someplace similar. On those occasions BFD would be in the broadcast booth at the station while John was at the site broadcasting live. And, it was not only a party at the broadcast site – at least 5 or 6 people from the staff, including myself, would hang out at the station and drink. To this day I still think that those were some of the most fun times of my life – we had a ball. We had fun, the station made money, management looked the other way, and the listeners were happy, too.
One of the other full-time DJs during this time was someone named TJ, but that's all I remember. It's odd because he even lived with me for a short time and I don't remember anything about him.
WPTX, 920 AM, was the sister station to WMDM and was an adult contemporary format when I first started. It also had local, full-time, on-air talent. It also had a play list, bins of records, CDs and tapes, and an hourly chart. The broadcast studio was right next to WMDM studio with a glass window between – the on-air folks could see each other plainly through the glass.
WPTX had older, less sophisticated equipment, though. It was AM and broadcast quality didn't matter as much. I do not remember the names of the full-time on-air staff of WPTX, though. There was a women who did a morning show who was from Florida and loved horses, but that's all I remember about her. A man was there who was let go for a minor scandal where he was cited in the local paper having been pulled over for drunk driving. I don't remember his name either; it happened shortly after I was involved with the station. I think he was also the program director for WPTX.
(end part 1 of 3)
I was doing a search for the addresses of WMDM and WSMD radio stations for a job application I was filling out and came across this posting. I worked at both of those stations in the early '90s. My name is Brian Magee. I was the news director at WMDM/WPTX and later at WSMD/WMOM, following an attempt to become a full-time DJ which didn't come about.
In case anyone cares, I'll revive this thread and fill you in on my experiences and interactions with people – at least as much as I can remember. This contains more personal things about me and my memories about the way the radio stations worked internally. So, it may not be for everybody. I will post this is three sections, to keep it below the restrictions of this board.
In 1991 WMDM (Power 97.7 FM, as it called itself) was a contemporary rock station. They didn't like the label “Top 40,” although sometimes it could seem that way. It soon changed to “Legendary Rock,” an attempt to be “classic rock” with a few more recent hits thrown in. The station was not on 24 hours a day; there was no overnight broadcast. Except for some of the weekly top 40-type shows and other features like religious broadcasts and Dr. Demento on the weekends, all the shifts were with live, local DJs. Even the religious shows were from local churches, either taped sermons from the previous week's service, or a live feed over a phone line, which meant really bad quality of sound. There was even a local full-time news director (not me yet) named Jeremy House. (The last I heard from him a few years ago he was working for SRN – Satellite Radio News - in DC).
Most people probably don't know this, but the “network” shows like the Top 40 Countdown and Dr. Demento were not via satellite or phone line – they were delivered each week on vinyl records and later on CDs. The local DJ played the record and stopped it to put in local commercials and when the record needed to be flipped.
There was no official play list, just the vinyl records, CDs, and tapes in the broadcast booth. There was an attempt to control what was being played by a formula, but it rarely was adhered to. The records, CDs and tapes were broken into 5 categories based on how recent the song was popular. Each hour a chart was supposed to be used to determine which category of song should be played in what order. The more recent popular songs got more “slots” per hour. There were usually more slots than could be played in an hour to allow for the chance that a bunch of short songs could be randomly selected. I remember that the top of the hour was always supposed to be a song from the second category – a song that was a hit within the last year. Throughout the hour the DJ was just supposed to take the next one in the bin for that category and play it. Each hour there was a new chart. Most of the time the chart was the same from hour-to-hour, but there were subtle changes for the mid-day vs. late evening times, for example. When the song was over, the DJ was to put it in the back of the bin for that category.
Rarely, if ever, did this formula actually get used as designed, though. It was still the days when the DJ's personality and preference mattered. One of the competing radio stations in Calvert County even used as a sales technique the pitch that their DJs had no personality to worry about! They were ahead of the game, I guess, trying to get people to buy ads based on the fact that the radio station sounded the same no matter what DJ was on the air.
As the economy got a little better the station began to broadcast 24 hours a day, but still with local DJs. That overnight shift seemed to have no one listening except those from PAX River, and that was before base consolidation made the place as populated as it is today. There was a call-in line, but, believe it or not, it was just one line! Later it changed to two, but for a while there was literally only one incoming phone line for the public to make their song requests and to call in for contests. The DJs were actually okay with that because answering the phone was a major part of the DJ's job, and a pain in the butt. There was no engineer or assistant of any kind. It was just one person in the booth playing songs, talking on the air, and answering the phones. I used to tell people who wanted to get into radio, “Don't even try if you don't like talking on the phone to the public. You will spend at least half of your time doing that.” No DJ ever had a call-in contest where the winning caller was any higher than 5. You had to answer and hang up that many times to get a winner with only one phone line. We had no tape delay of any kind, like stations of today, so rarely did callers go on the air live. The phone calls of contest winners, for example, were taped then played back after the end of the next song (also the DJ's job with no help.) If there was a really popular song, the calls were constant requesting it, even if it was being played as they were talking! The one that comes to mind at that time is “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. Even if I liked it, I would have ended up hating it because for about a month young kids requested that song continuously. “Do The Bartman” was similar in its short-lived intensity for requests.
During this time the morning DJ was John Price, who was also the program director. He eventually moved from Maryland to a station in North Carolina, and died later. I don't know the circumstances. He was a huge man (400 lbs. or better I would guess), but one of the funniest people I have ever met, even until today. He took on a morning co-host for a while, someone who had worked at WJFK in DC when it played all comedy routines. I don't recall his name, though.
The mid-day personality was Beverly Farmer, who later became the program director and who now does traffic reports in DC, as I understand it. The evening personality was BFD (Big Fu**ing Dave). He was mentioned earlier in this thread. I don't know what happened to him. He drank more coffee than anyone I think I have ever met. He had the best “radio voice” of anyone there, so he did most of the commercials and other voice work.
Now that I've mentioned commercials, almost all of the local commercials and PSAs (Public Service Announcements) were engineered by the on-air staff after their shifts were over. Some businesses would get them done professionally elsewhere, but the vast majority did not. There was a small library of vinyl records with background music and some sound effects, but little else to help make those commercials and PSAs.
Buddha (also mentioned earlier) did the overnight shift when the station went 24 hours. He also died a short time later but I don't remember the circumstances. His name, Buddha, came from his appearance. He was of some sort of Asian descent and was pudgy, resembling to some the Buddha statues that most people have likely seen.
There were a few part-time DJs, including myself, that picked up shifts now and again during the week, but mainly on weekends. I don't remember all their names, unfortunately. There was a woman who went by KT and dated BFD for a time.
The pay was terrible. For part-timers it was minimum wage, $4.35/hr., I think. So for a 4-hour shift you would make less than $20. When the minimum wage rose to $5.00/hr., management got made when John announced on air that everyone at the station got a raise that day, which was true, but, of course, not known to the public. The full-timers didn't make much more.
For a period of time there were weekly live broadcasts from various places on Friday and/or Saturday nights. Either at a roller skating rink or a bar in Lexington Park or Solomons Island, or someplace similar. On those occasions BFD would be in the broadcast booth at the station while John was at the site broadcasting live. And, it was not only a party at the broadcast site – at least 5 or 6 people from the staff, including myself, would hang out at the station and drink. To this day I still think that those were some of the most fun times of my life – we had a ball. We had fun, the station made money, management looked the other way, and the listeners were happy, too.
One of the other full-time DJs during this time was someone named TJ, but that's all I remember. It's odd because he even lived with me for a short time and I don't remember anything about him.
WPTX, 920 AM, was the sister station to WMDM and was an adult contemporary format when I first started. It also had local, full-time, on-air talent. It also had a play list, bins of records, CDs and tapes, and an hourly chart. The broadcast studio was right next to WMDM studio with a glass window between – the on-air folks could see each other plainly through the glass.
WPTX had older, less sophisticated equipment, though. It was AM and broadcast quality didn't matter as much. I do not remember the names of the full-time on-air staff of WPTX, though. There was a women who did a morning show who was from Florida and loved horses, but that's all I remember about her. A man was there who was let go for a minor scandal where he was cited in the local paper having been pulled over for drunk driving. I don't remember his name either; it happened shortly after I was involved with the station. I think he was also the program director for WPTX.
(end part 1 of 3)
My experience working in SoMD radio 2 of 3
On WPTX we did a lot of sports – Orioles, Redskins, Navy, Nascar, etc. - from satellite feeds and telephone feeds. This is where I got my start. I wanted to get into radio and this station was just over the bridge from where I lived at the time in the Chesapeake Ranch Club in Lusby. I kept stopping in to bug the people there.
Eventually, they trained me on how to engineer a sports broadcast. It was fairly simple, really. You just had to tune the satellite dish to the right channel and point it to the right satellite (yes, it had to be moved for different satellite feeds), then feed the broadcast through the local engineering board. The engineer also had to turn down the AM station's power at sunset. I don't know if the FCC's rules have changed since then, but because of the sun's detrimental effect on an AM broadcast signal, the strength of the signal was higher during the day. Each month the time of the change in power was different – an average sunset time was calculated and it was used for the entire month.
The only times I ever got phone calls on the AM side was when the power was turned down and some people in outlying areas lost the signal altogether. They complained, but there was nothing I could do – FCC rules.
The real important thing, however, was to air the local commercials. The network feed left breaks at certain times for local commercials and we had a list of when those breaks would be and for how long. So, the local engineer had to actually listen to the game. In baseball, for example, there is a commercial break at the end of each inning. Some inning had local commercials, some did not, but most did. Some were longer than others, so you had to keep track of the innings, too. In baseball, sometimes a side can go down 1-2-3 very fast, so going to the bathroom had to be right at the beginning of an inning and it had to be quick. When a game went to extra innings, you needed to do a little math to figure out the commercial sequence because it was a formula that went into effect, not a chart.
For Nascar broadcasts from the Motor Racing Network (MRN), there are no natural breaks, so we had to listen for an exact phrase to know when our local commercial break was to begin. The phrase was, “This is MRN radio.” They would work that phrase into their normal banter with no real warning, so the local engineer had to pay attention. When that phrase was heard, the network became silent for two or three minutes. If you weren't there to put in a commercial, there was dead air, and a mad GM.
Sometimes the network would broadcast just background noise, and sometimes wouldn't cut off the microphone of the announcers. If you weren't playing commercials, all that went out over the air. Now, each satellite feed is embedded with a silent signal and automated equipment is triggered by it to play local commercials already loaded and ready to go.
However, what this kind of work did was allow new people to get comfortable with the equipment and do a tiny bit on on air work, which was worked in. At the beginning and end of a sports broadcast there is usually an announcer saying something like, “Today's broadcast is/was brought to you buy....” We were able to do that little bit of reading on-air at the start and finish of each game from a little 3x5 card that was typed up and attached to the stack of commercial tapes assigned to the game.
For someone who has never spoken on the air before, that little bit of reading was a very big deal. Some people just couldn't do it, believe it or not. You had to talk above a low-level background piece of music – that you also had to play at the right time – and come out of it into a real commercial without sounding like an idiot, making a racket in the background while pressing buttons or knocking something over and breaking up the flow of the broadcast.
For first-timers, it is not as easy as it seems. I can still remember the first time I had my little 30 seconds of on-air voice time – it was terrifying, even though maybe only a few hundred people were listening. But when I made it through without a total breakdown, I felt amazing. It was actually one of the best feelings I've ever had. I couldn't wait until the end of the game to do it again. So, by not being one of those guys who got caught in the bathroom or reading a book and missing an entire commercial break, I was given more and more work. It was poorly paid and lonely work, but I loved it. I got to learn the equipment, talk on the air a little, and feel like I was a part of things.
Eventually I was given a real on-air DJ shift on a Sunday night, when, surprisingly, there was no sports broadcast to do. Boy, was I terrible. I quickly got a call from the GM who was listening from home, asking me what the hell I was doing. I was devastated, but I knew he was right. He gave me some pointers and, luckily for me, he was nice enough to let me continue and I got a little better as the evening went on and got more comfortable.
I never became a full-time DJ...I just didn't have the “thing” that good DJs have. My voice was okay, I think, I just didn't have “it.” I did continue to get an on-air shift now and again when someone was sick or away. I wasn't great, but I never did anything real stupid or dangerous either, so I was safe.
I also did get a regular shift on Sunday mornings running both stations. Each had a schedule of pre-recorded programs to play (religious on the AM side, countdown shows on the FM side). I just had to make sure they were played correctly with commercials. Both stations could actually be engineered from the FM broadcast booth at the same time. It became a skill, though, to listen to two stations at once and make sure they were both being attended to. If I had commercials at the same time on both, it was a little challenging, but rewarding, too. I was part of the radio business! It was fun, never boring, and I was part of it. I was poor, but I was having fun.
Then, Jeremy, the news director, was quitting to move to a bigger station. He followed Yogi Yoder, the General Manger, to West Virginia – WKMZ, I think. I had never really paid that much attention to his work, to be honest. I did, on occasion, work with him doing local high school football games, live. He did the play-by-play and I did the color and kept the statistics. I got paid $15 per game. It was fun, though.
We set up the broadcast equipment at the game, and someone at the station would feed it through and put in commercials. But to call it “broadcast equipment” carries an incorrect connotation. It was basically an over-sized walkie-talkie or CB radio. We would put the magnetic end of the antenna on a metal folding chair and put it on the roof of the tower at the football field. We had no communication from the station to be sure they were even receiving us. We carried Sony Walkmans with us to hear the radio station's broadcast, acting as if they were headsets in an engineering booth.
The way we did a radio check to see if the engineer could hear us was to get on the microphone and ask. If the answer was yes, the broadcast of the radio station itself would go silent for a second or two that we could pick up in our Walkmans – the engineer's signal was to broadcast silence for a couple of seconds and hope we could detect it. If we did, then we would speak into the microphone that we head the silence and were ready to go at the scheduled time. That's how we did it. If we didn't detect that break in the music, then we knew they didn't hear us and we had to check the transmitter. And, since these games were only broadcast on the AM station, an uneven broadcast signal was pretty common, so we sometimes had to do this check a few times if we weren't sure.
I sometimes think of a young child who, now older, may still have a recording of me passing on a happy birthday from her mother or father and playing her a song. I know that I got many requests to wish a child happy birthday, and couple of times the parent told me that they were going to record the radio station on a cassette tape to save it for their child. Who knows, someone out there may still have one of those tapes in a shoe box somewhere.
To return to the point...Jeremy was leaving. He asked me if I wanted him to recommend me for his job. Because it was a full-time radio job, I said yes. I knew nothing about journalism; my degree is in Transportation Management, of all things. But, I had watched, and heard, Jeremy - a little - I knew the area and the station's policies and people by now, so they offered the job, and I took it...for $15,000/yr. This was a major pay cut from what I was making at my full-time job as a bartender.
I gave my house back to the bank, and moved in to a small, one bedroom apartment off an alley in Leonardtown near the fire station, one block off the square. At that point the county government had still not completed it's addressing of the county, so I had no address in that alley; my mail came general delivery because there weren't enough PO boxes for everyone. I eventually got one, though, when the post office expanded. In both cases I still had to go to the post office myself to get my mail.
(end part 2 of 3)
On WPTX we did a lot of sports – Orioles, Redskins, Navy, Nascar, etc. - from satellite feeds and telephone feeds. This is where I got my start. I wanted to get into radio and this station was just over the bridge from where I lived at the time in the Chesapeake Ranch Club in Lusby. I kept stopping in to bug the people there.
Eventually, they trained me on how to engineer a sports broadcast. It was fairly simple, really. You just had to tune the satellite dish to the right channel and point it to the right satellite (yes, it had to be moved for different satellite feeds), then feed the broadcast through the local engineering board. The engineer also had to turn down the AM station's power at sunset. I don't know if the FCC's rules have changed since then, but because of the sun's detrimental effect on an AM broadcast signal, the strength of the signal was higher during the day. Each month the time of the change in power was different – an average sunset time was calculated and it was used for the entire month.
The only times I ever got phone calls on the AM side was when the power was turned down and some people in outlying areas lost the signal altogether. They complained, but there was nothing I could do – FCC rules.
The real important thing, however, was to air the local commercials. The network feed left breaks at certain times for local commercials and we had a list of when those breaks would be and for how long. So, the local engineer had to actually listen to the game. In baseball, for example, there is a commercial break at the end of each inning. Some inning had local commercials, some did not, but most did. Some were longer than others, so you had to keep track of the innings, too. In baseball, sometimes a side can go down 1-2-3 very fast, so going to the bathroom had to be right at the beginning of an inning and it had to be quick. When a game went to extra innings, you needed to do a little math to figure out the commercial sequence because it was a formula that went into effect, not a chart.
For Nascar broadcasts from the Motor Racing Network (MRN), there are no natural breaks, so we had to listen for an exact phrase to know when our local commercial break was to begin. The phrase was, “This is MRN radio.” They would work that phrase into their normal banter with no real warning, so the local engineer had to pay attention. When that phrase was heard, the network became silent for two or three minutes. If you weren't there to put in a commercial, there was dead air, and a mad GM.
Sometimes the network would broadcast just background noise, and sometimes wouldn't cut off the microphone of the announcers. If you weren't playing commercials, all that went out over the air. Now, each satellite feed is embedded with a silent signal and automated equipment is triggered by it to play local commercials already loaded and ready to go.
However, what this kind of work did was allow new people to get comfortable with the equipment and do a tiny bit on on air work, which was worked in. At the beginning and end of a sports broadcast there is usually an announcer saying something like, “Today's broadcast is/was brought to you buy....” We were able to do that little bit of reading on-air at the start and finish of each game from a little 3x5 card that was typed up and attached to the stack of commercial tapes assigned to the game.
For someone who has never spoken on the air before, that little bit of reading was a very big deal. Some people just couldn't do it, believe it or not. You had to talk above a low-level background piece of music – that you also had to play at the right time – and come out of it into a real commercial without sounding like an idiot, making a racket in the background while pressing buttons or knocking something over and breaking up the flow of the broadcast.
For first-timers, it is not as easy as it seems. I can still remember the first time I had my little 30 seconds of on-air voice time – it was terrifying, even though maybe only a few hundred people were listening. But when I made it through without a total breakdown, I felt amazing. It was actually one of the best feelings I've ever had. I couldn't wait until the end of the game to do it again. So, by not being one of those guys who got caught in the bathroom or reading a book and missing an entire commercial break, I was given more and more work. It was poorly paid and lonely work, but I loved it. I got to learn the equipment, talk on the air a little, and feel like I was a part of things.
Eventually I was given a real on-air DJ shift on a Sunday night, when, surprisingly, there was no sports broadcast to do. Boy, was I terrible. I quickly got a call from the GM who was listening from home, asking me what the hell I was doing. I was devastated, but I knew he was right. He gave me some pointers and, luckily for me, he was nice enough to let me continue and I got a little better as the evening went on and got more comfortable.
I never became a full-time DJ...I just didn't have the “thing” that good DJs have. My voice was okay, I think, I just didn't have “it.” I did continue to get an on-air shift now and again when someone was sick or away. I wasn't great, but I never did anything real stupid or dangerous either, so I was safe.
I also did get a regular shift on Sunday mornings running both stations. Each had a schedule of pre-recorded programs to play (religious on the AM side, countdown shows on the FM side). I just had to make sure they were played correctly with commercials. Both stations could actually be engineered from the FM broadcast booth at the same time. It became a skill, though, to listen to two stations at once and make sure they were both being attended to. If I had commercials at the same time on both, it was a little challenging, but rewarding, too. I was part of the radio business! It was fun, never boring, and I was part of it. I was poor, but I was having fun.
Then, Jeremy, the news director, was quitting to move to a bigger station. He followed Yogi Yoder, the General Manger, to West Virginia – WKMZ, I think. I had never really paid that much attention to his work, to be honest. I did, on occasion, work with him doing local high school football games, live. He did the play-by-play and I did the color and kept the statistics. I got paid $15 per game. It was fun, though.
We set up the broadcast equipment at the game, and someone at the station would feed it through and put in commercials. But to call it “broadcast equipment” carries an incorrect connotation. It was basically an over-sized walkie-talkie or CB radio. We would put the magnetic end of the antenna on a metal folding chair and put it on the roof of the tower at the football field. We had no communication from the station to be sure they were even receiving us. We carried Sony Walkmans with us to hear the radio station's broadcast, acting as if they were headsets in an engineering booth.
The way we did a radio check to see if the engineer could hear us was to get on the microphone and ask. If the answer was yes, the broadcast of the radio station itself would go silent for a second or two that we could pick up in our Walkmans – the engineer's signal was to broadcast silence for a couple of seconds and hope we could detect it. If we did, then we would speak into the microphone that we head the silence and were ready to go at the scheduled time. That's how we did it. If we didn't detect that break in the music, then we knew they didn't hear us and we had to check the transmitter. And, since these games were only broadcast on the AM station, an uneven broadcast signal was pretty common, so we sometimes had to do this check a few times if we weren't sure.
I sometimes think of a young child who, now older, may still have a recording of me passing on a happy birthday from her mother or father and playing her a song. I know that I got many requests to wish a child happy birthday, and couple of times the parent told me that they were going to record the radio station on a cassette tape to save it for their child. Who knows, someone out there may still have one of those tapes in a shoe box somewhere.
To return to the point...Jeremy was leaving. He asked me if I wanted him to recommend me for his job. Because it was a full-time radio job, I said yes. I knew nothing about journalism; my degree is in Transportation Management, of all things. But, I had watched, and heard, Jeremy - a little - I knew the area and the station's policies and people by now, so they offered the job, and I took it...for $15,000/yr. This was a major pay cut from what I was making at my full-time job as a bartender.
I gave my house back to the bank, and moved in to a small, one bedroom apartment off an alley in Leonardtown near the fire station, one block off the square. At that point the county government had still not completed it's addressing of the county, so I had no address in that alley; my mail came general delivery because there weren't enough PO boxes for everyone. I eventually got one, though, when the post office expanded. In both cases I still had to go to the post office myself to get my mail.
(end part 2 of 3)
My experience working in SoMD radio 3 of 3
Unfortunately for me I got started on my new job over the Christmas break, when, as anyone in news knows, there is no news! I didn't know this, of course, and was scrambling to come up with something to broadcast. I had five minutes to fill on the AM station each hour for three hours in the morning, once at noon, and three more times in the evening. I had a 90-second news block to fill on the FM side, too, each of those hours. I filled it with Christmas tree safety tips from the fire department (don't burn your house down), and other public service type stories. I was scrambling to do the best I could at this new job and I was failing.
When things picked up I made it my mission to be sure I always had enough “real” news, and I think I did good job of it. Eventually the AM station went to a news/talk format with Sally Jesse Raphael, Tom Snyder, Rush Limbaugh and the like. However, I was given a 3 ½ hour morning show that I would do live of all news and features. I would record the short news break for the FM “rock” station, and just concentrate on my live broadcast.
I started at 5:30 a.m., so I had to get there at 4 a.m. or earlier to prepare. I had to call all the local police departments in SoMD for overnight news, and capture ABC network news stories that I could play on tape throughout the morning. I had to finish up my stories from my own news gathering and edit in the voice clips from interviews. Most of the morning's broadcast was network features (ABC news each half-hour live), various sports features live from the satellite, too), my local news, the ABC news I recorded (not included in their live broadcasts), a daily live 10-minute interview with a local official or news maker, and finally, the last half-hour the People's Market.
This was a swap-shop type show where the public would call in with the stuff the wanted to sell, buy or trade. When I had first heard this show done by others in the past I was blown away by how popular it was. There was hardly a morning when people weren't waiting to call in. When I took it over, I hardly ever had to stop and fill either. This was the only broadcast where the on-air person had help. The nice office manager – I feel bad because I can't remember her name – would actually answer the two phone lines and be sure that the caller was for the people's market and then put them on hold. I would then get to them one at a time, with an old push-button, blinking-light, multi-line phone set. I would then write down what they had said, with a phone number, so that if people called in later to get the phone number we would have it.
When I started mangers wanted to get rid of the People's Market, which had been on at 9 a.m. for years. (My show was over at 9 a.m.) But I talked them out of it and was only able to do it by talking the office manager into coming in an half-hour early, at 8:30 a.m., to keep the show within my on-air time. At 9 a.m. we were now running a network talk show – I don't remember which one.
One of my highlights was being able to represent St. Mary's County as the “local celebrity” in the state Special Olympics. They local Special Olympics organizers were kind enough to ask me after I had given them some publicity on the air. I got to march with them as they entered the stadium during the opening ceremonies of the state games. It was neat.
However, the show was killing me. I had to get up too early, and stay up too late, with no help. The second time I overslept – right through an alarm clock and the FM DJ calling my house – I decided I couldn't continue like that, so I quit. I hated to do it, but I had to. If an alarm clock and a ringing phone don't wake me up, something is wrong.
Shortly before this a rival AM station in St. Mary's County went off the air. I don't remember the call letters, but it was high up on the AM spectrum, and it was owned by a blind man. The news director there – I don't remember his name – had moved to WSMD (98.3) in Mechanicsville when this AM station closed, which was also famous for their daily broadcast of the obituaries. (WPTX began doing so when this station closed.) We had remained in touch and still saw each other at many of the same news events.
He was able to get me a job at a small resurrected AM station owned by Roy Robertson, the same person who owned WSMD. The station, WMOM (1560?), was very low wattage. The broadcast facility, though, had all new equipment. It was going to be a Charles County-oriented station, with, again, mostly satellite shows during the broadcast day. I would be the only one to work there full-time. My job was going to be as news director. I was to get local, Charles County news to broadcast on WMOM, and to help the WSMD news director by feeding him those stories so he wouldn't have so much work to do himself.
The WMOM building had a trailer home literally attached to it, and I was offered the chance to live there. But it was so old, rundown and, to me, unsanitary, I said no and continued to live in Leonardtown. (I was making the same amount of money).
It was quickly determined that the station wasn't going to make money. The WSMD news director left for better things and I was offered his job, which I took. At first it was great. I only had to do brief, hourly newscasts in the morning, and record news for the noon and afternoon hours. I didn't have to work as many hours, or produce my own show, except for a one-hour interview recorded each week to play back on Sundays.
The morning team on WSMD, called “Dapper Dean and Donahue,” at that time was doing well. They had followed John Price, who had worked there for a brief time after he left WMDM, too. I don't know what happened to the morning team. I know that Brian Donahue (not sure of the spelling) had been fired from the station once before and come back. His first firing had been rough, having come right after he had proposed to his fiancée. Dean (I don't remember his last name) started to teach classes on the side on learning how to be a DJ.
Things seemed to be going well. I had built relationships with local news makers, I was getting sleep, and, although still making little money, was generally happy.
But I should have known better. Roy Robertson started letting people go (or maybe he never stops). I remember one DJ who was forced to go by the name of “Jack Daniels,” along with his girlfriend who worked there in sales. I remembered that I liked the two of them a lot and was sad to see them leave. I don't know what happened to them. “Jack” was not too happy because another DJ in DC was going by the same name at that time and it was confusing.
The morning team was also let go, and I was soon to follow. The reason I was given had to do with a new license for another radio station in SoMD. The owner of that license (or part-owner, I'm not sure) wasn't willing to sell it unless he got a job – my job. He was in the news business in St. Mary's County, working for one of the smaller papers there. So, he got my job, and I was out – and pissed. Having made no money, I had no savings. Unemployment was only a small help.
Eventually I got a job in Ocean City as the editor of a weekly newspaper, the Maryland Coast Dispatch, which I held for almost three years, leaving in 1995. It turns out that news isn't really my thing either, although I think I did a very good job at it. Hours were way better, pay was very much better, but I was out of radio, which I still miss to this day. I've never tried to get back into radio, mainly because of the low pay and unstable work.
Most of the past decade or so I have been a computer and telephone systems administrator, traveling the hemisphere. I'm doing okay, but often wish I was back in 1991-2 working at WMDM part-time with those people, where I was poor, but happy and having fun.
When I left SoMD for the Eastern Shore, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local county newspapers outlining my most memorable things about Southern Maryland. I never saw it, but heard that it was published and was well-received. I have not been back there since, but hope that one day I will do so. I did enjoy my time there very much.
I hope this wasn't to boring for those who made their way through it.
My email is bjmagee@hotmail.com.
(end part 3 of 4)
Unfortunately for me I got started on my new job over the Christmas break, when, as anyone in news knows, there is no news! I didn't know this, of course, and was scrambling to come up with something to broadcast. I had five minutes to fill on the AM station each hour for three hours in the morning, once at noon, and three more times in the evening. I had a 90-second news block to fill on the FM side, too, each of those hours. I filled it with Christmas tree safety tips from the fire department (don't burn your house down), and other public service type stories. I was scrambling to do the best I could at this new job and I was failing.
When things picked up I made it my mission to be sure I always had enough “real” news, and I think I did good job of it. Eventually the AM station went to a news/talk format with Sally Jesse Raphael, Tom Snyder, Rush Limbaugh and the like. However, I was given a 3 ½ hour morning show that I would do live of all news and features. I would record the short news break for the FM “rock” station, and just concentrate on my live broadcast.
I started at 5:30 a.m., so I had to get there at 4 a.m. or earlier to prepare. I had to call all the local police departments in SoMD for overnight news, and capture ABC network news stories that I could play on tape throughout the morning. I had to finish up my stories from my own news gathering and edit in the voice clips from interviews. Most of the morning's broadcast was network features (ABC news each half-hour live), various sports features live from the satellite, too), my local news, the ABC news I recorded (not included in their live broadcasts), a daily live 10-minute interview with a local official or news maker, and finally, the last half-hour the People's Market.
This was a swap-shop type show where the public would call in with the stuff the wanted to sell, buy or trade. When I had first heard this show done by others in the past I was blown away by how popular it was. There was hardly a morning when people weren't waiting to call in. When I took it over, I hardly ever had to stop and fill either. This was the only broadcast where the on-air person had help. The nice office manager – I feel bad because I can't remember her name – would actually answer the two phone lines and be sure that the caller was for the people's market and then put them on hold. I would then get to them one at a time, with an old push-button, blinking-light, multi-line phone set. I would then write down what they had said, with a phone number, so that if people called in later to get the phone number we would have it.
When I started mangers wanted to get rid of the People's Market, which had been on at 9 a.m. for years. (My show was over at 9 a.m.) But I talked them out of it and was only able to do it by talking the office manager into coming in an half-hour early, at 8:30 a.m., to keep the show within my on-air time. At 9 a.m. we were now running a network talk show – I don't remember which one.
One of my highlights was being able to represent St. Mary's County as the “local celebrity” in the state Special Olympics. They local Special Olympics organizers were kind enough to ask me after I had given them some publicity on the air. I got to march with them as they entered the stadium during the opening ceremonies of the state games. It was neat.
However, the show was killing me. I had to get up too early, and stay up too late, with no help. The second time I overslept – right through an alarm clock and the FM DJ calling my house – I decided I couldn't continue like that, so I quit. I hated to do it, but I had to. If an alarm clock and a ringing phone don't wake me up, something is wrong.
Shortly before this a rival AM station in St. Mary's County went off the air. I don't remember the call letters, but it was high up on the AM spectrum, and it was owned by a blind man. The news director there – I don't remember his name – had moved to WSMD (98.3) in Mechanicsville when this AM station closed, which was also famous for their daily broadcast of the obituaries. (WPTX began doing so when this station closed.) We had remained in touch and still saw each other at many of the same news events.
He was able to get me a job at a small resurrected AM station owned by Roy Robertson, the same person who owned WSMD. The station, WMOM (1560?), was very low wattage. The broadcast facility, though, had all new equipment. It was going to be a Charles County-oriented station, with, again, mostly satellite shows during the broadcast day. I would be the only one to work there full-time. My job was going to be as news director. I was to get local, Charles County news to broadcast on WMOM, and to help the WSMD news director by feeding him those stories so he wouldn't have so much work to do himself.
The WMOM building had a trailer home literally attached to it, and I was offered the chance to live there. But it was so old, rundown and, to me, unsanitary, I said no and continued to live in Leonardtown. (I was making the same amount of money).
It was quickly determined that the station wasn't going to make money. The WSMD news director left for better things and I was offered his job, which I took. At first it was great. I only had to do brief, hourly newscasts in the morning, and record news for the noon and afternoon hours. I didn't have to work as many hours, or produce my own show, except for a one-hour interview recorded each week to play back on Sundays.
The morning team on WSMD, called “Dapper Dean and Donahue,” at that time was doing well. They had followed John Price, who had worked there for a brief time after he left WMDM, too. I don't know what happened to the morning team. I know that Brian Donahue (not sure of the spelling) had been fired from the station once before and come back. His first firing had been rough, having come right after he had proposed to his fiancée. Dean (I don't remember his last name) started to teach classes on the side on learning how to be a DJ.
Things seemed to be going well. I had built relationships with local news makers, I was getting sleep, and, although still making little money, was generally happy.
But I should have known better. Roy Robertson started letting people go (or maybe he never stops). I remember one DJ who was forced to go by the name of “Jack Daniels,” along with his girlfriend who worked there in sales. I remembered that I liked the two of them a lot and was sad to see them leave. I don't know what happened to them. “Jack” was not too happy because another DJ in DC was going by the same name at that time and it was confusing.
The morning team was also let go, and I was soon to follow. The reason I was given had to do with a new license for another radio station in SoMD. The owner of that license (or part-owner, I'm not sure) wasn't willing to sell it unless he got a job – my job. He was in the news business in St. Mary's County, working for one of the smaller papers there. So, he got my job, and I was out – and pissed. Having made no money, I had no savings. Unemployment was only a small help.
Eventually I got a job in Ocean City as the editor of a weekly newspaper, the Maryland Coast Dispatch, which I held for almost three years, leaving in 1995. It turns out that news isn't really my thing either, although I think I did a very good job at it. Hours were way better, pay was very much better, but I was out of radio, which I still miss to this day. I've never tried to get back into radio, mainly because of the low pay and unstable work.
Most of the past decade or so I have been a computer and telephone systems administrator, traveling the hemisphere. I'm doing okay, but often wish I was back in 1991-2 working at WMDM part-time with those people, where I was poor, but happy and having fun.
When I left SoMD for the Eastern Shore, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local county newspapers outlining my most memorable things about Southern Maryland. I never saw it, but heard that it was published and was well-received. I have not been back there since, but hope that one day I will do so. I did enjoy my time there very much.
I hope this wasn't to boring for those who made their way through it.
My email is bjmagee@hotmail.com.(end part 3 of 4)
GopherM
Darwin was right
Possibly the ultimate oxymoron...Southern Maryland and radio personality used in the same sentence. Or would that be Southern Maryland radio and personality?CarolinaKid1214 said:I used to live in Southern Maryland (now outside of Baltimore) and wondered if anyone ever kept tabs on some of my radio favs from a few years ago:
-- TC
-- Pat Kelly
-- Rick Austin
-- Buddy Long
-- Stacy Reynolds
If anyone knows any of these folks and could pass along some contact info, it would be great.
Excellent story. I remember you and I remember the editorial you wrote. In the editorial, you made mention of the "future home of..." sign that was on Rt4 going towards the TJ bridge and you wonered if they will ever build that church. Well, they finally did a few years ago. I remmeber the DJs you mentioned as well. I saw BFD at the Bucksnort event that was held at Sea Side in 04. Still the same Dave. Don't know where KT ended up. We hung out with her a couple time when BFD was DJing at the old Tradewinds club on base.NixManes said:I hope this wasn't to boring for those who made their way through it.
(end part 3 of 4)
Geez, the memories!
I remember when I first started at the Tester and meeting Scott Cool out on a sales call. He was like a rock star to me because I heard him on the radio all the time. John Price, too.
Mike and Buddha and BFD - what a riot!
I remember when I first started at the Tester and meeting Scott Cool out on a sales call. He was like a rock star to me because I heard him on the radio all the time. John Price, too.
Mike and Buddha and BFD - what a riot!
CableChick
Loved
vraiblonde said:Geez, the memories!
I remember when I first started at the Tester and meeting Scott Cool out on a sales call. He was like a rock star to me because I heard him on the radio all the time. John Price, too.
Mike and Buddha and BFD - what a riot!
Scott Cool? Now that's a name I haven't heard in years! He worked for Comcast in Ad Sales for a while.
Thanks for all of you that took the time to comment. I didn't think anyone would remember because so few people pay attention to the newsCableChick said:
I forgot about Scott Cool. He was involved with Beverly Farmer and also did a weekend on-air gig at WHFS in DC while I was at WMDM/WPTX. He also was a full-time salesman at WMDM/WPTX, too.
I was happy to bring back any pleasant memories - to those who have pleasant memories
- of those days listening to SoMD radio. I think for the most part we all did the best we could.
"The People's Market
It's on the AM..."
(sung to the tune of "Copacabana")
It's on the AM..."
(sung to the tune of "Copacabana")
