There Was A Time When Radio Was Fun

I just came across a Face Book page called "I WAS A DJ WHEN DJS JOCKED DISCS...AND I DON'T MEAN CD's   http://on.fb.me/eNXODs      It brought back a lot of radio memories for me. For many years of my life, radio was a huge part of it and now it is almost non-existent.  I find that sad in many ways.  I know nothing stays the same and that’s okay, what a boring world it would be if it did, but radio changed for all the wrong reasons.  For me radio was fun, exciting and truly entertaining and now it is boring, redundant and mostly irritating.

I am old enough that I can remember before we had a tv in our home and we would listen to the radio.  I listened to Red Skelton, Amos and Andy and lots of other radio shows.  Then about the time I started junior high school I started listening to music radio.  I grew up listening to KLIF in Dallas and KFJZ in Fort Worth during the day and stations like KOMA in Oklahoma City, WNOE in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville at night.  WLAC is where I discovered black music and fell in love.

KOMA,WNOE, KLIF, KFJZ and KXOL were great top 40 stations and had some of the best jocks in the world. Randy Robbins, Mark Stevens, Paxton Mills, Rex Miller, Dave Ambrose, Jimmy Rabbit, Frank Jolly, C.C. Courtney,  and Charlie Van Dyke to mention a few.  Always high energy, lots of reverb and always entertaining.  It was fun radio.

I was fortunate enough to work in markets that were very competitive which forced us to be more creative on the air.   I worked at KXOL where we were in a tough battle with KFJZ.   In San Antonio at KONO, where we went head to head with KTSA.  While I was in Denver at KTLK we battled KIMN.   Finally at KRLY in Houston, I was up against KILT and KRBE.  The fun part is that everybody knew everybody and we had fun together. We respected our competition and yet did everything we could do to beat them.  This resulted in radio that was truly entertaining, and the real winner was the listener.   Now there is no competition and no creativity. Most of all of radio today is owned by four companies.

Radio stations use to be owned by people who loved radio and only had a few stations each.  Now they are owned by huge corporations and run by people (mostly lawyers and accountants) who don’t have a clue to what radio is about. 

I don’t spend time grumbling about today’s radio, as I said before everything changes. I am just grateful I got to work in radio with some great talent such as Tim Kelly,  Steve Sellers, John Steel, Bob Moody, Harry Scarbough, Cris Cooper, B.Bailey Brown, Chuck Joseph, Mike Wade, Ron Foster, Ron Seldon, Johnny Shannon, Paul Kirby, Phil Gardner and C.C. McCartney just to name a few.  It was fun and exciting for the people listening and for the folks who were on the air.



Stay tuned for future adventures.