My First Fulltime Job

I’m really not sure why I went looking for this, but this is my first ever mention in the ‘trades.’ This article was from the February 28, 1970 issue of Billboard. WMUM was my first fulltime job in broadcasting!

The article (sorry that’s as large as it gets) mentions the Knight Quality Stations. As it turns out many weren’t on at night and most had little relationship with quality.

Damn, that’s a long time ago!

10 thoughts on “My First Fulltime Job”

  1. Geezz Geoff that was almost 42 years ago! What were you 10 years old? Also, Doppler is sooo cute it pains me that she had to endure so much pain in order to reach you and Helaine. She is in good hands now.

  2. What was WMUM’s prior call sign in the Palm Beach area–does your history memory go back that far?

    I used to listen to WIRK out of Miami, and WJNO in Palm Beach in the late 60’s…

  3. WQXT, as I recall, was the “personality less” FM station–a good buddy of mine (John) and I used to do night shifts there–shut down around midnight. He was actually getting paid, I was just hanging out for something to do after our classes at Palm Beach Junior College.

    All the announcements and commercials on that station were pre-recorded by just one guy. Used to track a lot of symphony records in the evenings, so the owner, who lived in Miami, could have ‘nice music’ to eat his dinner by. Even the record titles were introduced by the same boring dude…

    Totally boring gig–until the night I cued up a demo record with the “Chicken Man” sybdicated radio show on the other turntable, intending to listen to it in studio only…

    A commercial cart was running, so when it was done, I flipped on what I thought was the RIGHT turntable and cranked up the pot…then suddenly realized it was the LEFT turntable, when the announcer for the “Chicken Man” demo said “And now we are about to hear..” I slapped it off the air the hard way and hit the other record… The next thing would have been the Chicken Man’s “Buck, buck, buck buckaaw” opening sound effect. Not Beethoven or whatever we were tracking…

    John and I just sat there and stared at each other….

    “What the heck did you do?”

    “Wrong pot!”

    “Wrong Pot?”

    “Wrong pot!–Chicken Man”

    “OH my Gawd!–If the boss heard that we’re DEAD!”

    So we sat there, waiting for the studio private line phone to ring, with an outraged owner on the other end…and the end of our little world…

    Apparantly, for once, he was NOT listening…we shut down as usual a few hours later, went home, and nothing came of it–coulda been an abrupt career-ender…

    1. And yes, we were that young and that stupid at times….sometimes I’m totally amazed that we never got in really big trouble..

  4. Wow that WAS a long time ago! Do you have any pictures of you back then? I’m sure I’m not the ONLY one who’d be interested in seeing what you looked like….

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