Day one of a new job is always disconcerting… very much like that first day of school, you imagine both the good and the terrible as the count down to your launch date passes, and for me that was literally what I was counting down to. We were launching a new radio station, a “support station” if you will, that would be a ratings distraction for the “upper end age demographic” that the NEPA area had to entertain.
I should take a second to explain our strategic intention for those of you folks that may not have the insider info on what I’m talking about when I refer to a support station. Radio clusters like Entercom NEPA usually own several stations, each one trying to attract a distinctly different group of people and those people are broken down by their age demographic. The idea is that if you put 4-5 totally different types of stations on the air, and they consistently attract the age group that they are targeting, the company in turn can completely command the ad revenue by selling across all of the brands to potential advertisers. It’s a calculated attempt at market dominance.
For instance, a Top 40 station would appeal to younger people (18-35) a Country station to a bit older demo (25-54) a News and Info station (35+)… you get the idea, and the plan for our new station was to pull older people (much older to be honest) and bluntly older women, off of our competitors frequency and on to us. Pretty solid thinking.
Now, ladies, you should know that advertisers adore you and are trying to woo you in any and every way that they can conceive possible (think of the 13-22 year old boys from your youth that would crash and burn undaunted till somehow getting your number), it’s an art form of sorts. The truest fact, one that ad companys won’t tell you, is that you ladies control the money in the house, how it’s spent, where it’s spent and on what it is eventually spent on.

If you just read that and don’t believe me, I advise you to take a brief look around your own house, (I’ll wait) if all you see is beer cans and Doritos, NFL schedules and Playboys, and there’s a lone Laz-y-boy it a dirty living room pointed at a VERY large television on a stack of milk crates then I’m oddly wrong, but if your family isn’t living like bears with furniture then the woman of the house channels the funds properly. Sorry fellas.
Anyhow, the station we were putting on air was to be the station you Mom, Aunt, Nana and favorite Church Lady could all agree on- EZ103. “Easy Favorites, Less Talk” was the station positioner (a breif description that was regularly said on air), and man was it ever. I was luke warm about the station to be honest, for God’s sake it was wall-to-wall Elton John, Celine Dion, Barry Manilow, Seals & Coft, Dion Warwick and an obligatory mellow Beatles tune every single hour, good stuff but not 8 hours a day 5 days a week for an attention hungry first time DJ that wanted a girlfriend and a beer for breakfast!

I seriously believed that I was signing on to working under the same conditions as an elevator operator at a soon to bankrupt company would be (small room, no windows, barely any people to talk to from hour to hour and the inescapable mind numbing soul stealing music… arg) but I was working full time as a DJ, that made it all worth it.

As a senior in college I was told by a well intended classmate that my radio career aspirations were entirely too high. He said that I’d never get a first job in radio as an AM Drive jock, I would need to move from station to station (possibly state to state) to advance at all, I would need years of experience to be considered for management and that “decent” pay was earned from years of passionate work… he meant it, I proved him wrong.
My EZ103 job was my first in the radio industry and a) I was to be the AM Drive co-host, b) I was tapped to be the P.D. (program director) and c) I hadn’t moved once in my life not to mention my career… he was right about one thing however, the decent money was a career oasis that was to be seen and never reached. When I was asked what I needed monetarily to sign on for the job my honest answer was met with a rather wet blanket response. I was ultimately offered $10K less than my financial expectation and told that I could make it up on talent fees and remote opportunities (I’ll explain that stuff later) and that with some “light-extra work” I should expect to meet my money hopes “no trouble”, that was total bullshit and they knew it!
Still, I was a full time PD, of a station that I was integral in helping put on the air, and also to be the first morning drive jock of that station ever, it was glorious right? Well, at least it all looks good on a resume…

The days and on-air shifts began to tick by pretty quickly and it was feeling more and more comfortable to be in the broadcast facility building, a place I’d once held in the same esteemed category of spots like Gettysburg, or St Mark’s Square or the Pentagon… in my mind I was adjusting to a higher standard. It wasn’t all roses and clover, but the challenges were to me fun tasks as opposed to daunting chores, and I attacked them head on.

I had this strangely great feeling like I was building something, not like a house or bridge, but like the feeling you get when you finally have a blooming garden or hedgerow, I was expanding and it was awesome! My solid belief, for perhaps the first time in my life was that I had found my place in the working world. I couldn’t wait to do another air shift; I couldn’t wait for the next commercial script; I couldn’t wait to see how to make a fast spoken thought faster, and more funny, and more entertaining… I was learning and loving it!

One afternoon while doing the next evenings overnight voice-track shift, the Operations Manager: J.R. we’ll call him, sauntered into the small production room where I was, and leaned hard on the console I was working on. “So… it seems like you’re doing great things here for WKRZ” he stated, (his voice a bit “affected” while he spoke, DJ’s often do that without noticing). “Would you be interested in full time work if we were to tap your into talents for a new station we’re considering putting on air in the near future?” he continued. Now, this was an interesting question for me to have been asked.

Several things crossed my mind almost all at once:

a) Did he think I was going to be uninterested in a full time gig?

b) Did my willingness to do the worst jobs in the building (sans scrubbing the commode) not make it apparently obvious that I wanted to be a full time DJ?

c) Why even ask me, why not just draw up the paperwork and show me to my desk already?

d) Would anyone on God’s green earth really turn down a rare offer of this magnitude?

e) Really!!

I was baffled.

“Yes, of course I’d love to be considered for the full time spot” I chirped back. “I’d love it” I reiterated. Now, it’s worth mentioning here that in spite of the fact that I was 35, I actually felt, and sort of really was, a newbie/intern. I also felt that if I went into any meeting, conversation, task or actually ANY aspect of this new job pursuit, with that fresh faced- kinda naivete about me, that I would achieve more than the others who’d been jaded by their years on this earth… and it was working. Note: Try acting like this for one hour today (seeing the world through a child’s eyes) it’ll shock you what you’ll begin to perceive differently.

I finished my work, bagged my headphones and headed for my car, all the while knowing that I had attained the respect of broadcast pros, one of which that had now told me that I was about to have a full-time future in the very business that I’d wanted to be in my entire life. It felt great. I’d build something, the base of a career, and it was about to pay off…

When you’re doing what you were meant to do for a living you know it, but so do all the people around you as well. I was doing on-air shift after on-air shift with all kinds of powerful, not to mention useful, feedback and almost all of it positive. As the air shifts began to pile up in the completed category, I was feeling more and more confident about the job and subsequently telling everyone who was within earshot that I was a radio DJ.
After 2 months I was pushed into the Sat. 10a-2p slot (the most listened to time of the weekend) and eventually asked to do fill-ins on M-F mid-days, then on occasional weeknights, I was busy (a super-sub if you will); and then it happened…
I was in my underwear on my back deck enjoying some early Tuesday morning spring sun, no joke, when the phone rang. It was the station manager telling me that in two days I was to be the fill in for “Jumpin’ Jeff” Walker, the locally legendary 3p-7p afternoon drive jock, who had been in that spot almost the entire 35 years that the station had been on the air. This was BIG.

The dive-time slots on radio stations are THE time you really want to be considered for as an on-air DJ. The thinking behind their popularity is that if you can get a listener to tune in during those times, then they’ll be back on again during almost any other time of the day. So you’d better be great.
I was nervous and looking of some tips. I remember asking the station mgr. if there was anything special that he wanted me to do in Jeff’s absence, as gracious as he was, he laughingly chose no answer at all, in fact I was given no feed back from anyone at all until the day I took the seat behind the mic and was set to do my first drive-time shift… the studio door swung open, it was the music director Kelly K, she peeked around the half open door, smiled and said two words: “Don’t suck!” It helped, sort of.
Months later a friend of mine Pete Marta told me a story that would solidify my confidence in my radio pursuit permanently. He was out chasing girls in a local nightclub called The Woodlands where “Jumpin’ Jeff” was doing his weekly 2 hour radio appearance gig, they call these easy money making events: remotes. I believe it was every Thursday and it was notoriously busy with the “local friendlies” (easy females) as my G.I. buddies would call them, so if you were single, or just horny, it was a no-brainer that you’d make it a stop on the night’s menu of places to visit.

Pete made it a point to talk to Jeff that night, for a couple reasons I suspect:

a) because it might elevate his bro-status being seen with the famous DJ in a club filled with other bro competition for the ladies he wanted to bed,

b) see reason “a” again,

and c) to put a good word in for his buddy Eric “the new guy at the station” Petersen…

but much to his surprise the truly good word about the new guy wouldn’t need to come from my friend Pete at all.

Pete strode up to Jeff, introduced himself and proceeded to explain to him that I was a friend and asked if he had a chance to meet me yet. The response was the type of poetry I’d like to have framed: “Of course I have met Eric”, he shouted (it was loud in there) “He’s amazing. Ever since day one, when he slid in behind that mic, he’s been a consummate professional. I’ve asked the manager to make him my permanent fill-in. When I’m off he’s the only one I want—-”
Jeff had been distracted by something, then pulled off for a work-type duty Pete told me, he’d excused himself and wasn’t seen again for the rest of the evening. But the words he had spoken had been relayed verbatim to me. It was like getting a sitting president to endorse your candidacy for public office.
The part time work you do as a radio DJ is by far the most fun and best days of your working radio life, at least it was for me, and as the rest of this story unfolds you’ll understand what I eventually had to come to terms with, perhaps what every working person on the rise in their career has to wrestle with-

freedom simply means having nobody that’s able to control you…

that’s what a salaried employee has to surrender, immediately.

The day I had my first on-air shift it was mid February and it was cold, real cold. I hadn’t been awake at 5am on a Saturday morning for any reason, job, girl, or bender (let me reiterate that- for ANY reason), so I was very aware that either a) I was committed to what I was about to do, or b) I must have lost my damn mind.
This may be a good time to fill in some details crucial to the story-line- on the day that I interviewed for the (part-time) radio job that I couldn’t wait to have, I was 35 years old. I had sold cars and gym memberships, run a pallet jack on a loading dock for a candy company and been a mgr. for JCPenney… all the while wanting to be in a studio behind a mic. I had become the very person that I had once made fun of- an older, lost, gypsy-esque, piece of career driftwood… I would’ve laughed at me if I hadn’t actually been me.

But as the following 14 years past I began to realize that I was what all radio people are- a loser. The broadcast radio world is a breeding ground rife with vagabonds and wannabees, that’s why we love it. As professions go there is no field that has a cult of people that could sound so Gottdam good while talking about almost anything, yet still be easily capable to go totally unnoticed during a random visit to the Cantina Bar on Tatooine! Losers.
Now you must understand that most people start in radio when they are very young, teenagers sometimes, and I was on my way into a studio to relieve one of them from an un-glamorous 12a-6a shift. Her name was Leanne and she was the type of person who was pissed off all the time. I (being the new guy) eagerly burst into the studio with a fever pitch, like a teenage pep-rally organizer, that only served to elevate her level of being pissed off more than her usual level of misery would maintain. She barely spoke to or had eye contact with me, she maneuvered around the room so as to steer clear of me (like I was contagious) and basically had a large amount of “go f— yourself” feelings for me (odd since we’d never met before this). Yet, as she left she said “If you need anything fell free to call me” and pointed at her number on the list of station employees, then the door slammed and I was all alone.
My heart was pounding as the first talk-break came closer and closer… the songs rolled up and the station sweepers with them. Finally came the first block in grey and red that was labeled “jock talk” that meant you’re on cuz! In my memory it was awful, but in reality it was no worse (or better) than any first timer… and it got easier. By the time the shift was over I’d done around a dozen breaks ranging anywhere from 3- 60 seconds and I felt strangely accomplished.
I left the station that morning in the capable hands of Dave Stewart, another long time NEPA radio name, and as I drove home weary from both a lack of sleep and the jitters of “first day stress”, I couldn’t help but feel like I was finally in a good place in my work life… little did I know what the following years would hold both good (at first) and then very, very bad.

A deejay. A story. Stay tuned…