Living On Air (7 page)

Up until now, my life had been one fantastic ride. A great family, good friends, my dream job, even meeting the girl of my dreams, but it was about to take a turn. It was 1978 and out of the blue, Stoney was let go from the station. Rumors started circulating that NBC was going to change formats, disco was dead, smooth jazz was in. I had always been a high-energy kind of disc jockey playing the hits whether it was country, Top 40, or disco. Now Gordon wanted the deejays to slow down, relax,
be mellow. Probably the last word anyone would use to describe me is “mellow.” They changed the name of the station from Disco Stereo to “Ninety Three Nine, Uptown.” I gave it a shot in the new format but it wasn’t natural, so I was shocked when my engineer, Stu Bullman, told me he heard the entire staff was getting fired, except for me. One day during my show, Gordon called on the hot line and said he wanted to see me at the end of the day. Well, I thought, this is it, Stu was right, Gordon is going to let me in on the big rumor. But when I walked into his office, that’s not how it went.

“Goomba,” he said sadly. The way he said it, I knew right away.

He gently carried on to tell me I just had too much energy, too much personality, for the new format. Stu had it wrong. Everyone was staying, but me. Now, I was out of work like Stoney. I had seen other jocks get fired, but I never thought it would happen to me. I got a severance check worth 12 weeks’ pay and a handshake.

Now what? I wasn’t prepared for this to happen. I couldn’t run home to Mom and Dad. What a strange and absolutely frightening feeling. But most of all, I was sad. It hurt. I was singled out, thrown out, while everyone else I knew stayed. They didn’t want me to come here every day anymore. I wouldn’t be allowed to park in that lot anymore. I didn’t work for NBC anymore. It was my first ride down on the roller coaster of life and, honestly, it was awful.

In the first place, I hate roller coasters. That terrible feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when the car drops from the top of the track, and plunges to the ground, that’s how I felt, all of the time. My stomach was in knots. I had my family, my friends, and Annie to lean on, but I knew it was up to me to get out of that jam. At least I was single, no wife, no kids, no mortgage. It was
just me, my life, my problem, my responsibility. So much of what happens around us is out of our control. In radio, like any other job, when a new boss comes in, there are going to be changes. The problem is, even if you are doing your best, you might get blown out anyway. In my case, the format changed and I didn’t fit in anymore. It happens all the time in radio but when it happened to me I felt lost. It was hard to know what to do with myself when I didn’t have anywhere to go in the morning. How do you fill the hours? How do you find a new job? How do you keep from getting depressed? I am an upbeat, positive person. I like being around people. I need to be around people. But I didn’t feel like that after I got fired. Mostly, I wanted to be alone. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for myself, not much anyway. I just needed to think. What would my dad do? What about my brother, Henry? They were two of the most responsible people I knew but they didn’t know anything about the radio business. I needed a job, fast. I knew that if I was going to make something positive happen, I had to work on it, relentlessly. Even now, I do the same thing, for almost any new goal I hope to achieve. If I want to go after a new gig, learn a sport, write a book, whatever it is, I give it my complete attention for one hour a day, minimum. Of course, after I was fired, I had all day to work on finding a new job. So that’s what I did. I mailed out airchecks and hit the phones, nonstop. I had to make something happen.

Several months earlier, Ann had gotten a new job at WJLA-TV, Channel Seven, as an assignment editor and news writer. She was as surprised as I was that NBC had let me go but she was always on my side, absolutely positive that something good would turn up. I didn’t have long to worry. A few weeks after I was fired, I was offered a job at WIND radio in Chicago, one of those cities I dreamed about as a kid. Fantastic! We made the decision to move there together. Ann was excited too, looking forward to working in television in Chicago, when I suddenly changed my
mind. Something just didn’t feel right so I took a risk and turned down that job. My intuition paid off. Six months later WIND dropped its format for All Talk and I would have been out of work. Again. Instead, I ended up staying in Washington, looking for any radio gig in town.

Even with all of this uncertainty in my career, I knew what I wanted to do in my personal life. I had been going out with Ann for two and a half years when I made the best decision of my life. It was Christmas Eve, 1978. We were at my parents’ house in Connecticut, about to go to my cousin’s for a big family party. It was just the two of us at home, my parents had already left, when I suggested we each open one gift. I have no idea what she gave me, I was much too excited to remember. I gave her a small box that she thought might be a bracelet, and when she opened it, there was a diamond ring. I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. Luckily, she said yes! It was a perfect night. There was a light snow falling when we left the house to go to my cousin Betty Ann’s. The entire family was there, aunts and uncles, cousins, my brother Henry and his family. Everybody was in on the secret proposal and was waiting for our arrival. A cheer went up as we walked into the house and we drank champagne with our huge Italian feast that night. It was a perfect evening and I could not have been happier. She is my one and only true love.

After a wonderful Christmas in Connecticut we were back in D.C. and I was still out of work. In desperation I called WRQX, the album rock station owned by ABC, to see if there were any openings. It wasn’t my style at all, but I couldn’t afford to wait for the perfect job. It was the kind of station where they played long album cuts, one after the other, where the jocks hardly said anything, but the afternoon guy had just left for a job in New York. There was an opening, and luckily, they gave me the show on a trial basis. What a relief. I was back on the radio.

Up until now, I was the kind of deejay who talked up records and said funny stuff on the air. Now I was in a radio format where all I said was, “That was Led Zeppelin, and before that was Foghat, and before that was…” aw crap, give me a break. At least I had a job and even better, Stoney was on the air with me again. After I got the afternoon shift at WRQX, I passed along Stoney’s tape to the program director and he hired him for the night shift. Believe me, I was happy to have a paycheck but I wasn’t content to play it safe. I was the same ambitious person I had always been. So I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get back into Top 40 radio. And then it fell into my lap.

HARDBALL

Working in radio can be a very risky business because there is no job security. Sure, there may be some radio personalities who feel safe about their jobs, people like Ryan Seacrest or Howard Stern. But even the famous Don Imus ran into trouble when he made a racially offensive comment on the air in 2007 about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Without any safety net, I think most deejays, like me, are just happy to be on the air, with a gig in broadcasting. If it’s not the perfect station, or format, you learn to make the best of it.

So there I was, at WRQX, playing those album cuts that went on forever. No more Top 40 radio for me. Plenty of time to pop out for lunch while a record was spinning on the turntable. No, not really. I had learned my lesson on that one. But I wasn’t about to give up on trying to get back to what I enjoyed the most, playing the hits. I wanted out. I was frustrated, bored, and uninspired. I didn’t care what went on at the station because I just wasn’t interested.

I was so out of touch with everything, that it came as a complete surprise when I walked into work one day and heard our boss had been fired. I had no idea he was about to be let go. All of a sudden I started listening to what everyone had to say,
very closely. I heard ABC was changing formats but no one knew what was coming. Country? Classical? What now? Then word came down the station was going to go Top 40. Are you kidding me? Instead of hoping to break out of there, I was desperate to stay. Rumor had it the new boss was the one and only Al Brady Law, a brilliant program director who had worked in New York, Miami, and Boston. Suddenly I was in the perfect situation to impress the famous programmer, except for one tiny problem. For the past four years I had been playing disco and now album rock. How was I going to show Al I could do the Top 40 gig?

I took a risk. On my own I dropped the album rock format, “before that…and before that…and before that…” and started talking to the listeners again, really talking, having fun, making jokes. What did I have to lose? I figured he was going to come in and fire everyone anyway, so why not have a good time while I tried to save my job and show off some of my skills.

Al came to us from WHDH in Boston and he brought along his news director, Doug Limerick. Doug is a great guy, originally from the South, with a beautiful voice. He is the consummate professional with a slightly twisted sense of humor. Just my kind of guy. We hit it off right away. In our conversations, it came out that I was from Connecticut, had worked in Top 40 most of my life, including WDRC in Hartford. Doug was familiar with the Big-D, because it was one of the great music stations in New England. I was hoping he would put in a good word for me with Al.

I met my new boss for the first time at a staff meeting, sitting around a huge table in the conference room. Everyone was there, the deejays, engineers, and office personnel. We sat waiting for
about 20 minutes when Al finally burst through the door. He was taller than me, about five ten, with a big belly, a thick mustache that covered his mouth, and he had a head full of black curly hair, shaped like an Afro. He immediately took over the room. All attention was on Al as he slowly scanned the table and said, “We are taking this station Top 40 and we are gonna kick ass! I’d like to say that one year from now, we’ll all be sitting here together at this table, but I gotta tell ya, I doubt it.”

Later that week Al fired every single jock at the station except for Stoney and me.

All I could think was, God bless Doug Limerick. I’m pretty sure he saved my life at ABC. Thanks, Doug. But hot damn! I was a Top 40 jock again. The new Q-107 went on the air on April 16, 1979, just about one month away from my wedding date. Our first day on the air, Ann was home sick with the flu and she taped my entire shift. [
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] It was such a big deal to me, I still have that recording all these years later. We had a huge budget from ABC, all the money we could ever dream of, to help launch the new Q. We gave away cars, trips, concert tickets, and cash. Every Thursday, every week, was Thousand Dollar Thursday. You never knew when it was going to happen, but sometime during the day one of us deejays played the song “Hey Jude,” and caller number one-oh-seven would win the money. I was having fun again.

There was even an attention-getting television commercial created for all the ABC radio stations by the advertising geniuses Chuck Blore and Don Richmond. It was called “The Remarkable Mouth.” It started with a shot of this beautiful woman, with long shaggy hair, wearing a tight T-shirt, of course, with Q-107 in big letters across her chest. Chris DeLisle was her name, she had clear
blue eyes, and a perfect smile covered in bright red lipstick. The camera started out wide, and she said, “Here’s something I know you’ll like,” then the shot slowly zoomed in extremely tight, so you could only see her mouth. Next, you heard each disc jockey say something, our voices coming out of her mouth while her lips moved in perfect sync to everything we said. Believe me, in 1979, that commercial was the coolest thing anyone had ever seen on TV. She was HOT! And so was the New Q. [
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]

My buddy Doug did the morning show with Dude Walker. They were absolutely brilliant together. Dave Thomson handled middays. I got the afternoon drive time slot from two to six, a step up from middays for me, oh and remember my old buddy Johnny Walker, from WWCO? I carried his aircheck from Q105 in Tampa into Al’s office one day and said, “Stick this in the tape deck and crank it up.” Johnny was using the name “Uncle Johnny” in Tampa and his act was outrageous. Johnny liked to say, “Everybody has someone crazy in their family and that’s me. The whacked-out uncle.” Al loved him and Johnny grabbed the early evening shift, from six to ten. Sandy Weaver, our first female jock, had the late-night shift. By now, Stoney had made a big decision to leave radio to concentrate on acting full-time. I missed working with him but I understood why he made that choice. Even though Stoney had left the station, he was still in town to be one of the groomsmen at my wedding. My brother Henry was my best man.

Ann and I got married May 19, 1979, at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C., Ann’s hometown. Her parents planned it all, there was a band, great food, beautiful flowers, it was one big party! All of our friends were there from NBC, ABC, Channel 7,
and both families, of course. To this day, more than 30 years later, people still tell us how much fun they had at our wedding. It’s a great memory.

In our very first ratings book, Q-107 buried all the other stations in the city. I had struggled through the past few months, when I was fired from NBC, and then when I took a job that wasn’t the right fit. But I never lost faith in myself. I was back in Top 40 radio, the number one afternoon deejay at the number one station in town.

Doing the afternoon show from two p.m. to six p.m., I had plenty of time in the morning to pursue a brand-new adventure, voice-over work. Out of the blue, I started to be asked to voice local and regional commercials in Washington. I didn’t know much about the voice-over world, but I quickly found out it’s a nice place to visit. I worked for clients like Garfinckel’s Department Store, and Woodward & Lothrop, classy ads designed by the Denenberg Agency in D.C. The owner and creative director, Elliot Denenberg, liked my voice and started using me on a few accounts for car dealerships and other retail radio and TV work. Plus before my shift at the Q, I made personal appearances for the station at high schools and charity functions, just like the kind of events I used to go to at WWCO in Connecticut. After my shift at six p.m., I either went to another meeting for the station or went out to dinner with Ann, Stoney, and Barbara. It was a great balance of work and personal satisfaction. Getting fired from NBC was quickly turning into a distant memory. Those terrible feelings were long gone.

Moving into the 1980s, the Q continued to grow. As we hit the one-year anniversary of the station and my marriage, I became
more and more interested in a voice-over career. I thought being in radio teed it up perfectly. I could pursue VO while my radio show paid the bills. I became aware of the big network voices like Ernie Anderson, Danny Dark, and others who lived in Los Angeles. Dreaming about that kind of career gave me a new goal to reach for in my career. I talked it over with Ann, and just like that we both decided where we were headed next.

For as long as I can remember I wanted to work in Los Angeles. If I was ever going to get a chance at national voice-over work, or doing promos for networks, I thought it could only happen in L.A. We were a team and Ann was all in, ready to find new opportunities in her own career as a TV news writer and producer. But I wouldn’t allow myself to move across the country without a job in radio already lined up. I had no interest in being another out of work, starving actor/voice-over guy in L.A. The plan was simple: I would mail out airchecks to radio stations in L.A., hoping that someone would take the bait. I loved Q-107. It was high-energy fun with great music. I knew how fortunate I was to get that job. But I’m not the kind of person who sits still for long. Like my dad, I’m always thinking of how I can make a particular situation even better and looking for what’s next for me down the road. I made it my priority to get to Los Angeles and as always I tried to work one hour each day on making it happen. After six months of sending out tapes, I had an offer.

I got a call from Jim Conlee at KHTZ radio in Los FREAKING Angeles.

“Joe? We listened to your tape and really like what you’re doing. We want to hire you at K-HITS.”

My head nearly burst. This was different from the call I got from Gordon when I was still living at home in Connecticut. Back then I was a kid who would have gone anywhere without a thought about how I would get there, how much I would make, or even how I would live. This time I wasn’t alone, I had Annie by my side. I knew exactly what part of L.A. I wanted to live in, and I knew I would have to take a pay cut to get there but I thought I could make up the difference in voice-overs. I thought I was prepared for everything. But wouldn’t you know, that roller coaster was heading my way again, ready to take me down. Two seats please!

I had a new boss at Q-107. Al Brady Law had moved on to WABC in New York, and the new Program Director was Alan Burns, young, hip, and cool. We got along well, and I was positive he would be happy for me. The next day, I could barely wait till my shift was over to tell him about my offer.

“Alan, I have a wonderful opportunity. I’ve been offered the dream job I’ve been waiting for in Los Angeles. KHTZ wants to hire me for afternoons. I love Q but I’ve been working towards this my whole life. I want to be fair and give you two or three weeks’ notice. Whatever you need.”

Alan was surprisingly expressionless. He just looked at me and said, “You signed a letter of intent to enter into a contract with us. We won’t let you go.”

My mouth dropped along with my stomach. Of course I remembered signing that letter, but at the time I was told it was only to stop me and the other jocks from taking a job with the local competition, at one of the other stations in Washington. All radio
stations do that kind of thing. I thought that was fair. The execs at ABC didn’t want to be in competition with talent they cultivated.

He said, “ABC owns two stations in Los Angeles, and we don’t want you in competition with them, either.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” I was stunned.

“No Joe. I’m serious. We’re playing hardball here.”

That hurt me. I loved that station and everyone there, including Alan. But as far as I knew, this was my once in a lifetime opportunity. They wanted to lock me into five years at Q-107. I was 25 years old.

“Alan, you want me to wait until I’m 30 years old to have the chance to follow this dream?”

His answer, “Hardball, Joe.”

I didn’t blame Alan, I knew he was doing his job, but I needed help to figure this out. Were they right? Did they own me for the next five years? I had no idea. I had to hire a lawyer to find out the answer.

My attorney’s name was Julian Tepper. I didn’t know anything about him except that he was a friend of a friend. He normally did litigation work for the government and he was looking forward to doing something different. He seemed like a sharp guy to me. From the beginning he told me, “I can take care of this for you. Don’t worry.”

I called Jim in L.A. to tell him what was going on and was surprised to find out he already knew. A huge corporation like ABC has plenty of lawyers on staff. Sadly, some of them were
working against me. KHTZ radio had received a “cease and desist” order to stop negotiating with me. Any more discussions, and ABC would take legal action against KHTZ. Damn, this really was hardball.

But Jim was calm. He told me not to worry. “Listen, Joe, this is big corporation shit. You work it out and I’ll keep a shift open for you. Good luck!”

Julian put in a couple of weeks of back and forth arguments, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally he said, “Joe, they’ll keep stonewalling until you run out of money. You’re never going to be able to match the amount that ABC can put into this fight with all the lawyers it has. There’s only one thing left you can do. We have to use what they want so badly, against them.”

I didn’t know where he was headed so he explained. “They want you on the air. Let’s take that away from them. Go into Alan’s office and tell him you can’t handle it anymore. The stress of all this is just too much and you need time off, without pay. You can’t do your show, you need a leave of absence.”

Oh man, I never would have thought of doing something like that. It wasn’t my nature. It was sneaky. And it was freakin’ brilliant. Julian’s advice went against everything my parents had taught me about being responsible and doing a good job. Making the decision even more difficult, we were in the middle of a ratings sweep, the most important time of all, for radio and television stations. If your company comes out number one in the ratings, it means millions of dollars in advertising revenue for the station. But I had to trust Julian. Besides, his advice wasn’t far from the truth. I was miserable, stressed out, and felt nearly hopeless.
I figured this was the only way off that roller coaster. So right before my shift, the next day, I did it. I walked into Alan’s office and told him I needed a break. He nearly fell off his chair.