My first radio job

I’m starting a new on-going series – tales from my early radio days. Along with Netflix picks, travelogues, Friday questions, excerpts from my 60s book, award reviews, movie previews, early tales of my writing career, and eulogies I’ll be sprinkling these chestnuts in from time to time.

I always contend that the only way I got respect in radio was by getting out of it. There was no Billboard Disc Jockey of the Year award for me in the early 70s. Most of the time there were no jobs.

I can’t say my aspirations upon graduating from UCLA were all that high back then. I wanted to play the hits. My ultimate goal was to do nights in San Diego. Not even Los Angeles or San Francisco. I thought with my voice even San Diego was unrealistic.

And of course, when you just get out of college your career planning is not really long range. It never occurred to me that introducing Cher records four hours a night for fifty years might not be the best use of my time or talent. I just wanted to land at a station with a good jingle package. (Another job well done by a faculty career counselor.)

My first real on-air job came while I was still in college. A friend, John was a disc jockey/chief engineer at the number two rock station in Bakersfield. KERN 1410. (Note: Any AM station 1300 or higher on the dial has the signal range of your WIFI router.) He called to say they had an opening – Saturday nights from 6-midnight for $2.50 an hour!! I gasped at my good fortune. Quickly I called the program director (who was on the air at the time... playing "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves"). He said send a tape. I had one ready to go. It was a composite of shows I had done at the UCLA campus station.

I asked if I could drive up there and play it for him. With such a plum assignment as six hours a week on a station no one listened to in the middle of nowhere in sweltering summer heat for minimum wage I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

So on the 4th of July in Africa-hot heat I drove the 90 miles up to Bakersfield -- the Jewel of the Central Valley.

The station itself was a shack surrounded by three towers in a giant empty field. The previous tenant was probably the Unibomber. I met the program director, your standard long-haired hippy freak/radio executive who took me into the production studio, which was the size of the bathroom in a Greyhound bus. I was very proud of this tape. It must've taken me twenty hours to assemble. He wound it on the old machine, and hit play. “It’s 6:00 on…” He shut it off. “Yeah, you’re fine. You start Saturday”.

I was ecstatic.

He asked me what name I wanted to use. This threw me a little. Couldn’t I just use Ken Levine? “I dunno, “ he said, “That sounds almost Jewish.” (Almost Jewish???) He suggested instead “R.K. Olsen”. (RKO owned a lot of big stations back then like KHJ, KFRC, and WOR. It was an inside joke for six people on the planet). We settled on Ken Stevens. Who knew I’d be going through Ellis Island in Bakersfield?

Still, this was unbelievable. Our campus station only went to the dorms. This station I could hear in my car! At least for the first six minutes driving back home at midnight.

For three months I commuted every weekend to Bakersfield. My radiator blew twice, my car overheated numerous times, I got a flat tire, snapped three fan belts, and one weekend I received two speeding tickets from the same cop at the same spot coming and going.

But it was worth every dollar I had to borrow to keep this glorious job.

And then they gave me Sundays from noon to six to go along my Saturday night shift. I did that for about a year, sleeping every Saturday night on John's threadbare couch.

At first I was terrible on the air. No tapes exist. But eventually I got comfortable. In other words, I started doing more comedy (LOTS more comedy). The program director left, replaced ironically by my friend, John. He really whipped the station into shape. And the next summer when the ratings came out (they only came out once a year in Bakersfield) KERN amazingly beat the longtime powerhouse KAFY despite their massive signal and better jingles.

And my ratings on Sunday afternoons: a staggering 49 share. Believe me, I owe it all to the comedy. Otherwise I had no pipes and no real style. Still I wonder – if I had gone by the name Ken Levine, would my share have been slightly lower? Maybe 40? Or 8?

More radio tales in the weeks to come. Here’s a hint: “Just shut up and play the records. Stop trying to be funny. You’re not!”

Is Emmy a goddess or the whore from hell?

Congrats to all the Emmy nominees. It’s a wonderful recognition of your outstanding work.

An Emmy can really help make a show a big hit. It sure helped CHEERS.

However…

“Emmy” can also be evil.

She can also destroy a show. I’ve seen this before.

MODERN FAMILY – beware! Emmy might be targeting you in particular for her treachery.

Year one of a show – all the actors are one big happy family. Everyone is pulling for everyone else. Now five are nominated and one isn’t. Right away that can spell trouble. I can hear her cackling. In this case I don’t think it’s going to be a problem because Ed O’Neill has been there before and knows how the game is played.

But now the actors in this one big happy family are in competition with each other. Egos could get bruised. Resentments could surface. How was life on the set of CYBILL when Christine Baranski won an Emmy over Cybill Shepherd? Emmy considers that one of her masterpieces.

I’m hoping in MODERN FAMILY’S case this won’t be an issue. I hope they all realize that Emmys are subjective. Just because someone wins and you lose doesn’t mean they’re any better. And the same is true when you beat them next year. There’s also the factor that actors from one show can cancel each other out so both are robbed. (Jackee won once for God sakes!) Intellectually, everybody knows this. But it’s tough when you’re an actor and it’s your face up there on the screen. So it’s just common nature to think, “They’re rejecting ME.” Please resist that.

Good luck to all the nominees from all the shows. May Emmy smile upon you and if not, the hell with the bitch!

This week in Tweets

This is the kind of crap I Tweet if you choose to follow me on Twitter.

Saw Joe Biden's motorcade yesterday. Didn't realize it. 2 limos and lots of police. I thought it was Lindsay Lohan being taken to County.

LeBron deciding where to go for dinner tonight. ESPN hour special begins in fifteen minutes.

Ballplayer walk-up music is annoying. Mine would be "God Bless America". I would get a standing ovation every time I came to the plate.

Cleveland loses LeBron but still has Betty White.

From my daughter Annie: The new Health Care Bill will impose a 10% tax on Tanning Salon Customers? My heart bleeds for the cast of JERSEY SHORE.

It's "earthquake night" at beautiful Dodger Stadium. Anything to attract fans with the Florida Marlins in town.

Another marriage proposal at Dodger Stadium tonight. I forget whether it was during "Kiss Cam" feature or "Bloopers".

Fireworks are great unless you are a dog.

From the Chutzpah Hall of Fame...

Here's another baseball post for people who don't like baseball. It's about one of the most outrageous characters I've ever met.

This goes back to my minor league days. For the three years I broadcast in the minors for Syracuse and Tidewater. You meet a lot of colorful individuals on that circuit but none even close to the announcer for Louisville (who was replaced by a guy named Joe Buck). This guy, we’ll call him “Louie” had a big booming voice and a style that only can be described as carnival barker. Having crossed into middle age, Louie was still a big skirt chaser, although in those days he generally wound up getting girls in big skirts.

One day Louisville is in Des Moines. He meets some woman at the hotel and they arrange to rendezvous in the lobby at 11 PM after that night’s game.

Unfortunately, the game drags on.

The visiting broadcast booth is right next to the main area of the press box with an open window between the two. Reporters can easily hear the visiting broadcasters.

It’s 10:40. Going into the 8th. The game has at least a half hour to go, then there’s wrapping up the broadcast, shutting down the equipment, and getting back to the hotel. No way will Louie make his 11:00 tryst.

As the two teams are changing sides and the pitcher is making his warm up tosses, the reporters start to hear play-by-play coming from Louie’s booth.

“Bottom of the 8th, Jones up, swings at the first pitch. Fly ball to right. Krellman makes the catch. One out. Next up is Smith. He swings at the first pitch and hits a grounder the first. Two quick outs…” etc.

Louis begins MAKING UP the play-by-play. Sure enough, “his” game is over in ten speedy minutes and he’s out the door. Louie belongs in the “Chutzpah Hall of Fame” for that one stunt alone.

But there were many others. Among them: getting thrown out of a game by an umpire for ragging on him from the press box, getting thrown out of an NBA game and costing his team a technical foul when he did same thing during his brief tenure as the San Antonio Spurs announcer, getting fired from the Minnesota Twins for illegally promoting a drag strip nightly on the broadcast he had ties with, getting canned from a Cleveland sportstalk station for accusing a team of “Jewing down” a player’s agent, and last I heard he was doing TV weather in a small Midwestern town and was arrested for fondling some woman’s breast in a carwash.

As a writer, if you were to put Louie in a script your producer would throw it right back in your face saying he was waaaaay too implausible. And he’d be right…except in minor league baseball. Guys like Louie made all the nine hour bus rides, make up doubleheaders, and dinners at Shoneys worth it.

A Woody Allen bit you've never seen before

Since Woody Allen seems to be a current topic on this blog I thought I'd share a great bit of his from the mid 60s. From time to time Woody would appear on CANDID CAMERA. For those who never heard of CANDID CAMERA, it's PUNKED but done in the 50s and 60s on CBS.

Woody Allen participated in this segment. He's an executive hiring an unsuspecting secretary.