My Childhood In Radio: The Radio Saga Parts I through III By Jeff Higgason

**Authors Note: The following story is one I have told a least two-thousand times during times of drunken loudness whenever I was lucky enough to catch the attention of some poor soul I had cornered. This is my first shot at actually writing it down. This is in essence the very story of my life so you can consider it a very personal message to those who take the time to read it. Of course I will change names wherever I find it appropriate to keep myself from any kind of legal backlash from former employers. This is the story of the death of a national icon. Reporting to you LIVE from the scene of the death of radio.Dr. Higgason 10.30.2008. **

Chapter One: The Rats Are in the Trash

When I was 16 I was savagely attacked by a rat while scrubbing the concrete around the bottom of the grease catcher thing when I worked a summer at the local McArches. I more or less enjoyed my job as a night shift grill employee. Thats right; I made your burgers, fries and all that good stuff. I might have actually caused you a heart attack and for that I apologize. We had an important inspection coming up in the morning. We had to be spotlessthey had a running patrol workin the parking lot, it was nuts. All of it seemed to stem from fear. Fear of being lashed in front of the crew by the immediate captains of the corporation. So being in a panicked state of mind and to UP the cleanliness bar, my stupid ass was sent outside to sweep and hose out the dumpster area and then clean off the excess grease from the base of that huge vomit bucket. I bent down armed with my scrub brush teeming with this degreaser solution that would burn your hands if you came in contact with in its concentrated state, in a terror I see two little beady eyes looking at me with a scowl. I stepped back in a startle and the loathsome varmint charged at me. With a couple of rapid thrusts of the huge scrub brush I caught him on the second shot with a pop fly over the concrete wall. I went back inside and announced that I had just taken on a rat. I was hushed and rushed to the back of the building. I was informed that it was one, bad manners to loudly scream that there was a possible pissed off rat on the premises, and two that the restaurant receives a new batch of vermin with every truck load. The Corporation knows about itits something we cant help.

Yeah, I know its a little hard to handle a story like that. I am afraid if I embellished even more I could face some sort of legal action by the company. There are dirty dark secrets masked in the mass-produced burger. That rat taught me a lesson. The truth, that it being, the truth is alwayshidden like a rat waiting in the garbage. In early October of 1995 I was tapped by a father of a friend and he explained there was a job open at our local FM station. All I had to do was mention his name in the interview and it was a sure thing. And so I hung up my apron, gave up my thriving fast food career to join another cookie cutter industry. This is my tale. The first night I worked at our local radio station WNOI-FM in my small Illinois hometown was Friday, October 13th 1995. The girl I was to replace was leaving after that weekend. I was schooled in the fine routine that was the programming in a matter of 2 and half days. My main job was to run commercials. I was rarely expected to play live music and was warned that if I did have to spin songs live that this isnt Nine Inch Nails country. I understood. I ran commercials through NASCAR broadcasts, during local sporting events, during remote broadcasts. That was the job. Of course I got to read the news and the weather live. I had to come in before dawn every Sunday to start Heavens Jubilee which started at six. Heavens Jubilee was a cheaply produced syndicate gospel program featuring the always vivacious host Jim Loudermilk. At certain spots during the program ol Jim would try to sell a buffet of products made from beeswax or aluminum free underarm deodorant. BUY MY SNAKE OIL! The rest of the shift included live news and obituaries at 7:05am and the rest were cut ins for weather forecasts or to announce the next program. The Sunday shift was a drag during the NASCAR season because I couldnt leave until the race was over. During one particular Coca Cola 600 I had to stay until well past midnight. The race had entered a rain delay and there were five laps short of half way. In order to make the race official the race had to be run until midway. Finally around 11:30 that night it stopped raining and they hit the raceway. I then was witness to the fastest five laps in NASCAR history. When I look back and remember all the Saturday nights that I shewed away my friends and parties so that I could be up early for the Sunday swing all I really see is a schmuck. When I started there all of our pre-recorded programming (commercials, news and weather music) were played off these horrible things called carts, short for cartridge. They were based on the same principal of the 8 track-cassette. Most of the carts were over 20 years old; it was the ultimate recycling program. You recorded on one of these things and when the commercial spot had expired you erased the tape and recorded on it again.

The problem was that after being ran through the cartridge player for 20 years and then used again the tape inside became worn and thin resulting in carts that hissed or sounded like a warped record. I hated those goddamn things. The studio console was a very simple set up; there were 3 CD players, 2 cassette decks, two turntables and a microphone. A majority of the music I played came off of 45rpm records. And coming up next we have The Cutting Crew The first thing I was taught was how to cue up a record. Find the beginning of the song, pull the record a quarter turn around the opposite way and BOOM you hit the remote start on the broadcast console and you are Sailing with Christopher Cross. It was a very frustrating gig at first. I mean, on the surface it was a very different job than most of my friends worked. I now had a seriously public job, the type of job where the community can talk an awful mess about you. I know because my father was a very vocal when it came to crap on the radio. When I did my first live newscast it was down right embarrassing to listen to. I found a tape recently of my first newscast and it will go to the grave with me. All the things that appear natural of a basic air-shifters on-air personality came later and within the first couple of months I loved coming in for my shift. Around Christmas time we had a ton of holiday commercials to play so I was allowed to run a full shift meaning I was on the air live for about 4 to 6 hours playing songs, running holiday commercials and giving the weather. It was a very taxing job time wise. The first early Sunday shift I did was the morning after a school dance. So socially I was tethered to the station. If a bad snow came along and forced the schools to shutdown I was expected at the radio station to read all of the closings and cancellations that were called in to our office and believe me those lists were huge ongoing tasks. There was no sledding and playing in the snow with girls, drinking Zima and an occasional finger bang for Higgason. I was a savage company man at 16-years-old. If the snow hit on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning because all of the area churches would have to call in service cancellations, winter was a stressful time. What, with all the kids calling in asking about school closings. You annoying bastards I just read that on the air.

PART TWO: The Platinum Rollercoaster

After about a year working there I sold the station manager on having my own show. He stipulated that in order to get the show I would have to sell it to the sponsors. We sold our hundred dollars worth of sponsorships within the first hour of trying. The show became the Platinum Rollercoaster, cute title; we had a contest to name the show, thats the best the audience could come up with. It was a mixed format music program, I handled the alternative rock side and my buddy Aaron covered the hip hop side. It was fun. I still say that we were the first to play a lot of hip hop hits before they hit, namely, No Diggity by Blackstreet and Da Dip by Freak Nasty. We were ahead of our time, but only about 25 minutes. We had some wonderful guests. The Olney, Illinois punk legends Toucan Slam graced our show with a performance once, all the way direct from Detroit, Michigan The Schugars and had various comedy sketches we had recorded. We interviewed royalty, the Clay County Fair Queen came on the show one time and we got her to name all of the nicknames she had for her vagina, my favorite being the bunny hole. That was a wacky show from what I remember. We had another female guest that was tying red Twizzlers into knots with her tongue. I think the contest was she had to empty the bag and tie all of them into a knot and she got a free tanning certificate. We did a spoof on the local cops; we had the Bad Boys theme music. Out of all that, we were reprimanded for the jokes about the police. My cohosts and I were starting to get a good listenership. We were receiving free CDs and T-shirts and posters and concert passeswe had a deal worked out with Mississippi Nights in St Louis for passes to shows to give away. We sent people to see Helmet, Silverchair and Rancid shows. We gave out hundreds of free CDs and stickers. We learned early that listeners like free stuff, heh! When the new Burger King opened we did a bit where I we would call up the manager of McDonalds and told them we were starting a pool about when the burger wars were going to start. I asked if there was any truth to the rumors that McDonalds employees were going show up incognito at the Burger King drive through window and hurl bagfuls of putrid McDonald hamburgers into the restaurant. We added variety to the local airwaves and all of our audience was in the age range of 15 to 21. It was a rare opportunity to listen to a group of local goof offs act like idiots in a full range stereo signal. As goods things do, the show peaked and the sales staff blatantly robbed all of my sponsors and put them onto a local oldies show. It wasnt very much longer after that I was offered a better job.

WFIW-AM/FM WOKZ-FM is located just east of the metroplex of the town of Fairfield. WFIW was a revered station due to their razor-sharp take on local news events and their very popular Morning Show with Woody and Murvis. The station manager called me under the recommendation of one of my professors at the college I was attending. WFIW was my first look at the inner workings of a very professional local radio station and the many loveable characters. WFIW was the only station where I absolutely adored all my co-workers. There were the morning guys, my boss Dave oh yeah, I still dig Dave. While mentioning names I cant forget my best dude in the world Marilyn. It was a very WKRP atmosphere and it was like home. I got a hell of a lot more air time. I had two regular shifts on weeknights and a regular Saturday morning shift on the AM station. I got to run music, gab and situate the AM station to simulcast with the FM station at noon. I learned radio at WFIW and recall many fond memories of the place. I learned my radio voice. There are multitudes of radio voices. You have guys that are hyper, like a little dog about to piss on your shoe; you got the guys that have the nice deep rumbly voice, the raspy crowd and the obligatory radio voice. Me I try to talk sexy, like Billy Dee Williams, when I read the news. What can I say; I learned a lot from Barry White growing up. I was very precise on punctuation and lost my Southern Illinois drawl I also learned some of the arts of being a reporter and Newscaster. Exciting things happened around the Fairfield area and there was rarely a dry news day. The news director Len Wells could get information most other area stations werent even privy too. The station prided itself on total local area coverage and they gave the listeners pounds of it. This is the man that taught me about news. One fine Spring night I was loafin around a bit waiting for my next newscast to come up at the top of the hour and the phone rings. It was a reporter from an Evansville Indiana TV station wanting some information about the killing spree. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and I would have to get back with him. I phoned up Wells at home and he said he would monitor the police scanner. After about ten minutes he shows up at the station, grabs the mobile phone pack and tells me he is going to follow the police around. All that evening he was calling in little reports from out in the field. With each report the details got gorier than the last set of particulars. The radio station was located about two miles east of the town of Fairfield and was very remote to say the least. The story was these two goons started killing people in Indiana earlier that day and had made their way in the eastern edge of Illinois. So I locked all the doors and hunkered down with a corkscrew I found.

According to these phoned in reports from Wells this man hunt for these two meth heads from Indiana was basically concentrated in the area of the radio station and about 4 miles southeast. So that put these desperate crazy cranked up murderers in my neck of the woods. About 10:30 that night there was a banging on the front door. I thought to myself, Dammit! Theyre here. I knew it. I had never been so happy to see a policeman in my life. They said they were out to check on me and they would be about a mile west up the highway. Early the next morning I was making the curves to Mt Carmel for school and I heard the whole story. After a search that had lasted the night, the two fugitives we spotted with a nightscope hiding in a large field. When the police had ascended to the scene they noticed upon their arrival one of the suspects was dead from a single gun shot wound to the back of the head, as you can guess, the plot thickens. This story stretched out for several newscasts. The police were charging the living suspect with the murder of his accomplice. According to the suspect he shot his accomplice in hopes of ending the fracas. What he failed to realize that after you and your friend leave a wake of murders across two states the opportunity for heroism had passed after the first person died. BOOM! He was charged with murdering his friend. The trial itself was hopelessly tabloid in manner. I believe eventually the trial venue was switched to Jefferson County because of too much pre-trial publicity, and the man was given the long ride at one of Illinois prisons. In my first run at WFIW I was witness to two more such incidents. One where a woman had stabbed her husband to death on a rural Wayne County road and the other was a horrible story about a young man in western Richland County hacking his family to death in their home. First rule in broadcast journalism: If it bleeds, it leads. The first time I was told this little nugget I was horrified. But the sad certainty is that is what the public wants, they crave the naughty little details and dignity is damned. So after a about a year and a half of working the boards and phones at WFIW I started looking around for a change of scenery and an excuse to go back to college. In the spring of 1999 I enrolled at Vincennes University in Vincennes, Indiana and signed up to major in broadcasting. After weeks of sweating it out I was able to find at job at the Vincennes radio station. I took my application to the top floor of the Executive Inn to the business office. I thought it was cool that we broadcast from high atop the once grandest hotel in Vincennes and there was a strong chance of fresh pastries on Sunday morning.

PART TWO: THE SHEEP ENTERS THE SLAUGTERHOUSE Or HIGGASON STEPS INTOTHE CORPORATION.
About a week before I was set to move I was contacted by one of my many bosses to remind that the station had moved. The new location was the historic Breevoort house. Apparently the man that owned the company sunk a huge wad of cash into the restoration and renovation of this Gothic Mansion that was built around 1865. The first time I drove by it I thought it looked like a mad scientists lair it was a huge brick monument to the Victorian era and was definitely not serving pastries on Sunday. Being employed by The New Corporation was a definite change. First of all it was the best and worst case scenario of automated broadcasting. The building housed three radio stations all for the most part were ran by computers. The main computer interface beeped and buzzed like something off of Star Trek. I have obsessive life long habit of randomly pushing buttons, so the fear of fudging something up kept me out of their but, just barely. The weather forecasts were all pre-recorded and so was a majority of the newscasts. The company owned about fourteen different stations in central and southern Indiana. Many of the stations were in danger of tanking financially and The New Corporation would step in and purchase the stations, stream line the operations and pocket as much coin as they could squeeze out of them. We had a very rigid sports broadcasting schedule that began the first Friday in August after school started. This was the symbolic beginning of the roller coaster ride. I considered just a few of the full time on air people to be friendly. However, the sports broadcasters were complete asses. Among the handful of sportscasters we had was the big boss of the company, I will call him Mr. Crazyass. The first time I met Mr. Crazyass I was running spots for the Rush Limbaugh show and this little snippy, pale balding bastard came in and jumped my ass about having a weather forecast for Evansville and not Vincennes. I jokingly said well Evansville isnt that far away. His response was, Print me out a Vincennes weather forecast, smart ass. My fists clinched at my side and I took a couple of breaths, because the Clay County Illinois hillbilly in my head was telling me to hang this fucker from the flagpole by his tighty whiteys. I composed myself and cordially printed out his forecast. Dan, the fellow that hired me came in about 10 minutes later and I asked, Who is the little man with the moustache that is running around.

Oh, he says, Did he get on to you? I am sorry but that is Mr. Crazyass. I am sorry I forgot to warn you that he was here. So not only, is the guy the most unfriendly sack of shit to be processed but he is also the boss, oh great! Dan reassured me that Crazyass was usually there just during the morning. I decided that since my contact with this guy was going to minimal I could deal with it. Over the next month I was also hired to work at The Cool One 103.1 FM WAKO in Lawrenceville, Illinois just over the river from Vincennes. It was very welcomed break from the horseshit that I put with in Vincennes. Back to the basics, small-town radio, intimate and humming out soft rock. The station was a trip back in time. The call letters beam a bright red WAKO, very nostalgic. Very classically decorated, musty old radio station, which smells a little like farts and coffee. My job at WAKO was very much cool and relaxing. I did the audio engineering for the Cubs games and inserted commercials. I was allowed to be on live if needed until 6pm and then it was Dick Clarks Rock Roll and Remember all the way until sign off at 10pm. And I would be a liar if I didnt say I tipped a many bottles in the parking lot at WAKO. Sorry Kent, much love man. The Corporation was very tightly run by Mr. Crazyass and he was rude and crude to all the part-timers based on the fact we were all expendable. This man was no broadcaster, he was a slick businessman that figured out he could gut the soul out of smalltown radio and then feast on the cold hard cash he charged businesses per commercial. Come to think of it I think he was an ass to pretty much everyone. My operations manager said that his day usually started with a bitch session by Crazyass concerning the reasons our stations suck. Paperwork was dutifully checked and if there was a discrepancy in the commercials that wasnt noted that was an almost unforgivable offense. The equipment was always screwing up for me and if the big brass happened to catch a commercial playing over a song he would call and vaporize you on the phone. Wanting the best on air presentation is not a bad thing. I wish more radio stations would focus in on their programming. But my boss in Vincennes was scary and it was foolish to try his patience. I was amazed of the things they would sell. Things like time checks. This time check is brought to you Bongs and Dildoesit is now 3:02. What! Or the weather sponsorsyou were expected to read a full forecast which normally takes about thirty seconds, you also had to read a little clip about the sponsor of that particular weather forecast. Still with me? All the while my classes were suffering. I would totally hate to sound dramatic but up until that point broadcasting was a passion of mine. I took enormous pride in my job and it seemed like the more I stayed on board the more Mr. Crazyass was digging further and further into my skin. I begin to blow off classes, I couldnt take working in radio and going to school for radio and have no time to sleep on the weekends because of radio.

I got to feeling a little crazy. In January I informed the head office that I was to quit. I wasnt sleeping well; I was pale, losing weight, drinking more. About an hour after I submitted my resignation, the head office called back. It was Dan, Mr Higgason, Mr. Crazyass has decided to offer you a full time operations management position at another station just south of Vincennes and with the job came a cheap apartment to rent in the back half of another Victorian mansion. Being an operations manager made me the immediate manager of the station they wanted to send me to. I told them that I had to think about it. So I mulled for about an hour and eventually called my dad. He told me that it was what I wanted to do after graduation. Here was an instance were my experience overweighed my schooling. I thought fuck it. Here is my chance to make a real impact on a station. I found out that the company had recently acquired this station. You see that was the corporations m.o., find radio stations that were treading water financially and then snatch them up and re-vamp and retool the station. This particular station had been bought and operated by the town back in the 1980s as a community cooperative. The mayor in fact had been an interested party at one time. He still came in once a week to record his Chat with the Mayor program. In fact the corporation was kind enough to let one of the former owners stay on as the secretary. Eventually this lady resigned in tears. When I arrived to take over duties I came to find that the stations files were in horrible shape. It was part of my job to straighten up the stations filing cabinets. Almost immediately the head sales lady started trying to passive-aggressively sabotage me here and there. In good faith I made a fair run at the job. I reorganized the files and even fixed a computer glitch that had bugged them for a while. During my first meeting as operation manager with the head prick things did not go well at all. Apparently I had forgotten to write down a commercial that didnt get played. I told them that in the course of my morning and all the tasks I was expected to I forgot to write it down. However that particular spot was played later then scheduled. Crazyass says, In the time it took you to come up with that excuse you could have written it down. I was then informed that out of all the station in the company my station was ahead $20,000 and everyone else was in the red. They were going to take that money and devote it to the flagship station. So my station received nothing. So needless to say things were not looking up. So one afternoon I was sitting my office and the phone rings, its the corporation operations manager. He tells me that the corporation was planning on my moving my station to an empty studio about 45 minutes north of the town it was already in. I was told that mum was the word. The plan would be announced after the final financials were sussed out.

You know its true what they say about small towns, shit gets around. A week later I get phone calls from concerned area residents about the possible relocation. My answer was usually, Buh? I can assure you the station will never blah, blah, blah Finally, I was approached the mayor about the situation unraveling in front of me. He asked that I be straight with him and personally I felt I owed it to him to tell him the truth. By this time the sale was complete. Zero hour had come and went. I told him that the physical broadcasting facility would in time be ripped out of this building and installed at a different location. In order to keep the station license the shell of the former station would be maintained as a sales office. He told me he understood and wished me luck. I was thumbing through some old pamphlets in my office and found a tourism guide for Pike County and pictured as a point of pride was the radio station. The picture showed at least 45 to 50 people all standing out in front of the radio station. For Petersburg, Indiana it wasnt long before their point of pride would be moved and that what would be left would be a silent regular old building. About a month before the big move I officially turned in my resignation. That afternoon when I returned from my shift I had bill from my boss taped to my door stating that if I wasnt out by Thursday that I would owe him $500, because I was no longer an employee. If you havent been booted from The New Corporation you havent been anywhere. So I gathered as much stuff into my 92 Dodge Shadow and headed back to my hometown. I spent the rest of the night making trips back and forth with the aide of a buddy that had a truck. We were drinking a fifth of Calverts and were listening to Merle Haggard all night. About midnight, we cleared out the rest of my junk. I threw my key, and my pager on the kitchen table, locked the door and left. The next morning instead of training my replacement I spent it sleeping off a horrible whiskey drunk. The rats had beaten me. I had cast myself outside the gates. Part Three: Splendid Isolation It was March 6th, 2000. Devin and I finished the Calverts the next morning sitting in the truck, jammed it in gear and proceeded to make way. As we blew across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge out of Vincennes and we hit the Illinois state line I tossed a mental wad of dynamite out the passengers side window and imagined the structure crumbling. My desperation to get away was such that when my bed sheets blew out of the back of the truck I told Devin to drive faster. Seriously, I was certainly fucked, busted and broken. The experience, I felt had more or less wrung me dry. That spring and summer was full of odd jobs. I managed to swing a position at a local company that ran a lawn mowing crew.

It was like rehab, I was outside everyday. I didnt have to be on time about every little detail. Of course I DO mean to be melodramatic here, it was very serene. My favorite day was when the crew, when I say crew I mean myself and hillbilly named Murl, well every Wednesday we would get to mow the high school football field. All day on the mower, tanning and just turning little circles. All that corporate madness was a state away. I was once told by a professor in broadcasting school that once you get radio in your blood its hard to shake. I found this to be true. For me it was an addiction that lay dormant. Around September 2000 I was contacted by my former boss Lil K from WAKO, he also owned a station in Newton Illinois called WIKKFM. This he said, is exactly where you need to be Jeff. This is real radio. All live programming. Yes, being the arrogant prick I was/am, bought it. I bought it all. I was the 6 to midnight guy. This was perfect for me at the time, living by the rock and roll all night, party every paycheck standard I did. Firstly, the station itself was weird. It had a strange vibe about it I could never put my finger on. My office in the basement reminded me of porno set, fake plants, bad furniture. The job was every thing Lil K said it would be. It was everything I expected. Stinky egos, two low level functioners trying to run the station, the immediate station manager being very laissez faire about everything, she was the owners sister. These are the aspects of the job that they dont teach you about in broadcasting school. The second thing I found a little odd but at the same time intriguing was the stations music format. I had a music log that I was to follow. The procedure was to mark out songs that got played. If you had someone phone in a request you simply scratched out a song and wrote the request in its place and put a check mark by it. The format was supposed to be what they call middle of the road, which means they are hitting every popular genre and putting it in heavy rotate. It was amazing this station was more like weaving back and forth across the middle of the road after drinking a fifth of Rebel Yell. I would play Sometimes by Britney Spears and have to follow it up by Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival and then some horrid thing by Celine Dion and then FOGHATIve made my point. I was able to follow the playlist rule for about 2 weeks. I begin making my own requests. And you know I noticed that no one seemed to care! Soon I began averaging about 7 or 8 listener calls an hour. Hell, I had a lady come to the station and MAKE me a fresh margarita for playing Jessies Girl! After about 5 months on the job I began hearing rumors that the company was looking to sell the station.

A sell that smelled a lot like the masterfully stinking horseshit The New Corporation had been peddling in Indiana. Instinctive I knew the fun was coming to an end so I packed my stuff (my coffee mug that said WORLDS BEST DUDE) and hit the road. WDBX I CALL IT THE PROMISED LAND I spent about three years in different jobs. Nothing to grand, those typical low wages, low self esteem positions we all have to do. I soon migrated to Carbondale Illinois. I didnt go to enroll at SIU I went with my wife to get out of the Clay County area. I had spent my entire life in the place and it was dry, I would liken its organic flow through to that of Styrofoam. I wanted to go someplace where things were going on. Maybe go sit on the pulse of a city with a defined heartbeat for awhile. Carbondale offered culture you dont get on the rusty buckle of the Bible belt. In the time my wife and I lived in Carbondale we attended lectures and summer concerts in the parkhippiesalbeit charge card hippiesbut hippies nonetheless. Our first night in our first apartment was primitive. Whoever had just moved out decided to take the light bulbsso we had candles. The only entertainment we had apart from my hand puppet show was a crappy AM/FM radio. So I started dialing up stations. I zeroed in on a very, very amateurish sounding radio show. The station ID was played and the program was coming from Carbondale. WDBX-FM. Community Radio for Southern Illinois. As my wife and I passed the last bit of pot we had back and forth we listened on. It was a local hip hop show and the guests were apparently a local rap group. These guys were beyond fucked up for radio. It was the most interesting radio I had really every heard. This was the first non-corporate station I had ever heard. I picked up a WDBX program guide at a local business and began checking out different shows. There were Heavy Metal shows, punk shows, local interest news type programs, socially informative shows, organic gardening tips there was a fantastic variety and it was all community owned and operated. To me it was very humbling. It was a totally new concept to me. Community radio affords the average listener the experience to become a programmer. All the Disk Jockeys were volunteers, the station was solely owned by a very heavily community supported non-profit organization. It belongs to the people.

It took me about a year and a half to get the balls to walk in the WDBX office and sign up for a show. The station manager was a very hip ol fellow by the name of Brian. I had to go through a simple application process and I had to do what they called The Random Show. It was sort of a demonstration program. They wanted to know exactly what a potential on air volunteer wanted to do. After my Random Show I was told that there was a lengthy waiting list for primetime slots on the schedule, but he did however need to fill a 2am to 4am spot on Fridays. In light of my previous experience he offered it to me. THE LATE NIGHT MUSIC THING Now normally in your typical small Southern Illinois town at two o clock in the morning there aint a creature stirring so to speak. But in a hopping college hamlet like Carbondale some people are usually just getting started. The bars closed at 2am. My hope was to catch these late night revelers as they were filing into smoky, crowded living rooms to pass around a bong or a bottle and sit and relax and enjoy each others company after a long night at the bar. My hope was to also catch them off guard. Hit them left and right with a carefully OVERBLENDED amount of different music. The only rule was NO TOP 40, really nothing after 1999. The idea of the WIKK format stuck with me and I wanted my listeners to be saying to themselves WHATis he going to play next. My first show at WDBX started with Compared To What by Les McCann and Eddie Harris.

GODDAMNITTRYING TO MAKE IT REAL COMPARED TO WHAT?

When I kicked off that song it was like bringing a Boeing 747 up to full thrust. There is an esoteric command one feels at the helm of a broadcasting console. I cant describe it. Only those that have been there can relate. You feel powerful, thousands of watts of you being spilled throughout the atmosphere. Someone is always listening. My format was very Jackson Pollack. I would grab songs at random and try to figure out how to shift the mood unexpectedly. For example I would play some Hank William Sr and back it up with Hell Bent For Leather by Judas Priest, Deep Purple and follow up with The Fat Boys, scientifically. Back when I was horrifically abused by piped in satellite soft rock at a commercial station I complained to a station manager about the music and he said Remember Jeff, every song is someones favorite song.

So I was to play, more of everyones favorite songs. Being a fan of the many shows on WDBX it was very endearing to know that the person had constructed their program for you, the interested listener. After dragging myself to the station at 1:30 in the morning for two months I was offered the Midnight to 2am slot. Hey, now this was primetime! In the meantime I ran into a very kindred musical spirit by the name of Joe. Now Joe was a man of few words. But he had a very expanded musical vocabulary. I asked to join up and there he was. I would talk and he would mumble. Joe is what could be best described as a philosopher. No matter what the situation he has wisdom for you. I made up a segment on the show where every week we would feature one of Joes deep thoughts. He drove himself crazy that week, running around with a little notebook jotting down thoughts. The night of the show we talked it up. I found some very Olympian sounding orchestra music, I said, Ladies and Gentlemen Philosophy Joe I ran down the music, pointed at Joe and Joe froze. I started a song and said You said it all buddy. WDBX was a great time; it was a great thing for me. Everything local radio should be. It showed me that some that amazing could exist. To me it was a living breathing organism and it had a good heart. I drifted back up home after about two years in Carbondale. I landed a part time job at the local corporate owned station. The station manager seemed to try and talk me out of the job. I told him I just wanted to operate the equipment. In essence I was back to square one. I was engineering local sports, major league baseball. The station seemed to be a ghost town. It had all these offices but no one was in them. We had an on air staff of five or six. Totally computerized. It wasnt alive. Eventually I had my hours cut severely and I had to resign. I took a job managing a local bait shop. OLNEY FREE RADIO In April of 2007 a group of interested citizens took the initiative and planned the Olney Free Radio Project which was basically a group of interested citizens committed to bringing a non-profit community owned Low Power FM (LPFM) station to Olney Illinois. Our organization promoted the idea of community radio; we formed a board of directors and began planning our radio station. At the time the OFRP started the federal window for applying for a LPFM station license was closed and closed for an indeterminate amount of time. The question I was most asked when promoting the idea was Why do we need another radio station? We had the facts, we had the figures, what we lacked was interest. The Olney Free Radio Project folded due to lack of community interest.

In the time since the OFRP disbanded I have taken more and more notice of stories in the news about community radio activism, specifically Low Power FM radio. People have started taking notice that in small towns around America community groups have awaken to the possibly of solidifying the notion that local radio can indeed be local radio. A normal FM radio station usually transmits thousands of watts; the highest I have ever worked with was 50,000 watts. Radio stations with that much power behind them require expensive equipment and obviously use a lot of electricity. Based on my experience general operating costs can run uncomfortably near a million dollars annually. Low Power Stations are relatively inexpensive to set up. LPFM stations transmit at 10 to 100 watts; with this amount of power a station can cover a radius of about 3 to 4 miles. Now with the case of LPFM the basic broadcasting equipment that consists of the transmitter and the antenna can generally cost about $5000. The monthly operating costs can be compared to that of a single household. The real trick is finding a building, honestly. In December of 2009 the House Of Representatives approved the Community Radio Act and it brought new hope to many people across our country who want to take that step to make community radio a possibility in their hometowns. Since then the Community Radio act has added literally hundreds of new stations to hometowns across America. The fun part is that you can get involved. The idea of tuning into a radio station whose newscast isnt the same a the newscasts you hear on other commercial stations. It is truly humbling. All programming on LPFM is designed by people you know. For those interested in radio activism and wish to play by the rules (believe me I know, rules sucks, but read on), simply form a group of interested people in your town, and make a nonprofit organization that will own the station. Put together a board of directors and prepare for some fundraising. In other words, you will become a non-profit corporation (or if that word is too icky, a community partnership) that is the owner/operator of a low power non-commercial radio station. There will be a lot of little hoops to jump through, but dont worry little doggie, itll be the best biscuit you ever ate. Those people you elect for your board of directors have to be local residents and they have to be the kind of people that can handle business situations well. Getting a person that knows something about grant writing is a very big plus. 99.9 percent of getting your organization up and about will be the cash flow. Fundraising will be your watchword and your mantra. After you establish yourself as a legal non-profit organization, you can not only hold events in town to raise money, you can apply for federal grants.

Depending on your plans for the station after you cover your costs of the licenses and fees (which isnt much in the grand scheme of things), you can start off by building a very low rent studio (as I like to call it). As you organization builds momentum by community support and ongoing fundraising initiatives such as on air telethons, you can build the station of your dreams.