An Audio Trip Through My Radio Past

Somehow, and I still don’t know how, several personal cassette tapes have survived in an old cardboard box for over 20 years.  The sound quality is poor, and I don’t remember if I recorded them just to hear how I sounded back in the day, or if I thought by putting them together I could create an audio resume for a future radio job.  Who knows.

Background.  From 1981 to 1985, in addition to actually trying to attend classes and study subjects at Hamilton College, I worked on the campus radio station, WHCL (88.7 on your FM dial).  WHCL was one of the few places where I actually felt like what I did was fun.  Of course, it was back at a time when the station had barely six monaural watts of power, and you could only pick the station up from the Stryker side of campus – the signal didn’t carry across the street to the Kirkland side of the campus, and anybody who did listen to radio at that time were either tuned to WOUR or Rock 107 or KG 104.

Somehow, in this pile of old cassettes, I actually found an old clip of an on-air promo for “The Nightowl Radio Show,” my Friday night block of imported music and alternative “college rock” tracks.  You can click here to listen to the original promo.  It’s not much, but it’s still 30 seconds of something.

Spin forward.  From 1987 to 1988, I was an on-air personality on radio station WWWD in Schenectady, also known at that time as AM 1240, 3WD.  And unlike my time with WHCL, I actually have some airchecks of my work available for you to hear how I sounded back in the day.   Call the request line and ask for your favorite hits from the 50’s and early 60’s.

You can listen to three different airchecks…

from that time period by clicking…

any of the links in this sentence.

My time as an on-air DJ ended in March 1988 – that’s when 3WD flipped a switch and became WVKZ, one of the first satellite-simulcasting radio stations in the Capital District.  There was no need for an on-air local disc jockey when you could have a programmable radio personality from Houston say “It’s a great day here in your hometown, and you’re listening to the station with all the big hits.”

And realistically, that was my last appearance as an on-air DJ.  I had the dream, but realistically I wasn’t going to put Ric Mitchell or Boom Boom Brannigan out of a job.  WHCL was college radio – heck, anybody with a record collection could get two hours of turntable time; and 3WD was in the process of being sold to Off-Track Betting anyways, and the Arbitron ratings for the station were about as small as a mosquito bite.

Although I could say that I did cross something off the life list – being an on-air radio personality, even if for a short time.  And, thanks to this  blog, there’s audiophonic proof.