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 Starting Out in Radio
from The Palomar
November 09, 2008
In the mid 1950's, I decided that I would make a career in Radio. I graduated from high school in the Spring of 1956 and went to Indiana University that fall. Indiana Memorial UnionIndiana University - Bloomington, Indiana It was one of those carefree summers. I had pumped gas at the local Marathon Service Station in my home town of some 750 people. I worked in a Service Station. That meant when a car came up to the pumps and ran over the air hose that rang a bell, I would stop whatever I was doing and run out to the customer's car, fill the tank with gas, check the oil and air pressure, wash the windows and if I had time, also wash the back and side windows. I collected the money and wished them a bon voyage. All for the astounding price of about $5! (For a fill up!!) In the fall of the year, I went to IU and started my studies. (There was a lot going on which I might relate in a later post.) But I wanted to be a radio announcer and I wanted to be a professional broadcaster, so I enrolled in a BS degree which included the usual Arts and Science courses including a foreign language, government, a couple of English courses and the like. I was also in the Marching Hundred college band. It was a full work load and I never saw the radio station until I was in the second semester of my second year! But, I was learning. I thought the best way to get into radio was to work at a radio station. But, where and how??? My parents knew a guy who was a Standard Oil distributor in our home town and he and his wife had bought a small radio station in West Tennessee. I wrote to them and told them I would like to learn the radio trade in the following summer. They told me I was welcome to come down and learn the ropes. The money would be meager, but I would have a good time. So, I traveled to McKenzie, Tennessee and started my "career" in Radio at a 250 watt daytimer (sun-up to sun-down). It was the scariest thing I ever did!!! I had never sat in front of a microphone, let alone talk into one! I watched the others do it and then I was told that I would be next on the air. I was given the "lunch break shift" and I got to play Country and Western music...which I knew absolutely NOTHING about! I had NEVER heard of these performers and, being a Big Band fan, never thought I would ever care to listen to them. Lesson number one: Learn to play what you're told and learn as much about the genre in as fast a time as possible! I started playing the records and reading the commercials and learning the control console all at the same time. In addition to playing records (Lord, 2-1/2 minutes is a terribly short time when one has to learn so much in such a short period of time!!!) I had to follow the program log and do the commercials and select the next record, give the weather forecast, read public service announcements, check, read and log the meters on the transmitter, and learn from the person guiding me through the maneuvers of the physical running of the program. After the first hour on the air, I was completely worn out! And that was only the beginning. I got to do another hour at the end of the day. This time playing a new kind of music called "Rock and Roll!" I didn't know anything about that EITHER! I had to read newscasts from the Assiciated Press teletype. I had to listen to the manager tell me how to pronounce the local names correctly, I had to meet and talk with people who came into the station who would go on the air for their 15 minute programs. We had preachers, Soil and Water Conservation managers, County Agents, Mayors, more preachers, Ladies who read the local society news and many others. I also learned that the thing that really mattered was selling the air time that made the money that paid our salaries. So, when I wasn't on the air, I was tagging along with a salesman who was trying to sell spots and programs. If we were able to sell the commercial time, we then had to come back to the station and write the commercials. Most were read live. Back in the 1950s there weren't too many taped commercials. We didn't have facilities to record commercials while we were on the air, so if any commercials were recorded, they were done after the station went off the air at sundown. I can guarantee you, I was in the master control room after the station went silent so that I could learn how to run the turntables, tape recorders, and other parts of the place that needed to run at the same time. Being a small-town radio station, we didn't have a network news operation that was fed to the station every hour. We did have a couple of remote programs that came from a minister's study for his daily religious broadcast. We also had a remote broadcast from the local Baptist Church for their weekly Sunday morning broadcast. Other than that...it was all done live and we played a lot of records. After about a month of country and western and rock and roll programs, I finally got to air a 15-minute Big Band show. Not much, but it was a start. Some of the local "wags" who met me on the street would ask why I was playing "that Classical Music?" They wanted more of the "good stuff" like Ernest Tubbs, Jim Reeves, and Patsy Cline. They liked to hear Flatt and Scruggs and Eddy Arnold and that new fellow, Elvis Presley. Who was this guy Frank Sinatra??? Yes, I learned a lot during that first summer. I learned about Country Music. I learned about Rock and Roll. I learned about doing a remote program from the County Fair and interviewing people on the spot about hog farming and how the crops were going to look that fall. I also learned how to sell radio time, write commercials, make friends old and young who were amazed that so much "stuff" came out of a radio with so few mistakes. It certainly was a great learning experience and one that you didn't learn out of a book or sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher who had never really done it. AND I LOVED IT! Every bit if it. I learned to listen to the other announcers and how they did their shows. I learned that you didn't call it "Hillbilly" music. I learned that Sun Records was a major record label down in Memphis (about 150 miles away). I learned that you couldn't over sleep because it was your job to wake up the listeners every morning. I also learned you collected the money from the Sunday morning preachers BEFORE they went on the air, or they wouldn't pay for their program! I also learned that many preachers would bring their congregations to the studio with them and they would "be saved" right there in the studio. The little "teapots," as we called our radio stations, were a popular and important part of the local culture. There was one in each county throughout the South. It was the only means of communication in those areas, because all they had had before was a weekly newspaper. They all loved their little radio stations and followed them throughout the day. Later, I was to find that the ballgames would be recorded and replayed the next day because we weren't on the air at the actual playing time. But that was okay, they could relive the game the next day to hear how their local heroes did the night before, even though they had seen that very game LIVE. I went back to IU that fall with a new appreciation and new excitement for broadcasting because I had actually lived the experience. As I became more familiar with the whole experience, the more I loved it. It became my career and I lived it for 19 years, before I decided to settle down and get a REAL job. William "Bill" Schaaf Crawfordsville, Indiana Email Me
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 Mini University Conversations: Lack of Respect and Generational Differences
from Indiana University Alumni Association
April 24, 2008
What is respectful or disrespectful? What is proper and appropriate? Surprisingly, different generations have different opinions as to what is proper and respectful. Carolyn Wiethoff describes the characteristics of the "millennial generation," or "Generation Y," and how the opinions and lifestyles of these now-teens and twentysomethings will affect the business world and American society as a whole. "There are no secrets for the millennial generation. Theres no sense of privacy. If I want to know what Britneys wearing today, I go online and find out; its not that hard. And I think thats one of the reasons that were starting to see what we view as a lack of respect, because theres a real lack of boundaries."
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