Say K instead of W

(Author's note) For those of you who do not know, radio station call letters East of the Mississippi begin with the letter W, and West of the Mississippi begin with the letter K, with few exceptions)


Once my family and I arrived in Payson and unpacked some of the truckload of boxes it came time to look for a job. During the year that preparations were underway for the move to AZ, I had been in e mail contact with Steve Bingham the President of the Payson Council For The Musical Arts, a non-profit corporation that operated KRIM-LP FM. While Steve was impressed with my resume and air check, as well as Blaine Kimball the General Manager of KMOG AM, neither had any openings. One of Steve's Friends was Chris Salgot who owned and operated C & M Communications a two way radio dealer and repeater service. After a while I managed to catch up with Chris, and we agreed with my background that I might be of some use to him selling radios and repeater service. Along the way I helped him with his radio advertising and covered his office when he was out of town. Oh, did I mention it was only commission?



During this time I talked with Steve Bingham and he was having some problems with his sales, called underwriting in non-profit radio terms. I agreed to take the dead accounts and see what I could do. I also proposed doing a once per week oldies show on Friday Afternoon called "The Friday Class Reunion." The idea being taking one year each week playing nothing but music from that year along with news and whatever else rattled my headphones. Eventually I added the top 10 countdown for that exact week from that year. I must say it was pretty interesting seeing what was at the top of the charts. Looking for the music was interesting, I found that there are several download services, "legal of course," that were quite useful. One was Limewire and the other was Napster, between them I found 99% of the songs I needed. At the time KRIM's staff consisted of Randy Roberson, Station Manager and "Good Morning Payson" co-host, Donnalyn Williams, Co-host of G.M.P, Jim Duncan the Underwriting Manager, and Joanne who did office work and of course Steve and Bobbie Bingham.



The equipment at KRIM was at best SPARSE, with the main, and only audio board, a Mackie 8 channel mixer. Coupled with it was a good quality Shenheiser Mic, Gemini commercial grade CD player and, two computers that ran the on air programming. If the equipment was bad, then the "studios" were even worse, located on the second floor of the Club House/Office of The Payson Campground. The on air studio and business office were located in one room about 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, there was no air conditioning, save what might have filtered up from an ancient swamp cooler, that's the Arizona form of air conditioning, of course no heat either, except in the summer. The bathroom was downstairs and around the building, it actually was the shower/locker room for the campground. On the air monitoring was with a Radio Shack tuner, and you had to turn it down when you opened the mic as there was no monitor muting. Prior to working at KRIM the worst studio I had ever seen was the old WPGM studio in Danville, Pa from their early days.



Surprisingly the audio quality was not too bad, but the studio was labor intensive to do a live air shift if you didn't use the computer for music. The program they used for on air was never designed to be an automation program so it was nearly impossible to run. In addition to the main transmitter KRIM had two translators that covered a pretty fair part of Northern Arizona. At that time KRIM was also carried as the background for the community access channel on the Payson TV Cable, and also on the Town Of Payson's Web Site, yep world wide coverage.



When I did "The Class Reunion," I used CD's, but since the station only had one CD player, I brought one of mine in with me. As I said it was labor intensive, no cue system, no monitor muting, and a VERY uncomfortable studio. But the show went on and quickly developed a loyal listening audience.



After about a year Randy Roberson decided to leave and pursue other ventures and Steve hired LeLani Dawn who had been Operations and News at KISS Fm in Globe, AZ. LeLani and I hit it off instantly and while I felt she was put in an impossible position, she did a pretty fair job of updating the computer software into something designed for 'On Air" and making the overall sound a bit brighter. Of the managers I worked with at KRIM LeiLani was probably the most supportive. Jim Duncan retired and the station hired Marty Stuckenberg for the Underwriting Manager Position, in addition I also was handling a few accounts as well. I might point out that sometime not long after I started on KRIM I was offered the Morning gig on KMOG, more about that in the next entry.



Not long after LeiLani came to KRIM it was decided that KRIM needed to move, Mike Farrell President of KMOG and Blaine Kimball the General Manger had a room available in the KMOG building, so while the studio was smaller, at least there was heat and air conditioning and a bathroom! The arrangement of equipment was a bit better, but it was still the same old stuff. I often said I had better equipment for my D.J. gigs that KRIM did, and I still believe that.



A few months went by after the KRIM move and Steve decided that LeiLani was not the person he wanted on the air for Morning Drive. I personally felt she did an adequate job, but she had replaced a duo. Anyone who has ever worked in radio knows that if you have a two person show and those people click, replacing them with a one person show is not the best idea. Steve's next big idea was the hire Suzanne Michaels to do mornings. She had been the morning person on KMOG, and when she quit I replaced her there. In the radio business there are two types of people, the "Prima Donna's" and the people who really do the work. Suzanne is a Prima Donna complete from her greatly retouched publicity photos, to her fake smile and on air persona. LeiLani and I knew that LeiLani's days at KRIM were numbered as Suzanne advances herself by stabbing others in the back. Such was the case in a matter of weeks, LeiLani was out and Suzanne was in! I found out about Suzanne's appointment as Station Manager when I came in to do my "Class Reunion," and saw her new business cards! Not long after that Marty was released and Cathy Hall, wife of KMOG's "Cowboy Carl" came to be Underwriting Manager. To Cathy's credit, she did a fine job getting new accounts and bringing back some of the old ones as well. Cathy eventually fell victim to "Suzannegate" as her accounts were taken away one by one and given to Suzanne's brother KIP, who suddenly appeared on the scene. Cathy stuck it out a lot longer than I would have, eventually moving across town to KCMA LP.

Knowing that she would try to do me in next, I set about putting "The Class Reunion" under contract with me being a vendor provider and having complete control over the content of the show.

"The Class Reunion" was a lot of fun to do, all in all, it gave me the opportunity to try many different things along the way. I was always doing some special program with some of my favorites being, Names in Songs, Groups A to Z, One Hit Wonders, and Summer Songs being some of my favorite shows. After about one year, I got thinking about the 60's group The Vogues, I saw them in concert twice and met them at the height of their career. Over the years I wondered what happened to them, I looked the group up on the web and found "The Vogues," and they had a new CD. WOW! I ordered it and when it came I did not recognize faces or names on the CD, it sounded OK, but was missing that unique harmony they had. On a hunch I searched Chuck Blaskos name and found his website and the details became quite clear, he had lost the right to use the name do to some possible underhanded dealings by a former manager and record label. There was an e mail site and I sent a note saying that I would tell the story on my show and how much I enjoyed the group then. I received a reply from Keith Dix, one of the members of Chuck Blasko's Five O'Clock Reunion telling em that if I wanted an interview Chuck would be happy to do one. A few days later he called and we set a date. As luck would have it Chuck had a family emergency and could not do the show, BUT he made arrangements for Hugh Geyer to do the interview. As with all the artists I interviewed I tried to talk with them in advance of the show so we would be comfortable with each other. The interview was the first of over 50 I did in "The Legendary Artist Interview Series." In later postings I am going to tell some of the stories from the artists that made "The Class Reunion" an unforgettable experience for me.

Thanks for reading, still more to come on my time at KRIM and on KMOG.

On To Arizona

Even though this post will bring you close to the "current times" in my life and career, it won't be the last. Do I know what I will write about? Heck no!

Sometime in early 2000 I received an e mail from the daughter of a long time friend of mine who's family had moved to Arizona in the late 60's. Over the years as they would come back to Pa to visit relatives I would have the chance to see them. But as happens all too often I lost track of them so the e mail was a shocker. Anyway, to make a long story short there was the usual pleasant exchange of e mails, some of them containing my complaints about the Pennsylvania weather. It was from them I learned that Arizona is not all flat and desert, but had beautiful hills and places where there was a moderate change of seasons. As luck would have it I had some airline miles due to expire, so I decided to come out and take a look around. I was amazed at the beauty of the desert and found out that it did not look like a set from Lawrence of Arabia, but it had color, vegetation and more. The drive from Phoenix to Payson had me saying "wow" a lot. Magnificent mountains deep valleys and a constant change in vegetation. This was the first week in April of 2003, and I spent some 5 days roaming all around "The Rim Country." During that time I talked with my wife back in Pa, she was unable to come along because she was taking care of her elderly father, and one day I was sitting in the sun at Roosevelt Lake, about 40 miles S.E. of Payson, the temperature was in the mid 70's and there were boats on the lake. At the same time Pennsylvania was getting hammered by a snow storm that eventually left over a foot of snow on the ground. It was then the decision was made to "head west old man."

It all sounded so simple, until you consider I had a successful business, a house in which my mother was my tenant, my son was at college in Allentown, and none of us had a job waiting in Arizona. But we were determined to figure out how to make the move. My mother was needless to say rather upset that we were planning on such a move and told us quite firmly she was going to stay in Pennsylvania. Fortunately in Canton there is a nice senior housing project owned by the Yoder Brothers of Turbotville. I had known the Yoder's for many years as they at one time were the dealer/builder for Ridge Homes and had been one of my advertising accounts on WMPT. I checked out some of there other projects and talked to the local officials in each area they had apartments and as expected the Yoder's got a great recommendation. So mom's name went on the waiting list, and in January of 2004 she got her apartment.

It was about the same time that we were able to place my father in law in a nursing home as he was getting too much to handle, my son finished college and moved back to Canton to help us prepare for the move. The house was on the market and I very quietly went about selling my company. I felt that a customer would be a logical choice since they were consumers and liked the products. I pared my list from 12 names down to five and sent them each a letter with the offering. Several expressed some interest with Carl and Linda Cox of Knoxville in Tioga County, the most interested. Carl had been a customer for well over 10 years in his capacity as Public Works Foreman in Knoxville Borough. We met with them and a deal was struck. Now the house, it had been on the market for several months but with very little action, so I decided to take a rather radical approach to selling it. Each Monday I reduced the price by $2,000 and stated that would happen every week till the property was sold. As luck would have it during a yard sale, Gary Wright, who I had known for years and his wife appeared at the sale. I had worked for Gary for a period of time as a salesman for his wholesale flower business in Wlliamsport. Well anyway Gary was looking for investment property, knew the house and was impressed at the improvements we had made. I took him through that day and he made and offer the next, I countered and it was sold. Early on we thought it would make more sense to sell most of our furniture and buy what we needed when we got to Arizona so we scheduled an auction two days before we were scheduled to leave. All the time we had been packing boxes and stacking them in a designated size area. The auction went as planned the 'Budget Truck From Hell" was packed, and we started off across country with Carol, Karl and two dogs in the van and me with the rental truck and a trailer towing my sons vehicle. Bad roads, one run out of gas, a blowout of two tires on the truck and several episodes of the truck just plain quitting and we arrived at our new digs in Payson some 5-1/2 days later. Karl and I had been out to Payson early in the month and had rented an apartment and had all utilities ready and even made arrangements for the truck to be unloaded. Even though the trip was tiring and stressful it was good to be in Payson.

Next time jobs, where do you find them?