My history as a broadcaster…
I don't know when I first considered "being on the radio", but I have some recollection of such thoughts as early as junior high. I also remember discussing it with my dad as a possible career while he drove me to Purdue University for my first shot at college. (My dad supported the idea, but said if I became like the then-typical Top 40 DJ's on AM radio, he would disown me.) At Purdue I lived in a large dormitory—and it had its own in-house closed circuit radio station. I didn't have the equipment to hear that station in my room, but I did hear it in various places as I moved around the dorm. One night I knocked on the "station" door, and was allowed in by the guy currently "on the air". I spent the next couple hours hanging out in the studio, fairly fascinated by what I was watching.
The next school year found me—for a variety of reasons—at a different college, this time it was the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. One day near the start of the year I noticed a sign announcing a meeting for anyone interested in becoming involved with the campus radio station. I went to that meeting and, along with several other broadcast-wannabes, was given a study guide for earning my Radio Telephone Operator Third Class License with a Broadcast Endorsement, my first introduction to the examination system of the FCC. A few weeks later, in a university van, the radio station Program Director took me and the others up to Roanoake, VA, to take the test. Happily, I passed, and soon my license arrived. Posting a copy of that license on the wall of the station, I volunteered for and was given two weekly air shifts, spinning rock and roll from 4pm to 7pm. I was a broadcaster, on "WUAG – Greensboro!"
Four years later I found myself at yet another college, the University of Alabama in Birmingham, or UAB. I'd been working full time for several years and had gone back to school at nights. Predictably, the job I'd had for all those years (Dramatic Artist in Residence for the Jefferson County Board of Education—a wonderful story of its own) was terminated, and I needed to find work while finishing my education. UAB was home to a public radio station, and I learned the station was hiring some part-time help. I went in and demonstrated I could do such things as thread a tape on a reel-to-reel, cue a record on the turntable and also pronounce the names of classical composers; I was hired as a member of WBHM's air staff, my first paying job as a broadcaster. For about a year I filled in wherever I was needed, including hosting classical music at all times of the day, babysitting pre-recorded programming and even a couple guest-hostings of the Saturday evening Red Mountain Bluegrass Show.
The next couple years following that were occupied with graduate school and, though I visited the public radio station at the university I was attending, I never sought work there. Between school years I did seek summer work at a local commercial station, but nothing was available. After graduate school, circumstances took me to Taiwan (another story, no question about it.) There I studied Chinese for a year and taught "English as a second language." I grew dissatisfied with that form of employment, and learned that the island's only English-language radio station was hiring. I made the trip up Yang Ming Shan to the studios of "ICRT, International Community Radio, Taipei", applied for a position as news announcer, and was hired.
I worked at ICRT for four years. After one year, almost to the day, I was promoted to News Director. After two years in that slot, I determined that I would be returning to the US in another year, and wangled a promotion to Special Projects Director for my final year; it was an administrative trouble-shooting post that provided experience in various aspects of running a radio station. I also stayed on the air as one half of the morning news team, which included my partner and me doing an hour-long newscast of world events each morning, 40 minutes of hard news, 10 of business and 10 of sports. (I have never—before or since—been so informed on world events as I was while working at ICRT.)
Leaving Taiwan after more than five years, I returned to the US and settled in the Puget Sound region. Determined to work again in public radio, I initially did some part time work for KUOW in Seattle but soon landed full time work with KPLU, in Tacoma. More than twenty years later, I'm still working for KPLU. After the first four years all of my on-air duties went away as I moved to full time responsibility for the station's computers and, later, also its phone systems. At the start of the twenty-first century, I moved away from those duties, becoming the station's Director of Finance and Administration and evolving through various titles to my current position as Assistant General Manager, Director of Support Services. So, I continue to be employed in broadcasting, but no longer broadcast my voice.
[ Maybe that's why I finally got my ham license—so I could put my voice on the airwaves again. ]
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