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August 20, 2025 13 mins

We celebrate National Radio Day (yeah!), with a few inside-radio stories from the crew! 

 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's National Radio Day, and we've never been so proud.
It's one more thing.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm strong and geddy.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
One more thing.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
There's name of the radio today. I heard a radio
contest here in LA. But it doesn't matter where you are.
All radio contests sound exactly the same. You're lucky color
number seven, hoop, We're going. Who can't believe it? Are
you serious?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm serious? You just want one thousand dollars?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
What's your favorite radio station? There's one?

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Don't do whatever the hell it is.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Most people have no shame or humility. There's no rule
that says you have to love the station you want. Huh,
I want a contest, I'd be completely honest. You just
want a thousand dollars?

Speaker 1 (00:49):
What's your favorite radio station?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well? I jump around a lot. I like the Spanish
one and this one's pretty good. What station is this anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
I just had it on Seek.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
I just pressed Seek. You have to be old enough
to remember when people did that with radios, and they
even existed in your car. I don't know how to
make the Seek work on several of my vehicles.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Good times.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
So it is National Radio Da Katie?

Speaker 4 (01:31):
Have you been always you were in a big market
your whole life, so you know that small market.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Radio, yeah eighteen years. Did you ever work at any
yanky radio stations?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
Or I did, like college radio, Oh okay a little bit,
and that radio station was yanky.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Yeah, and then and you probably had the realization as
Joe and I have had on some small stations starting out,
where there's a possibility at this.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Moment that no one is listening.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
Oh yeah, yeah, frequently there for my own enjoyment only
at that point.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Yes, yeah, it's not impossible that there is literally not
a human being listening right now, or.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Apparently not a single human being who wants a free
taco or whatever the prize of whatever contest might be.
As we've both had the experience of you know, announcing
a contest caller number of whatever nine.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
And you don't get a single call.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
What's the smallest thing you ever gave away?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Oh, because I gave away.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Like at taco or an ice cream cone, I mean
a value of like a dollar and a half, and
you're gonna have to drive to the radio station.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
And get it.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I mean, yeah, and nobody.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
You don't get a single call, and then so you
got to make it up or you know you you
say caller ten, but you get two calls. See, you
pick one of them, and it's the same person that
calls every time.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh hey call you tell caller number two. Hey you're
number ten.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
They're like, oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Hey Jim, Oh yeah it's you again. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we'll just send it with the other prizes. Yeah, we
have your address already.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Nice talking.

Speaker 5 (03:09):
I was a phone screener. When they ended up putting
in the system to stop people like that, there was
like a niceiractionately, that's right.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, And I think a lot of the stuff
that existed in radio back in the old days, like
a lot of things in a lot of industries, probably
wasn't everybody was doing it because somebody did it once
or thought it worked, but it just I don't know
if it was helping anything. Really, you're you're there are
like four people that were going to change their listening
habits because you're giving away an ice cream, corn on

(03:40):
or oil change or whatever it was. It didn't have
any effect on most people.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
We're not going to participate, right, and we're not allowed
to talk about the rating system like at all on
the air, And frankly I'm not sure how bold I
want to be on the podcast, because I just don't want.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
To create problems for people who don't deserve them.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
But in a bigger market, those four people become forty
or maybe four hundred, and if one of them has
whatever diary or device or whatever is used to measure
the ratings, then that, you know, Hamburger platter or whatever
the hell you just gave away, that that could change

(04:17):
your life, could change the station's fortunes, at least for
a month or a quarter or whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Here's where I can get hurtful to some of our listeners.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Oh no, I was a prize pig. By the way, Katie,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
If you were. Are you serious? I was a serious
college prize pig.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
And I'll tell you why I'm judging you right now.
Go ahead, Yeah, that's fine. I was.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
I had no money, you know, any money I wanted
I had to work for and I didn't have much
of it.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
And I was and.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Well, I guess I am accidentally now, but was a
music trivia freak. I will would read and memorize every
word on every album cover I came in contact with,
and and just I just voraciously I don't know why
I was obsessed with him. I knew who produced and

(05:13):
mixed an album ten years before I knew what it
meant to produce or mix an album. I knew the
names of bands, roadies. I knew who played guest you know,
steal guitar on one track of an album for I
don't I'm just so interested in it. And uh oh,
what was the uh what was the nay of the

(05:35):
call letters the student radio station at the University of
Illinois that I was never on. I never I showed
up to one meeting and it was there was like
a million people when I was out in the hallway listening,
and I thought, ef this And I didn't get involved
in college radio at all. But whatever the station is,
and it'll pop into my head. But they would do
every noon rock Quiz and they would it was like

(05:56):
a syndicated thing with a sponsor, and they'd ask you
a question about what rooster haired rocker who was originally
a star soccer player found fame with blanketing blank And
I'd be like Rot Stewart and I would call and
I had to I had to pretend to be friends
of mine because they had rules. You could only win

(06:17):
like once every week or something like that, and I
would win like three days a week.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Wow, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Oh, But I was so into it and it wasn't
like I mean, because some of the prizes were pretty cool.
I actually won some tickets and video concert videos and stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
But it was just it was competitiveness. Yeah, it was like,
I'm better than anybody.

Speaker 6 (06:40):
Bring it on, I'm the best prize pig there ever
has been.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Right right, I did.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Once.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
I did a semester of college radio, and then I
got hired onto a real commercial radio station, and so
then I was off and running and doing that. And
then I got hired to a bigger station in a
bigger town. So I actually left my community college early
before I was finished with it and moved to the
other town for the job. But when I got to
that big town, it was the big town. Everybody wanted

(07:08):
to work there. And I got there and I had
a job, and it was in the first week. It
might even have been the first night I'm on the
air and I pick up the phone and somebody said
you suck and hung up, and I will I will
always remember it because I was devastated. I mean, I
was just devastated. I sat there thinking, oh my god,

(07:32):
I went to college for this, this is the only
plan I've got.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I don't know how to do anything else.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
And I suck?

Speaker 1 (07:39):
What am I gonna do?

Speaker 4 (07:40):
I mean, I just I I can't believe I reacted
that way, like that person was the arbiter of whether
or not I could be in this career.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Surely they wouldn't call and I'd a pure cruelty or meanness,
say something definitive or be wrong. How many you suck
calls did it take before you reacted whatever? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
I don't know what it was for me. Y oh yeah,
yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
It rattles your confidence, even if you have.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Confidence, yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
I don't know when, but eventually you get thick skin
to it. Actually, I don't know if that's what happened,
even like with with Joe and I still getting emails
and texts today where their people are so cruel at
a certain point. I mean even when I was twenty
years old. I was a program director radio station when
I was twenty and I was making my rent and

(08:32):
my car payment. I'm making a living at this, So
you thinking I suck is fine. I'm making I'm supporting
myself on this job.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
The free market begs to differ, right.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
So enough people think I don't suck, that I'm gonna
go with that is. I think that's what got me
over the home, right, although the living I was making
was quite meager.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
All right now, and now you'd reply, yes, I do suck,
but I work cheap.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Oh god.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
I remember when I was about nineteen, we had the
text lineup and thank you so much, and I saw
a five to one zero number which was the same
area code as mine, and so uh and and the
message that came through the text line was Katie, you're
the worst, Get off the radio, or something along those lines.
So I thought, you know, my town is small. I

(09:24):
wonder if I know this person. And I plugged the
number into my cell phone and it was my senior
prom date.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Oh wow, Oh that's a good story.

Speaker 5 (09:36):
So I texted him back from the station and said thanks,
call him Dan.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Prom was fun, And he.

Speaker 5 (09:43):
Wrote back, Oh, I was just kidding you because things
I could see he was, yeah, total dick.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Your was a dick, total dick. Yeah that is so
that is so freaking weak.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
So you're you're to prom date from high school, has
a cool job, and.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
You need to try to take her down a peg.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Well, I hope his life sucks. It probably does. If
he's doing that, his life almost certainly.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
Sucks, or it will soon. Yeah, if that big a dick.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Right.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
So, Joe and I are both in our mid eighties,
so when we were doing this getting phone calls, there
was no mid eighties. There was no like color id
or anything like that. God, that would have been great
if I could have called these people back or figured
out who they were instead of just the random you
suck calls. Oh, and I should so since it's National

(10:40):
Radio Day, the one time.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Ever in my entire radio career.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
I've ever gone out with a listener, and I sworred
off ever since then at age twenty, So this uh,
and I had been warned. I had been warned about,
you know, being misled by a velvety sounding voice over
the phone. But I was twenty, and I was new
in town, and I was lonely, and I was a
male and all the things that go with that. But

(11:08):
this this chick kept calling me, calling me, call me,
and then she wanted to uh, she wanted to go
out sometime. God, I can't believe I did this. This
is how naive and stupid I was. I gave her
my freaking address.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
What oh yeah, yeah, wow. Didn't meet her somewhere neutral
or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
No, well, I'm in a town of twelve thousand people
for one thing, so I mean it's yeah. But she
comes to my house. And it wasn't that she was
bad looking. She was actually fairly attractive, but she was
dressing dressed very freaky, like by today's standards, she's the
barista at every coffee shop you go to. But by
those standards, it was like really freak show stuff. She

(11:50):
had some piercings and tattoos and colored hair, and I
mean just craziness. And I, oh, my god, this is
not small town midwestern eighties girl, I was hoping. And
then she opens up her purse, which was full of pills.
Not liking bottles or anything like that. It was just
like a bag of pills. And she said, which color
do you want? I said, I'm good, And uh, who

(12:13):
knows what they were? I have not got the I
didn't know anything about drugs, for one thing, so I have.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Dissolving right.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
So I wanted to get her out of my my
my house. So I said, let's go over to the
pool hall, which is what we had to discuss doing.
So we go over to the pool hall. We start
playing pool. I say I need to go to the bathroom.
I I go to the bathroom, I walk out the
back door, I get my car and I leave and
I never saw her again. I was afraid she'd come
to my house. I think I slept with like a

(12:40):
bat near my bed or something like that.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
She didn't free showing shove pills down your throats.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I asked you what you wanted. Oh my god, I
don't know what I would. Yeah, the naive the being,
the naive child. I could have ended up dead. Yeah,
Oregon's harvested tuba ice.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Call the police.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Your kidneys have been harvested.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Exactly. It happens a lot. I heard about that.

Speaker 6 (13:11):
Okay, this is my radio story. I was seven years old.
I had a Fisher Price record player and I would
play Disney songs, you know, to amuse myself. But on
the weekends I would I'd have paid programming, I believe
it or not. And then I finally sold my station
to the kid down the street that spoke Spanish, and
he's changed format to the Spanish and I got his bike. Well,

(13:37):
I guess that's it.
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