The good Ol days. Posted on March 25, 2026 at 09:27:54 AM by Radio reminescing
Jeez, I just read this one...how can a guy like you be so confident and so wrong about me? I didn't even START drinkin until I was bored with computer programming and I retired--mostly because I didn't want to learn SQL programming. I retired at 62 after more than a decade out of TV. Broadscasting was never a large enterprise in KC like in NY and Hollywood.
You just dont' realize that broadcasting especially in radio is such a TINY NITCH in both the business and entertainment world. Guess from your dining rm table you are just a prisoner of your own reality there offa Mission Road, my friend. You get these fixations and they become your reality about people. You're only close to it like most radio people because you can stay connected by listening to it. TV people don't even realize with 4 TV stations even THAT is a tiny nitch of a community...but they spend all their time watching affiliate TV. On gateway, all they talked about was abt weathermen and anchors. How many people in the metro even work in studios? 500 tops including sales and engineering? I didn't even understand a vibrant community until I got out of broadcasting studios and as a reporter learned the diversity of professions and industries in a busy city. Retail, manufacturing, government, utilities, airlines, medical, education. Each of them bigger than broadcasting which itself is just used passively by most people and provided free. Now sharing eyes and ears with the internet that originates all over the country!
Look at what tv stations cover! Cop news, passing weather, retail ads. That's IT. People dont' even go stations to meet the media people to buy anything or to be entertained like in the old days when there were studios for the public. NBC draws audiences at Burbank and NY to watch live shows. In Wichita before we were born, the stations hosted live events... But out here in the hinterlands, they don't even originate live events for the public to go see. Radio plays recorded songs and TV gets their programs from the coasts. Whats KC got but the Plaza lighting ceremony?
Radio can't even cover the local weather without EBS! When you did radio remotes, how much traffic did you generate into stores? 200 walkins? More? Radio people had to beg listeners to stop by so the store owners could see radio was effective. It was mostly hype though by the radio people themselves. I even had to hype results! Fact is theres nothing for the public to actually SEE at a remote since Whizzo retired!
Talk about radio and TV, Jim, not alcoholism and successes and failures in radio with me! I was just a news voice passin thru. Something you know a little about! Were you EVER a celebrity in radio? Very little for people to actually SEE, because radio doesn't produce major events. Stations might as well be out in the country. Wait. Stations actually WERE out in the country tho KFH at least was in Wichita's Lassen Hotel where the Country band performed like a little town's version of Nashville's Grand Ol Opry.
Times have changed bud. And nobody remembers our names, and rarely saw us in person. At least Phil Jay made it to all the high schools for record hops! The Geritol for Lunch bunch still talks about him fm time to time on the Remember When facebook pages. But us boomers are droppin like flies who opened up most the schools in the 60s.