Shot In The Dark: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXIX

June 23, 2006

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXIX

It was Monday, June 23, 1986. My audition tape had been sitting on Scott Meier's desk for well over a week.

I figured that was plenty of time. Today was the day to start the big push.

Assuming I could get to work.

My old '73 Malibu was hanging on, but was fading fast. Every rainstorm left it immobile for a day or so, until it dried out. An early-morning deluge left me calling Rob Pendelton for a lift to work. "I know, I know", I said as I got into his car, "I gotta get a different ride..."

I got to the station, did my board shift during the Michael Jackson show, and walked into the production meeting with Don and Dave. It was Monday, so Meier - the station's general manager and program director, would be in shortly.

Now, when I call Scott Meier a "program director", I don't mean in the sense that anyone who's ever worked in radio, especially in the bigs, could possibly relate to. At most "real" radio stations, the PD is an pseudo-deity of format knowledge, an all-powerful dictator who can make or break careers on a whim; a person whose entire careers hinges on the whims of a market's listening audience, and who passes that down to all who work for him, the station's "air [programming, production, whatever] department".

Meier, on the other hand, was a sales guy (although he'd had a brief air career) who got stuck with the job as a cost-cutting measure. He didn't know talk radio, and - this is the part that astounds "real" radio people - assumed that his staff could figure out the technicalities and do the job they were hired for better than he could.

And it worked. The station was getting the best ratings it'd gotten since it had gone all-talk in 1981. Which wasn't really saying much, but it was something.

The best thing about working at KSTP back then was its splendid isolation, on the edge of a swamp on Highway 61 (note to Bob Dylan fans - yes, that Highway 61) in north Maplewood, north of Saint Paul. The station sat in an old (as in 1930's-era) transmitter shack that had been remodeled with some offices, a kitchen, and a studio/control room and a couple of crude but useful production rooms. The station had moved out there about a year earlier; rumor had it that Hubbard Broadcasting wanted to unload the AM station. In those days when the "Fairness Doctrine" ruled and when Rush Limbaugh was still working in Sacramento, the "conventional wisdom" was that AM radio was a dying band, populated by losers broadcasting to geriatrics. The station, a 50,000 watt blowtorch, was apparently on the market for five million dollars - and was getting no takers. Hubbard broadcasting poured all of its resources into the properties it kept down on University Avenue in Saint Paul - Channel 5 (then the #2 station in town) and KS95 FM with its well-connected Program Director and morning guy Chuck Knapp. All of corporate's attention focused on the "downtown" properties downstairs from the executive offices. Out in Maplewood, we'd go months without hearing from anyone at corporate, except when the biweekly bag of paychecks arrived.

So we were pretty much left alone - to do what we had been hired to do, and to get the best numbers we could.

Bit by bit, it was working. Our Spring Arbitron book showed us in the mid 3-point range among people 12+, and better still among males aged 25-54, the key audience.

Things were good - which meant my timing was good, too.

Meier walked into the studio. "Hey guys".

"Hey, Scott. Listen to my tape?"

He nodded. "Yep".

"And...?"

"Interesting"

"So whatdya think?"

"There's possibilities".

Vogel chimed in. "Scott, you gotta put him on the air!"

"Yeah!", I added. "Put me in, coach! I'm ready to play!"

Vogel laughed his unrestrained cackle.

"Yeah", said Meier, "there's possibilities there. But I'll have to think about it..."

I pulled out the closest thing I had to a trump card: "And given that Edwards, Geoff Charles, Michael Jackson, Owen Span and Karen Booth are so far to the left, we have that whole Fairness Doctrine thing to think about..."

Meier nodded. "I'll think about it". He changed the subject to talk with Don about something or another. I didn't pay much attention. I was figuring how to press the issue further.

It wasn't everything that was on my mind, of course. I got home around 7 that night, spent an hour digging through the classifieds for cheap used cars...

...and then curled up in the basement with my "recording studio" for a couple of hours.