{"id":73515,"date":"2020-03-06T10:58:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T16:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=73515"},"modified":"2020-03-06T10:58:22","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T16:58:22","slug":"sweet-sixteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=73515","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Sixteen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
My first radio \u201ccareer\u201d started when I was 15, and ended sometime around age 29. \u00a0It led me through jobs at a bunch of radio stations – KEYJ and KQDJ in Jamestown and KDAK in Carrington North Dakota, then KQDJ again.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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And at age 22, I figured that\u2019d be pretty much it. \u00a0I was tired of spinning records, and didn\u2019t see much future doing radio news. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Then, of course, I moved to the Cities, and fell into a job – KSTP-AM – and, more importantly, a format, talk radio, that was just\u2026<\/div>\n
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\u2026me. \u00a0 In some ways, that two year job was not just my indelible first work experience out of college, but almost the first real all-consuming love of my life. \u00a0 I produced comedy (the Don Vogel show), sports (Minnesota North Stars, Minnesota Strikers and the State Hockey Tournament network), and of course my own show, from 2-4AM weekday mornings, a testimony to management\u2019s confidence in their relentlessly-ambitious newbie. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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That ended, of course – followed by jobs at KDWB AM\/FM, WDGY and KFAI.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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And then\u2026nothing. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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And then 12 more years of nothing. \u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Well, not \u201cnothing\u201d, per se – I had had a couple kids, started a new career and then another, got divorced, moved on with life. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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And then, via a confluence of meetings and opportunities almost too improbable to recite, I wound up back in\u2026<\/div>\n
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\u2026well, not \u201cthe radio business\u201d, per se. \u00a0 Radio was always a lousy field, one of few fields in modern business that couldn\u2019t afford to razz the popular music industry\u2019s ethics. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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I wound up back in the fun part of radio – talking over the air to people for fun, a little money and, most important of all in these fractious times, a voice. \u00a0 \u00a0For me and, I\u2019d like to think, a lot of people like me who – perhaps counterintuitively for a political talk show host – hate politics, but know we\u2019ve got to keep a toe in it anyway, since it\u2019s going to affect you whether you\u2019re resplendently above it all or not. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Anyway, that confluence of events led to the first ever Northern Alliance Radio Network broadcast, sixteen years ago today on AM1280 in the Twin Cities. \u00a0 And pretty much every Saturday afternoon since then. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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And I need to thank everyone involved; in AM1280\u2019s operations manager at the time, Patrick Campion, for taking that crazy idea and running with it; with general manager John Hunt for OKing it; with GM Nik Anderson and ops manager Lee Michaels for keeping us on the air all these years. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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To a couple generations of producers who made us sound good – from the late Joe Hanson, through Matt Reynolds, Tommy Huynh, Irina Malanina, Megan Fatale, the Consigliere, and for the past couple years Terminator N. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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And of course, to the guys: \u00a0 Atomizer (for that first day, and that first day only), JB Doubtless, Scott Johnson, Michael Brodkorb, Brian \u201cSaint Paul\u201d Ward, Chad \u201cThe Elder\u201d Doughty, John Hinderaker, King Banaian, Ed Morrissey and, for the past eight years, Brad Carlson. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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And especially everyone that\u2019s been tuning in all these years. \u00a0Thanks!<\/div>\n
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And yeah, we\u2019re gonna have that tenth anniversary party. \u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first radio \u201ccareer\u201d started when I was 15, and ended sometime around age 29. \u00a0It led me through jobs at a bunch of radio stations – KEYJ and KQDJ in Jamestown and KDAK in Carrington North Dakota, then KQDJ again.\u00a0 \u00a0 And at age 22, I figured that\u2019d be pretty much it. \u00a0I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73516,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73515\/revisions\/73516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}