Spring 1998 AP Class
In my recent fraternity history, I spent a lot of time on my first semester as a pledge and the overall pledge program and rightfully so given how much it impacted my life. I have barely ever touched on the radio training I did as an Assistant Programmer in the Spring 1998 semester, even with an entire tag of radio show history going back more than a decade.
My decision to join the radio station was only marginally more thought out than my decision to join a fraternity. i was certainly favorably inclined to radio in a way I wasn't to fraternities. My father had some volunteer involvement with KFJM at UND when I was a kid, although he wasn't an on-air personality or anything like that so far as I can remember. I had decided after a rough fall 1997 semester that I needed some activity that wasn't the fraternity. At the time, my fraternity brother Davis co-hosted a talk radio show at WRUW - I'd listened to him off and on my freshman, as well as the show hosted by a guy named Luke who lived in my quad in the dorms. The just graduated Glick was also co-hosting a ska and punk show with The Spectator called "Screw the Buzzard." I had always liked music, albeit with a pretty mainstream taste, and this seemed like it could be fun.
Training at the radio station back in those days (and really on through my departure in 2020) meant being assigned to a show that you'd appear on every week, with increasing amounts of responsibility until you were prepping as much as 30 minutes of a two hour show, or more if your host was generous. Of course, my host was a fraternity brother, so he handed me a giant book of ska and punk CDs (remember CD books?) and told me to check it out on my own time. This book had more CDs in it than I personally owned, and I knew virtually none of them. I fell hard for ska, and most of that semester you could hear me listening to new CD after new CD in my room. I sooner learned enough about the genre to be dangerous, or at least enough to do a halfway decent radio show.
Beyond that, there were the seminars.
- First, you had to learn how to do production, which back in those days involved splicing tape together and using razor blades. I was pretty terrible at it and only passed the mandatory production requirement because another staff member named Bill helped me out a LOT. I was very happy when production moved off of tape, first to a fancy digital gadget that I never used and then to a standardized computer program called Audition which I achieved just enough competence in to actually teach it to trainees for a few years before we waived the production requirement altogether.
- You had to attend at least two music seminars, which were when staff members would basically talk about whatever their pet music genre was. I'm pretty sure I went to a country music one hosted by Cuzin Jimmie, who probably could have taught a university class on it. I don't recall the theme of the other one I went to, but I remember being asked if I could ever justify playing mainstream bands and saying "sure, if it's a really cool thing you can't hear elsewhere." Weird what you remember, or think you remember. I eventually taught my own music seminars to future trainees, specifically a seminar called "Freeform on a Budget: The Soundtrack Library." The name was better than the seminar, but a future GM named Kelly actually did a soundtrack show after taking my seminar, so I guess that's something.
- There was also a policy seminar, which hadn't yet claimed the catchy name "FCC and Me" that it would acquire later on.
At the end of the semester, you had to turn in an air check, which back then I recorded on a cassette which I probably still have somewhere. You also had to take a test. I was terrible at tests that year, and I suspect I didn't do well on it. However, I lucked out. The training director that year was a reggae host named Rich Lowe, who I became friend with later on. He told me some years later that Spring 1998 was the year he lost all the tests, so he just assumed everybody passed because he couldn't tell, and it didn't seem fair to make them take it again. Or something like that, anyway. So it's entirely possible that I failed that test and still managed to be at WRUW for more than 20 years. I like to think I picked up a few things in subsequent years!
Radio was always a solitary event. During most time slots there no more than a couple other people in the station besides the on air programmer, and quite often nobody else at all. One reason I liked being on Sunday afternoons was that there were very often people down there besides me and whomever my co-host was that semester, especially when Tech Crew started meeting consistently on Sundays. The training program was just as solitary. Outside of the required seminars, you rarely if ever actually hung out with the people in your training class at the radio station. In my particular class, most of the other trainees were actually community members, so they were all older than me and not on campus anyway. However, a few of us hung on for so long that we became friends, or at least friendly acquaintances through long exposure. Besides myself, the members of the Spring 98 training class were:
- Charles was and is the proprietor of My Minds Eye Records in Lakewood. He did a show called "Splatter Rock" off and on for quite a few years.
- Marty G hosted a blues show for at least a solid decade before leaving the station.
- AP Magee and Stella were a couple who trained together. Or maybe Stella was already trained and only Mike was in the program, I'm honestly not sure. They ended up hosting matching political talk shows ("State of Decay" and "Domestic Terrorism" which eventually merged into "Domestic Decay") with heavy doses of punk and metal and eventually getting married. Stella passed away very unexpectedly in 2010. AP got kicked off the station in 2013 after playing something the university deemed offensive after Nelson Mandela died. Apparently somebody complained.
- With my departure from the station, Patty became the last woman standing from the Spring 98 training class. She's hosted an 80s show called "The Spandex Years" virtually every semester since 1998.
There were probably other trainees in that Spring 1998 class, but either they never did a show or didn't stick around long enough for them to stick in my mind. Could have been either, really. Any given radio training class would have:
- People who dropped out midway through.
- People who failed the test, or almost as common never showed up for it.
- People who passed the test but never applied for show, or never got one.
- People who did a show once and lost interest.
Once you got past those folks, you'd have a few more who did a show every semester until they graduated and left Cleveland. It was somewhat unusual to have somebody continue their show after graduation, and having someone who would do their show for a decade or more is even rarer. To have at least 5 trainees from one class who were each involved with the station for more than a decade was nigh unprecedented. I don't know exactly where I was on the seniority list when I left (note: we did not actually have a seniority list), but I certainly had a nice run as one of the rare people who really did play almost anything on his show.
My decision to join the radio station was only marginally more thought out than my decision to join a fraternity. i was certainly favorably inclined to radio in a way I wasn't to fraternities. My father had some volunteer involvement with KFJM at UND when I was a kid, although he wasn't an on-air personality or anything like that so far as I can remember. I had decided after a rough fall 1997 semester that I needed some activity that wasn't the fraternity. At the time, my fraternity brother Davis co-hosted a talk radio show at WRUW - I'd listened to him off and on my freshman, as well as the show hosted by a guy named Luke who lived in my quad in the dorms. The just graduated Glick was also co-hosting a ska and punk show with The Spectator called "Screw the Buzzard." I had always liked music, albeit with a pretty mainstream taste, and this seemed like it could be fun.
Training at the radio station back in those days (and really on through my departure in 2020) meant being assigned to a show that you'd appear on every week, with increasing amounts of responsibility until you were prepping as much as 30 minutes of a two hour show, or more if your host was generous. Of course, my host was a fraternity brother, so he handed me a giant book of ska and punk CDs (remember CD books?) and told me to check it out on my own time. This book had more CDs in it than I personally owned, and I knew virtually none of them. I fell hard for ska, and most of that semester you could hear me listening to new CD after new CD in my room. I sooner learned enough about the genre to be dangerous, or at least enough to do a halfway decent radio show.
Beyond that, there were the seminars.
- First, you had to learn how to do production, which back in those days involved splicing tape together and using razor blades. I was pretty terrible at it and only passed the mandatory production requirement because another staff member named Bill helped me out a LOT. I was very happy when production moved off of tape, first to a fancy digital gadget that I never used and then to a standardized computer program called Audition which I achieved just enough competence in to actually teach it to trainees for a few years before we waived the production requirement altogether.
- You had to attend at least two music seminars, which were when staff members would basically talk about whatever their pet music genre was. I'm pretty sure I went to a country music one hosted by Cuzin Jimmie, who probably could have taught a university class on it. I don't recall the theme of the other one I went to, but I remember being asked if I could ever justify playing mainstream bands and saying "sure, if it's a really cool thing you can't hear elsewhere." Weird what you remember, or think you remember. I eventually taught my own music seminars to future trainees, specifically a seminar called "Freeform on a Budget: The Soundtrack Library." The name was better than the seminar, but a future GM named Kelly actually did a soundtrack show after taking my seminar, so I guess that's something.
- There was also a policy seminar, which hadn't yet claimed the catchy name "FCC and Me" that it would acquire later on.
At the end of the semester, you had to turn in an air check, which back then I recorded on a cassette which I probably still have somewhere. You also had to take a test. I was terrible at tests that year, and I suspect I didn't do well on it. However, I lucked out. The training director that year was a reggae host named Rich Lowe, who I became friend with later on. He told me some years later that Spring 1998 was the year he lost all the tests, so he just assumed everybody passed because he couldn't tell, and it didn't seem fair to make them take it again. Or something like that, anyway. So it's entirely possible that I failed that test and still managed to be at WRUW for more than 20 years. I like to think I picked up a few things in subsequent years!
Radio was always a solitary event. During most time slots there no more than a couple other people in the station besides the on air programmer, and quite often nobody else at all. One reason I liked being on Sunday afternoons was that there were very often people down there besides me and whomever my co-host was that semester, especially when Tech Crew started meeting consistently on Sundays. The training program was just as solitary. Outside of the required seminars, you rarely if ever actually hung out with the people in your training class at the radio station. In my particular class, most of the other trainees were actually community members, so they were all older than me and not on campus anyway. However, a few of us hung on for so long that we became friends, or at least friendly acquaintances through long exposure. Besides myself, the members of the Spring 98 training class were:
- Charles was and is the proprietor of My Minds Eye Records in Lakewood. He did a show called "Splatter Rock" off and on for quite a few years.
- Marty G hosted a blues show for at least a solid decade before leaving the station.
- AP Magee and Stella were a couple who trained together. Or maybe Stella was already trained and only Mike was in the program, I'm honestly not sure. They ended up hosting matching political talk shows ("State of Decay" and "Domestic Terrorism" which eventually merged into "Domestic Decay") with heavy doses of punk and metal and eventually getting married. Stella passed away very unexpectedly in 2010. AP got kicked off the station in 2013 after playing something the university deemed offensive after Nelson Mandela died. Apparently somebody complained.
- With my departure from the station, Patty became the last woman standing from the Spring 98 training class. She's hosted an 80s show called "The Spandex Years" virtually every semester since 1998.
There were probably other trainees in that Spring 1998 class, but either they never did a show or didn't stick around long enough for them to stick in my mind. Could have been either, really. Any given radio training class would have:
- People who dropped out midway through.
- People who failed the test, or almost as common never showed up for it.
- People who passed the test but never applied for show, or never got one.
- People who did a show once and lost interest.
Once you got past those folks, you'd have a few more who did a show every semester until they graduated and left Cleveland. It was somewhat unusual to have somebody continue their show after graduation, and having someone who would do their show for a decade or more is even rarer. To have at least 5 trainees from one class who were each involved with the station for more than a decade was nigh unprecedented. I don't know exactly where I was on the seniority list when I left (note: we did not actually have a seniority list), but I certainly had a nice run as one of the rare people who really did play almost anything on his show.