The Start Of The Rollercoaster

I call this the start of the roller coaster because this past year my radio career has been just like a roller coaster: a long climb up, a tantalizing pause at the top to enjoy the view, then a fast, terrifying drop followed by twists you don't see, turns that sneak up on you, loops that leave you dizzy, punctuated with little inclines for you to catch your breath, finally leaving you where started, but instead of being on the ride now, you're in the back of the long, long line of people who want to get on the ride again too, and they changed how tall you have to be to get on the ride, so you barely make the height now, and all the big kids are taking all the seats on the rides the little kids had all to themselves, but you don't want to ride another ride, you want to ride on THIS one!

Okay, so that made no sense to you, but I'm laughing hysterically!

Saturday night. September 1st, 2007. The anniversary of my 29th birthday. I am the PD/Afternoon personality for the #1 station for young adults in the Dayton area. It's 8 o'clock and I’m ordering dinner for myself and a beautiful young lady I met a few weeks ago, having made reservations at the local equivalent of Morton’s. The calm before the storm of my birthday party later on that night at the newest hot lounge. Life is good.

Then the call comes. “The station is off the air!” Oh, s$#%! We have one 4 hour show a week that we play off of CDs, and the person in charge of running that show, the board op, failed to show up. No answer from repeated calls to the board op. I call a board op running a show for one of our sister stations. I have him start the first CD, but since the first segment is only 25 minutes long, we’ll have dead air again if no one is in the studio.

• Do I hope the board op is just running late and stay with my date at the restaurant?
• Do I ask the other station’s board op to skate back and forth between stations, running my programming and his own, and stay with my date at the restaurant?
• Do I call around to the other staffers to see if anyone can go to the station and babysit the show, and stay with my date at the restaurant?
• Can you tell that I want to stay with my date at the restaurant?
• Or do I apologize to my date, give her the choice to stay and have her meal, and sprint to the station before that 25 minute segment finishes?

So dessert comes and I say to my date, “I wonder if the board op ever made it to the station?”

No. Not really.

I skid into the station parking lot at 8:20pm and take the stairs two at a time to the on-air studio. “Good, 5 minutes left.” A quick search of the premises turns up no trace of the board op, and this show has 3 1/2 more hours to run. The lounge opens at 10pm. I have to be there, not just because it’s my birthday party, but because I have a signed contract to DJ and host the event. The station is my primary responsibility, but I am the face of the station. If I back out of a deal, that reflects badly on the station. I don’t want the station’s credibility with the owners, managers and promoters to be shot.

The challenge is this: can I get the remaining 7 segments on the air and get to the club before the bulk of the people make it there?

I first call the club to tell them I will be a little late, because I have an emergency at the radio station. That gives me some breathing room, but at that point I don’t know how much more time I need. I then fire the next 25 minute segment. I jog to the other end of the building and start downloading segments into 1 of only 2 computers that can quickly send music files to the on-air studio (I’m glad I earned my operation manager’s trust for him to give me a key to his office). Once segment 3 is ready I place it in the queue. I continue to scamper back and forth between office and studio until all the segments are in the queue, ready to go! I jump into my truck, observing the speed limit and stopping at every yellow light… (riiiiiiight) and make it to the lounge only 30 minutes late.

Oh, and the young lady? She understood completely, left the restaurant with me, met me at the lounge later on and made the rest of my birthday memorable!