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Meeting Your Radio Idol
If you ever worked in radio, chances are pretty good you used to listen to someone who made you want to get into this crazy industry. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear him or her on a regular basis. If you’re more fortunate, you’ll get to meet them. And if the stars really align, you’ll discover they’re as great a human being as you always hoped.
That’s what happened to me on Wednesday, when I got to treat one of the guys who inspired me to lunch in the Distillery District. His on air name was the Real Bob James and he toiled in the 70s and 80s at such great Top 40 stations as WGAR Cleveland and WNBC New York, with lots of other stops along the way.
This guy was one of the greatest jocks I’ve ever heard, an inspiration to me of how really great radio can be done. He came to Toronto for his first ever visit this week and he was nice enough to ask to meet me.
We talked about the loss of personality radio, the state of the industry today, some of his amazing career highlights, the fact his high energy approach (which included producing bits and taking requests on the fly) lost him about 5 lbs. per shift, and his post-radio career (he quit the biz at age 40 and went back to college to earn his Ph.D in media studies, followed by a tenured professorship at two prestigious American universities.)
How talented was he? Consider this: in the 70s, the local Emmy winner auditioned for an opening for a TV game show that needed a new host. He played a fake game with fake contestants and aced the thing. But in the end he came in second, as the production company decided to give it to a local L.A. weatherman, simply because he was better known in that market. The winner was Pat Sajak and the show was Wheel of Fortune. If not for that one quirk of fate, he might have been a household name.
But despite that near miss, he never lost a beat and remains as smart, nice and gracious as I could have hoped. (Dale Patterson has an aircheck of him on Rockradioscrapbook.ca here.) And his wife was equally charming.
I bring this up because while I feel very lucky that he wanted to see a non-entity like me, even though his time in the city is short, it made me wonder if anyone else ever got to meet one of the people who inspired their love of radio.
If so, how did it go? I can only hope your experience was as happy as mine.
Thanks for the memories Real Bob. Including the unforgettable one I made today.
- Dale Patterson
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Re: Meeting Your Radio Idol
I was golfing with my Dad (may he rest in peace) at Humber Valley in the early '70s when we joined up with a man who turned out to be CFRB's Bob Greenfield and his son. Bob was a very nice person and you couldn't mistake that wonderful voice of his. Funny we didn't talk much about radio and we all left right after the round. I wonder what ever happened to Bob Greenfield?
"Life without echo is really no life at all." - Dan Ingram
- Dial Twister
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In the summer of 1967, a friend and I decided to stop off at 1331 Yonge Street, late one Friday night. We had been doing the typical Yonge Street cruise while listening to (what else?) the great 1050 CHUM. We peeked in to the street-front windows and waved.
Wouldn't you know, Bob Laine waved back and came out to talk to us on the sidewalk. Terrific guy, and an amazing on-air talent who later moved into senior management.
Another one who died too young. RIP Bobbo.
“Good Morning World, this is Bobbo. Good Morning Bobbo, this is World.”
- geo
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Re: Meeting Your Radio Idol
I met Jody Thornton at High Street fish 'n chips, 55 Underhill Drive, North York, east of the DVP & north of Lawrence last winter. We both had haddock & chips and passed on dessert. It was memorable.
- Fjiri
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Re: Meeting Your Radio Idol
RadioActive wrote:
If you ever worked in radio, chances are pretty good you used to listen to someone who made you want to get into this crazy industry. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear him or her on a regular basis. If you’re more fortunate, you’ll get to meet them. And if the stars really align, you’ll discover they’re as great a human being as you always hoped.
That’s what happened to me on Wednesday, when I got to treat one of the guys who inspired me to lunch in the Distillery District. His on air name was the Real Bob James and he toiled in the 70s and 80s at such great Top 40 stations as WGAR Cleveland and WNBC New York, with lots of other stops along the way.
This guy was one of the greatest jocks I’ve ever heard, an inspiration to me of how really great radio can be done. He came to Toronto for his first ever visit this week and he was nice enough to ask to meet me.
We talked about the loss of personality radio, the state of the industry today, some of his amazing career highlights, the fact his high energy approach (which included producing bits and taking requests on the fly) lost him about 5 lbs. per shift, and his post-radio career (he quit the biz at age 40 and went back to college to earn his Ph.D in media studies, followed by a tenured professorship at two prestigious American universities.)
How talented was he? Consider this: in the 70s, the local Emmy winner auditioned for an opening for a TV game show that needed a new host. He played a fake game with fake contestants and aced the thing. But in the end he came in second, as the production company decided to give it to a local L.A. weatherman, simply because he was better known in that market. The winner was Pat Sajak and the show was Wheel of Fortune. If not for that one quirk of fate, he might have been a household name.
But despite that near miss, he never lost a beat and remains as smart, nice and gracious as I could have hoped. (Dale Patterson has an aircheck of him on Rockradioscrapbook.ca here.) And his wife was equally charming.
I bring this up because while I feel very lucky that he wanted to see a non-entity like me, even though his time in the city is short, it made me wonder if anyone else ever got to meet one of the people who inspired their love of radio.
If so, how did it go? I can only hope your experience was as happy as mine.
Thanks for the memories Real Bob. Including the unforgettable one I made today.
Your post inspired me to check out some of his work RadioActive.
Holy Shit! That man haz skillz!!! Check this out (no, this isn't an attempt to rickroll you!):
Last edited by Fjiri (October 18, 2018 9:22 pm)
- RadioActive
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Re: Meeting Your Radio Idol
And now you know why he lost so much weight during an average shift! The man was incredible with his drop-ins, bits and timing, and he told me he often put in 8 hours before each shift just getting it all ready. Some of the material he wrote. Some was from a service that he subscribed to. But it was the way he pulled it off that was so impressive.
(He also told me during our visit that he got into trouble for calling the soon-to-be extinct WNBC "The Radio Titanic," as he does on this aircheck. But what were they going to do with just a few weeks left on the air - fire him?)
Yet he once confessed to me in an email that despite his great success in major markets, he felt unfulfilled, that the guy on the air wasn't really him, only a character he played when the mic went on, and that he never felt entirely comfortable doing that with a good chunk of his life. (And indeed, in person yesterday, I found him to be a fairly quiet, thoughtful and serious guy.)
I remember reading that and feeling very sad for him, because I enjoyed his air work so much, he always made me laugh and yet he apparently didn't get much satisfaction out of it. That's why he eventually went into teaching, which he did find fulfilling.
It always reminded me of something the great Dr. Don Rose once said in a TV interview. The guy was the toast of San Francisco, the #1 morning man at KFRC for decades and he practically owned the city, enjoying fame, fortune and being able to live a pretty terrific lifestyle in a pretty terrific city.
Ten years to the day after he retired, a local TV station did an interview with him to mark that milestone. And the reporter asked him, "So if you could do it all over again, would you?"
And Rose, without any sign of the jokester he'd played all those years on the radio, took a long pause, sighed deeply, and simply said "No." When the stunned reporter asked why, he refused to elaborate.
That also left me feeling pretty sad, but I guess it's a sign that what we hear on the air isn't always what's going on with the person.
Still, Bob James' amazing body of work (including working for Entertainment Tonight, the Voice of America and running the American Comedy Network, which created comedy bits for radio stations across North America) will always stand up. I just wish he'd enjoyed it more.
Here's another aircheck from WGAR, Cleveland, although I have no idea who that guy pictured on the page is supposed to be. As a bonus, it contains one of my all time favourite jingles (around the 8 minute mark) "You're Fired! You're Fired! From WGAR."
I'm betting every DJ could use one of those...
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Thread Starter- Fitz
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Re: Meeting Your Radio Idol
Have had a few encounters with radio legends but this one was captured on a few pics. One of the questions I asked was something that I had always wanted to ask a CHUM jock from back in the day and that was "why did CHUM not play Nobody But Me" by the Human Beinz"
That was a hit one year before this jock joined the station but it was something that always perplexed me. I did hear the track on CKOC but not CHUM in 1968.
Cool Airchecks and More: