I received a terrific email from my old friend "The Real" Bob James, a long retired radio DJ who used to be on, among other stations, WGAR Cleveland and WNBC New York. As you can see from that list, he was a major market talent. He recalled his first time ever on the air when he was just 14 years of age at a station called WNIO in Niles, Ohio. 

I don't think he'll mind if I repost it here. Here's a part of his remembrance:
 
"My first radio gig was at 1540/WNIO, Niles, OH back in 1964. It was a real dump...but a good place to start and learn a bit about broadcasting. I was still a high school kid, and every day at 2:45 pm, my grandma would pick me up, and drive me to my 3-5 pm radio gig at WNIO.

NIO was an MOR station (more of "All Over The Road, really...and, at 500 watts, my hairdryer had more power. I don't remember too much about it -- except the funny smell of stale cigarettes and wet butt/crotch (something I've found at a lot of smaller stations)...I do recall one year, WNIO had their Christmas party in my grandma's basement. Really! 

I do remember the owners, Frank Bevilocqua -- an older man who walked like a grasshopper, kind of bent over, his arms back, (with pants up to his armpits) -- and Steve Conti -- whose on-air name was "Cookie Randolph". No joke. Steve was a very, very nervous man. He'd literally tremble when he went on mic. I felt bad for him. If he didn't have a heart condition back then, he likely died of one.

Al DeJulio was the GM, he hired me. -- Al had a creepy pencil-thin mustache, and his brother Ray (a salesman) suffered from Marty Feldman eyes. And then there was me, barely 14-years-old. What a motley crew. I did love it, though. It totally absorbed me."

All of which reminded me of my very first time on air. It was the mid-70s and I was still in high school. My late mother happened to be listening to CHIN-AM's one English language show in the morning for reasons I'll never understand and called in to win a silly contest. The winner got a record album, a small prize for a small station. (It turned out to be Peter & Gordon's Greatest Hits, so at least it was a good one.)

She went all the way downtown to pick it up and I asked her if I could come with her.  When we got there, the morning man, Mark Burns, came out to personally give us the prize and I boldly mustered my courage and my still changing voice and asked him how to get into radio. He said "why don't you come back on Saturday morning at 6 AM and find out?"  He probably thought he'd never hear from me again. A teenager getting up at the crack of dawn? Impossible! But he hadn't counted on this being my dream.  

I wasn't even old enough to drive so my fantastic father, who I will miss forever, volunteered to get up at 5 in the morning on the weekends and drive me all the way down there - about a half hour trip before the sun was even up. What an amazing dad to do that for his kid, huh? I've never forgotten it. I remember having to go to a pay phone - remember those? - nearby to call to be let in.  

I'll never forget my first time inside the bowels of that place. It was on top of a supermarket where the owner had originally made his money to start his own station. Like WNIO, it had an odd smell - in this case, old and really bad feet. But I didn't care. Hey, I was in radio!  

I used to be a pretty timid kid. But I decided I was going to walk in there for the very first time with a bravado attitude that I could do this. So I boldly marched into the control room that first morning, and Burns and an operator were standing over a record (still used them then) playing on the air. Burns' back was to me but I walked straight up to him from behind, gave him a hard slap on the back and said, "Good Morning, Mark! How are you!" What I didn't know was he'd been holding a cup of coffee, which then proceeded to spill all over the LP that had been on the turntable. Somehow it kept playing through an ounce of coffee, but it was, to say the least, an inauspicious start to my career - which I thought was over right then and there! Somehow, they forgave me and I learned how to operate the board, pull the spots and fill out the log.

The stories I could tell you about that place might fill a book. The on-air people back then weren't radio types - merely ordinary Toronto residents whose only talent seemed to be that they could speak another language and get others to buy time on their respective programs. 

One of them, a Ukrainian woman I'll call Mrs. M, wore a giant hat on her head during her show and refused to take it off. She wore headphones over it and they never came close to her ears. So we could never communicate with her over the talkback because she couldn't hear us! She never did get used to that thing. She'd start speaking into it, but only press the talk button when she was done. As a result, all we ever heard in the control room was "Brlk" or "Flarn" as she finished whatever she'd started to say. 

Another was Mrs. G., who taped her Polish language show and had it on full blast over every radio in her house. On the occasions when she would come in, she always wore her clothes inside out, with the label showing. I'm not sure why, but this woman was snake bitten. Even though it was on tape, something would always, always go wrong with her broadcast.  

I still remember the day we had her tape playing on one of those old Ampex machines, two stacked on top of each other. The tape was affixed with hubs on the reels and it was playing just fine. As I watched in almost awe, the tape suddenly stopped for no reason, the hubs flew off across the room and the reels literally fell off the machine and hit the floor. I swear to you it was like a poltergeist had come in to do it, because there was no one anywhere near it.  

The operator who was training me hurriedly put on some music while he fixed it, then said to me, "watch this -- 3-2-1" and the phone lit up. It was Mrs. G. screaming into the receiver, "Who is da Operator there! Who is it?" She was some kind of angry but we were laughing so hard, it was hard to talk to her.  

This is getting way too long, so let me get back to the original subject of this thread with the very first thing I ever said on radio. And though it was far from momentous, I still remember it word for word.

We were supposed to run a tape of another Ukrainian show, but we couldn't find it. So we ran a little of that now beleaguered country's music off an album while we hunted it down, and I went on the air and made this announcement, now forever enshrined in history. "The Ukrainian Students Program, Munos, will not be heard today. It will return at its regular time next week right here on CHIN 1540 Toronto."  

And with that, my on air career was off and, well, not exactly running!

If you have a memory of your "first time," I for one, would love to read it!