A Death In Radio

A Death In Radio

From the time I was three years old, I knew I wanted to be in the radio business. At age three I was impressed by something I heard a local New York City radio personality do on the air. I ran into the kitchen to ask my mother how this had been done.

ìItís his job to know how to do that,î she said, ìHe has to know. Thatís what he does for a living.î

Immediately I knew, that was the job for me. The life for me. The ìlivingî for me.

That began a fascination with radio that turned into a love affair. I read the radio trade journals as a kid; followed the charts and learned a bunch about the music business, too. Studied radio stations, their make-up, their approaches, and everything ìbehind-the-scenesî I could possibly learn.

A baby-boomer growing up in the post-war education boom, my goal in life as a grade school, junior high and high school student was to learn everything I could about radio. I got to know some radio people. Famous New York DeeJay and radio (et al) personality Murray the K [1]tried to help me land a Summer job at his station, but, alas, I was too young.

I ended up working at Pacificaís Listener-Supported WBAI, and even managed to get on the air (in afternoon drive, no less!) at the ripe age of 15 years old. 99.5FM, New York City radio, and a station I loved, no less. What a Summer it was, and, oh, what I learned there! Not only that, but the staff was always giving me concert tickets and records, too. I was in teenage career-orientation heaven.

When it came time to apply to colleges, I pored through that massive, thick directory of every college in the country, searching out schools with a major in Radio. By this time I knew a thing or twoÖI checked out the dial position of the collegeís radio station (if a school did not have a real, over-the-air, licensed station, it was immediately dismissed), the on-air schedule if available, the class and power of the station, and so on and so forth.

Certain criteria were crucial: underclassmen should be able to hold on-air positions; a full broadcast schedule was necessary, a station outside of the low-end/low-power non-commercial range was a major plus. Internships at real local stations as part of the curriculum was a must.

My goal, my dream, my vision, my romantic notion was this: I would go to college as a Radio major, and learn the trade, the art, the craft of radio broadcasting at the feet of masters. Knowledge would flow from them, wisdom would emanate. This was my dream as a 16-turning-17 year old high school senior.

Remember, it was a psychedelic, dreamy time. I graduated from high school in 1969. Aside from Viet Nam, there was nothing in the way of a baby boomer on his way to college, to learn, to grow, to gain erudition from past masters, now devoted to imparting their experience and wisdom to avid, eager, students, with a zest to learn.

I found a college with a full commercial-class FM station, 37,000 watts of power in stereo. Undergrads on the air, staff positions and scholarships to go with them, to boot! It looked like Iíd found exactly what I sought.

Oh, was I wrong.

The head of the Radio-TV Department had been ìkicked laterallyî (not even upstairs) out of the Drama Department, but he had tenure. So they gave him Radio, as there was a departing Head-of-Department over there. This fellow had been a board op at a station some years back, and that --plus tenure, apparently ñ qualified him for the job.

This man had never been an announcer, a deejay, a programmer, a manager, salesman, or an engineer. Heíd been a board op, switching the stations from ìNBC-Redî to the ìNBC-Blueî network. For all practical purposes, he could have been the toggle switch guy at the local train station, putting up the anticipated arrival and departure schedules.

He knew nothing. And I was there to garner nuggets of knowledge from this man.

His one and only Department staff member (not a professor, not even an assistant prof., just an instructor) was a woman whoíd sung with a band on a radio station, and done a little time as a deejay. Sheíd been out of radio for over ten years when she finally earned her diploma, and ended up with this low-grade teaching position for which she was woefully unqualified.

She taught a ìRadio Productionî course. While grading the finals (we all handed in a 30 minute program on reel-to-reel tape, our individual projects to prove that weíd learned what she was supposedly teaching, and so she could have some basis to come up with a grade for us) one of the tapes broke on the Wollensak [2] home tape player she used in her office to play the submissions. She asked me if I could please come in and splice the tape for her.

It was clear that this woman, teaching a radio production course, had no idea how to even splice tape. This is the equivalent of a law professor not knowing how to use a ìwhereas.î

I refused to do it for her. Boy, was I ever an arrogant smart-ass. I told her that if she was teaching production, she should be able to do this in a heartbeat, and she could perform this rudimental task on her own. Gee, I told her, she was such a kidder.

There went my grade.

The funny thing about this class is that it was such a laugher, a no-brainer, that the Drama majors who minored in Radio took this as an easy-A course. One other radio major student in the class and I ended up producing all the tapes for Drama majors, since theyíd been given absolutely no useful instruction, information or education on how to produce a program, or even a tape, for that matter. We did this on the sly, so as to protect their grades.

Every tape I produced for a Drama major got an A. These were all simple, straight productions, just voice-to-tape, with an actuality or voice-over blended in somewhere. Nothing fancy.

I wrote and produced a 30 minute play (I was also one of the characters, I played the piano on it, blah, blah, yada, yada), with various special audio effects and such. She gave it a B.

So learning radio in college was a bust. At least I had the station as a playground some of the time. I also got a scholarship, and was Music Director and then Program Director of the station. But the curriculum laid out in the college bulletin and catalogue was a fantasy. The whole program was bullshit. It just so happened that during my years there, the group of radio majors was a pretty focused and full of initiative.

Radio is like a drug, an addiction, a love, a need. It gets into you, and becomes a major part of your life. I know of spouses who call themselves ìradio wivesî or ìradio husbands.î They often feel like the ìother wo/maní as their spouseís first love is actually radio. Others call Radio their spousesí mistress, the one who has the heart and the passion.

Many years later, after Iíd gotten that first full time job at a radio station (screaming my lungs out doing Top 40, and having the time of my life!), and moved on to the business side, I found myself back home in NYC. I was operating a consulting and research firm, working with broadcast chains, stations, advertisers, record companies, etc.

It had always sort of stuck in my craw that Iíd never had that special radio mentor, a teacher or guide, whoíd show me the ropes, impart wisdom, the whole romantic concept.

Be careful what you wish for, the saying goes.

In 1980 or 1981 I was asked to speak at a meeting at the Sheraton Centre in New York. Students in the broadcasting fraternity would be having their annual convention, and they wanted speakers to cover radio programming and radio research. Since I was active in both areas, would I please join a speaker panel, they asked. There would be an ad rep there, and a man who had a special ratings analysis program, too.

And this was when I met Maurie Webster.

Maurie was showing his presentation of a product called The Analyst. This was a computer breakout of ratings data, tailored to the needs of both the Sales Department and the Programming Department of radio stations. Back in the early 80ís this was no simple data massaging task. It took analysis and re-computation of mag-tape data, a great deal of programming in languages used on main-frames, and an enormous amount of time, knowledge, understanding, and development, as well.

Maurieís son Scott was the programmer; Maurie was the conceptual manager (ideator) and salesman for the product.

I was knocked out by the presentation! I wanted all my clients to buy it, I wanted to use it, and could see the tremendous benefits and opportunities in the way the data was handled. I also had some custom concepts, and thought I was maybe just possibly in radio research heaven. Maurie and I exchanged cards and agreed to meet again shortly thereafter.

What a meeting it was! I realized Iíd met a man who was a legend in the industry. Maurie had held positions all thoughout CBS radio. Heíd managed west coast stations for CBS, run their rep firm, consulted the entire broadcast group. Heíd been a part of the developing history of the business, working with luminaries at CBS, names which were lore to radio junkies such as I.

And he was such a down-to-earth guy!

Maurie had worked in the original phases of a company offering some of the original computer-services-to-stations back in the day when this was like a space-age hoo-hah concept.

Maurie also knew just about everybody in the business! He was on a first-name basis with people whose names or positions intimidated me! And suddenly, after a few meetings and discussions, he and I are looking at projects where we could combine our talents, to offer ourselves out to clients.

And I finally had met the mentor and friend, inspiration and radio soul mate, Iíd hoped to find back when I was researching radio departments in colleges as a high school senior.

Maurie and I did numerous projects together. We partnered in a number of areas, had joint ventures, and I ended up taking office space in his headquarters. There I was, running my own consulting firm, plus doing joint ventures with Maurie Webster, and enjoying life as a radio professional in midtown Manhattan.

To cap it all off, Maurie and I bought a radio station together in 1985. I found the deal, he brought in a some investors, and we took a little teeny station and tripled the billing and more than doubled the ratings right out of the box.

In my professional life in radio, I never met a more dedicated Radio Man than Maurie Webster. I would refer to him as ìThe Grand Old Man of Radioî (never to his face, of course, as Maurie was a little sensitive on that age matter!).

When my daughter was born, Maurie and his wife gave her a baby present, with a note signed, ìfrom Uncle Maurie and Aunt Judy.î

Just this evening Susan and I were out with some friends, and somehow or another the subject of Maurie came up. I was out of the radio business when Susan got the chance to meet Maurie a few years ago. He had moved from the city and was running his company (with his son and daughter) in an outer suburb, very close to where one of Susanís relatives had a country home. I spent part of a Summer there with my kids, and when I had car trouble in the middle of the night, who came to the rescue? Maurieís son, the computer programmer. And who did we visit the next day? Maurie, who was happy as could be to see the kids and to say hello.

Tonight I was talking about him, and what a wonderful man he is.

Little did I know that when Iíd get home later in the evening, Iíd scan some of the various net pages and sites I like to check out, and learn that Maurie has just died.

The funeral is Monday, and Iíll be there. This is a major loss for the community/family of broadcasters. Even the way Maurie would say the word ìradioî was special. One of my friends, in fact, a client Maurie had recommended me to with whom I became good buddies, would often mimic the wonderful way Maurie would say, ìRADIO.î

Radio has lost a living legend. Iíve lost a mentor and a friend, a man who was like a ìradio fatherî to me.

If there is, indeed, some sort of afterlife, wherever it is that the good guys go, they just got a great announcer. And a great guy, to say the very least.

Rest in peace, Maurie

To know him was to love him.