Brindle Media

Posts Tagged ‘Nixon’

January 8^th is a special date for me.

It’s not because I’m an Elvis Presley fan. I like a lot of Elvis’ music but I wouldn’t categorize myself as a fan.

No, it’s because Charles Manson was a fan. Not THAT Charles Manson but, instead, the Charles Manson who was the general manager of radio station WGLD-FM, Chicago on January 8^th, 1973. It was on that day forty-one years ago that Manson decided to switch the station’s format, without bothering to tell the station’s owners, from Progressive Album Rock to Oldies.

At the time, I had just been fired from WGLD’s sister station, WMOD-FM/Washington,DC for defending the use of a “Chicken Man” joke on-air by the station’s morning personality, Jack Casey. It’s a long story.

In any case, as a member of the union American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), I had received a several pay package from WMOD and Sonderling Broadcasting which owned both the Washington and Chicago stations. Three weeks after being fired, I found myself flying to Chicago at the behest of Sonderling’s corporate program director, Dave McNamee to take over as program director for WGLD-FM. Consequently, I had not only been promoted from the ranks of on-air personality to management within the Sonderling organization but was also receiving both my severance payments from WMOD and my new program director’s salary from WGLD!

Radio. You’ve got to love it.

As it turned out, my stint in Chicago didn’t last very long. Manson didn’t like the idea of corporate imposing me on him and our relationship was strained from the beginning.

In early 1973, the Nixon administration was out to get broadcasters because they felt that the media was being too critical. This was just prior to the Watergate hearings and the administration was sending a message to the media.

At the time, a radio personality named Bill Balance was having some success doing a sex talk call-in show in Los Angeles so radio general managers in other cities decided to create their own local versions of a sex talk show. Charles Manson was one of them. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought it through.

WGLD’s midday music personality was assigned to host a one hour sex talk show each weekday.  If I recall correctly, it was scheduled between 10-11AM Monday-Friday.  I wasn’t a fan of the show because it really didn’t fit with what we were trying to accomplish with the station and I would have preferred to can it but the general manager ignored my objections. Of course, typical of the radio industry at that time, management hadn’t bothered to train this DJ about any of the legal ramifications involved in such a show.  One of the FCC’s rules made it clear that it was a finable offense if the content of a sex talk show was targeted at persons younger than 18 years old.

One morning during the sex talk program, the host found himself assigned to do a live read of commercial copy for a local driving instructor. Although I had warned him about being careful about the appearance of talking to teens, during his reading of the commercial the host ad-libbed a comment in which he said something along the line of “Hey, kids. They can help make sure you pass your driver’s test.”  Either the FCC was monitoring the show, a competitor had taped and submitted the recording to the FCC or a listener complained. In any case, WGLD got busted and the station became a poster child for the Nixon administration’s war against smut on the radio. Of course, as the program director I was held responsible for the DJ’s gaff.

That episode plus some other “philosophical differences” between Mr. Manson and myself resulted in my departure from WGLD in July, 1973. Once again, Sonderling Broadcasting was paying me a generous severance which allowed me to lounge by the pool and to watch the Watergate hearings.

One day, I received a call from Dick Booth, a former colleague at Northeastern University’s WNEU radio, who offered me a job at a new FM station in Pittsburgh where he’d been hired as station manager.  I was his second hire. The first was a 19 year old kid named Bob Pittman.

So, I loaded up my meager belongings into a rental van and drove to the Steel City where I met the guy who would ultimately offer me positions with his teams at WNBC, New York and at MTV.

All because of Elvis’s birthday.