News at 5, page 1

Just a fun story from a lot of years ago...

I was the new guy at the station, I’d never done anything in Radio before. It had always seemed like a cool gig to me, working on the radio. I’d done some DJ stuff on my own for parties and stuff, but this was the real deal. I had a friend who worked at the station, and he was the one who got me the opportunity, said they needed someone to pull some night and weekend shifts. He’d shown me a few tricks on the consoles and in the taping studio. Next thing I knew the Program Director called and asked me if I wanted to come in for an interview and a studio check. The tricks Todd had shown me saved my bacon, and to my surprise I got the job. It wasn’t going to be a career, but it seemed like a fun job.

I had to learn the ropes before I could really do anything, especially because I during the shifts I would be working I’d be pretty much the only person at the station. Rod, the Program Director, had told me to come in for a few days (at my own expense of course) and shadow some of the people working at the station, and that’s what I was doing there that day.

Another guy I knew from High School was a guy named Rick. I didn’t even know Rick worked at the station, though I wasn’t all that surprised because Rick was always hamming it up in high school in plays and theater stuff as well as band. Rick apparently did the news, sports and weather along with another guy. Rick was also an awesome drum player and had a drum set rivaling that of Neil Peart from the band Rush. Rick’s aspirations were to become a rock legend in a great band somewhere. The year was 1980.

I walked around the station introducing myself as the new guy and asking a whole lot of questions. During my travels I was also constantly keeping an eye on the recording studios to see when they were available. At every available opportunity I would go sit down in one and familiarize myself with all the gear. I’d practice making demo tapes to see what things sounded like and figure out how all the stuff worked. All of the recording studios were nearly identical to the broadcast studio so if I could get comfortable there I could be good to go anywhere. This went on for a couple of weeks as time permitted.

As the days and weeks wore on people became familiar with me poking around, I guess it was pretty usual when they hired a new guy. I even did some live broadcast work when somebody needed to do something, nothing involving voice at that point, but just spinning records and queuing up ads and stuff. It was good for practicing segues between songs and advertisements. It definitely wasn’t easy.
I remember thinking how surprised I was at how much there was to do. I always thought those guys just sat around and gabbed while music was playing. Far from it.

One day I was goofing around in Studio “2” (the studio right next to the broadcast studio). At a major-market station this would have been the studio with the window where all the engineers sat and ran all the controls. The window was there, but this was just a regional-market station so the on-air staff also ran their own show. Studio’s “2” and “3” were used mostly for recording advertisements and canned “copy” it was called.

So I’m sitting there in Studio 2 when one of the guys comes in, all excited, and says, “DID YOU HEAR WHAT HAPPENED TO RICK????” I answered in the negative. Well, it seems 4-5 days before Rick had been asked to come to LA to audition for a new band which was forming out of two other local bands, one called Rock Candy and the other called London. The caller was none other than Tommy Lee, and the new band would soon be named…Motley Crue! Lee at the time was considering having two drummers for the new band. But Rick was already supposed to be back by now and should be showing up at the studio any time now. Welllll, not exactly. Seems Ricky boy was riding a bike (i.e. bicycle) in LA somewhere and crashed, and broke both of his arms the day before his epic audition!! (Too crazy, I know). LOL!!

LOL! I probably just stole my own thunder right there with that little factoid bomb! LOL! Anyway, back to the story…

But there was a problem (if that wasn’t already a problem). Rick was in the hospital, and was going to be out for a while. And, the other news guy was off somewhere (I don’t remember where), SO…guess what? “Looks like YOU are going to have to do news, sports and weather today!”

WHAT????

**flubber, stumble, flubber, stutter** “I can’t do news, sports and weather!! I don’t even know what I’m doing yet!!!” By this time “Rockin’ Rod” the PD is in the studio and, ever being the funny-guy, he looks down at his watch and says, “Well, looks like you’ve got about 45 minutes to figure it out!! News is on at 5.”

There was no way this was going to happen! By this time people were bringing in stacks of print outs from the AP wire machine which just printed news stories on this endless roll of paper 24x7. It was this massive gob of crap you had to try to sort through and figure out what to use and what to toss.

Time to get creative. (I think all these guys were just loving watching me squirm and scramble, because all they were doing was piling more crap on me and chuckling).

I don’t remember the exact words now, but when the “On Air” light came on and the on-air jock pointed at me, the news, sports and weather sounded something like this:

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“Rick (insert last name) is off today. In World News today…(pause)

Well, for today’s Top Story - Rick (insert last name) fell off his bicycle in LA somewhere while auditioning for some band nobody’s heard of, and the Stock Market went down like 40 points in a whirlwind day of trading. I’m sure there’s probably a bunch of other stuff that happened today, but I’m just some new guy they hired at 7-11 about 45 minutes ago so that’s pretty much all I got. (by this time I could hear some laughter and claps outside the studio, and the DJ across the table was grinning ear to ear and nodding.)

In sports today the Lion’s soundly tromped the Tigers in underwater ice hockey.

The weather calls for clear to partly cloudy with a chance of showers followed by sun. Winds should remain relatively calm with some gusting later. Temperatures will be in the 50’s to 70’s, and the rest of the week calls for pretty much the same.
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I threw the mic switch (which turned off the light). My news was complete BS! I learned a lot about the “news” that day! “Rockin’ Rod” poked his grinning head in the door and all I could think of to say was, “Hey, you said…News at 5, right?” He just shook his head and shut the door. I actually gained a lot of brownie points and more than a couple friends that day.

P.S. I still can’t believe Rick crashing a stupid bicycle the day before an audition with what might have been the greatest opportunity a person ever gets in their lifetime. Motley Crue, can you believe that??? That’s just crazy! Poor guy! Oh, and the one true thing I said in that newscast was that Rick was auditioning for a band “nobody’s ever heard of”, because nobody really had heard of Motley Crue then. A little over 2 years later Motley Crue would perform at the US Festival to international acclaim.

edit on 7/14/2021 by Flyingclaydisk because: (no reason given)