The History Of Radio Randy

  Rushford Central School, Rushford NY Radio is show business . Maybe the lowest form of show business, but nonetheless it is in fact show business. All the familiar tropes about show business apply to building a career in radio. Getting discovered! Timing is everything! Right place right time and so on. It is true you need a little bit of luck to get into radio. Or at least you did when I started.   You also need support from your friends and family. Deciding to have a career in radio is not a common choice and is met with skepticism from some and outright disdain from others. My fascination with radio was well known in my High School, which was exceedingly small. In fact, I attended a K-12 School which had less than 500 students’ total. My graduating class was about 30 kids. My fake radio station and radio show tapes were known to many kids and even some teachers. I also gained some notoriety for my comedy bits that were played back by some on tape players in study hall....

                                                                             How is started for me.      Before TV, radio had everything. Dramas, Comedies, Game shows, Suspense, Mystery, Soap operas. We have all seen old photos of families gathered around looking at their radio during a broadcast. Radio fueled my imagination as a young child. I was only about 6 years old when I started listening to WKBW in Buffalo. Each night my mom would let me set the timer on my bedside radio for 15 minutes as I went to bed. Once she left the room, I would reset it to 60 minutes. Even at that age I was fascinated with what was going on behind the scenes at the radio station. I thought the groups were playing live. That they shuffled them in and out of the study to perform on cue. I imagined t...

Vicky and I love the Blue Ridge Mountains  After 43 years of daily radio broadcast business, I am now standing on the sidelines. I retired recently from radio. At least in the sense that I am working in a radio station building every day. I have loved radio since I was 5 or 6 years old and still do. It is all I ever wanted to do. With some great support from my family and some great mentors along the way I was able to enjoy a very long career doing something I loved.  I know that many people are not that fortunate. To be able to really love their work and look forward to going in to work each day. I never lost that. At stop lights in the morning on the way to whatever station I was working at, I would look at people around me, knowing that many, we're going to a job they hated. Meanwhile I was thinking about three or four things that I wanted to do to improve my radio station, and couldn't wait to get to work to implement them. That was a gift I think. To be able to really enj...