Ahoy There Matey, It’s 1480!

My radio partner Sheri Lynch and I have been getting a lot of coverage in the past month. She was on the cover of Radio Ink’s issue spotlighting the most influential women in radio. It’s the heavyweight magazine for the radio industry. We were also featured in The Charlotte Observer, one of the country’s best newspapers, with an in-depth article by Theoden James focused on how miserably we were treated during the past decade by several former owners, most of which are now defunct.

As longtime listeners and readers will know, this treatment pushed us to become an independent show that serves great radio stations and companies across the nation. Sheri and our manager Tony Garcia have done a terrific job guiding us through this seismic change. Today, all is well.

I’m sure many of you have toiled in toxic work environments where walking through the door to start the workday usually began with a deep sigh. I recall walking out of our former studio and seeing a poisonous sale, programming, or general manager at the far end of the hall. I would duck into the nearest office and start up a random conversation with whomever is seated at his or her desk. “Oh, hi Barry, how is your upcoming weekend shaping up?” This is a very un-Bob thing to do. It became known as the Bob side-duck and was eventually used by several other employees. It’s one of my finest gifts to humanity.

One of the now defunct companies which brought the station we were carried on, overpaid by tens of millions of dollars. When the economy slowed down the CEO was exposed, and the blame game started. It was Bob and Sheri’s fault. They talk too much. “Fuck Bob and Sheri, they cost too much too.” He was then told we were the only thing keeping the station in the black. This station in its history had burned through about two hundred and seventy-seven music formats, all of which failed. Along with others, it was easy listening, golden hits, light rock, top 40, Your Favorite Wedding Songs (I’m not kidding), Soft Adult, Softer Rock, Adult Top 40 and I think, Lithuanian Folk Favorites. Research showed the only thing people knew about this particular radio station was us. Research said if we were to leave, the station’s image would be dead for about ten years. We were expected to be ashamed for being popular.

Another CEO heard the rumors that his company was about to sell all the stations in our chain. He called me personally to waylay my concerns. “Bob, this is Big Honcho here. I’m calling key people in our radio division, and you certainly are one, to let you know we have no intention of selling our stations, in fact, we are more committed than ever to radio.” I was ecstatic! Not only were we safe, but Big Honcho himself was telling me I was a KEY PERSON! The only other time in my life I was called a Key Person was when I scored backstage passes for my friends and me to see Loverboy at a food festival. I wished my father could have heard this about his son. The one who cracked up the family Pontiac’s side panel three weeks after getting my license. The son who had an anemic .198 batting average in Little League. The son who had a child while in college. That son was safe and a KEY PERSON! Big Honcho sold our station six months later.

Did he call me knowing that the station was on the block? Or was it a last-minute corporate decision? Not many corporate decisions are last minute. He seemed like a very nice man, and I always give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who is nice to me. That is a weakness. To become a Big Honcho, you must at times bend the truth or at the very least withhold information from the vast unwashed who toil for your fabulous bonuses. You must fire people and still sleep at night. One major bank CEO said as he fired thousands of employees during the banking meltdown of 2008, “We’re very good at this.” He was part of the reason there was a banking catastrophe in the first place, yet he was showing pride with his ability to throw people’s lives in chaos. He was canned, by the way. Embarrassed, but he still left with an ass-load of money.

Sheri once had dinner with a high-level broadcasting executive. She thought a lot of Sheri’s gifts. Not so much of other personalities. The executive mentioned to Sheri these exact words, “We think of air-talent as slightly retarded children.” That comment is despicable on several levels.

Again, all of the executives we work with now, are fantastic. We have finally severed relations with the toxic and are now shoulder to shoulder with the good guys.

I’ve had a few people work for me over the years, but I’ve never really been a boss, boss. I realized that at a very young age.

I was hired when I was nineteen for my first full-time radio job. WSAR was a mid-power AM station in Fall River, Massachusetts, a perpetually bankrupt town just outside Providence, Rhone Island. It was best known for being the home of Lizzie Borden, who famously killed her mother and father with an axe. Today the home where the murders took place is a lovely bed and breakfast where you can relax in the room the slaughters occurred. Early Dateline.

I was hired to be the night dee-jay. It had my favorite jingle of all time… “Ahoy there matey, it’s 1480 WSAR.” It paid about what a good Chick-fil-A employee gets today, and the Program Director made me the Music Director complete with my own office. That title got me an extra $25 bucks a week. My office was in the basement of the station and was supplied with an old gray metal desk with a matching gray metal filing cabinet, a lamp, a phone and boxes and boxes of vinyl records sent from the record labels, many of which I stole. I was in heaven.

I also got to plug on the air bands that would appear at the Anawan Street CYO (Catholic Youth Organizations for you heathens) and bring the bands on stage to play for the kids. Father Ed would slip me a cool $50 and my weekend walking around money was in my pocket. This, by the way, is what is known as payola, small-time, but payola, nonetheless. Father Ed was the best.

I was living a teenage fantasy. A few college courses during the day and at night, spinning vinyl and dreaming of someday doing a national radio show with a bossy woman.

This little bubble of bliss was one day disturbed with an event I never would have imagined. The Program Director came to me and said the other jocks and the engineers took a vote and wanted me to be the shop steward. “What’s that?” I asked. “If there is a problem with say, working conditions or an employee is going to be fired, you are the guy who goes to management and addresses the problem.” “Me?” “Right, you. All the other guys think you are the right person for this responsibility.”

Wow, I thought. First, I get the night lot, then I’m given the Music Director job, and now I’m shop steward! Negotiating with management for my fellow broadcasters! I’m on my way to the top, baby!”

What I didn’t realize was that this was the absolute worst responsibility you could have. The other jocks were in their late-20s and knew the only thing this union wanted was our monthly dues. I must say at this point that I am pro-union. They provided good lives for a lot of the families I grew up around, but this union was for electrical workers, not dee-jays. The other jocks knew being shop steward was a thankless, toothless position, and my guess is they were laughing at the rookie kid the long hair, faded jeans and Santana t-shirt.

Nothing happened after my installation as shop steward and I actually forgot about the responsibility. Then one afternoon my office phone rang and a tough, older male voice said, “You the shop steward?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yes, I am… the shop steward.”

“OK, I’m Nick Divita with your union. You all set for the meeting Thursday?”

“Yes I am.”

“Good. Bring any complaints, needs and financial suggestions. We’ll be meeting at the Howard Johnson motel in Seakonk meeting room at 11.”

“OK.”

“OK, see you then.”

Gone.

I had no idea what was going to happen, but I knew I couldn’t show up in jeans and a t-shirt. I was after all SHOP STEWARD!

I went to a Fall River textile factory outlet store and bought the first suit I ever owned. It was a brown double-breasted wool deal that I teamed up with a white shirt and an electric blue and brown tie with a knot the size of a softball. The whole ensemble was about, and I’m not kidding, $40. I looked at myself in the mirror in the old bathroom of the apartment I was renting. “Perfect,” I thought. Thanks, Father Ed.

The manager I was to negotiate with was a man named Bob Sennitt. He was a sixty-something guy who had spent all of his career in Boston radio and was semi-retired running this pea-shooter station in this struggling town on the coast. He was always very nice to me, asking about what college courses I was taking and where I came from. He had thinning white hair, with clear blue eyes that crinkled deeply when he smiled and a physique that made you think he must have been a marine.

Most days, Bob, he said we could call him that, showed up with a white or blue dress shirt, rep tie and a blazer. On the Thursday of the meeting something was different. I walked into the station and Bob was dressed in an old brown short sleeve work shirt with ratty, un-ironed khaki pants. And he was sweeping the floor of the small lobby with an old broom.

It was a warm July day, and the brown wool suit was burning me up. I drove the short distance to the Howard Johnson motel and met Nick Divita, the union guy in the parking lot.

We went into the lobby and there was Bob. In the same shitty clothes, he was wearing sweeping up the station. At that moment I knew what was going to go down.

He looked at me and those crinkled blue eyes now looked hard and cold. He was going to play, poor mouth and I, in my $40 wool outfit was going to look like a fool. Why was a 19-year-old going up against a seasoned Boston radio street fighter? The realization of the impending meeting coupled with the body heat of wearing a dark wool suit in July overcame me. I was profusely sweating through my shirt and on my neck.

I immediately went into the men’s room and threw up.

I don’t remember the meeting. All I know is we didn’t get any more dough. The next time I saw Bob he was back with the rep tie and blazer again and we never discussed the meeting.

I learned a lot that day. Wool suits in summer are not good. Try very hard not to barf just before a big meeting. And sometimes warm grandfatherly eyes become ice when money is involved.

Ashleigh Fiorino