{"id":3694,"date":"2020-01-03T18:33:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T00:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2020-05-17T20:31:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T01:31:16","slug":"recruited-in-high-school-for-widb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/?p=3694","title":{"rendered":"Recruited in high school for WIDB"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Gary West<\/p>\n

I found WIDB before I had ever seen SIU or C\u2019dale. It was almost a year before I started there.<\/p>\n

It was because of Dave.\u00a0 We were always hanging out in high school, and Dave graduated a year ahead of me.\u00a0 So my high school senior year, Dave comes home to visit in October with reel-to-reel WIDB airchecks.<\/p>\n

\"Dave.<\/a>

Dave. (Ed at left).<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m 16 years old, still in high school and listening to Jeffrey Thomas (\u201cIn the Nighttime\u201d) and Sam Glick, and Alan J. Friedman doing news.\u00a0 I\u2019m hearing the ID (\u201cWIDB Carbondale\u2026is\u2026Together\u201d) It all sounded great, like a real station, almost like WLS.\u00a0 Dave lived in Wright I (second floor) so he was at WIDB all the time.<\/p>\n

Dave reported that in his first R-T classes, the professors told the students not to consider working at WIDB because it was not \u201creal radio\u201d and if you worked at WIDB you would \u201cnever work in broadcasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

This made Dave head straight to WIDB immediately.\u00a0 (Dave just retired after 40 years at CNN as Chief Engineer).<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, in early November 1970 I took the pre-Amtrak train to visit C\u2019dale for the first time.\u00a0 We stayed with friends in Schneider, and Dave took us to WIDB.\u00a0 At that point, WIDB had existed for 7 months and had been on air maybe 70 days (30 days in spring, off summer and 40 days in fall).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A REAL radio station<\/p><\/div>\n

I found a real station at WIDB.\u00a0 There was a control room, audio board, turntables, CART MACHINES, a playlist, a 45\u2019s and LP record library, a jock studio, a news studio, a production studio AND a teletype UPI machine.\u00a0 There were schedules for jocks, newsmen, board operators.\u00a0 There were people there, and everyone seemed to have a sense of purpose; they all had something to do.<\/p>\n

\"Alan<\/a>

Alan J. Friedman (left) delivering the news.\u00a0 Jeff Butler, right.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was talking nonchalantly to Alan J. Friedman in the news studio when he said \u201cShut the door.\u201d\u00a0 I obeyed and he immediately hit the mic and delivered the news headlines.\u00a0 I was impressed this was done so professionally, in such a relaxed, confident manner.\u00a0 And it all sounded so great to me.<\/p>\n

After a few hours hanging out at WIDB, I realized that no one there was over 22 years old.\u00a0 \u201cWhere are the adults, the supervisors,\u201d I asked Dave.\u00a0 \u201cWe don\u2019t have those here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

10 months later, my father dropped me off at my dorm.\u00a0 As soon as he left, I headed for Wright I.<\/p>\n

This time, the station was different.\u00a0 It was not full of people (classes hadn\u2019t started yet).\u00a0 The UPI machine was not working.\u00a0 There was no newsman on duty.<\/p>\n

I was immediately drafted to do news.\u00a0 There was no copy, no teletype.\u00a0 We had to use newspapers, SIU press releases and a few recorded reports, mostly outdated.\u00a0 There was no one to train me.\u00a0 I was still 17.<\/p>\n

\"Gary,<\/a>

Gary, age 17, prepares the next newscast<\/p><\/div>\n

People were coming & going as jocks and board operators, but no newsmen.\u00a0 I kept trying to leave, but there was no one else to do news.\u00a0 That day I did all 14 newscasts.\u00a0 I became known as the \u201cOne man news Department.\u201d<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Gary-first-newscast-September-1971.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

This set the tone for me as I spent probably 85% of the rest of my SIU time at WIDB.<\/p>\n

Anybody else get recruited in high school with WIDB airchecks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gary West I found WIDB before I had ever seen SIU or C\u2019dale. It was almost a year before I started there. It was because of Dave.\u00a0 We were always hanging out in high school, and Dave graduated a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-i-got-to-widb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3979,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widbnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}