WHOoPLA Chapters 5 – 7

Chapter Five: It’s All About…

Having started at my radio work in 1978 as a Sophomore at the University of Wisconsin campus public radio station- WUWM, I had made the jump to commercial radio and was making the hour and a half commute from Milwaukee to Rockford, Illinois for an overnight weekend shift on Album Oriented Rock Station WZOK at the suggestion of Tom Daniels, LPX’s debut Program Director. Daniels then hired me for overnights on LPX after a few months in ‘79. The midday balding LPX elder jock “Uncle Chris” nicknamed me “Scott The Kid” and it stuck because I was child-like in comparison to him.

I dropped out of college. After a couple years there it started to feel funky as they started plugging in “new wave” artists such asDuran Duran and Thomas Dolby. With the encouragement of QFM’s then Program Director Brent Alberts, I jumped ship over to QFM to work overnights there. It was the culmination of a long held dream to inhabit the hallowed studio of my teen mentors. But, as the next generation, I too was tired of living in the shadow of the 60’s & 70’s “older brothers and sisters.” I was very cynical about the era yet empathetic having let my hair grow long and pierced both ears. I loved wearing retro 50’s shirts, just like Seinfeld’s “Kramer,” that I would buy at the second hand clothing shops down on the funky Brady Street, east side Milwaukee, strip. I was rail thin and acted much smarter than I was. (Some things never change!) I was the father of my high school sweetheart partners’ three year old daughter. I was 22 years old.

Aside from the overnight radio job, I also owned and managed a small suburban record store called Hot Waxx. It featured High Fidelity stereo speakers tucked inside a 1940’s deco wooden standup radio and lots of tall, nearly dead, house plants. Sammy Llanas, who later formed a well known band called The Bodeans, worked at the store part time.

My move to QFM felt like it had been a good one but I still held strong respect and love for my former LPX friends.

Chapter Six: The Combatants

Just after my move to QFM, Tom Daniels was fired at LPX.

“We were like two General’s at war,”

said R. J. Harris, the new LPX Program Director who had given up a much more lucrative WLUP Chicago morning show spot for a move into management. He and the Hearst General Manager John Hinkle had taken an instant liking to each other and, initially, Harris was confident about his ability to halt LPX’s,

“Freight train steaming downhill.”

His across the street counterpart, initial opponent, was the aforementioned Brent Alberts. Alberts was a long time radio nomad who had come to Program QFM via his like post at the “Superstars” formatted Y95 in Rockford. He was the morning man for the blow-out debut of LPX before that, which may help to explain his confidence and ability to put together a team and presentation that would win people back to QFM. He knew the weaknesses of his old pals and the Superstars format. Alberts was a heavyset, affable, “nice guy” who was loved by the people he brought in. He had the difficult task of converting the legendary 70’s progressive QFM air staff to the new, highly formatted, rock radio world. That meant he fired nearly everybody from the old regime and brought in all new, younger jocks. He had a rare ability to find new talent and cultivate them through sheer faith and it was working in Milwaukee. Listeners could hear the transformation. Nonetheless, he didn’t seem like a formidable foe for the seasoned Harris and QFM was coming on strong but had yet to beat LPX in the ratings game.

Harris had heard of the appeal of the city of Milwaukee as a great place to make a home. He had a family and a life. But it didn’t take long for him to see how difficult his “turn the station around” mandate would be. As he drove the screaming yellow logo clad black LPX van around the city on his first day in town, a trio of key demo dudes pulled up beside him in a trashy black Camaro and unceremoniously all flipped him a mean bird.

“That’s when I knew I had my work cut out for me.”

It was about to get worse.

Lee Arnold had wanted Harris’s job. When the position came open he was encouraged by the Superstars format consultant, Lee Abrams, to apply. Hinkle was cold in his rejection of Arnold.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me, they were rude, nasty… it was really kinda weird.”

Arnold was a near polar opposite of Harris. He too had a life but it didn’t include a perfectly nuclear family. His life was radio. He had began in 1967 premiering WTAI which was an underground progressive AM station in Cocoa Beach, Florida. He booked bands back then too, making lots of early southern rock pioneer friends along the way. Randy California, lead singer of Spirit, was among them, hanging out at his home, playing with Arnold’s then toddler son Irv. The early Lee Arnold was a dead ringer for the young John Lennon. At QFM, he often wore flip flops in a cold weather state where nobody ever wore them, even in the summer. It was the heart of the FM radio progressive burst in the country when he took over WORJ in Southern Florida in 1972 and made it the most successful progressive rock station in the country with a 7.7 market share (about 8% of all listeners) that was the #1 radio station in the market. (The better known KSAN in San Francisco had a 2 share at the time.)

He was in and out of 98Rock in Tampa, Fl and WAAF in Boston, winning at each in very competitive markets before he took a break from radio to become the National Album Director for RCA Records. There he was head of album promotion and traveled the country as part of his efforts. He met countless bands, managers and radio programmers in dozens of markets. It was a loosely related helter skelter mix of resume position titles that LPX”s “square” GM Hinkle had no appreciation for.

Shamrock Communications, QFM’s owners, had a well known reputation for being wickedly cheap. In that they were primarily a newspaper publisher, QFM was considered a play toy for black sheep family member/owner Bill Lynett. Given his antics when he would leave his Scranton, Pennsylvania hometown and come to Milwaukee, the applicable toy would be a catnip filled mouse. Stories abound of his after hours bar fun. He liked booze and women. If the idea was that the 93.3 Milwaukee frequency was something for him to do that would keep out of trouble, it was severely lacking. Lynett is a good ol’ boy corporate brat who had no problem letting it all out. To co-op a popular phrase, the 93QFM barrel “rocked” from the top down.

Lynett’s poor management is legendary. He vacillated from micro management to disinterest. My impression has him basically never really taking the radio station too seriously. His actions in regards to his employees reflected that. Turnover was tremendous. Milwaukee’s 93.3 frequency is the Kevin Bacon of broadcast radio with six degrees of separation between it and EVERYBODY who has EVER worked in radio. Those who worked there learned that the best thing to do was to hang around the middle because too low meant cleaning house due to low profits and too high meant cleaning house to greedily grab the new cash and lower the payroll. These were swinging saloon doors, not the slow and cumbersome revolving type.

Brent Alberts old “recreational” habits had gotten him into trouble again. They were the reason for his losing his morning position at LPX a few years before when the Milwaukee Police Department had shown up one morning at about 5:45 am to cart him away in a paddy wagon for being too close to people who were doing naughty things. Now, his penchant for “nose candy” had him in trouble again. When his boss GM Ralph Barnes asked him if he needed help to get things straightened out, he got upset and quit. Alberts:

“It was the biggest mistake of my life.” Lynett:

“Losing him at that point in time was awful.”

Alberts had put together what would become a magical and historic staff. He had been responsible for the stations turnaround and had created a strong momentum with his family-like attitude that included not only his air staff, but also the listeners. There was a mass intimacy that critics thought was not possible to achieve within the confines of the rigid Superstars format but was the result of his personable, hands off, management philosophy.

Chapter Seven: The New Guy and The Big Guy

Three months after being rejected by LPX, Lee Arnold found himself in QFM General Manager Ralph Barnes’ office pitching himself for Albert’s now open Programming job. He told Barnes he had a personal interest saying,

“If you hire me, I promise you that I will spend my every waking hour of my life between now and when it happens working to put them out of the format. And I guarantee you that within two years they won’t be a rock station anymore.”

That’s the way Arnold spoke. It was always in grand, massive and majestic themes. Everything that came out of his mouth was quotable shit. And his words had verve as they were spoken with strength, articulation and confidence. His favorite gesture was his clenched right fist that he squeezed and shook just out in front of his heart to punctuate elongated adjectives. He was a wordsmith who had the tempo and timing of a comic.

“Everything in life is sales…”

He was one of those people who you knew was selling you yet was so smooth that you didn’t mind. He would cradle you in words that made you feel great causing you to lower your guard and let it happen. He had the ability to make even the most cynical, like myself, get caught up in the fervor of his message.

I always had a “controlling father” vision of Arnold which caused me to want to avoid him whenever possible. On one occasion, I was ordered into his office for a critique of my aircheck from the previous nights show. He sensed my discomfort and was gentle in his suggestion that I modify my speech to limit funky gasps and lip smacking. It was that chameleon-like flexible personality that tuned him into the person or people he needed to persuade that was his greatest gift.

I’ve learned, over time, that the more somebody talks, the less likely it is that they should be listened to. This comes from my view of myself and from my experiences working with skilled trades people on large historic preservation projects. When I was new and unskilled, I had to talk my way into getting the work. As I got better at my trade, few words were needed.

Lee Arnold is a talker and he’s one of the rare exceptions to my rule. Some talkers ARE worth listening to albeit in bits and pieces with lots of free time in between.

Ralph Barnes bought into Arnold’s many words. Barnes was the General Manager of the 21st floor penthouse zoo that was 93QFM. His nickname was “The Big Guy” because he looked just like the similarly named character in the radio station television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Like his popular counterpart, Ralph was meek and somewhat out of touch. He’d spend most of his time sequestered behind his corner office’s closed door but would, every now and then, sneak out and roam around the tiny office catacombs bent forward with his hands behind his back to say a quick “Hi” to everyone.

There was one notable difference between Ralph and the WKRP “Big Guy” that was downright freakish. The middle finger of his right hand was permanently bent into his palm because of a severed tendon war injury that never got fixed. He couldn’t straighten it. Thus, when you would shake hands with him, you’d get a horribly uncomfortable “goose” that would cause a knee-jerk reflex recoil. He was very aware of it and he hated it. Most people don’t really think about handshakes- how many times in a day you do them- how they feel, etc. As the General Manager of a radio station it was a lot. So it must have been slightly torturous for Ralph to have to work to constantly avoid the “dirty grandpa” handshake. I would always forget not to hold out my hand when I saw him. When I did he’d just say,

“Yeah, yeah”

and then he’d slap the back of my outstretched hand with his left hand in a “get outta here” hokey/hip funny gesture that reminded me not to take the world too seriously. Ralph wasn’t a heavy but his presence was known.

With Arnold on board, the rock radio war took a jump into hyperspace. A lot was at stake as Milwaukee, traditionally, was not a large enough market to profitably sustain two rock stations for very long. One of them was going to die.

Arnold and Harris both began by applying standard clean-ups to their stations. Harris knew that, although LPX played less commercials than QFM, the perception was that they played more due to the many short informational rock features they played so he striped them out in favor of more music. Arnold used the new research department of six college chicks on telephones in cubicles to tighten the playlist and emphasized getting his air staff “out on the streets.” Arnold:

“The most important thing- as a program director- is to make your staff believe that you’re going to win- and get then pumped up to the degree that they’ll do anything to make that happen. Back then…everybody had a real passion to do great radio. I had a staff of Rangers! We owned the streets! We did stuff to them (LPX) that made them just cry. We were horrible to them! It was great!”

~ by Scott on December 11, 2007.