[BC] How we got our first break in radio....

[Hingsbergen, John E.]

I'm loving these stories.  Please keep 'em coming.

Here's mine:  As a 14 and 15-year old, I would frequently visit WMOH in Hamilton, Ohio (ten miles from where I am right now.) I and a friend would visit with Bob "Mr. Movin'" Patton, the evening Top 40 DJ...buy him cigarettes, pick up food for him, etc.  In exchange we were allowed to just hang around, play with the production room board and just generally take in the ambience.  I still remember the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the yellow acoustic tiles. Oh, and of course the easy-listening LP tracking to the end in the always vacant FM booth.

My first opportunity to get on the air was the "Dr. Pepper DJ of the Month Contest."  My friend and I both came in for auditions, reading a script that certainly had something about Dr. Pepper in it into an RCA 77-DX, on a giant boom (at least it seemed gigantic to this skinny 15-year-old!)

"Great," we were both told following our auditions, "Now for the final step of the process, all you have to do is collect Dr. Pepper bottle caps.  The contestant with the most caps wins."  There may have been one other contestant besides my friend and me and we set out to collect bottle caps.

We bought some Dr. Pepper for home consumption but we didn't drink all that much soda at my house.  So we set out across our neighborhoods, visiting grocery stores and gas stations, asking if we could have their caps.  We had to take them all, especially those from the vending machines, and throw away everything but Dr. Pepper.

It turns out my friend, Elmer Fackey, became the first Dr. Pepper DJ of the Month in January, 1966.  I became the second, in February.  In the absence of other viable candidates, Elmer hosted the one hour show again in March and I did it again in April.

Elmer went on to a career in grocery retailing and was probably never on the air again.  I went on to whatever I've been doing these past 43 years!

And now you know the rest of the story.  Good day!
 

John E. Hingsbergen
Program Director in Exile
npr at 88.5
WMUB, Oxford