Chapter XXVI (To Meet or Not to Meet) 2/08/23. (26)

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10-70, and the Buzzard
were the best back then
Wish me & Moto
could do it again.

When my radio buddies in Canada asked if there was any difference between being a PD in the States than there was in Canada?
I answered, “Hell yes, my boss picks me up in the morning and then back home in the evening every day. Nobody ever did that for me in Canada.”

Truth be known, I dreaded those rides; they just were just another meeting place where I couldn’t win for losing.
The way it went was if we listened to WIBC on the way to work, then we listened to WNAP on our way home.

In my early days at Fairbanks, we decided that I should fix WNAP first.
We definitely needed to get more familiar without losing our hipness, so we were slowly evolving the music from pure AOR to a more hybrid sound.

As I said, we were evolving the music, so occasionally, one of the deep cuts would come on while Jim and I were in the car together.
Whenever that happened, I’d start to talk louder, and Jim would nod in agreement as he turned the volume up. When I’d finally run out of steam, he’d say, “Johns, what the hell is this?”

Then, one day, I finally realized that there was no winning for losing in Jim’s car.
We were listening to Gary Todd, the only jock Jim still worked with, and on this particular morning, he turned to me and said, “Johns, I don’t understand why you’ve got Todd talking so much?”

Dick-Fairbanks

Speaking of meetings, one of our goals at Fairbanks was not to have any with Mr. Fairbanks (shown above)
Our quest, if Mr. F ever called any of us into his office, was to blame whatever he was asking about on Jim and then get the hell out of there.

Even though Jim was the CEO of Fairbanks Broadcasting, he was also the president of the Indiana Pacers and was one of the guys who merged the ABA with the NBA,
However, the NBA was in the driver’s seat, so they punished the ABA teams by cutting them out of the TV rights for several years, so the investors wanted the Pacers sold.

Unfortunately, that put Jim on the road looking for buyers, which meant that he was gone quite a bit, so things slowed down a little at the two-story brick.
It was during one of Jim’s Pacer selling trips that I’d come up with the idea that needed an immediate answer, so a meeting with Mr. Fairbanks was unavoidable.

Back then, on Memorial Day, every radio station in town ran the Indy 500 using the same network feed.
What was so cool, though, was most of the announcers on the network were from WIBC, so I wanted to run an overnighter with Arbitron that would prove that everyone listened to WIBC or thought they did on race day. (There was no local TV coverage)

If I was right, we could charge a ton of money for the commercials the following year. If I was wrong, we could dump the project into the garbage can, and nobody would be the wiser.
Doing this was expensive, though, so that’s why I had to meet with Mr. Fairbanks.

After getting all my ducks in a row, I trudged into Mr. F’s office and nervously began my big presentation, which he interrupted right away by saying, “George, I think you’re right, let’s do it.”
Shocked, and because I’d prepared a lengthy presentation, I continued, but he interrupted me again with, “George, you’ve already got a yes, but if you insist on continuing, the only place it can possibly go is to a no.”

To this day, whenever I hear a yes in any meeting, I’m outta there!

 

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