WVUD-FM, Kettering/Dayton Ohio_1983

To be fair, it was my airshift DECADES ago and the call letters were WVUD-FM then, now they are WLQT, but still!

All Access announced that Kent and his Saturday night “The Ultimate Party” will replace “Saturday Night Solid Gold” —which really hasn’t been on the air in decades on WVUD ‘er WLQT and certainly hasn’t been worth listening to since Peter K. O’Connell hosted it all those years ago.

Just sayin’…. 😉

Just kiddin’….:)

Tags: commentary, radio, silliness, university of dayton, WVUD by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Peter K. O’Connell delivering WDCR Paddy O’Grams circa 1983

Based the tremendous response to yesterday’s post (crickets: chirp, chirp), many of you asked “OK, what DOES a sad ass radio jock look like in 1982?”

Again, I believe now we’ve satisfactorily answered that question too, haven’t we?

This picture may require a bit more explanation.

You see, as a fund raising tool, the University of Dayton’s campus radio station, WDCR, would create seasonal message deliveries with staff dressed up in costumes of the season. We did them for Christmas (Santa), Thanksgiving (Pilgrims) or in this case “St. Patrick’s Day”.

Yes that IS me dressed as a Leprechaun delivering a silly (possibly naughty) message to some campus house while using my famous Irish brogue (which would likely get me thrown out of any pub in Dublin).

On the plus side, many women thought it extremely good luck to smooch a Leprechaun.

So I had that going for me, which was nice.

Tags: radio, university of dayton by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Peter K. O’Connell, on the air at WDCR in Dayton, OH circa 1982

Many of you have been asking yourselves lately “what DID a bad ass radio jock look like in 1982?”

I think now we’ve satisfactorily answered that question, haven’t we?

Glad I could help.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you what a sad ass radio jock looked like.

Tags: commentary, radio, university of dayton by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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WDCR in 1982 FRONT Row Tracy Hurd, Ron Alexander MIDDLE Row Clare Bracken, Gary Sandy, Jim Secunde BACK Row Peter K. O\’Connell, Scott Rolle, Mike Savino, Unknown (sorry) and Mark Kraus

My longtime friend Ron Alexander is a fun person for many reasons not the least of which is he likes to collect things. He just doesn’t seem to throw anything out! It’s all very organized, mind you, but he seems to keep everything. Like that photo you see up there.

What you’re looking at (besides an embarrassingly silly mustache on the guy in the upper left corner slurping his Pepsi, again) is probably a group of some of the most creative college radio folks there ever were. I don’t mean that in an egotistical, “hey aren’t we great” way!” I mean it in the best possible sense.

I will grant you that my opinion is likely jaded because I was a part of it but really, what the student staff at WDCR (now called Flyer Radio and incredibly higher tech then when I was there) pulled off as regular broadcasters was quite amazing.

BTW, the big deal for the picture was that Gary Sandy (who I want to say was from Dayton) was somehow cajoled to stop by WDCR (now known as “Flyer Radio”)while I think he was still starring on WKRP in Cincinnati. It was big doings at the time.

Anyway, at UD, it worked this way: if you really wanted to work in radio at the University of Dayton, you started at AM-64 WDCR (which was a carrier current station that only broadcast to the dorms and student union). Then you tried to work your way up to WVUD-FM, the University-owned 50,000 watt station that had a full time professional management team (GM, PD, sales, promotion etc.) and gave a few students regular air shifts.

Having the combination of those two opportunities for a radio ho like me was Nirvana. WVUD was the real deal but the creativity and ingenuity that WDCR offered to all of us was almost magical by comparison.

It helps to have had a real promotional talent like Ron Alexander who was the only person who ever got me to dress up like a leprechaun. I think I delivered leprechaun-o-grams or something to student houses and dorm rooms as a fund raisier….but that was the kind of crazy stuff that got the station attention.

Of that group, I still keep in touch with Ron (who was in my wedding), Clare, Tracy, Mark and just caught up with Scott on Facebook (Ron pointed out to me Scott’s got a new show on the History Channel so congrats on that).

Not in that picture are other great folks like John Luttrell, Bill Slamon, Jeff Wagner, Dan Suffoletto, Ginny Judge, Liz Benz, Lisa Curie, Joe Lombardi and more (who I am unforgivably forgetting) who made WDCR an amazing station during my years at UD.

That one picture absolute takes me back to a simpler time where I thought I knew how good I had it. But I now know you can’t know how really good you have it until you take a moment to look back down the road a spell.

That to me is a really special gift.

Tags: commentary, radio, university of dayton, WVUD by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Truth is this was a simple idea that I should have caught on to long ago but last week is when inspiration hit. My hope now is to give you an idea that you can customize to hopefully benefit your business.

I graduated from the University of Dayton in 1986 which didn’t seem like a long time ago at the time.

Looking at LinkedIn recently I was checking on UD groups and such and saw some called “Business Connects”; these were city specific networking groups made up of UD Alumni in that city.

Ooof! Simple. On-line. Free. Double ooof!

Now I had tried creating an in-person UD alumni group in Buffalo and long story short, it no longer exists but not for lack of alumni interest.

So I created University of Dayton Business Connect Western New York. This group would include any UD alumni who have or currently do live anywhere roughly between Buffalo, New York and Rochester, New York. But those are the only requirements (so if you don’t meet the requirements, don’t ask to join cause I’ll say no – but I’ll say it politely and with a smile).

I gotta think that if you graduated from a College or High School, something like this exists BUT if it doesn’t, I can tell you it is not that tough to slap one of these groups together. If you are willing to spend a couple of hours prospecting, ‘er, researching your school name and your city name on LinkedIn, I bet you can find folks who you can invite to join.

Over about 2-3 days, there are 11 members in our group. A ton? No, but a start. I’m not sure if I can give you a better example of social media at work.

To be fair, I have no idea how successful this could be but I have nothing to risk and individually and as a group we have everything to gain.

Do you think this would be worth doing in your area for your school?

Tags: commentary, community, linkedin, networking, social media, social networking, university of dayton by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Back in 1985, when I was working at WVUD-FM in Dayton (now WLQT), CBS Radio affiliates were given early access, via network satellite, to “We Are The World” before records (yes records) got mailed to stations. WVUD as a CBS affiliate could download it and as production manager, that’s what I did, running the cart down to the on-air studio so Pat Haverland, our midday guy, could be first to air it in the market; he did and we were.

So the song has always had a special place within me…and (for different reasons) just about everybody else.

I will grant you that 25 years ago and then again this year, the professional singers who participated in the recordings had the best of intentions and indeed turned in fine performances.

But when I saw George Whittam’s facebook posting of this very unique video of a less famous rendition, it made me think that maybe this was how it was supposed to be performed in the first place. Social media done extremely well? What do you think?

Tags: commentary, radio, social media, university of dayton, video, WVUD, youtube by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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