So this is where it all started: WTBU, the campus radio station at Boston University. Six years after this 1970 photo, another shy boy from New York found his voice on the same microphone. Maybe you’ve heard of him: Howard Stern.Every budding DJ pays his dues at a small-town radio station. At WAWR-FM in Bowling Green, Ohio, I paid my dues and they paid me bupkis. The 1974 photo is out of focus, and so was my life. I got out of radio and into advertising. I got lucky … and then unlucky … and then really lucky. Read about “The Time I Made Six Figures in Six Seconds.”Mona Scott was the weathergirl (well that’s what they were called back then) at the Columbus, Ohio NBC affiliate. She was also the announcer for most of my radio spots while at Byer & Bowman Advertising in the 70s. I had a wonderful time at our recording sessions, and a wonderful time reminiscing about it in “The Time I Slept with Miss December.”From 1975-78, I wrote hundreds of Christmas commercials for the large national department store clients of Byer & Bowman Advertising in Columbus. We shot them “live,” recording each spot in one complete 30-second take. Here, I’m on the studio floor holding a stopwatch. If the take took 31 seconds, we had to do it all over again. That’s why we started in August.“Sometimes opportunity doesn’t knock. It rings.” This was the opening line in my national award-winning TV public service announcement promoting the Allied Jewish Campaign’s Super Sunday Telethon. SMZ Advertising Chairman Mort Zieve (right) looks on as Judge Avern Cohn makes the presentation. Most PSAs aren’t given prime airtime by broadcast stations; this was an exception.Enter a caption
Strange-But-True Stories from My 50 Years ALMOST in Show Biz 
Leave a Comment