Excerpt #5 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

I mentioned earlier that my show, “Let’s Play Records” became Number One in Tucson. What I didn’t think of till just this minute is that Merlin Media (?) the audience measurement service, only measured audience when at least four stations in the market agreed to pay for the service. So we really rarely had any kind of continuing audience research. Initially (I believe I’m recalling this correctly), it was done annually. Later, I think, twice a year. So I don’t know when I found out that I was actually beating Arthur Godfrey. I just know that shortly after that, he quit. Probably couldn’t take being second in Tucson.

Five years in Tucson. The big fish in a pint-size pond. In all that time the biggest thing to come along was my little baby girl, Cathianne. It was when I talked about the birth on the air that the second biggest thing, or at least the second most memorable, happened. There was a large window between the on-air studio and the entrance-lobby area. The mike and the console faced away from the window so if some poor bored soul decided to watch the excitement of a real live broadcast, they would have to stare at my back and witness the exciting cueing up of the next record, or the even more provocative turning the pages of the copy book Maybe an hour after my on-air birth announcement, Sally, our lovely receptionist, buzzed me to suggest I turn around. I did and discovered maybe fifty people, in a lobby designed to hold no more than maybe ten, smiling and waving at me with flowers and balloons. I grabbed the longest playing record I could think of, I remember it was by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a song called Sixteen Tons. I put it on and went out to say thanks to the people in the lobby. I couldn’t shove the door open to get to them. I kept shoving and shoving till somehow enough of the people could move back to allow the door to open. Then all at once, all of those people were shouting and hugging and kissing me ... both men and women. I said maybe fifty people were in the lobby. That was about right, but when I looked out through the front door glass, I saw another couple of hundred people, all with balloons and flowers and many with baby gifts FILLING THE PARKING LOT. Somewhere in the crowd behind me I could hear Tom Jr shouting, “Go out and talk to them ... I’ll do your show.” I made my way outside and into the screaming crowd and into more hugging and kissing ... and crying. The crying part was done by me. It was unbelievable. I’d never seen anything like it ... before or since. And it went on for over an hour. A pint-size pond maybe, but that day that pint was overflowing with a spontaneous outpouring of pure joy. The most amazing thing, overwhelming really, was the realization of how strong a bond could be formed between unseen people and someone they knew only as a voice on the radio.


That whole amazing experience was the first thing I thought about when I got a call one day from Gordon McLendon via Don Keyes. Don was about to become PD of a new McLendon station in San Antonio. He explained that Gordon had driven through Tucson recently, had heard me on the air and thought I might be a good fit for the new station.

“Well, I don’t know,” said me, “I’m doing pretty well here.”

“How much are you making?” Don has always had a way of getting straight to the heart of the matter, and in other words, to the heart of his audience.

“Well,” I said, “It’s not always a matter of how much you’re ...”

“Sure it is.” Intoned Don.

“It’s gonna have to be a pretty good deal for me to leave these five years behind. I’m Number One here.”

“How much? I’ll make it better.”

Boy, what an opportunity to stretch the truth a little bit. “I actually do pretty well. I’m making $250.00.” Oh, nuts. The truth just popped right out.

“Hmmm” Don resonated. “I can go as high as $275.00.”

“Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Uh ...nothing. I’ll have to think about it.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Cath!” I shouted to my wife who’d been sitting next to me during the whole conversation. “Two ... hundred ... and SEVENTY FIVE dollars.”

She said, “Yeah, but ...”

She had a good point. Big fish are not always comfortable in the company of other big fish. And there’s the security thing. That’s gotta be worth more than twenty five bucks. Then when you think about your friends and family and the comfort of being Number One and the couple of hundred people helping to celebrate the birth of your baby and ... RING!

“Gordon says we can go to three hundred.” Don Keyes again, using all the power of all that resonance to underscore the grandeur of what was being said

“Oh wow. Tell Gordon I’m coming.” That just popped out, too. Damn! If he’d gone to three hundred that quickly, he might have ... Oh well, two weeks later we were on our way to Big D, and my future in broadcasting was about to take a whole new direction. I could never have imagined where that new direction would eventually lead. “Oh wow.” indeed.