The Two Story Brick on North Illinois and a few memories from our get together in Cambria

The two story brick was built as the home of WIBC radio in the 30's. When the company moved to new facilities on North Meridian street in the 80's the old two story brick was donated to Butler University by the Fairbanks family, Butler housed their student and public broadcast stations there for years. I wonder if anyone connected to the Fathers and Families Center in Indianapolis has any idea of the old buildings history.

Tom Cochrun and I started at WIBC, Indianapolis the same week in 1969. Tom was hired by Fred Heckman, the storied news director of WIBC. In anticipation of the interview, Tom got his long hair cut. The interview went well, Fred hired him. When the interview was over, Fred said to young Tom, "Get your hair cut."

I left KQWB in Fargo to go to WIBC. My first job there was the all night show. From Midnight to 5, I did everything, played the music, did the news, weather, sports, you name in it, I did it. When I arrived at WIBC my news experience was "rip and read", as in tear the stories off the AP wire and read them. I soon found out I had to have News Director and morning drive anchor Fred Heckman's 5am,5:30am and the 10 minute 6am newscasts, written and ready. Fred gave me a crash course in broadcast journalism. It took a month of poking and prodding by Fred to get my news writing to an acceptable level, another month before he passed out a complement. I wrote those three newscasts a day for a year. Fred’s guidance gave me a foundation, I was later able to put to good use when I built news departments, hired news people and directed news/talk radio stations. Thanks Freddy for training me and kicking my ass when it needed kicking.

WIBC was a national trendsetter, one of the first major market radio stations to embrace the changing demographics and to redefine what adult contemporary radio would become.

The WIBC vison came from a young General Manager named Jim Hilliard. Jim came to Indy from Philadelphia where had built and programmed legendary Top 40 station WFIL. For whatever reason, Jim took me under his wing. He would get to the station early in the morning (6:30) a couple of days a week and go over air checks of my show. He taught me what I could do better and more importantly, what not to do. Those early morning teaching sessions with Jim gave me a foundation I could build on as I moved on in my career with Fairbanks and other companies. Jim worked me hard, 5 all night shows a week and a midday show on Sunday. I’d get to the station at 10 at night and usually get home between 10 and 11 the next morning. Jim had enough confidence in me to have me do fill in for our morning man Gary Todd when Gar was on vacation and then my eventual move down the hall to WNAP FM to do mornings and later on to program our stations in Boston.

Jim had a lot more confidence in me than I had. Until I got to WIBC/WNAP I wasn’t even committed to radio as a career. Jim taught me to see my possibilities and gave me the confidence and encouragement to make a commitment to broadcasting. Everybody worked hard for Jim, he made it so damn much fun, the long hours and dedication he required were well worth it.

Working at WIBC and WNAP was an honor, a privilege and one hell of an education. So thanks for that and so much more JCH.

We had some tremendous talent in that brick building on North Illinois. The great Chuck Riley, Orly Knutson, Gary Todd. Fred and Lou Palmer anchored either end of the day in the newsroom. Young guys like Tom Cochrun and Bruce Taylor doing reporting and occasionally anchoring. Tom and Bruce moved on to successful careers in television news. One of the reporters was a classy old guy named Bob Hoover. You could imagine him with a press card stuck in his hat. Hoover had been a broadcaster for so long, he had covered John Dillinger in the early days of radio news. Bob Hoover was a walking talking history book.

WIBC had a nationally recognized Farm Director, Harry Andrews. Harry did the bulk of his Farm Reports in the early morning hours, beginning each broadcast with "Howdy Neighbor". Harry was a Purdue University grad, a school with a very good program in agriculture. Interesting thing, Harry's degree from Purdue was in drama. Harry played a character on the radio who was an expert in agriculture, he certainly wasn't. He was so good at it, the farm community didn't notice.

We had a great mix of old pros and young kids at the station. When I arrived at WIBC, Sid Collins, the voice of the Indy 500, was the Sports Director. Paul Page was a young police reporter. Paul replaced Sid on the 500 broadcasts and later did the Indy 500 race on ABC TV for many years.

WIBC was the flagship of Indiana University sports, the Pacers, the Racers (with a young kid named Wayne Gretsky centering a line) and later the Colts. Those sports broadcasts were anchored by legends like Jerry Baker, Joe McConnel, Bob Lamey and later a kid named Kevin Calabro. Today Kevin is "the" sports guy in Seattle.

We did traffic reports, the reporter was Deputy, then Sergeant, then Lt. and later Marion County sheriff Jim Wells. We had a young mayor in Indianapolis named Richard Lugar. Mayor (later Senator) Dick Lugar was a regular guest on the WIBC morning show.

Down the hall at the Buzzard, WNAP FM. The talent level was scary. WNAP had broadcast hall of famer Cris Connor, Major Tom Lewis, Tom went to be the top meteorologist on TV in Washington DC. Old friend Mike Griffin was a mainstay of the WNAP staff in those early days. Mike said the other day he was astonished at the music we played, he remembers it as much hipper than it was. Sugar-Sugar, right Mike? Mike moved on to become one of the owners of the Panther Indy Car racing team. Fresh from the Navy, Charlie Kendall did nights. Charlie went on to a programming career at some of the finest stations in the country, WMMS, WBCN, WMMR and WNEW. The list of WNAP talent is long, guys like Buster Bodine, Psycho Billy Cadillac and so many more opened the mic at WNAP.

I did mornings at WNAP for a year and a half and then moved onto Boston. I couldn’t have made the move without my WNAP experience.

The two stations at 2835 North Illinois in Indianapolis became the foundation of the Fairbanks Group of stations. Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, later Kansas City, Tampa and Palm Beach. We were the best.

Our success all began with Jim Hilliard. And Jim, I would be remiss not to say thanks for dragging Geo out of Canada, he has been my colleague and friend for so many damn years I can’t even remember when it all started. One thing I do remember is sharing an office with Geo, no windows, no ventilation and we both chain smoked Marlboro Reds in those days. The Duffy Twins would open our door and the smoke would just roll out into the hall. We must have smelled like ash trays, lucky the smoke alarms didn't go off. Maybe they did.

It seemed everybody in that old brick building was a character, we even had an engineer named Will Fix.

Don’t get me started on the sales department...they were crazier than we were. Yance, Johnson, Seeley, Shelton, Cooper, Bobo...you guys know who you are.

It was a special time in broadcasting and in my life. Special friends too.

BTW, growing up in North Dakota, until I got to WIBC/WNAP, I didn't realize I had listened to Jim, Gary and Chuck on Winnipeg's CKY when I was a kid driving around in my car. I later found out Geo was working behind the scenes at CKY as well. Small world.

KIngs-Bruins at Staples Center

Notes from the Kings-Bruins last night...

SoCal has a population from all over the world, not only was the crowd at Stapes diverse, there were one hell of a lot of Bruins fans at the game. Rough estimate, 10-15% of the crowd were wearing Bruin's gear. The Massholes were chanting and taunting the Kings fans.

The suite level has indoor and outside seating, we sat outside. There was a family sitting in front of us, Mom. Dad and two kids. The fan was the little girl, maybe 9 or ten years old, she had on an Anze Kopitar jersey and never took her eyes off the game. Her brother looked bored, she was a fan.

The best kiss on the "Kiss Cam" (a Lakers invention from the Show Time days) was from a chubby, white haired, old couple. The kiss was movie quality, so much so they needed to get a room.

In the 19 years Cakes and I have been a couple, this was her first NHL game. She's been to one baseball game, the 7th game of the 1997 world series, hasn't been to one since, even when we lived a 1/2 mile from Fenway Park.

We left home at 5, got home at midnight. It was worth it. 

Foreign Relations

Ulla got in the back seat of my car, she turned to Ricky and said, "Give me a cigarette." Rick shook a Marlboro Red out of the box, Ulla took it, Rick lit it. Ulla took a long drag, she French inhaled, settled back in the seat and relaxed. I watched her smoke in the rear view mirror. I listened as she began to unload her troubles, it came out in a torrent of frustration and anger. She talked non-stop on the way to the University, on the walk from the parking lot to the to the student union. We were early for the lecture, we had time for coffee, Ulla never stopped talking. For a girl who seldom talked in school, Ulla had a lot to get out.

Ulla was our Foreign exchange student my senior year in high school. She was usually dressed in black or other dark colors, Ulla wore glasses with heavy, black frames. Ulla would not look out of place in hipster Brooklyn in 2016. Ulla was from Finland and for her year in the US, she lived with a local minister and his family. The minister's daughter, a year younger, may have been the most uptight girl in our school. The standing joke was the only time she'd ever been kissed was when she played Marian the Librarian in the Music Man.

Lucky for Ulla, as seniors, we had events and activities that were "seniors only". This enabled Ulla to escape the minister and his family who as she said, "we're constantly dropping to their knees in prayer."

Ulla loved hanging around with normal American kids, we smoked, we drank, we loved rock and roll, thought a lot of our teachers and parents were idiots and we swore like sailors. We were just like her friends at home in Finland. Imagine that! I think we left her with a favorable impression of America and when she thinks of us, we bring a smile to her Finnish face. I hope she tells stories about the Kegs Drive In, cruising and just hanging around with a bunch of American teens in the 60's.

I related our experience with Ulla to our sales rep in Seattle, she had her own Exchange Student story. Her family hosted a sophisticated girl from Paris in their suburban Seattle home. The young Parisian was an only child, her parents were both lawyers. The girl was model thin, dressed like she stepped off the pages of a French fashion magazine. Her lifestyle in Paris was typically French, she walked everywhere. She stopped on the way home from school at the butchers, the bakery and the vegetable market. She and her parents would have a light healthy, late supper, talk, read and go to bed. She drank coffee and wine. In suburban Seattle she seldom walked, ate fast food and pizza after school, had a big supper and then snacked and watched TV with her American classmates. The young Parisian gained 27 pounds during her year in Seattle. Her parents barely recognized her when she got off the plane in France.

We had a Dutch foreign exchange student when I was a sophomore in high school. Hans was a great guy, big, funny and he wore ties and sport coats to school. Hans was another smoker and drinker. Hans was astonished that American kids couldn't drink beer and wine at home or in bars. Hans was a world class bull shitter and he would go into a liquor store at 16, dressed in a tie, coat and hat and come out with the goods. Hans was disgusted by American beer and I don't blame him.

A Memorable Boston St. Patrick's Day

There once was a group called the "New England Broadcasters Association" or NEBA. If you were a broadcaster from any of the New England States you could join and did they ever.

The best NEBA party of the year was the annual ST. Patrick's Day party. It was so big, broadcasters from all over the country made plans to be in Boston for the NEBA party.If you celebrate St. Patrick's Day American style, (an excuse to get drunk on a week day) The NEBA Party was exactly what you were looking for.

One year in the 70's the Party started at noon at the old Bradford Hotel in the theater district. Corned Beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes and carrots, plenty of beer (not green) and Irish Whisky.

The entertainment? Carmel Quinn and Dennis Day. They both looked like they were made up by an undertaker...

        

20 odd years later, my St. Patrick's Day went like this, lunch with a friend of mine at a Japanese restaurant (?) the food was good, but the conversation left a lot to be desired. I listened to 2 hours of complaints about her marriage. Around 3 we met a couple of friends for drinks at Daisy Buchanan's, an hour or so at Daisy's and we were off to the NEBA Party, held this year at a blues and barbeque joint. (?) The band, I can't remember their name, was okay. The food was pretty good, I had ribs and brisket, I think.

One thing led to another and I became the "boyfriend" of a Lipstick Lesbian I knew, my function was simple, keep guys from hitting on her. Our party had now grown to 8 or ten people, including two sisters from Brighton who latched onto the seriously drunk Kevin. Kev was at the point in the evening where all he could do was grin. My friend Tommy fell in love and disappeared with a TV reporter.

At the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, I sat next to a retired bus driver at the bar. He hated the band and kept yelling for them to "turn that shit down".

He thought my lesbian "date" was the best looking thing he'd seen in years. He asked me if I was "tapping" her. Before I could answer, she jumped in and said, "Wouldn't you like to be, pal?" I just smiled at him. Somebody bought me a shot of Bushmills, I slid it in front of the old bus driver, he thanked me and slammed it. He told me, I was a "lucky man".

The Lipstick Lesbian and I lost Kevin and the sisters somehow, Tommy was gone with the TV lady and Billy wandered off. My unhappy friend and her husband had left hours ago. It was just the two of us.

Somehow we caught a cab to get back across the river. Lipstick couldn't drive so she stayed at my place, I loaned her a t-shirt to sleep in, we crawled into bed and said, "We can snuggle but keep your hands to yourself."

We're in a Drought, Dammit!

 The average Southern California household uses 174.3 gallons of   water a day. This guy uses 27,000 gallons a day....He's Movie and Music mogul and philanthropist David Geffen

This is why...his house in Beverley Hills.

That's not counting the water used in his house in Malibu...

Or on his yacht Pelorus...

David Geffen has done really, really well for a college drop out from Brooklyn. Asylum Records, Electra/Asylum Records, Warner/Electra/Atlantic, Geffen Records, Geffen Film/DreamWorks SKG.

Geffen does wonderful charity work, Geffen UCLA Medical School, NYU Medical School, The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles.

Geffen is one of the 400 richest Americans and may be the wealthiest gay man in the United States. So please David don't be an asshole and join your whiney neighbors in Beverley Hills in their protest of the water surcharges for using too damn much water, pay it, you can afford it.

Better yet, cut back on the 27,000 gallons you use a day for chissakes!

Thank You!

Stunned and Amazed by The Cakes

My Executive wife Jan, better known as "The Cakes" started on a journey last year to create her own business. Her dream, "All American Fair" is blinking on hold for the moment, the investment to do the business right, to make it what it can and some day will be, had to be put aside. I won't get into the reasons, but I will say, Venture Capitalists are short sighted.

So now what?

Cakes is a marketing professional, she's been a corporate officer at one of the largest furniture retailers in Southern California, she's worked on the manufacturing level marketing to the world's biggest retailers. Cakes has worked for an advertising agency, while there, she and her team produced a video for a local hospital, it won a Regional Emmy award. She's good, damn good.

So now what?

Cakes, her friend and colleague Barbara met in our upstairs office one day. They discussed their skills and contacts. They bounced their ideas off me, they listened to me and hopefully discounted most of what I said, as well they should. They did their research and they they came up with a plan. That plan created Moonstone Marketing and Media.

So now what?

Without a design staff and a computer genius by her side. Cakes went to seminars and web design classes. In 6 weeks of 12 and 14 hour days, she taught herself the skills, skills she needed and never had to learn in her past.

She learned the "front end" and the "back end" of web design, she learned "SEO", she learned how to secure platforms for ecommerce. Cakes learned to link social media to each other and make them work, bringing the various platforms together to make something bigger and stronger than the individual platforms. While Cakes was learning, Barbara was on the street looking for potential clients. Together they went to meetings, sales pitches really. They came back with reams of notes, notes that helped them create presentations to fulfill the clients needs.

So now what?

Her first client is a friend of mine, he had a terrible web site, no social media and a great concept. Cakes created a new site and in turn it created a new image for his services and his business has skyrocketed. So much so, he is starting to complain, a little anyway, about how busy he is. A few weeks ago he offered her an override on new business, she took it.

Barbara's background is in health care, Moonstone now represents a local pharmacy group, a high quality home health care service and another home nursing client focused on post surgical needs and individual services.

Moonstone has a new client in the human resources field. They represent a large commercial printing business. They are ready to close a financial services client. Next week they are making a presentation to 40 non-profit senior citizen services organizations.

Cakes works in the office upstairs. Yesterday, she was up at 7, at her desk before 8. She spent the day designing and writing for her clients, she was on the phone with them. She was still doing it at 7 last night. She worked in yoga pants, a fleece pull over and her pink slippers all day. She seldom took a break.

What did she accomplish? She designed and wrote 4 targeted electronic flyers and sent them out to over 100 targeted potential clients. She designed thank you cards for a client and started another design project. She took an introductory letter I wrote for Moonstone, rewrote it and sent it out.

She exchanged over 20 emails with a client and then on the phone walked the client through a painful conversation of why the client had to change the clunky image she had created herself and used for years.

I am stunned by Cake's energy, creativity, at how tenacious she is and the laser like focus she has.

She is on hell of a woman. I am so proud of her and completely amazed at what she has created in such a short period of time.

Moonstone is close to breaking even in 6 short months...know anybody who needs marketing help? They could put her over the top!

I don't think I need to mention I love her very much, do I?

What Betty said...

                                        Election Confession by Betty Cracker|

You know how sometimes you’re faced with a really hard choice where the pros and cons seem even and you just can’t make up your mind? And then you flip a coin, and while your quarter is spinning in the air, you realize which outcome you’re rooting for, and that’s how you make your decision?
That’s how picking a candidate for tomorrow’s primary has been for me this year. I like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both a lot and would happily vote for either one in the general. I’ve donated small sums to both candidates, watched most of the debates and followed their campaigns closely. Both are great candidates, IMO.

I first donated to the Sanders campaign as a protest: Like Sanders himself, I suspect, I didn’t think he’d come this far. My small donation was a way to show support for his consistent message about the corrupting influence of money in politics, a hope that an early groundswell of support for Sanders would buy his issues a seat at the table and shift the conversation in the primary leftward.
That’s not a knock on Clinton, BTW; I’ve never bought the notion that she’s a DLC Democrat at heart. I think her beliefs are similar to President Obama’s (in other words, a bog-standard center-left Democratic governing philosophy) and that they are consistent. There wasn’t a great deal of difference between the Clinton and Obama platforms in 2008, and there aren’t now either.
But I’ve noticed in past primaries that a candidate with a strong message can shift the conversation. Even that odious phony John Edwards put poverty more firmly on the agenda back in aught-eight with his “Two Americas” focus. Bernie’s message about creeping plutocracy couldn’t be more timely and urgent, and to his great credit, he has made it central to Democratic politics throughout this primary season.

Even so, just before the actual voting started, I was leaning a bit toward Hillary because I thought she was more electable, having withstood the wingnut shit storm for 25 years, formidably faced down the partisan witch hunt over Benghazi and forged strong, deep and long-standing ties with establishment figures and core constituencies of the party. But I still wasn’t sure.

I’ve followed the Berniacs vs Hillbots clashes at this blog and elsewhere, and I resolved not to allow the behavior of overly enthusiastic supporters color my opinions of the candidate, and that remains the case. But my coin-flip moment has been playing out as the voting takes place, and now I’m ready to admit it, to myself and to you all: I want Hillary to win. I’m going to vote for her tomorrow.
This realization started to dawn on me when she got edged out in Michigan. It’s not that I wanted Bernie to lose, but I was disappointed that Hillary didn’t win. I was disgusted with the media spin about it — not the valid analysis about trade, etc., and how that might have driven Rust Belt voters to the Sanders camp but the crap-fest about whether HRC was once again losing to a man who excites the youngs and whether the country wants to try something new instead of this tiresome, ambitious woman.

Well, after 229 years of the Oval Office being a men’s only club, a woman would be something new, even if we’ve known this particular woman forever. I’m not going to deny that’s a huge part of my support for HRC. I want a woman in the White House, damn it. And we’ve got an incredibly qualified one right in front of us.

It wasn’t that big of a deal to me in 2008 since I supported PBO over HRC. It seems more urgent now. In the 2008 primaries, my mom was a Hillary supporter, not just because Hillary is a woman but because my mom was a big fan of the Clintons, who were of her generation. Mom was no PUMA; after Obama won the primary, she voted for him in 2008 and again in 2012. She thought he was a great president.
But she never got to see a woman win the White House. And that sucks. I don’t apologize for believing that breaking this barrier is incredibly important. For myself. For my daughter. For all the women who came before us and will come after us. It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing either.
Anyhoo, as I said, I like Bernie too, and if he wins, I’ll work my ass off to make sure he prevails in November. My husband is going to cancel my Hillary vote by voting for Bernie tomorrow, and I will even remind him to do so. But it turns out I’m with her…and I have been all along.
PS: I realize the graphic up top is controversial because some people thought the quote implied that Sanders’ line about “shouting about gun control” was sexist. I don’t think Sanders is sexist at all. But I do like the sentiment in the quote, which is generally true.

Betty Cracker, Front Pager at Balloon Juice