My Longtime Best Friend Mike-Part II

As I noted at the start and the finish of Part I, I am pondering writing a book about my broadcast career, and as I finished up Part I I realized how much I left out, and I am sure I will have that feeling again as I roll through this edition. When last you were reading, I faced the very real possibility that my life-long relationship with the microphone, and it being my only profession, was ending.

After returning to the Midwest in the mid-90’s, and after a couple of failed radio ventures, with a young baby and wife to support, I was on the verge of accepting a job as a hardware store manager. But just before I took it, I saw a classified ad in The Lawrence Journal-World seeking a weekend news reporter at KLWN. I went in and filled out an application. They called back and said they wanted to interview me for the position. As the interview began, the person doing the hiring made a point of saying how greatly overqualified I was for the job, that it was really more for a college student or beginner. I said that it didn’t matter to me, I would rather do that job than anything else available then. It was two long work days, so you got quite a few hours, and I could still be Mister Mom during the week.

So they offered me the job, my wife agree to have me turn my back on the full-time hardware position, and I took the news reporter job. I will be forever grateful to KLWN and the great people there. They got a higher quality of work than I am sure they figured they would receive, and I got a lifeline. In pretty rapid fashion I was doing other things as well, started getting some sports assignments like KU basketball postgame, and eventually hosting the “Late Night at the Phog” broadcast.

It got me heard in the area again, but I still needed another break. A broadcast connection from the past, actually from my days at WIBX, knew the program director at KMBZ, and he had found out that they were going to fire the host of the night time sports talk show.. My contact put in a good word for me and said I should call them. One thing led to another, and I ended up with an on-air tryout. That was really an indication that they didn’t value that show all that highly, just throwing someone on the air randomly to do it, but I didn’t care.

This might be my last, best chance to continue my dream. For what would be the first of six auditions, I prepared for the three hour show with about 15 hours of material. After that first effort, they said I had done well, but they weren’t ready to make a commitment. Five more times over about three weeks I did the show. Praise each time, no commitment. Finally, I was called in and I got the position. The job description was to do the 6-9 P.M. sports talk program, fill in for Don Fortune in the afternoon when he was out, for Bob Davis on the morning news when he was unavailable, and eventually to do Royals postgame during the week, and pregame and postgame on the weekend.

Actually the latter assignment came a couple of years into my tenure, and is a reflection of my fairly tortured relationship with Entercom, the parent company. I was hired when Bonneville was that entity, but they had subsequently sold it. While I was thrilled to be back in the game, there was still the part of supporting a wife and young child. I was doing a reasonably high profile job, working long hours, and making less than thirty thousand dollars a year. After a reasonable time on the job, and with my performance often praised, I felt it might be time for a raise. I went to the interim Program Director, who said he didn’t have the money, and if I didn’t like the answer I could go to the G.M. Which I did. That went badly also. He was so dismissive of me I was curious as to why I even had the job.

A few months later they came back to me with this. If I would do every Royals game, adding the weekend pregame and postgame, they would give me what you would have to call a paltry raise. It really wasn’t even a raise, it was just added work. But I was in no position to say no, I love baseball, so I took what I could get. Working for a conglomerate is less than ideal. Entercom is based in Philadelphia, and has dozens of stations. They have no idea who you are or the quality of your work, you are just a line item. Unless you get some real leverage, which I certainly didn’t after a short tenure, you were really kind of screwed…..financially. But the work is very rewarding, when you are broadcasting you are your own boss, and there are many other gratifications…..outside of the paycheck.

While I would never reach my ultimate career goal of being exclusively a play-by-play announcer, throughout virtually my entire time on the air in various roles, one of them was doing games. It is in my mind the ultimate role in my profession, especially on the radio. You are truly the eyes and ears of your audience. Once the game is on, you have complete control, and really, are like a jazz musician. You take what is in front of you, and make it your own. My idea of that is to paint the clearest and most precise picture you can, while allowing the excitement of the contest to create the proper emotions. I absolutely love it, and am so glad I have done so much of it. I became the K.U. women’s play-by-play announcer (again) while at KMBZ as part of the Jayhawk Radio Network, and the good part was that the network paid me.

There were so many great and talented people at KMBX when I was there. When I first arrived, the last real glory days of news departments were still on. Not that talented and hard working people still do it, but these people were appreciated and paid what they truly were worth. Slowly but surely, longtime standout reporters were bought out and replaced with younger, and cheaper talent. It was kind of full circle for me, having spent so much time in newsrooms watching seasoned pros, like my Dad, at work. The FM station KY102 was still cooking in the same building, 61 Country (the signal that is now 610 sports) as well. Great, longstanding and iconic broadcasters there, as indeed at KCMO 810, which obviously is the signal that WHB is on now. It was the start of a sea change in radio, most of it not for the good.

So, in many regards, despite the struggles, there were good things about my four years at KMBZ, which would end abruptly in 2000. I had been through a fairly recent divorce, which was in part made more bearable by pretending to be a human being each night on the radio. I had just met the woman who is still my wife, Jayne Siemens, and was starting to get some normalcy back in my life, when I became victim of the restructuring of the sports lineup at Entercom, which had made its first attempt (which failed) at sports talk radio. That’s a nice way of saying I got fired.

It turned out to be the best thing that happened in my broadcast career. I had had some previous conversations with the fledgling KCTE, which now had become WHB, but things hadn’t worked out. Thank goodness they still had interest basically almost immediately. Inside of a couple of days I had three job offers, two out of town, and that one in Kansas City. The others had some real appeal, but a variety of factors, certainly Jayne one of them, sent me to WHB.

There probably is a book in my time at WHB alone, but I will just give some highlights. I was hired to do Sportscenters during Between the Lines in the afternoon, almost immediately start College Football Gameday, which had its twentieth year last fall, and be the Royals reporter. There was no initial plan for what became my major role eventually at WHB, which was a daily co-host to lead host Kevin Kietzman, whenever I wasn’t on assignment or had time off. Initially I would finish Sportscenter, pause for a minute, and if Kevin didn’t give me a little signal to stay, I would go off to other duties.

The fact that it ended up where it did, pretty much personified my working relationship with Kevin. He was completely gracious in sharing the platform, despite the fact that we are very different people, with often wildly different viewpoints. He obviously felt that I had something important to offer, and maybe a little balance, and I believe he appreciated the fact that I knew how to pull back when he was in full flow constructing an argument, and only respond after. I can only think of maybe one or two times that an on-air disagreement carried into anything remotely significant even into the commercial break.

I got a front row seat to this truly unique broadcast story, as unlikely as can be imagined, with a locally owned company succeeding in a totally corporate landscape. . Sure, it was a little jarring at first to be broadcasting from an old ranch house in Independence, but just a couple of years later that was a thing of the past as well, as WHB moved to new studios in Overland Park, reflecting their remarkable growth. Quality of personnel and dedication from top to bottom was rewarded from Chad Boeger at the top through the sales staff and the litany of talented broadcasters..

At this point you might be thinking that there might be some sour grapes since my full time association with the station ended in may of 2018. Did I want it to end that way? Of course not. Do I have questions and am still a bit mystified as to why it went down? Sure. But eighteen years is a helluva run in this crazy business, and it was an amazing string of assignments for me. I got to cover Final Fours for almost two decades, go to Super Bowls, cover a stretch of World Match play golf championships, do a few American Century golf tournaments in Lake Tahoe, call years of basketball games for UMKC, Sporting Kansas City games, and on and on and on.

And then there is baseball. It started off with a bit of disappointment, when the 2001 Royals were so bad right from the jump that the plan to have me staff all the road games only lasted a month, and the five years that the station was the flagship almost sunk the operation. Through it all I did literally thousands of pre and postgame shows and even on a dead Sunday afternoon with one caller, I loved it. If it was a sacrifice, and it really wasn’t. I would get the kind of payoff you can only dream about.

2014 and 2015, being on site for those World Series runs, with the All Star Game in Cincinnatti in between. If not completely the highlight of my career, it certainly is right up there. Watching high level, kinetic, pulsating games, and providing the stories surrounding them to thousands and thousands of riveted fans, it just doesn’t get much better than that.

But the only thing that might be better was doing it in the context of a group of people at WHB who created a working environment that was challenging, fun, competitive, and cooperative. Every workplace has its jealousies and disagreements, but they were so few it’s almost not worth mentioning. A lot of my best fun was working the three different main shows when I was on assignment. Each had its own personality, so you got to show different sides of your own. You had a standard to uphold, and when you may have come up short, you regretted it badly, like one of the only times I was taken to task by Todd Leabo, for messing up a Super Bowl hit from New York City, when he had gone to bat for me to get the cool assignment. You just felt such an incredible letdown for not hitting the standard he rightly wanted.

Thankfully, those times were few. From the off the air MVP Jason Justice, Bukaty, St.John, Jake, Kevin and Todd, Petro, Doug and Kurtis and on and on and on. I wasn’t going to start listing because so many will be left off, but you get the picture. Dozens of people who made us on the air sound good. I always especially tried to be extra supportive of the weekend board operators who I worked with so often on the less than high profile shows. They are truly in it for the love of the business, many just hoping it’s the start of a dream that I still get to live.

I do it on my own terms and with my own business now. It’s hard at times, and we are still building. But I still get to share my ideas, analysis, interviewing prowess, and sense of fun to people like you. Don’t ever think I don’t appreciate every person who reads a blog, listens to a podcast, or views an essay.

The ride continues.