Deejay All You Can Deejay
If you want to see the world, the Army isn't always your only option.
When I first entered the radio profession, there were many more thousands of jobs available both on-the-air and behind the scenes. Although experience was absolutely a plus, there were so many opportunities - full and part-time - almost anyone with enough drive and motivation could get into radio.
The key was: you had to be willing to move.
There are many thousands of commercial radio stations but they're not spread out and spaced evenly throughout the land. The F.C.C. assigns stations and their frequencies to serve certain areas. Generally, that means areas of population. You'll find a lot more radio stations serving Chicago, Illinois (pop. 2.8 million) than you will find serving Little Chicago, Wisconsin (pop. I can't even find out on Google.)
Many stations used to be "Mom and Pop" operations - owned by one person or a small company which afforded more opportunity for jobs. Before automation, voice-tracking, deregulation, and consolidation of the industry the majority of stations had to have a complete staff and fend for itself against competition. That provided almost a steady flow of Want Ads for deejays, program directors, and other staff.
Deejaying One Step Ahead of the Law
If you didn't like the job you were working at, you could up and quit and just move someplace else to pursue a new opportunity. Early in my career, I accepted some gigs without even seeing where I would be working and just packed my car and left. Sometimes my current employer would want a two-week notice but often they were so annoyed at losing another employee they had recently trained they would just yell, "Get the hell out!". No notice was required.
Angry or not, even employers knew there was a long line of ambitious DJ-wannabes more than willing to work for even less than I was. They were probably more mad they had to interrupt their tee-off time to schedule more interviews.
When I began in radio, I was single and had very little responsibilities holding me down. I could pick up at a moment's notice and drive 500 miles to my next radio station. The only drawback was everything I owned had to fit in my car. If it didn't - then it got left behind. Renting a U-Haul was too much hassle, costly, and above all: raised a person's profile. When I split from town I didn't want anyone knowing it and I confess: more than a few times I absconded from towns and states in the middle-of-the-night breaking both leases and speed limits. Even today, I'm sure the law is still keeping an eye out for me in Northumberland, Pennsylvania and I'm really sorry about that.
The Wanderlust of Radio
The multitude of opportunities that radio once afforded and the ease by which someone could either qualify or talk themselves into a job was one of the joys of being in radio when I started out. As I wrote in my 2004 book, The Cash Cage, radio is "...an exciting medium held together by an odd lot of gypsies who move from city-to-city in an incessant struggle for ratings, income, and acceptance."
Nothing has changed except there are just less places and less jobs to move to and one of the joys of radio for me has always been the discovery of new places, people, and opportunities - a state of mind very appealing to a wanderer like myself.
