When I read about it I was struck at how young he was by today's aging standards. It also reinforced something I have felt for a long time: Radio people – mostly the on-air performers - seem to die younger.
When I worked at Q94 (WRVQ-FM) in Richmond, Virginia in the early to mid-1990s (my second tour there), one of my co-workers and friends, Roger St. John, had a sudden heart attack at age 48.
Another DJ at the station, "Bob-a-Lou" Freedlander died from long-term health problems at age 52.
Some years earlier, I worked with a personality at WOHO-AM in Toledo, Ohio who told me he had had survived a heart attack at 32-years-old.
I'm only working off of anecdotal evidence here but I have a feeling Radio isn’t the healthiest profession to work in and here’s why:
- Sedentary – You don’t get much physical activity by sitting in front of a microphone 4 hours-a-day. And it's even worse today than it used to be. At least when DJs had to cue up records or insert carts into cart machines they got a little exercise. In today's digital studio, the most physical activity a performer gets is clicking a mouse and making coffee.
- Cigarettes – When I first got into Radio, almost everyone smoked – including me. Sitting around waiting for songs to end gives a person a lot of extra time. Most radio studios I worked in up until the early 1990s allowed the on-air personalities to smoke. I think management generally felt cigarettes were good for calming their most "creative" employees. (See #7 below) This thinking was eventually pushed aside by the smokefree workplace movement. But, plenty of Radio people still light up during long music segments and newscasts.
- Alcohol – I’ve heard my share of stories about alcoholic radio personalities – and worked with a few choice ones myself. The alcohol-Radio connection goes way back. After a 1959 DJ convention in Miami, the Miami Herald ran an account of it with the headline, "Booze, Broads, Bribes". That kind of sums it up, now doesn't it? Famed DJ, Alan Freed (The man who named it "Rock 'n Roll") died of alcohol-related diseases in 1965. Notably, bucking the trend to wallow in liquor is successful talk show host, Glenn Beck, who admits to being a reformed alcoholic. Thanks for being a role model, Glenn.
- Drugs – In Radio? What? Please…! Drugs used to be a lot more freely passed around some years ago during an era when record reps used them to lubricate and ply the good graces of Program Directors and Music Directors who decided playlists. Of course, this was and remains highly illegal. That aside, I can only state it is an unstated fact that plenty of Radio folks have used drugs for plenty of reasons. Remember Rush Limbaugh’s admission back in 2003 of his use of prescription painkillers and his subsequent visit to rehab? If that was the top of the iceberg, can you imagine how deep it goes?
