Posted today on the Eckhartz Press blog "Studio Walls"
Eckhartz Press co-publisher Rick Kaempfer is a former radio producer and host and still writes about the media regularly as the media columnist for Illinois Entertainer. This is his 30th year as a media writer, so we are featuring excerpts from the more than 200 current and former Chicago radio and television stars he has interviewed, including the following people who are celebrating birthdays this week...
Greg Solk’s birthday is January 24th. He is the program director and operations manager for WXRT Radio. He previously programmed the Loop (WLUP AM/FM) and he created the format at the Drive (WDRV). At the time of this interview (2010), he was the Senior VP of Bonneville International, which owned WDRV, WILV, and WTMX in Chicago. Rick asked Greg about how began his career at the Loop at such a young age…
I interned weekends and summers in 77 and 78, and again, purely by chance one weekend morning in early 1979, I just happened to be at the station when a guy knocked on the door carrying a big box of tapes. He said: “I’m Steve Dahl, and I’m going to be the morning guy starting on Monday.” And I helped him carry his stuff in, and get his tapes ready, and during the process Steve asked if I had any interest to work as a producer on his show. I started right away – and got paid! I was very lucky to work with him. I was still in high school, and here I was working with Steve Dahl. I learned more about radio from him than I learned from anyone, before or since. He taught me the genius of connecting “on an emotional level” with the audience. He’s the smartest radio guy I’ve ever met.
Read the entire Greg Solk interview here.Eric Ferguson’s birthday is January 27th. He has been the top-rated (or nearly top-rated) morning man in Chicago for more than twenty years. Rick has interviewed Eric a half dozen times during those years. The first time was in 2009. Rick asked Eric how he managed to appeal to a predominantly female audience…
We’re not as different as we seem to be. There’s a lot of topics I bring up that I think will be right down Broadway with females, and then nothing but guys call. We each want to understand the way the other sex thinks. No question that’s one of our main topics of conversation. One of my other big rules is that it’s OK to talk about yourself, but it needs to finish with a way to include the listener. I know that sounds so simple, and it is, but too many people in this business get too consumed in their own egos and lose sight of that. It’s got to be a conversation, not a monologue.
Read the entire Eric Ferguson interview here.
Jack Silver’s birthday is January 28th. At the time of this interview (2009), Jack was with CBS Radio Los Angeles as Director of Integrated Marketing and Promotions for Classic Hits K Earth 101 and Smooth AC 94.7 The Wave. Rick interviewed him about his time in Chicago, most famously as the program director of AM 1000 in the early 1990s, when his on-air talent routinely made fun of him...
One of the things I learned is that the listeners have a boss too, so if you become a boss that can be made fun of, the listeners seem to absolutely love that. I probably met more of the listeners than any other program director, because they knew me. (In LA, they called me Jack-S, or jackass). This whole radio thing is about the listeners, and when you put yourself out there, they go out of their way to meet you. The guys that sit in the offices and don’t get out there are usually the guys who never been on the air, and don’t really understand what a personality is thinking or what they’re dealing with, that moment of panic that can set in when you’re not 100% sure what you’re going to say next. If you haven’t had that, haven’t experienced that, what good are you? Jimmy DeCastro, Larry Wert, and all those guys at the Loop in Chicago, they totally got that.
(Note: Jack was one of only two people who fired Rick in his radio career–canceling his show Ebony & Ivory on AM 1000 in 1992)
Read the entire Jack Silver interview here.
Dane Placko’s birthday is January 29th. Dane is a reporter for WFLD-TV in Chicago, and has been for more than 20 years. Over the years Rick has interviewed him several times, including a piece for Shore Magazine. The most recent interview was in 2018, for the Illinois Entertainer. Dane was experiencing a truly strange vacation in England, and Rick spoke to him there…
“We toured the movie studio where they shot all the Harry Potter movies. We sat in on a Brexit debate in Parliament. We dodged raindrops for an afternoon at the London Zoo. And we enjoyed the cheesy/gory history tour at the London Dungeon. But during the Walking Tour for Muggles on Thursday, I noticed some blurriness at the bottom of the field of vision in my left eye. Friday it was slightly worse. And when I woke up Saturday I knew I was in trouble. A large shadowy disc had robbed me of most of the sight in the affected eye.”
Thus began the actual adventure, which included a trip they hadn’t planned: A trip through the National Health System in Britain. Dane had to have emergency eye surgery to repair a detached retina.
Read the entire Dane Placko interview here.Tony Lossano’s birthday is January 29th. Tony Lossano was the host of the Nude Hippo TV Show, and has worked for many years as a radio producer in Chicago (Melissa Forman, Bob Sirott & Marianne Murciano, and more). He currently produces many podcasts for his company OPPIH Shows that air on the Radio Misfits Podcast Network. Among his current shows is the one hosted by Rick and fellow Eckhartz Press publisher David Stern, Minutia Men. Rick first interviewed Tony in 2008 when he producing Melissa Forman’s show…
I’m used to being the one in charge and in the spotlight with NUDE HIPPO, but my true love is producing and it is so refreshing to get out of the spotlight and have it focus on someone who is so good at what she does. There are very few individuals who I would ever want to work with and I’ve been lucky enough to be in the position to pick and choose…and I’m happy to be with Melissa on such a refreshing, real and fun show.
Read the entire Tony Lossano interview here.
Lisa Dent’s birthday is January 30th. Lisa was an air-personality on Big Country 95.5 before that station changed formats in September of last year. Rick interviewed her during her long stint at the other big country radio station in town, US99, in 2016, just days after she learned she was going to be inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“I found out from (co-host) Ray (Stevens). Ray told me before the holidays but said, ‘When they call you, you better act surprised and fake it.’ When he told me I cried. Although I wasn’t sure he was telling me the truth—so I said ‘You better be telling me the truth!’ It would have been doubly embarrassing to be crying if it wasn’t true. With Ray, you never know for sure.”
