Re: First time on the air

[Jeremy Mixer <mixer@zoso.net>]

My first time on the air was not at such a young age, I was 20 at the
time. I'd been a fan of Portland's WBLM for years, and had recently gotten
to see the studio and I was starting to develop an interest in radio. One
day the Captain and Mark were looking for contestants to come into the
studio for a girl scout cookie eating contest. My immediate thoughts were
"Wow.... I can go in the studio and be live on the air." While I had
played a few contests live over the phone, and I couldn't tell you the
first time I had one of my requests played over the air (which was also
equally cool at the time), but being in the studio and being able to talk
in the studio was just an incredible thought. Although I lost the contest,
the Blimp still hooked me up with George Carlin tickets, Johnny Lang
Tickets, and stuck me on a party bus to go up to Waterville and see the
Black Crowes. And if that wasn't enough, the then producer of the Blimp
morning show, Brett Slater (who is now working for Clear Channel in the
Bangor market) asked me if I wanted to help make the daily promo for the
morning show, and I immediately agreed. They wrote up a copy for me to
read, and Brett thought my first take was great, so all day  long my promo
was being played on the air. I got several calls from friends and
relatives saying "Hey I heard you on BLM!" and it was just so damn cool.
It was at this point in time, I think later that same day, that I got
online and looked up NESCom (which I had looked at in high school for
video rather then radio but decided I wasn't ready to make a committment
to school.) Less then two weeks later I had had an interview and was
accepted at the school.

Then in October of the same year was my first ever radio shift on the
NESCom/Husson station, WHSN. I was an extremely enthusiastic freshman
radio student and had already learned how to do digital audio production
and was cranking out promos for specialty shows left and right....but I
couldn't wait to be on the air, but they wanted us to wait until October.
Once October came I immediately signed up for a training shift, which my
trainer never put me on air, but went over all the stuff I needed to know.
The next day I went and found the school's director, Ben Haskell, and told
him I was ready to go on the air. He went down the checklist of things
that I needed to know and it seemed I knew what I needed to so I was the
second freshman to get my own air shift on the station that year. I
immediately signed up for a shift. It just so happened that my first shift
coincided with the three days that the station had to do BMI logging.
After three hours of training and no prior time on the air (other then
reading news during other people's shifts), as if I didn't have enough to
worry about, I had to sit there and do BMI logs for every song I had to
play..... made lots of mistakes that day, somewhere I still have the
aircheck. But I walked away that night after shutting the station down at
midnight with this really satisfied feeling, I got through my first ever
air shift, and I couldn't wait till the following Sunday to get in there
and do another one.

Hard to beleive all of this has happened in the past 26 months!

all the best,
Jeremy