Real Names of Disc Jockeys

[Scott Fybush]

On 5/15/2013 6:13 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote:

> I think a pretty significant number still do, either because they
> established that name a long time ago, or simply to preserve their
> privacy.  (This is more important today than before, when people may
> have things like social network accounts that they don't want to
> intermix with their current employment.)

I think the trend is shifting, at least in the world of news. When I 
started at WBZ 20-some years ago, it was with some newsmen who had come 
of age a generation earlier when ethnic names were still frowned upon. 
That's how "Bernie Boehm" became "Bill Lawrence," for instance, long 
before his WBZ days, and how "Carl Haarer" was renamed "Carl Stevens" 
while he was working in New Hampshire.

That sort of thing doesn't happen so much anymore...just ask younger 
newspeople like Bernice Corpuz. And in the world of noncommercial radio 
where I now toil, it sometimes seems that the more ethnic and unusual 
the name, the better.

The social media issue doesn't seem to me to be as big a deal. I know 
plenty of 20- and 30-something on-air folks who use their own names on 
the air but still manage to separate their personal accounts from their 
on-air personas.