Radio Names

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:16:53 -0400, "Ted Larsen" <tlmedia@intrstar.net> said:

> My real name is Thorvald Lauritsen. Not too good for radio. WMEX told me to 
> change it to "Ted Larsen." I thanked the short-lived Art Simmers.

For some people, their air name has become more "real" than the name
they were born with, notwithstanding what their driver's license says.
There are quite a few people on this list who are far better known by
a "nom de radiodiffusion" than any other, even among their friends.

I'm pretty sure most of the jocks I grew up listening to were using
their birth names, if perhaps shortened in the usual way.  (I'm pretty
sure you don't go on the air as "Ginny McGehee" or "Dena Yasner" or
"Walt Speck" if that's not your given name, at least in part!  And if
you're in a market that's a third Franco-American, "Rob Poulin" is not
likely to sound "too ethnic".)

Not so sure about the old(er) guys on WVMT, though -- Ernie Farrar is
the only one I can remember any more, and he's been a fixture for more
than four decades now.  (I can still sing[1] the "Ernie in the
Morning" jingle -- a custom sing of the "Imus in the Morning" jingle
in JAM's "Nothing But Class" WNBC package.  WVMT also used the
"dramatic legal ID staging bed", as the demo called it, but oddly
enough, not for the legal ID.)  My parents refused to pay extra for an
FM radio in the car, so from 1980 to 1986 my ride to school was
accompanied by Ernie Farrar.

-GAWollman

[1] For some values of "sing".  You probably don't want me to
demonstrate.