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 "I began my broadcast career
as an intern at age 17 for "The Real
Bob James" show on WKIS-AM 740 in
late 1982. That lead to me become a weekend board op and eventually led to full
time as a board op/producer for Harry D. Cup.
As things progressed, I was really in my element when "SportsTalk"
was added and
getting to work with Chris Russo as his producer. We perfected the art of
dialing the hotels where major leaguers stayed on the road and getting many of
them on the air. I also hosted a weekend scoreboard show and got to fill in for
Chris on occasion. Even interviewing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who was not much of a
talker and with my limited experience, may have been one of the worst broadcast
interviews ever! I was also the board op for the afternoon news block "PM
Orlando" with Wayne Trout and
Jim Philips (Clive Thomas eventually took
over for Wayne, who used to do a double, by hosting the morning block.) During
the mid-80’s, WKIS had really become something special. With Bob Christoper as
news director, we were scooping TV stations, newspapers and other radio
stations, and with Clive and Gene Burns anchoring the talk lineup, we were on
the verge of knocking WDBO-AM 580 off the perch as the dominant AM station in
the market. After General Manager Mike Gaier was replaced by
Bob Poe in 1986, I
followed Gaier to Tampa and went to work at WFLA-AM 970. Having been a life long
Orlandoan, I was home sick and returned from Tampa. I became the evening board
op at WOKB-AM 1600 which was running the "Heart and Soul" satellite
format. I also had a Saturday morning shift and with our station taking part in
an MLK (Dr. Martin Luther King) day parade, I decided to “get discovered”
and went live on my shift. When PD Willie “Roger”
Clark, who hosted
afternoon drive started to question me about it the following Monday when I came
in for my shift, I immediately confessed to my actions…he was expecting me to
make an excuse about losing the satellite feed. It lead to more on-air shifts
after we dropped the service. We made WOKB’s last run as an urban format as
"HOT 16". Given our studios were in Ocoee and separate from our office
downtown, it was not uncommon to have a few beers during a shift. In 1988,
"102Jamz" (WJHM-FM 101.9) was born and that pretty much did it for our
format and also our rival on the AM dial, WORL-AM
1270. WOKB took it’s first
turn with a Gospel format as WXXO(-AM 1600) "The Gospel Explosion". I
was promoted to Program Supervisor and assigned to our recently acquired
WRKT(-AM 1300) in Cocoa. The calls were changed to WXXU(-AM 1300) but continued
with it’s automated oldies format (outside of me hosting morning drive) for a
bit and then shifted it to Gospel as well. I would return to afternoon drive in
Orlando and eventually morning drive as would begin simulcasting on both 1600
and 1300. In 1990, Champion Broadcasting sold the stations which would go
Spanish and I was on to the next phase of my career. At WOKB / WXXO / WXXU, I
would work with Max Johnson and George Hampton (both of whom I worked with at
WKIS), Kevin G
(Gardner), Charles Morse, Chris Hill and
Stacey Freeman among
others. Next stop, WGTO-AM 540. They has just moved the studios to Ocoee and
relaunched as "Cruisin Oldies 54". I started part-time overnight
weekends and engineered the Saturday Night Cruise at Old Towne for Terry Mason
who was the PD. Florida Media (two doctors and a lawyer in Fort Myers) owned the
station. They hired out of market talent (at good money I’m sure) Robert J.
Wright, Hank Dole, Jerry Steffen but had very little advertising so you could
pretty much figure that would not last long. They would begin moving on and also
mass layoff would take place. After a year and half of part-time radio and
working at Lowe’s, I approached Bob Johnson who has just taken over as GM and
had worked with at WKIS about doing sales and doing sports reports in morning
drive. About 6 months later would be the famous "Black Friday" that
led to only 5 full-time employees being left: Myself, Merrill
Craig, Perry Moore
(who had just joined us as midday host and sales), Keith Feeney our business
manager and Jay Waggoner our chief engineer. We would go satellite oldies and
that would begin the most challenging time of my broadcast career and would also
end up being best time of it as well. Despite the odds of a small staff on a
stand alone AM, we began to turn things around. Perry Moore and I did mornings
so I got a chance to work with one of Orlando’s legends on the air. I would
also become Program Director by default and out of necessity. We started adding
some sports programming to our already existing Gators programming with UCF.
Terry Mason, who had gone to Oklahoma City would come back as GM. We changed the
music to "Fresh Oldies" (70’s and 80’s) with Dave Edwards
and Jay
Cresswell working on-air. Then the evolution continued towards talk and sports
programming. We brought on Ed Hartley,
Peter Rocchio and Clive Thomas after they
were dumped from WTKS-FM 104.1. Todd Wright who worked at WFNS in Tampa and I
had gotten to know covering Orlando Magic games came over after he got let go
there and became the first ever afternoon sports show in the market Along with
doing morning drive with Terry Mason, I would host a Magic-oriented pre-game
show from 6 to 7. In 1994, we would come within a whisker of getting broadcast
rights to the Orlando Magic. Much of the programming we proposed doing, WDBO-AM
580 would end up programming, quite reluctantly I’m sure. Our little successes
were starting to mount up. In late 1994, a deal was struck for Paxson
Broadcasting to buy WGTO. They had been in hot pursuit of the frequency for
quite awhile. Many of us would not be retained. In 1995 I would be asked back to
be the part-time board op for the morning show with Jerry O’Neill and
Greg
Warmoth on the all new "540 The Team", (WQTM-AM
540). After a few months I would be
the morning show producer. Slats from WDIZ(-FM 100.3) would replace O’Neill on
the morning show later. Later in 95, (WESH-TV) Channel 2’s Steve Rondinaro
announced he was moving to Boone, NC and buying two radio stations. Knowing
Steve from Channel 2’s news affiliation with WGTO and having him guest host on
our morning show, I inquired about going to work for him and came to an
agreement. In December of '95, he was about to get FCC approval on the deal –
and then the government shut down putting that on hold. As fate would have it,
once the dust finally settled on that and being recently married, my wife had
taken a job that she didn’t want to leave and I had to make a tough decision
and not join Steve in NC. In mid-1996 I would leave Paxson and go to work for an
ad agency. I would end up working for Terry Mason again at WOTS(-AM 1220) in
Kissimmee doing play-by play of Kissimmee Cobras baseball and the Friday Night
High School Game of the Week. The ad agency would end up closing their office
here and moving me to Knoxville, TN. In 1998, the agency went out of business
and I returned to Orlando. I ended up in publishing, joining the production
department at World Publications. The company is now known as Bonnier
Corporation and owns around 30 magazine brands and recently finished up a 17
year career there and have just started in customer service with GolfNow. I
currently reside in Apopka with my wife of 20 years, 2 dogs and 5 cats. I just
started doing a sports blog and podcast resurrecting my old radio name. My
website is jeffallensportstalk.com and my podcast is available on
iTunes,
SoundCloud and TuneIn. Feel free to drop me a line sometime at
jeffcassell22@earthlink.net
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