Dr. Al stories? Oh yeah! Al had made his second departure from WKGN
by the time I met him. The first one was to WIL in St Louis when the
remarkable Dave Diamond hired him to do nights. The second was to
program WKDA in Nashville. When I met him, Al was on his way from
Nashville to Cincinnati and WKRC and I was on WKGN. We never worked
together there, but I caught up with him about a year later at WKRC,
where I became assistant PD and music director.
One of my Dr. Al stories comes from just after that:
I
had been hired to rework WEBR in Buffalo from a tired old standards
station into an adult contemporary format. Having worked with Al at WKRC
in Cincinnati and admiring his talent, I hired him to do nights on
WEBR. Weren't quite ready to squeeze the trigger on the new format yet,
so I had told him to stay put for a couple of weeks before turning in
his resignation. He was set to do that in about three days when I got
this call from the new PD at WKRC - a really good midday man the station
had promoted beyond his competence. He asked me if I had any place for
Al, because they were "going in a different direction" in Cincinnati.
This was a really nice guy, but I had to let this joke play out. "Aw,
Jerry, I'm sorry, but I don't," I told him. "Gee, if I had known this
just two days ago... I already hired a guy for the last shift I had
open. Jerry felt awful. I immediately called Al and told him to let 'KRC
fire him. He did. Instead of working out two weeks of notification, Al
walked away that day with something like a month's severance and went on
my payroll the next week. He chuckled about that all the way to
Buffalo.
thanks for hangin' with the Possum
