Radio roulette 

When I got my first transistor radio for my 13^th birthday (red with a silver grille), I discovered a game called radio roulette. I’d spin the tuning dial back and forth, from WMCA at 570 to WWRL at 1600, and wherever I stopped, I had to listen to that station for ten minutes, (although I may have given myself a pass if it was a Spanish-language station). 

Later, I’d wind up having random brushes with what could be called real-life radio roulette. 

WJRZ was a country music station (the term back then was “country and western”) with business offices on Main Street in Hackensack and a studio somewhere in the hinterlands of town near Route 4, a couple of sprawling cemeteries and a patch of wetlands that is likely long gone. In 1970, the station changed its call letters to WWDJ and its format to Top 40 – an uphill climb given the popularity and listening range of WABC in New York City. 

To promote the new format, a couple of deejays came to our high school for an assembly program. I can’t remember much detail, except that it got real embarrassing when they chose to play “Don’t Pull Your Love,” a slice of white bread performed by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds (comma placement is important here) at a deafening volume, while several black classmates laughed at the music and flashed mocking peace signs. White teen culture taking one on the chin. 

Pete Fornatale

By college I had a car with an FM radio, always tuned to WNEW-FM. My favorite deejay was Pete Fornatale, who had a likeable personality and delivery well-matched to his broadcast shift (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.), while championing uncool bands like the Beach Boys and Poco, and playing Buffalo Springfield well into the 70s. A true believer in the medium of radio, Fornatale put together what passed for a “multi-media” presentation back then (recordings from the radio matched up to a slide show) and took it around to college campuses. When he brought the show to my school, I made the time to be there. 

What I remember best from his presentation were his references to the power of a community of like-minded people tuned to the same radio station, his unmistakable voice not coming out of my car speakers, but from right there in the same room, and his opening line: “None of you look like what I pictured either.” 

I had a similar experience a few years later when I met Vin Scelsa, another WNEW deejay whose Sunday morning show was the definition of idiosyncratic and something I listened to every week. Speaking directly with someone whose voice you've heard for years through your stereo speakers can be a bit surreal. 

Then there were times when real-life radio roulette found me.  

When I was sports information director for Upsala College, our men’s basketball team went to the Division III Final Four, a big enough deal that some felt, understandably, that the game should be broadcast live over WFMU-FM, the former Upsala radio station whose studio was still on campus, although it was no longer officially affiliated with the school. The station agreed and several alumni traveled out to the game site in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lugging a heavy metal case holding the broadcasting equipment. 

The night of the game there were glitches – probably because the equipment looked like something Marconi would have experimented with in the 1890s – and a connection couldn’t be established. Unable to do a live broadcast, I became Plan B, calling into the station afterwards and being put live on the air to summarize the game. It worked out pretty well until some transcontinental telephone interference forced an end to the call.

One last spin of the dial occurred when I was working in corporate communications for the local electric utility and was on call after-hours when an outage blacked out Penn Station in Newark. At 5 a.m., WCBS-FM was looking for an update. So I wouldn’t wake anybody, I went down to the kid’s playroom and spoke with the reporter, then left early for work. During my drive in, the station played my soundbite during the news. I laughed, not just at hearing myself on the radio, but knowing that while some early morning listener might think this official spokesman was situated in some underground bunker, it was only me sitting on the floor in my underwear, surrounded by toys.