"Big Time Radio"

“Hey! I was looking for you.” Joe jumped up and brushed past the other salesmen’s desks to meet me at the front of the bull pen. He handed me a pink While You Were Out slip. Joe and I went back a few years as salesmen (the term salesperson wasn’t in use in 1983) at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling, WV.

“It’s an out of state area code, so I thought you might want to call back right away.” Joe watched my face for any sign of recognition, eager to see if I had any information to share. He returned to his desk disappointed.


It’s true I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew the area code meant Pittsburgh, and any number that ended in three zeros must be important, so I made an excuse to leave the bull pen, and head for the payphone in the back of the lingerie department of Stone and Thomas.

“Good Morning, KDKA-Radio, how may I connect your call?”

If country music giant WWVA-AM was the 50,000 watt voice of the Ohio Valley, the coal miners and the steelworkers, KDKA-AM was the 50,000 watt news and talk king of the neighboring tri-state region. It was also the voice of the Steelers, the Pirates, and the Penguins. KDKA was big time radio.

The number I dialed was picked up on the third ring, which I felt lent a very professional air to the call, and made me think of Loretta, our receptionist at WWVA, who answered our phone whenever she got around to it. Loretta was hired to work the front desk even though her husband was the sales manager for a competing station, because she had a great first name, like Loretta Lynn, and she was a greater fan of WWVA than her husband’s radio station. But she still wasn’t fast at answering the phone.

“May I speak to Gene Burrows please? I’m a sales rep at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling returning his call.”

I was on hold just a few seconds.

“Well hello! This is Gene Burrows, sales manager here at KDKA. We’ve been hearing some interesting things about you up here. I wonder if you’d like to interview for a position with us?”

I was excited to hear that Gene sounded black. I figured if a black man could be a sales manager up there in Pittsburgh, maybe a woman could be too. In preparation for the interview, I went to Sears and bought a grey suit, with an aqua pinstripe and a fake hanky in the breast pocket. It took me almost a week to find a blouse to match the pinstripe exactly.

My appointment was scheduled for the third floor conference room of the KDKA-TV/Radio offices in Three Gateway Center. This was the age of one of Pittsburgh’s first Renascence. There have been several since, but the one in the early 80s really took. There were new parking garages and downtown malls and lots of new ways to get turned around.

The day of the interview I was greeted as I came out of the elevator. Gene nearly shouted, “How ya doin’? Find your way all the way up here to Pittsburgh okay?” He was handsome and well dressed and seemed extremely at home in this big building. “And I see you bought a new suit for the occasion. Nice stuff!”

Gene walked me to a glass walled conference room with a long shiny table that could seat at least 16 people.

“Is anyone else joining us?” I asked while looking at all the chairs and deciding where to sit.

“No just us for now. Roxanne, our station manager may join us after we talk a bit.”

I took the chair at the head of the table and twirled around on it a bit. “Nice chairs!” I took a 360 degree twirl. “Do they all go around like this?”

Gene laughed. “They sure do.”

“Neat.” I took a minute to look out over the central area of  the KDKA sales offices. There were a lot of young, good looking people walking around. They all looked like they had someplace important to go and were in a hurry to get there. A few stopped to glance in at Gene and me. “Who are all those people?” I asked.

“They’re secretaries, traffic coordinators, copy writers, producers...” He jumped up from his seat and tapped on the glass. “Hi Brad!” He pointed and waved at a handsome man in his late twenties dressed in a blue pinstripe shirt with a white collar. “That’s one of our salesmen over there. He’s doing a great job for us.”

I wanted to say, Well, I do a great job too. I’m the number one sales rep at WWVA. But since that wasn’t appropriate at the time, I waited for Gene to continue.

“We think you can do a great job too.” He said as he sat down.

Now we were back in track. “I know I can.” I said. “My specialty is opening new business.”

Gene nodded. “So I’ve heard. I know you took a few sales from us where our coverage overlaps in Washington, PA. The Taco Bell franchise was one. We’re hoping you can do that sort of thing for us.”

I nodded proudly, and looked out again over the offices. This place was nothing like the bull-pen back at WWVA. Everyone looked smart and sure of themselves. Everyone seemed to be on a mission. In Wheeling, the highlight of the day was lunch, when we decided whether to go to Rax or the diner near Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. Here, excitement seemed to self-generate. I felt energy here and I liked it.

At that moment I decided to say whatever I had to say to get this job. Long commute from Wheeling? No problem. No base of accounts to work on? No problem. The job was  based mostly on commission? No problem.

After about an hour and a half of saying what I thought Gene wanted to hear, he called in Roxanne, who also complimented me on my suit, and offered me the job.

My only regret about leaving WWVA was that I knew I’d miss one of the other salesmen, Doug. I’d developed a serious crush on him that I felt guilty about since we were both married. I never acknowledged my crush, but I think he knew. And I always hoped he felt the same. Still neither of us ever crossed any lines. Doug never betrayed his wife Helen in the slightest, and that endeared him to me even more.

The guys back at the bull pen were shocked when they heard of my leaving, since no one left WWVA under their own power. That shock quickly morphed into a dogfight for my accounts, with Doug getting Ron Small Mobile Homes. This was only fair considering Doug was the one who got Ron to pay the bill for the remote I sold him. After that experience, I got cash in advance 90% of the time, and that was enough to make me a hero to station management.

I realized right away the atmosphere at KDKA was far different than anything I’d experienced. The sales people went out for cocktails, not beers, and the women dressed in complete coordinated outfits from big name department stores like Joseph Horne’s and Kaufman’s. Many of them were from other cities, like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Hardly anyone was home grown.

My job was to “develop and expand” the base of accounts at KDKA. Normally that would mean convincing newspaper advertisers to spend their money with us instead of on print media. But in this case it mostly meant grabbing a share of the revenue generated by the salesmen at the competing FM stations.
FM stations were growing in number and in attractiveness to advertisers. Listeners were younger and the number of commercials sold was limited to eight minutes an hour. In contrast, the FCC allowed AM stations to run 18 minutes of ads an hour, and KDKA always ran the maximum. So besides spending time over the next few weeks practicing my phone pitch and learning about the station’s ratings, I spent hours learning how to combat this growing threat.

I was taught to tell clients if they advertised on an FM station, because the frequency was “line of sight”, their commercials would crash to the ground as soon as the radio signal hit a building. Then I was to assure them that if they bought ads on our AM station, their commercials would bounce mountain to mountain and would end up in Canada on a clear night. This would have been great if any of the businesses I called on had branches in Ottawa, but since none did, I didn’t have a lot of faith in this strategy.

And if I needed a clincher, I was to tell customers that in times of natural disaster, listeners turned to AM stations like ours for news and information. But since I couldn’t always count on a hurricane or tornado to make my quota, this angle never looked too promising either.  In short, this was going to be a tough gig, and as always in sales, the clock was ticking.

Gene created an office for me in a little room with one small window near the ceiling, at the end of a brightly lit hall. The office was also used to store old advertising copy, and miscellaneous station give-aways. Brad and Laura, two of the more successful and established sales reps, shared an office “suite” across from me. Brad was from New York City, owned his own tuxedo, and got manicures. Laura was from Boston, and carried a designer handbag she bought at Saks. She spent quite a bit of time on the station’s watts line talking with her former sorority sisters who were located around the country. Both of them had desks big enough to pull chairs up to for visitors.

A lot of Brad’s and Laura’s sales calls were made to ad agencies right in the same building, which meant they could go on appointments in the winter, even if it was snowing outside without putting on a coat, much less several layers. Rumor had it that bigger things were in store for both of them.

Both of them stopped regularly in my office before or after calls to ask me how I was doing and just to hang out. Brad loved to hear about life in Wheeling and was fascinated with my apparent fear of getting stuck on the wrong end of a bridge or tunnel. Laura liked to talk about make-up and hair, and asked me several times where I had my hair permed.

Gene got into the habit of visiting me in my office every morning about nine o’clock. He’d walk in, look around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, and ask, “What’s new?”

Of course I took that to mean did you sell anything. It wasn’t very long before I started to dread this simple morning greeting because I had nothing concrete to offer up in return. I didn’t even have a nibble to report.

The same day Roxanne, the station manager, a very tall, very thin, Smith graduate with a perfectly cut blonde bob who pronounced negotiate, “ne-go-see-ate” with a long e, instead of “ne-go-she-ate” like most people, stopped in to ask me what was new, I took out the list of WWVA clients I had stuck in the back of my notebook for good luck, and found a map of the tri-state region.

The tri-state region ran east approximately to Altoona, Pa, south to Morgantown, West Virginia, north to Youngstown, Ohio and east to Zanesville, Ohio, home of the first Taco Bell in the region, and a must stop destination for Doug and I whenever we were in town to make a call or collect money from a delinquent advertiser. Doug always brought home a couple of tacos for Mary from those trips, which I saw as tremendously gallant.

WWVA and KDKA are both smack in the middle of the Valley, about 50 miles apart, with a definite overlap in coverage area. I looked at my desk calendar for a moment, noted the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, and knew where I could go to sell something.

I drove south on I-79, on the alert for any new or temporary signs near the highway or just off the exits. A small flat bed truck with an uncovered load of brightly colored cartons, signaling to make an exit, looked interesting. On a hunch, I followed it off the exit, parked on the shoulder, and watched as the flatbed followed a fresh set of tire tracks over the grass toward a big white tent with a couple of banquet tables placed out front. The driver got out and stapled a huge sign on what looked like a sawed off telephone pole stuck in the ground. The sign read: “Big Bang Fire Works! If It Explodes, and It’s Legal Anywhere, We Got it! Best Prices in the Tri-State!”

It would have been a very bad move to invade this guy’s territory without warning. Big Bang was what Doug and I called “shaky”, as in shaky shacks, our name for mobile homes, among other things. We used to drive down the highway and point at one business or another and pronounce it shaky based on its looks, or its history with the station, or just an instinct we had. Lots of things can be shaky. People, accounts, even situations, for that matter, can be shaky, and can fall apart at the slightest provocation. So I waved my arms and shouted from the shoulder of the road.

“Hey Dave! It’s me.” I walked slowly across the grass. Fortunately his name had come to me at the last second. “The sales lady from WWVA! Remember me from last year?” He put down his staple gun.

“Yeah! I remember you! You’re from W-W-V-A Radio.” He did a fairly good imitation of my phone sales voice. “And you want to sell me advertising! You want my money! You want my wallet!” He ran on like that for a while.

“I’m with KDKA now.”

A look that was wary, but maybe a little impressed, crossed his face.

“So no more free Saturday night Jamboree tickets.”

“No, afraid not, but I have something even better for you. New customers.” I pulled out my KDKA coverage map. “You can cover Wheeling, Steubenville, Weirton, and Pittsburgh with KDKA.”

“Maybe I want to try an FM station this summer, get a new younger, partyin’ crowd that likes to shoot it up big for the fourth.”

I let Dave bust me a little before I went on.

“Yeah, right, your ad will run all the way from the FM station’s tower to the first hill and splash! Into the ground! Look at the coverage I can give you! And on the Fourth of July, where else are you going to advertise?! KDKA was the first commercially licensed station in the United States, and it’s the only station with call letters that start with K east of the Mississippi!”

I don’t know what that had to do with anything, but it seemed to work. Dave was so sold on KDKA he gave me a bunch of firework samples to bring back to the station for the on air talent to play with. Dave didn’t know that while advertisers always want the announcers to try their product, the truth is, most samples end up in the sales department.

Since I wasn’t the only one in this conversation who knew Dave was shaky on payment, Dave walked back to the canvas tent, and returned with a cloth bag and a Redwing shoe box. He shoveled handfuls of fives, tens, and twenties out of the sack and into the box. Then he shook it a little to spread out the bills. “I bet that‘s fifteen hundred dollars.”

“And I bet you’re right!” I said, and added that the ability to estimate things was a sign of superior intelligence. “But we have to be sure. Pittsburgh accountants, you know.”

So we counted out the bills together, and I threw the shoebox and the samples in the back seat of my car, into the empty laundry basket I used for occasional dry cleaning runs. It was late and I wanted to get back to the station.

All the salesmen reported in at the end of the day to book their orders because of the 18 minute commercial limit. No one could risk getting shut out, and we were coming up on the busy Fourth of July weekend. It was first come, first served, which led to some pretty crazy races to the traffic desk and more than a few nasty blow ups. I hustled up I-79 in order to get to the station in time to strut around a bit before the race was on.

As I drove up to the station, Roxanne and Gene waved me down. I’d completely forgotten that we were supposed to make calls together that afternoon. Gene stuck his head in my window, “We knew you wouldn’t forget. What appointments do you have set for us? ”

Roxanne got in the front seat, Gene climbed in the back beside the laundry basket.

Before I could answer Gene asked, “What do you have here? Dynamite?”

Gene had a real nervous laugh. So did Roxanne.

“And in the shoebox, is this your money? I see a little grass in there too.” Another giggle. Roxanne turned to look, twisting her neck at an unnatural angle.

“No and no. It’s a surprise.” I told them. “You’ll see.”


We got back to the station at about a quarter to five, and I followed the two of them up to the offices happily carrying my basket. After a quick stop at my desk, I grabbed a few of the firework samples and hurried to the ladies room where I prepared to take advantage of what I felt was a unique opportunity to impress my fellow salespeople and sales management.

My sense of showmanship told me that before I could regale my audience with the tale of how I snatched a sale from the jaws of the FM enemy, I first had to get everyone’s attention. So when I hip checked the glass door to the sales department, I was all smiles and both hands were blazing.

At first there was just silence. It even got quiet around the traffic desk. I could hear Brad on the phone, reading a 30 second spot to his big account- a local chain of tire stores. He trailed off at about 20 seconds. I figured –they’re all mesmerized. So I reached in my jacket pocket and snagged a long roll of Chinese firecrackers with my pinky. I lit them with the sparkler in the other hand.

The secretary closest to me screamed first, followed by the girl at the traffic desk. Laura grabbed her purse and hid under her desk, pulling the phone down with her. Gene and Roxanne both ran out of their offices into the hall. The janitor pushed through the double doors with a stack chair over his head, ready to swing. He was a brave guy I guess, looking back at it.

At first, I tried to stomp out the firecrackers. When that didn’t work, I ran past the traffic desk to get the jug off the water cooler, but one of the other salesman stepped in first and extinguished the mess with a 7-11 big gulp of coke.

 Shortly after that I heard a siren in the distance. Then I heard Brad and Laura and the rest of them laughing.

Roxanne called me back into her office the next day. Gene was there too.

“You understand, I’m sure, after yesterday’s visit from the fire department, we are not going to accept this order from your fireworks person- Big Bang Fireworks.”

“Why not?” Admittedly, things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped yesterday, but this development still shocked me. “I got cash in advance! And now Big Bang will advertise on an FM station!”

“Be that as it may, there are many laws surrounding the sale of fireworks in the tri-state region. Group W, a Westinghouse Corporation, and owner of KDKA, does not want to incur any unnecessary litigation should there be an incident.”

“But can’t we have a disclaimer or something… we ran his spots at WWVA.”

“This is not WWVA, and I am not here to ne-go-see-ate with you.” Her blond hair quivered and bobbed. “Return the money with our regrets. And bring him a KDKA mug.”

I looked over at Gene. He looked at the crease in his pants. He told me he had to agree with Roxanne. No sale. Then he looked up and smiled, and asked me how I ever found this guy. I refused to smile back, and I certainly refused to tell him my trade secrets.

After the meeting I was even more resolved to make it at KDKA. I wanted to be invited for cocktails with Brad and Laura and the rest of the sales staff. I wanted to shop at Loehmans with Roz Goldstein, or be asked a glamorous question like could a person travel around Europe (Europe!) without knowing a second language. I wanted to be a person marked for bigger things.

So I kept at it. I’d learned in life so far, that if I wanted something, I only had to work hard, laser my energy, and apply my ability to think on my feet. I put it in overdrive and I made a few sales. There wasn’t a lot of long term business developing, not a lot of repeat business, but I always got cash in advance. And none of businesses I sold ever bought ads on  FM stations.

After a few months, I was called into Roxanne’s office again.

Once again Roxanne was behind her desk and Gene was playing lieutenant.


Roxanne started the conversation. “You’re one of the best, most talented reps we’ve seen here. No one in this room is saying you can’t sell. In fact we wanted to ride with you that day to see what it is you say to close these deals.”



Gene jumped in, “We thought after we turned down the fireworks order, you would have understood…”



He trailed off and waited for me to finish his thought, but I just sat there, and refused to help him out.



So he continued, “…we thought you understood. Our goal is to develop long term, solid business here. We want accounts that can grow with us, that have potential to be with us long term. These accounts you’ve brought us, they...” again he trailed.



“They all paid cash in advance is what they did …I never added a penny to the receivable problem you guys have.” I made the deadly pronoun switch from “we have” to “you have.”



Roxanne responded, ”Yes, cash is necessary at times for certain advertisers, like concert promoters, but the need to get cash in every case means we are dealing exclusively with bad credit risks. That’s not the portfolio of accounts we care to accumulate. Besides, half the sales you bring in here can’t be broadcast.


“But, but, but……” I actually stuttered. Roxanne put up her hand.



“Let me finish. This is a very high profile radio station and we all have very important jobs here. KDKA doesn’t advertise hair restorers. We don’t make outlandish promises on products that are not FDA approved. We don’t advertise DSMO for pain. My understanding is that DMSO, whatever that stands for, may be approved for use as horse liniment, but that’s all.”



“Well, I had two real testimonials, from grandmothers. And I know they were considering buying an FM station before I sold them.” I could literally feel my hair stand on end. “You said you wanted new accounts! All the big accounts are taken!"



Gene went on, “That professor who advertised with us for test subjects. His ad said he wanted healthy men and women between the ages of twenty two and thirty for an experiment at his university and he would pay them five hundred dollars each. He got a lot of responses, but we handled the fall out when the university found out he was conducting some sort of sex study, off campus, unsanctioned and without their knowledge.



“He was basically a voyeur for God’s sake.” Roxanne added, taking in deep breathes. She was way ahead of the curve and already into yoga. “When you took his money after his own campus radio station turned him down, didn’t that tell you something?”


“It told me I was scoring one for the AM side!” Now I was past ruffled, and onto wise cracks.


Roxanne ignored this. “Frankly, the most solid account you’ve brought us is the Starving Artist’s Group, and they only come to the Ramada once a year.”



From wisecracks I went to sarcasm. “Hey what about the gold buyers? Sometimes they stay in town for two weeks. And the Starving Artists come twice a year.”


“Still, you can’t build an advertiser portfolio based on the price of gold, or art sold by the yard. Needless to say, we have to wonder here at KDKA, if we have a match.”


I could have gotten mad. That would have been all right, natural enough. I could have cried, and been disappointed, again that would have been all right.  But what I got was worse. I got humiliated.

That’s the worst response I could have had, because that kind of naked embarrassment makes a person want to fight and cry at the same time. It makes people want to hide away and beat up on themselves, but only after they’ve taken their anger and frustration out on the people who’ve made them fall so completely, so miserably, out of love with themselves.


Comments made to me over the past several months raced through my mind. Glen, congratulating me on my new suit. Roxanne laughing, and telling me I’d lived in Wheeling too long after I mistook a book case for a gun cabinet. Laura commenting on my perm for the twentieth time; with Roz following up, asking me if I wanted her to recommend a new hairstylist. Brad telling me to call the things that hold up men’s pants braces, not suspenders, and informing me that not only movie stars owned tuxedos.

I got up from my seat, walked silently to my office at the end of the hall, and sat on the edge of my chair. The view from the little window held me transfixed for at least fifteen minutes, and would have for a while longer, if I hadn’t noticed Brad and Laura hovering in the doorway. The realization that these two may have known what had gone on in my meeting was beyond contemplation, but definitely not beyond addressing.

“What do you two want!?”

Laura jumped a good foot. “Nothing!”

Brad tried a smile. “We just wanted to know if you’re all right.”

I stood up and grabbed a bunch of files, piling them in the center of my desk.

“All right? Am I all right? I’m all right. Are you all right?”

While Brad and Laura backed out of my doorway into their offices, I gathered as many files as I could in both arms, and grabbed my WWVA tote bag from under the desk. “Cause I’m all right. I’ve never been better!”

I remember shouting to no one in particular as the elevator doors shut, “I listen to FM radio as a matter of fact! Cause there aren’t so many damn commercials!!!!” and leaving a trail of manila folders from my desk to the main entrance of Three Gateway Plaza.

After I spent 15 minutes wandering in a daze looking for my car, I finally found it in an alley, and dumped everything in the back seat. Then I got lost and turned around a few times on one-way streets, searching for a sign pointing to I-79 South. Eventually I found my way to the mall in Wheeling which felt like a safe place to pace and disappear inside myself. I ended up at my favorite payphone which was in the narrow corridor closest to Sears, next to the water fountain and the ladies room.

“Hi Doug! How are ya ?"

“Ms. KDKA! What are you doin’ callin’ us good ole boys down here in Wheeling? I thought you were gettin’ too big time for us down here?” Doug sounded genuinely surprised to hear from me, but also genuinely pleased. “How’s everything goin’ up there in Pittsburgh, at K-D-K-A?” Doug strung the letters out slowly.

“Pretty good, I guess.”

“Just pretty good?”

“Well, pretty good, but, shaky.”

“Shaky?” He repeated. He spoke slowly. “Shaky people? Situations? Customers?”

“Everything. All three.”

“Well,” Doug said, “That’s pretty shaky alright.” There was silence on the line for a few seconds. “Hey, did you eat yet? There’s a special out at the diner. I can round up the other salesmen, and maybe after lunch, we can all stop in at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. We can rattle his cage, get a payment from him. We can always use your expertise in these sorts of situations.”

“Anything I can do to help.” I said and I meant it. “Glad to be of use.”