The Writing Is On The Wall

I knew something was up. I saw strange people coming and going, writing down serial numbers from our equipment. It was late 1992, and I just had a feeling that something bad was in the making. I had already been through the process of getting new ownership when I worked at WSLR/WKDD, WAKR/WONE,and WCUE.

It almost always started with strange people taking inventory, somebody figuring out what the property was worth. Then it would get eerily quite for a year, 18 months. Then would come the announcement: "We're sold." I knew what this meant: changes that would probably result in people losing their jobs. Then there would be a period of doubt, as the change went through the FCC. Maybe it won't happen. Maybe things will be better under the new owners. They'll all realize how underpaid we are, we'll get big raises and new equipment. Things will be better.

But by now, I had been around enough to know that wasn't going to happen.In fact, I had already developed what I tell my students to this day, I call them "Phil's Rules of Media."

Rule number one? "Sale always bad. Get out."

I went home that night and told my wife "I have to leave." We had just had our first daughter two months prior, so now I couldn't afford to risk losing my job. It might take two, three years for it to happen. But when it did, it would be ugly. I had time, I figured, to find a new gig. But I needed to get going.

As luck would have it, (and I know you're gonna think I'm making this up, but I swear it's true) the very next day our News Director, Mark Williamson dropped job postings on my desk.

"Did anybody here know the Akron Public Schools were looking for somebody to run their radio station?" Williamson asked. As per usual in any newsroom, he was greeted with grunts and guffaws. Who could possibly want to leave the glamour of TV for a school system?

I admit it. I casually slid the postings into my desk. I snuck them home that night, careful not to let anyone see them. I was destined for this job. By Thanksgiving of 1992, I would leave WAKC-TV 23 to become General Manger of WAPS-FM and APS-TV at the Akron Public Schools. I would escape the painful day that would come just over three years later, when allot of my friends would lose their jobs.

And I would start working for the person who would radically change my life.

Tune in next week...you won't believe what came next.