I worked in newspapers for more than 20 years before I joined CFIS radio a couple of years ago.
At first, when I started with the community radio station, I was doing some public service announcements and the occasional bit of voice-tracking, where, for instance, I may come in on Sunday and record the voice parts that go between the songs on Monday between 10 and 2.
The first few times I did the voice-tracking, I was given the midnight to 4 slot, I assume on the assumption it would be harder to mess things up there.
I’ve always liked the music from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which is basically what we play on CFIS, so I had no trouble occasionally dropping in a trivia note about one of the artists or songs.
If I was playing The Loco-Motion, for instance, by Little Eva, I might note that her version went to Number 1 on the Billboard charts, the version done by Grand Funk also went to Number 1, and the version by Kylie Minogue was a Number 3 hit. That’s the same song, in three quite different styles, all making the top five.
Then I was asked if I would be willing to host the After Nine talk show. I was worried at first about whether I would be able to come up with enough questions to talk to a guest for 15 or 20 minutes.
What I found out very quickly was it was really no different from all the years I did interviews for newspapers. You do some research, you prepare some questions, you ask the questions, you listen to the answers and usually get some more questions from them.
I did find one big difference, however, between doing interviews for newspapers and doing interviews for radio.
When I did an interview for the paper, the job was just starting. I still had to go back to the office and write the story up.
On radio, when the interview is done, it’s done.
That’s kind of nice.