|
Home
Lion Broadcasting
1964-1969
Media/Jersey Horizons
1969 - 1974
Dick Bailey era I
1974 - 1979
Dick Baily era II - the Jackie Rose collection
"Cousin" Bruce Morrow
1980 - 1986
WMHQ
1986 - 1988
The death of WRAN
WRAN reborn (sort of...)
LINKS
EMAIL US
|
Me and Bert and Johnny
I started as the night DJ at WRAN in
October, 1978. By January, 1980, I had rocketed to
radio success and the morning drive shift. As part
of my daily routine I would check the wire (an old
Model 15 teletype machine) for stories I could use
on the air. On this particular morning was the news
of Bert Parks being fired after 25 years hosting the
Miss America pageant, a New Jersey tradition.
PERFECT! A local story I could use to rally
listeners to a cause: BRING BACK BERT! So I spent
many of the breaks in between songs exhorting my
listeners to get behind the campaign. The phones did not stop
ringing off the hook. I am only 23 at the
time, with little over a year's experience on the
air but I knew I had hit gold. To promote the
station (and, admittedly, myself) I asked the
newsman to call the Associated Press and tell them
about our campaign, which he did. An AP reporter
called me back and before I knew it, the story had
"hit the wires."
But not before Johnny Carson got into the act. That
evening he took to his bully pulpit and started his
own campaign to "Bring Back Bert" which, thanks to
our call to the AP earlier the same day, resulted in
my name being mentioned in the same article as the
King of Late Night - albeit as a tag line ("...David
Kruh, a disc jockey at WRAN in Randolph, New Jersey,
also urged a letter writing campaign to have Parks
rehired.")
People from all over the U.S. would send me clippings
from their local papers.
Here's a typical article, drawn almost
exclusively from the AP wire story...
While putting together
this new (as of September, 2020) page I googled the
story and, to my amazement, found a Washington Post
article from January, 1980 on line. One would expect
the venerable Washington Post - the nation's paper
of record -
to have spelled my name correctly. That the article
was written by Tony Kornheiser, a writer and ESPN
host whose work I have enjoyed for years, was a
pleasant surprise. But, come on, Tony, even the
reporter for our small local newspaper in Dover got
it right...
Now, the
following will not surprise anyone who knows me:
when I saw from the next morning's newspaper
that Carson had taken a public stand, I
contacted the Tonight Show. I know this sounds
crazy but I imagined them inviting me to Burbank
to appear on the Tonight Show to talk with
Carson about our campaign. (Hey,
it's like I used to say to my daughter as I put
her to bed when she was younger: "always dream,
and dream big.") Again, remember I'm just 23
years old and I'm seeing my name alongside
Carson's in articles like this:
This is how I imagined it would happen: The Tonight Show would
fly me out to the Coast. I would appear on the
couch and Johnny and I would bond over our
common cause. Afterwards, offers from major market
stations would pour in!
Yep... just waiting for the call... Should be
any minute now...
The call never came.
Disappointed, but undaunted, I still saw the
campaign had life. I boldly announced on the air
I would deliver the "hundreds of letters of
support" (okay, so maybe it was only dozens)
Bert had received and bring them to the pageant
committee in Atlantic City.
Now...
the Punchline (as could only happen at WRAN)
A few days after I began my "Save Bert Parks"
campaign, the station owner's sister, Rose (who did
some bookkeeping among other duties) asked to speak with me.
"Dick wants you to stop
talking about Bert Parks," she said.
"But why?" I protested. "We're
getting so much great publicity!"
"Dick has friends on the pageant
committee."
Of course he did. Probably explains
why a few years earlier when New Jersey was holding
a referendum on casino gambling in AC he wouldn't
sell airtime to a group opposed to gambling in the
state.
And so ended my great crusade for Bert Parks. I
gathered the hundreds (okay, okay... dozens) of
letters and sent them to him, along with a letter
describing my attempt to get his job back (something
that eventually happened in 1990.) In response, I
got this note which, I have to say, put a nice Coda
on the whole affair.
|
|