Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #7 / Move to KTRM

Sometimes the signage was on the move...

This guy made easy money, as all he did was slowly wend his way through the crowds in the Youth Shopping District.

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
My time at KOBS was indeed a wonderful experience, full of memories and pride in where I worked.  But it was time to move on; due to an alignment of unfortunate circumstances it became more and more painful to make that drive to my old hometown of Orange.  So I used the reel-to-reel machines in the studio to make some air checks, and applied at KTRM in Beaumont, a country music AM station.

Now these were the days when KTRM occupied an old white one-story house on some property adjacent to Parkdale Mall.  The living room was partitioned to make rooms for a reception desk and office space, and the bedrooms were converted into a transmitter room, the broadcast and production studios, and a newsroom.  Seeing real modern broadcast equipment and being around real professional broadcasters in a much larger city made me feel like I'd hit the big time.

The reason I got hired there was because their part-time weekend guy, Ray Gedaley, had given his notice and they needed someone to take his place to work the midnight-to-six shift on weekends.  I had befriended Henry LaRocca at Beaumont-Charlton Pollard High School and he helped me get a foot in the door.  Also there at that time were Kevin Brennan in news, Robert "X" Brown, Gary Powers as program director, and a midnight-to-six guy that was the music director.  Jim Lago also worked there, and Marty Adelman.

I was trained by Ray Gedaley and Gary Powers, and must admit was more than a little intimidated by the technology and much higher level of professionalism.  There were cart machines that utilized primary, secondary and tertiary lighted cues; timing of songs and announcements had to be exact, down to the second, to hit the network news just right; answering more than one phone line for a much broader audience; monitoring a hot line for VIP's and emergency broadcasts, etc. etc.  Also I had to learn a whole new genre of music, changing from Top 40 to Country (mostly classic).  Later on I would learn to handle the board for remote broadcasts and sports games, and would occasionally substitute for an absentee.  All of this was quite a change and a giant step up from what I'd experienced at KOBS.

Yours truly operating the board at KTRM.  As can be compared with this post, the equipment was professional - not homemade like at KOBS.  Note the carts to my left, something that was beyond what Mr. Kobs was willing to pay for on his shoestring budget.