Rick & Ryan’s All Geek Marching Band

I’m hanging out in our new sports operations center and hear the haunting sounds of someone playing the mouth trumpet. I was surprised and delighted to discover our own Ryan Kormann riffing away. About this time, Rick Kennedy steps out of his studio to join in with Musical Hands. He insisted that he wasn’t warmed up and was a little nervous, but his musical gift was obvious.

TV audition tape

July (2002) will mark my 30th year in broadcasting. Sort of. I spent half of that time doing affiliate relations for a statewide news network. But I’ve been around radio for all of that time. Longer, really, since my father was a “radio announcer” (I like that so much better than “broadcaster” or “DJ”). I’ve now reached the point, however, that all those years are a liability rather than an asset. It dawned on me as I was filling out a profile of my experience. Ten or fifteen years is “experienced.” Thirty years is…too much experience. So I lied and put down fifteen years.

There was a time I thought I might try my hand at TV. I mean, it’s just radio with pictures, right. I rented a little studio time at a local station to make an audition tape  They pulled some stories from that day’s news and threw them up on the tele-prompter. The stories were: Rape and Carnal Abuse; 70-year-old Man Beaten and Robbed of Life Savings; Elderly Woman Dies in Head-on with Tractor Trailer Rig; Another Fatal Traffic Accident. I sent that tape to a few friends in the TV business and can onlly guess at the hours of laughter it must have produced. “More news after this…” Uh, no thanks.