Thursday March 17, 2016
Cloudy 68°F/°C in Cedar Park, Texas 78613
Rain 65°F/ °C in Tauranga Harbor, New Zealand
Buongiorno,
My phone rang
shortly after midnight. My old buddy, John Stephens was calling from Tauranga,
New Zealand with some hot news about his retirement that’s going to enable me
to scoop the AARP Magazine, hands down. He has discovered the ecstasies and the
agonies of running a local radio station. And in so doing, he gives hope and
inspiration to every pensioner who slogged for a lifetime in the workplace just
to be able to retire and collect a pension that would enable the retiree to
enjoy his or her Golden Years to sit
in a rocking chair on the front porch of the old folks home wrapped in a
blanket and sucking on a lemon.
 |
| The ParadiseFM Gang! |
I’ll insert the
link to John’s enterprise ParadiseFM.co.nz right here, so you can check it out while I
tell you the rest of the story. (You can also check it out on IHeartRadio).
I met John in 1989
when I signed on for what I thought would be a short stint as News Secretary to
then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Ira Reiner. John was an Investigator/Photographer
assigned to the DA’s Bureau of Investigation. He was the real version of the
guy with the camera that you see in every detective movie, moving around the
crime scene taking flash photos that the detectives need for their cases. He
also shot most of the publicity photos released by the department, including
celebrity mug shots. A lot of his handiwork was included in the press releases
that Sandi Gibbons and I produced for the department during those tumultuous
years in the early 1990s. Among the notable cases were the McMartin child
molestation trials, Charles Keating-Lincoln Savings scandals, the Rodney King
case, the Menendez Brothers case, and, of course – O.J. Simpson.
John was not only a
cracker-jack still photog, but he became a fine video guy as well. He not only
shot videos to bolster our prosecutors court cases, but he worked with me on
the video material that we included as part of our news releases and the
television program that the department produced for the public access and government
access cable TV channels throughout Los Angeles County. During his career with
the district attorney’s office, John was the go-to guy for images, photos and
video for half a dozen District Attorneys. No mean feat in a highly volatile
workplace with lots of strong political swirls of every variety. (John is in
the accompanying photo, helping to hold the banner in the back row).
In 2001, I headed
up to Sacramento to a new job with the State of California and John stayed on
to finish his enlistment with Los Angeles County. We stayed in touch over the
years, with occasional visits and lots of phone calls as he took on the task of
maintaining the original www.mikebotula.com
even after I retired. Then his own
retirement date approached and he told me, I’m
going to New Zealand! Wow! I thought. New
Zealand? Geez! Talk about a surprise. Straight out of left field. And, off
he went with his new wife to a new life Down
Under. I found a new webmaster – ME – and John and I stayed in touch via Skype as far-flung friends do in this
internet age.
As John got
rooted-in in his new surroundings, he connected with a local radio station and
embarked on a new path, radio disc jockey. That’s a species that is nearly
extinct in the United States, but local radio is still going strong Down Under. Not content to just be doing
a program on a local radio station, my friend the former crime-scene photo
decided he wanted his own radio station. That’s what his midnight phone call
was all about. Wednesday midnight in Texas, but 6 a.m. Thursday in Tauranga, New
Zealand, on the other side of the International Date Line and below the
Equator. Valentine’s Day 2016 was a warm summer day down under as Paradise
first went on the air.
To quote a line
from the local Weekend Sun newspaper,
It's unlike any paradise you've ever seen – four walls of concrete, the rooms
blackened out with curtains and foam padding, and in mid-February, little to be
seen of the actual summer vista that lies outside.
What ParadiseFM’s listeners hear is, a whole mix of genres, starting with Americana and under that banner
comes alternative country, folk, reggae, blues, plus we also feature a lot of
NZ music and contemporary tracks from rock albums, with an additional emphasis
on Irish and Scottish music, to further quote The Sun.
What really tickles
me is not just the good news from an old friend that he’s embarked on a new
career in a whole new world, but the fact that one of my old loves is alive and
well – local radio. I literally spent my formative years having the time of my
teenaged life spinning 78 r.p.m. discs at my hometown radio station, rattling
off the lost pet notices, and other local news and picking up the constantly
ringing phone to hear requests and advice from our listeners. At that time and
at that level we didn’t need to rely on ratings and focus groups to tell us how
we were doing. People picked up their phones or stopped you on the street to
tell you personally.
ParadiseFM is a
low power operation by contemporary broadcast standards, but through internet
streaming, including IHeartRadio, it has a global reach. And I wish my old
buddy, John Stephens, Buon Viaggio!
on his new career.
Ciao,
MikeBo
(MikeBo’s Blog is a wholly owned subsidiary of www.mikebotula.com , and is linked to Facebook, and Twitter and Google Plus!)
© By Mike Botula 2016
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