Chapter One: Getting On the Air
This short book is for everybody who has ever dreamed of becoming the next Michael Buffer (booming announcer for HBO boxing shows); or even the next Ryan Seacrest, radio host and announcer for the once wildly popular, American Idol. Perhaps your ambitions are more modest. You only want to be a disc jockey on your own radio show or be the news reader on your town’s television station.
These jobs are very easy to procure. All you have to do is obtain a degree from Emerson College in Boston, Syracuse University or Boston College.
The only problem is that Emerson costs about $50,000 per year. At $57,000, B.C. is not much of a bargain. And Syracuse will run you about $53,000.
Of the three Emerson is probably the best value because it produces much of the nation’s top talent. A quick check of notable alums includes, Jay Leno, Tim Burton, Norman Lear, Spalding Gray, Dennis Leary, Brandon Lee, Henry Winkler, and thousands of others - many of whom are local and national radio personalities and news anchors.
What was perhaps the best broadcasting school in the Northeast does not exist anymore. It was Grahm Junior College, which occupied four huge buildings in Boston’s historic Kenmore Square. From 1957 until about 1980, thousands of students learned valuable money making skills of the announcing trade at Grahm. A high percentage of alumni went on to important positions in network and local broadcasting.
The school did not spit out as many big names as Emerson or Boston College, but it did place virtually every one of its pupils in a good paying broadcast job. And it did it for a lot less money than the schools with more prestige. .
Grahm Junior College - 1960s
Some of the jobs learned at Grahm were in front of the mike or camera and many of the positions were behind the scenes vocations in production or other facets of the communications industry.
I graduated in 1964 when the school was still growing and expanding at the rate of about thirty per cent per year. Located near Fenway Park, the college was literally in the middle of the best that Beantown had to offer. Scollay Square was giving way to the brand new Prudential Building. The Red Sox were always at the bottom of the American League standings, so when my fellow students and I, went to the ballpark we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
Boston Garden was home to the World Champion Celtics who almost never lost back in the day. With Bill Sharman, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinson and Bill Russell, the Celtics won the NBA Championship eight straight times between 1959 and 1966!!! You can look it up!!!!!!!!
Graduates of Grahm during my time there included Gary LaPierre, a legendary Boston radio personality who led Boston's top rated, WBZ news team for decades.
LaPierre, working for Westinghouse’s top station which reached 38 states, was one of America’s most listened to newsmen. Perhaps his most famous broadcast was his deathbed interview of David Brudnoy.
Brudnoy, an evening talk show host with very high ratings, had fought a long and very public battle with cancer. Just hours before Brudnoy died, he and LaPierre did an extensive, poignant interview that was broadcast live.
Brilliant performance artist Andy Kaufman claimed that he learned Transcendental Meditation while at Grahm. There was no such course at the college, but that doesn't mean he didn't learn it.
Like many students at Grahm, Andy participated in the student radio and television stations, WCSB. He began formulating many aspects of his act during his time in Boston. Kaufman went on to become one of the weirdest, yet most fascinating comics of all time.
Andy Kaufman
Andy Kaufman with a Grahm Junior College WCSB-TV production of a children’s puppet show.
Andy’s character Latka, on the sitcom Taxi, was based on his earlier creation of a funny little guy that he called ‘foreign man’.
While I was a student at Grahm, I learned the Blues, Jazz, and 'the Dozens', from the coolest teacher on campus - a black janitor who befriended me.
The man knew music!!!! I learned more from him that I could from any of the professors.
One of the things I learned from him was “The Dozens”. Most common among African Americans, it’s an insult game where one person faces off against the other to see who can hurl the biggest insult.
There were a few recorded versions of the dozens in the 1950s; with throbbing backing instrumentals in the style of Bo Diddley or Johnny Otis.
Here’s a brief example of a battle of The Dozens, performed in ‘call and response fashion:
THE CALL: "Your girlfriend is so ugly, she looks like she was whupped with a ugly stick!"
THE RESPONSE: "Oh yeah. Well, YOUR girlfriend is so ugly, when she cries, the tears go down the back of her head, just so they don't have to look at her face!"