by Craig Carton
I had been listening to WFAN at night. I was mesmerized by the fact that there were people talking about sports in a way I had never heard before. Prior to that, the only time I had ever heard anyone do sports talk was when Art Rust Jr. was a nighttime host at WABC. I would hear him if we happened to be in the car and my father had the Yankees game on. But WFAN was the first radio station I ever made it a point to listen to under the covers until late at night.
So I was thrilled when I got the internship at WFAN, but it turned out to be really boring, and it taught me nothing about being on the radio. I erased eight-track cassette tapes, sat in the production room during the Pete Franklin afternoon show, and counted the seconds until I could leave.
Few young people were there, unlike today, and the adults who ran the newsroom were serious about their craft. Every day, I questioned how in the world I would ever get a job in an environment like that—or be happy doing it. Everybody in the building seemed miserable, including the on-air host, Pete Franklin, whose show I was interning for. I never did another radio internship because of my WFAN experience, and it wasn’t until they changed hosts and became a local radio station that I fell back in love with the station.
My first postcollege life-changing moment came in the summer of 1991, the year I graduated from Syracuse. I was teaching baseball at a camp in Naples, Maine, for the summer before I set out on my path toward getting a real job. The idea of never leaving camp was always in the back of my mind. Being a camp owner would be awesome, I thought, but I wasn’t ready for it at that time.
I had done some broadcasting for the college radio station while I was at Syracuse, and figured I might as well give that a shot before I became a counselor for the rest of my life. Toward the end of my senior year, I made a demo tape of play-by-play basketball and sports talk, and began to send it out to various stations across the country. Today, I see entitled kids who think they should be on the air right away in a major market, but I was willing to go anywhere and do anything.
While a lot of people know what they want to do by the time they graduate from college, I knew only what I did not want to do. I knew that I would never work a nine-to-five job, and I knew that I could not wear a jacket and tie to work every day. I had enjoyed doing the college radio sports show, and I was a big fan of WFAN radio. While I dreamed about what it might be like to be a talk show host for a living, it wasn’t as if that was the end-all for me. My passion for being in the bar/restaurant business was just as strong. As my college days came to an end, I figured it couldn’t hurt to send out some of my demo tapes to see what would happen.
The first station that offered me a job was the only station that did, and it was based in Georgetown, Texas. A small Friday Night Lights kind of town, twenty miles outside Austin. When I got the call, I was told to hold on for the program director. After enduring a few minutes of country music, a Texas-sized bellow came across the phone. In his best country twang, the program director said, “Craig Carton, my name is Cowboy Otis, and I would love to have you come to our station.” Cowboy Otis, what the fuck, I thought. He went on and on about how I would be covering high school football games and doing updates for the station, and that I would earn a $16,000 salary. I needed to be ready to start by July 1.
Was this my moment? I wondered. Would I start in Georgetown, Texas, and years later tell my kids how Cowboy Otis was the greatest guy in the world and like a second father to me, and I couldn’t have made it to the network level if not for him?
No way. I decided that it wouldn’t take long for Cowboy and his friends to dislike the Jewish kid from New York. I politely passed on the job. Without any other offers, I drove to Naples, Maine, to be a camp counselor. While there, I was summoned to the office one day in late July to take an important phone call. Normally an important phone call is not a good thing, but in this case it was.
My buddy Marc Bronitt was on the phone. Marc and I had been close friends since junior high school, and he went to Syracuse, too. He had sat in on my first college radio call-in show at ’Cuse. His mother was a radio personality at the legendary Z-100 in New York City. Her name was Claire Bronitt, but she went by the name Claire Stevens on the air and was part of the Scott Shannon Morning Zoo. Marc told me that his mother was at the wedding of a radio friend in Buffalo. She just happened to be sitting at a table with the general manager of a station there. He told her that he was looking for a new sports talk person.
When radio people get together, all they talk about is radio. So I was lucky that she sat at his table and heard they needed a new employee. Marc gave me directions to send the tape of my college show and a cover letter referencing his mom’s name to Chuck Finney, the program director at WGR in Buffalo. I did as I was told.
I gave my parents’ phone number to Chuck with the explanation that if he liked my tape and wanted to talk, he could reach me through them as I was in Bumfuck, Maine, for the summer. My brother, Jeff, typed the letter, made the tape, and FedExed it to Finney the next day.
A week later, I was summoned again to the camp office for an important phone call. It was my brother telling me that Finney called and wanted me to call him to introduce myself. I called Chuck. He was gregarious over the phone. He told me a little bit about the station, and said that he liked my tape and that I should come to Buffalo. I packed up everything I owned into the 1980 Buick I was driving at the time and drove to Buffalo to start my professional life, or so I thought.
My moment was here. This would be a defining point in my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. By getting the job in Buffalo, I would meet people who, twenty years later, still look out for my well-being, and I would be heard in a Top 35 market without even knowing it. I would wind up being promoted to a Top 6 market and have the chance to host the morning show in the country’s biggest market. If I’d messed up and hadn’t represented myself in the right manner—if the interview hadn’t gone well—I never would have gotten into radio. I had no other leads, I only had one demo tape, and I didn’t know much about the business.
I got to Buffalo late on a Sunday night and checked into a dumpy little motel. My meeting was Monday morning at nine. I woke up early the next day, put on a suit, and drove to the station. It was in what used to be a Victorian home, in a neighborhood of residential houses; homey and small-market, pre–consolidation of radio, for sure. I walked in and was introduced to Chuck. We spoke for about thirty minutes or so about what the station needed, what my experience was, all the normal Q&A stuff, and then he dropped the bomb on me.
“Craig, it was nice meeting you. We will let you know.” What? I thought I had the job. Here was my moment. I could extend my hand and thank him for his time and walk out, or I could do something brash. I did the brash thing, but I did it without thinking. Only years later did I realize that this act changed my life. I said, “Chuck, when we spoke on the phone, you told me I had the job.”
He replied, “I told you we liked you, but we have four other candidates that we’re scheduled to interview.” I said, “Listen, if you look out that window, you’ll see a 1980 Buick loaded with all of my belongings, and that car isn’t going to make it back to where I’m from. I promise I will never embarrass you in any way on or off the air. I don’t do drugs, and I’m not an alcoholic. I need and want this job.”
“I like your spunk, kid. You know what, that’s the attitude we need around here. You’re hired.”
I was stunned, but went right into negotiation mode. “Chuck, it’s time to talk money.” He smiled and said “Okay, go ahead.” I had it in my mind that I wanted to make $20,000 in my first real job, and I told him so. He said, “We will pay you twelve thousand,” so I extended my hand and said, “Sixteen thousand it is,” figuring we would split the difference.
Chuck said, “It’s twelve thousand, kid. Two hundred and fifty dollars a week before taxes, take it or leave it. I’ll give you the week to find a place to live, and you start next Monday.”
We shook hands, and I went a
bout finding an apartment.
Had I accepted his word that he had other people to interview and walked out that door, I never would have gotten that job. And I don’t think I ever would have made a career in radio. Unless I was willing to go work for Cowboy Otis, I had no other options.
I set out to find a suitable place to live, which ain’t easy on $250 a week, before taxes. After a few hours of looking all over suburban Buffalo, I stopped into a sports bar named Malone’s on Delaware Avenue in Kenmore, a blue-collar, steel-mill-worker kind of town. While waiting for my wings to arrive, I drank a beer and looked out the window. I noticed a vacancy sign on the building across the street.
I finished my wings and a few more beers, and walked across the street to the decrepit six-story building, wondering if I had found a place to live. As it turned out, the building was an old-age home. Yes, they did have a vacancy, but for someone much older than me. I told the manager of the building that I didn’t think I would be there long, I didn’t do drugs, and I wasn’t a big drinker. Hey, two out of three facts ain’t bad. I added that I would help the elderly with their groceries and help him shovel. He agreed on a handshake, and told me the monthly rent would be $99. A hundred bucks for a studio apartment infested with cockroaches and surrounded by old people. I was in heaven! I moved in that day. Two days later on August 24, 1991, I started at WGR Radio in Buffalo New York. My life would never be the same.
It’s hard for the average person to understand the social life of a celebrity. To make tons of money, to have women throwing themselves at you night and day. No matter how good you look and no matter how much money you might make, even if you’re a lawyer or a successful businessperson, you need to work to get laid. You may not have to work as hard as a bus driver, but you can’t walk into a bar and expect women to throw themselves at you. While I can’t relate to Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter by any stretch, when you are on the radio in a given market, you become a local celebrity—and for some women, thankfully, that’s all you need to be.
I had been in Buffalo for about three months when I realized the power of being “famous.” By no means was I famous, but I had built a loyal following on the air. When I first started there, I did six-hour shifts alone on Saturday and Sunday, and during the week I produced the John Otto nighttime show, and I also did as much work as I could during the day. I was a radio rat. I wanted to learn it all, and the only way to do it was to be there every day, all day, to see what the business was all about and figure out what I could do, and do well. (Plus, on $250 a week, I couldn’t afford to do much outside of work, anyway.)
Being the new blood in town and not being from Buffalo had its benefits among the ladies. Most of them were depressed at the prospect of winding up with a loser from Buffalo with no future. I was fresh meat to them, and I had decided I would be lowering my standards while I was there—not because I was Don Juan, but because I’d gotten used to some real lookers at Syracuse.
The first girl to show me any real attention was a gal named Michelle. She was a dwarf who I met out one night. I had never seen a dwarf before, let alone have her talk the dirtiest sex talk I have ever heard to this day in my life.
When I saw her, she didn’t pay me any attention, but soon thereafter, she learned that I was the guy she had been listening to on the radio. Michelle offered to do things to me that I had never considered before or since. I would love to tell you that I took advantage of this situation and had unbelievable dwarf sex, but I didn’t. I did, however, tell her that she could do some things to herself and videotape them for me. Not only did she oblige by telling me what she did and how she did it, but had the Internet been around in 1991, she would have been its first star.
Without getting into too many details, she was willing to role-play an XXX-rated scene right out of The Wizard of Oz, and another as an Oompa-Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Even today when I see those movies with my kids, the phrase “We welcome you to Munchkin Land” has a different meaning. Augustus Gloop drinking out of the chocolate river and being tended to by six Oompa-Loompas gives me the chills.
Having turned down Michelle, I was still single and enjoying the limited nightlife in Buffalo. It wasn’t limited because there was a lack of bars. But if you weren’t a Buffalo Bill or if your name wasn’t Jim Kelly or one of his brothers, you had to go on a search-and-destroy mission akin to SEAL Team 6 finding Osama bin Laden. Or host a popular AM sports show and hang out at the same bar as often as possible so that everyone there knew who you were. I hung out at a bar called Jovi’s, also on Delaware Avenue, a few blocks from my apartment. I met a waitress there and asked her out. We agreed to meet at Jovi’s to have some drinks on the house first. She was nineteen and not legal, but they let her drink there. They all knew me by this time, so I had a house account and paid it off with tickets to Bills games and Sabres games that I got from the station.
The date started great. We did a few shots and drank beers, and she told me she wanted to take me to a cool spot in Buffalo. We drove for about twenty minutes and approached the entrance to a public park. She directed me to an exact spot where we could stop. I parked the car, left the battery on, and turned on the radio. And then she jumped me. She was hot, and it seemed like this was going to be an amazing experience. Just as we got our clothes off, I heard a knock on the window that scared me so much I popped up and hit my head on the ceiling of the car. Holy shit, a flashlight shone into the window and a voice said, “Lower your window, son.” It was a police officer.
Not only had I had a few drinks and drove to the park, but my date was nineteen and she was bordering on drunk, too. The officer told me the park was closed and I was there illegally. Woo-hoo, strike three, I thought. He asked me for my license and registration and then pointed the light toward my date. Fuck, I thought, here we go: Were you drinking? and then some.
Instead, I heard these words:
“Suzy, is that you?”
“It’s me, Bob.”
“Haven’t I told you to stop bringing guys here after hours?”
She started small-talking him. They grew up together, and banging guys in cars in this exact spot in this park was her m.o. God knows how many guys she had done this with, not that I cared. I was just happy to get out of there. But my night wasn’t over yet.
Suzy had kept saying to me that no matter when the date ended, I had to be sure to escort her to the door of her house. I reassured her twenty-five times that I would, and that it wasn’t a problem. I couldn’t understand why she kept making it such an issue. We arrived at her house around four in the morning. As I put the car in park, she again said, “Now you have to walk me to the door.” I said that I would. As we walked from the driveway to the house, I noticed that it looked as if all the lights were on inside.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be shot by her dad for keeping her out so late, or what, but I sucked it up, held her hand, and walked her to the front door. When she opened it, about twenty people jumped out and said, “Surprise!” This startled me. Was there a birthday? Not that I knew of. But no, the surprise was for me.
She had told her family that the guy they listened to on the radio has asked her out. This was a big deal to them. They sent her out on a date with me, and then invited all of their relatives over to the house to wait for me to bring her back in whatever condition so that they could meet me, talk sports with me, and feed me. I met every cousin, uncle, and nephew the girl had, and ate one of the greatest meals of my life. I didn’t roll out of there until almost seven in the morning. I realized that “celebrity” could be great, but also dangerous.
It wasn’t until I got to Philadelphia that I learned just how dangerous. But that’s a later story.
The best example of the dangers of celebrity is Alex Rodriguez, the star third baseman for the New York Yankees. Married to his high school sweetheart and the father of adorable girls, Alex, along with the rest of New York, woke up to the following headline: ALEX RODRIGUEZ BUSTED WITH BLONDE AT TORO
NTO STRIP CLUB. It was the single biggest story of the year and was talked about for months and months. Every day, thousands of your friends who travel on business wind up going to strip clubs, hiring hookers, or picking up random women at hotel lobby bars. None of them get caught. None of their wives or girlfriends have any idea. And of course none of them are famous.
There are more than 1.4 million entries on Google that come up when you search for “Alex Rodriguez Strippers.” The end result was Alex’s wife wearing a T-shirt to a Yankees home game that said “FU” on the back collar. Sadly, shortly after that they got divorced. So sure, celebrity sounds glamorous compared to our lives—most of it is—but the next time you do something a little left or right of center, imagine TMZ there waiting to catch you.
I had been in Buffalo for six months when it happened for the first time. I walked into the station and the main secretary told me there was a message for me. I didn’t have a phone extension there, and to my knowledge nobody had ever called for me at the main switchboard. This was something entirely new. The message slip said that some guy named David George had called, and please call him back ASAP. I went to a cubicle and dialed.
The phone rang twice, and then a pleasant-sounding woman answered. “Three W-EEEE, may I help you?” I didn’t know what “Three W-EEEE” was, so I said, “May I please talk to David George?” still having no idea who he was. David picked up right away and said hello, and told me he was a big fan. I thanked him, and he referenced a radio bit I had done the weekend before and laughed out loud. Clearly a smoker, David’s laugh was more half-cough. When he finished recounting the radio moment, he told me that he was the program director of WWWE Radio in Cleveland, Ohio, a legendary radio station with a signal that reached twenty-eight states and half of Canada, at least according to their own promotions. I assumed the Canadian part was a fib, but shit, this station was big-time.