Dave Williams was one of about 50 employees hired when Randy Michaels and Walter Sabo were putting together their news team in Chicago. The new project was to be a "conversational" talk format geared toward females. The goal was to attract younger listeners, to take them from music formats that were not listening to the spoken work on AM. That original plan has since morphed into more of a traditional news outlet as hardly anything has gone according to plan for Merlin in Chicago. And when the plan changed, news veteran Dave Williams was pink slipped. We caught up with Williams last night about what happened.
Williams says he's doing fine but is still at a loss to explain why he had to break his lease and leave Chicago. "These days companies don't give you a reason because that might give you something to bite into legally. I was told, ?We?re moving in a different direction,? period. I am a total loss to understand why I was released from Merlin Media but what really hurts is that I have to tell my family and my radio friends the truth: I don?t know why I was fired. The people who know and love me will believe that but everybody else has every reason to suspect there is something unsaid. Who doesn?t know why he was fired? I don?t. And I say that with no animosity, just pure and frustrating bafflement."
Williams says he had never been involved in a startup like Merlin before and it was very exciting. "Merlin hired fifty people for Chicago in the course of a month or two. For the first couple of week we met each day in meeting rooms of fancy Chicago hotels because the radio station didn?t yet have a place to put us all. We sat around several large tables like a bloated sitcom writers? room and made it all up from start to finish. We had a lot of direction, of course, but Randy Michaels, Walter Sabo and Andy Friedman led the cheering squad. They gave us a compass heading and let us chatter to our hearts? content. When we had hammered out a basic format approach we were sent into the fray, two at a time to do five minutes newscasts. My partner, JoAnn Genette, and I went first. When we returned from our silly little five minute newscast a huge cheer when up through the room. And every time another duo returned from their first taste of fresh Chicago air we all cheered as if they had conquered the world. It was wonderful."
"Imagine this: you have fifty colleagues ranging in age from 20 to 60 and nobody, not one, has an ego problem. Impossible, right? When Andy Friedman first phoned me last June he promised that he would never hire any divas, nobody with high maintenance problems. He kept his word. We had major market talent and kids straight out of college. Within just the first few days we all felt like a family. We all learned, we all taught. I know...that looks ridiculous even as I reread it myself but it?s true. Maybe I?m a hopeless Pollyanna but that?s how it seemed to me. I miss them all."
Looking back Williams admits the original plan put on the table was not a good one. "No disrespect intended toward Mr. Michaels and Mr. Sabo but I think that?s condescending. I just turned 60 and none of the women in my life have ever been so shallow as to only care about makeup, children and shopping for shoes. I?m oversimplifying but that?s the route we took at first."
Williams began his radio career as a kid in the early sixties with his first transistor radio. "I can still smell the clean leather case that held it and I can still hear the tiny voices of the disc jockeys of Northern California. I loved the music but the disc jockeys were magicians to me. You could hear the same song a thousand times but it was presented in a thousand different ways. They made bad songs exciting. I got my first radio job just two weeks after I graduated high school. They paid me $400 a month to read meters and clean recording heads.
A few months later I talked somebody into paying me quite a bit less to be on the air. I did eighteen hours between 6 a.m. Saturday until noon Sunday. I threw a sleeping bag on the production room floor. Didn?t sleep much and couldn?t have cared less. They had to kick me out of the place."
"The first seven years of my career took me from KOBO, Yuba City, California to KROY, Sacramento, where I worked with my boyhood idols. I was a top-40 deejay and life held nothing more to tempt me. At the age of 21 I become program director of KRTH, Los Angeles ? all automated oldies at the time, an RKO station. That took me to RKO?s WHBQ, Memphis as jock and PD, back to Sacramento as jock and PD at KNDE and eventually into the news room at KCRA, Sacramento, where I was turned into a talk show host and news reporter/anchor. Spent the next 20 years doing morning news at KFBK. Then KABC, KFWB and KNX. A couple of bumps in the road later I wound up in Chicago, three months ago."
The big question is what's next for the well-liked Williams who dropped evverything and moved across the coutnry to be part of the new Merlin. He says the radio industry is throwing hundreds of people out of the business every week. "I?ve got another good ten years or more left in me but I?m not sure the industry I love cares anymore. I?m thinking it might be time to go back to school and learn a new trade; not sure what that might be. In the meantime, I?m still open to radio offers because that?s what I know and love. I wanted to finish my career in Chicago because I fell head-over-heels in love with the place and its people. But since I can?t afford to stay I?m going home to be with my family for the holidays. That?s a pure blessing. Beyond that I?m thinking it might be nice to find a small town station in a beautiful place like Oregon or Washington or my native Northern California, somebody who will give me a reasonable salary and four or five hours on the air to do the stuff I do well: talk, play songs, take phone calls; screw some things up."
And about his being released by Merlin, Williams says "I?m still shocked. I should sum it up by borrowing a famous phrase: ?It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.? Every day brought us hours of exhilarating challenge punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I think that?s a pretty good definition of living life fully.
Check out Dave's website HERE
Reach out to Dave via e-mail HERE
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