Spotify Killed the Video Star

In 2007, I was an intern at Magnum Broadcasting in State College, PA. That experience was wonderful and I still have lifelong friends from the experience. I learned a LOT about business, digestible media, and how commerce can be strange bedfellows with neighborhoods & citizenship. I can say, with certainty, that experience with Magnum Broadcasting put me on the path to do the things I’ve done, & I’m grateful.

Blame it on the neurodivergence, but I need a specific type of music in my ear while I’m working, to get the most out of my work day. I’m a kid, hardly twenty-one years old, I’ve got a cheap MP3 player I bought from winnings on a scratch-off, & I am working away. The General Manager, Diana (who looks remarkably like a young Linda Hamilton) comes into the room I was working in, & she’s not happy. She points out how bad it would look if an advertiser were to come in and see me listening to anything other than what the company is putting out on the air. As soon as she said it, it made perfect sense. I wouldn’t have had the first clue before that. That’s the kind of common sense I learned that has taken me places in business.

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What It’s Like Being a Radio DJ.

When I sit down and look at it, I’ve lead a decently interesting life — a lot more than I would have thought when I was in high school, with absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life.

One of the most favorite things I’ve ever done professionally was being an on-air personality for an actual radio station! I say professionally, as in “I got paid for doing it,” but truly, I would have done it for free. In 2007, every Saturday between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, I was Alan Stone: “Happy Valley’s Polite DJ” on 105.9 Joe FM (the era of 105.9 between “the Buzz” and “QWiK Rock”).

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I Love Radio, and I Think You Should Too

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this story; when I decided to leave Pennsylvania and move to Wilmington, North Carolina, I’d never seen the city before. I had it on good faith that the city was beautiful, that there were a lot of reasons why I should go live there, but I’d never seen it for myself. I packed all of my things, loaded a UHaul full of all the life I could carry, and at three in the morning, I left the Keystone State with no intention of ever carrying a Pennsylvania Driver’s License again in my life.

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