One CEO Under 30: Part I

I noticed online today an article "30 CEOs Under 30" which caused me to wax nostalgic as too these dot com Whippersnappers and reflect back on my life at that age.
January 1, 1980 I rolled out of bed at 4am to make a one hour drive to start a new chapter in my life, running a business that I owned. WETZ AM a 1,000 watt daytime only radio station in New Martinsville, West Virginia. I was 28 years old, my wife  was a school teacher, and we had a two year old son. I had walked away from a great management job that I had for six years, we had sold our house and drained our savings to buy the second radio station I had ever stepped foot into.
The first morning of a new decade was cold, but dry as I made the drive on WV Route 2 and Ohio Route 7 North along the banks of the Ohio River constantly adjusting the knob on the radio to try to get the very weak signal of Radio WETZ. Finally I was able to detect the scratchy audio of what was and continued to be the most popular program on the station "Swap and Shop" which was a live telephone call in show where local listeners called in with items they had to sell or trade. When the signal finally cleared which was not much further than the shadow of the tower, a caller from Clarington, Ohio called and offered to sell a goat for the best offer, he explained the goat was blind and only had three legs. I was in the broadcasting business, a communications mogul. I wondered if Ted Turner had goat issues when he started.
This did not deter nor discourage me as I walked into the little flat topped house that station was located, these little stations were built like houses in the 1950's, so if the whole radio fad didn't pan out the owner would still have a house that would have some value.
The Seller and the only previous operator of the Station was a man by the name of Harry Bright. Harry had been with the RCA Blue Network(predecessor of NBC) in the 40's and was able to purchase WETZ in the early part of the 50's from the fellow that had put it on the air. Harry was indeed a unique character and much could be said about him, but he spent some of the money I had given to publish a an autobiography entitled "I lived on Air" which is much kinder than I could be.
Progressive would not be a word that described Harry and the block programming on the station had not changed in the nearly 30 years he had operated. Block programming was the practice of having a diverse type of broadcasts during the broadcast day. In this case you had country music in the mornings that "bookended" the popular Swap and Shop, then at 9am the programming switched to paid religion and a thrice weekly show that was live and hosted by the Station's Community Service Director and Sales Manager Imogene Kuhn. Local politicians, and civic leaders like the local farm agent were the usual guests, unfortunately about half the time the guests would be a no show, and we had 15 minutes of Imogene filling time with what she called Potpourri, which consisted of what ever she found interesting in that days newspaper. Religion then continued to 2 pm when another announcer took over to play rock and roll music on the Pied Piper Show targeted to the students leaving school. Bright had called it the Pied Piper Show so that there would be no announcer identified with the daypart in case he had to replace him for playing a song to wild for Harry's conservative taste or should the announcer leave for a career change that might pay him more than the minimum wage. It was also not a coincidence that Harry had had a record store in town called the Pied Piper where he mostly sold promotional records that had been sent to the station and clearly marked on the label "Not for Sale"
Stay tuned...