I learned to keep the introductions concise and straightforward. My education progressed, and, after somehow managing to get my initial contract renewed, after about a year on the air, I realized the following: I became (somewhat) famous, which required wearing trousers made of animal hide.
In our broadcast studio, a laminated map of the Dallas-Fort Worth area was taped to the side of a computer monitor directly in my line of sight. On this map, the area covered by our signal was colored red. Above the map was written “These people can hear you right now!” The map was meant to guard against solipsism, to remind whoever was on the air that the folks out in Little Elm could easily grow bored and, God forbid, switch the station. But there exists a semantic difference between “These people can hear you” and “These people are listening.” As far as I was concerned, the red area delineating the latter was a gerrymandered little splotch solely composed of my friends and immediate family. That’s why I rarely got nervous on the air. The “show” was just Yvonne and I talking to each other like we would over drinks. Except without the blue language. And without the drinks. On our good days, we managed to broadcast a blithe little show that, even with a signal only half as strong as our competitors’, eventually did attract a loyal group of listeners searching for a morning show that played a fair amount of listenable adult alternative rock without tawdry penis-talk between songs.
But the illusion that no one was really listening became difficult to maintain outside the studio. Strangers would recognize my voice and say hello in line at Subway as I was waiting for my sandwich. Small talk at my wife’s office party would wend its way to what I did for a living, and someone would say, “Oh! You’re Tim! Tim from ’Tim and Yvonne!’” Suddenly, because I talked about myself on the radio for a living, this person I’d just met would care far too much about me and my life and what I had to say. “Man, it was funny that time you let your 2-year-old run naked in the fountain at Fair Park and made everyone else uncomfortable. I hate Julia Roberts, too. Was Don Henley nice?” For the rest of the evening, I couldn’t be just Tim. I had to be Tim from “Tim and Yvonne.” Meaning I’d have to be more interesting than just Tim and certainly more awake than just Tim, who, by 7 o’clock most nights, especially after a few cocktails, was yawning uncontrollably and ready to hit the sack.
Now, I’m not suggesting that the mantle of celebrity weighed heavily on my shoulders and that you should pity me. Because that sure would sound conceited and silly. But the mantle of celebrity weighed heavily on my shoulders. Please pity me. I mean, I eventually had to buy a pair of leather pants and everything. It’s not easy wearing leather pants and consorting with rock stars and living up to the public’s expectations.
For the sake of my neck, which wasn’t designed to support such a large and ever-expanding head, it’s probably for the best that: A dead cat signaled the end was near.
Yvonne, four years my senior, liked to refer to me as the younger brother she was glad she never had. It was an apt description of our love-hate relationship. I would tease her about being a pitiful teenage runaway who actually wore safety pins in her ears. She would harass me about belonging to Mensa but being so stupid that I had to ask whether Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon preceded The Wizard of Oz (I have since allowed my membership to lapse). There was a time when we’d hug every morning at 4:59, for good luck, right before she turned on the microphones. But that time came to an end many months before the show did.
On our bad days, we had on-air fights so raw and brutally unentertaining that even my mother would switch the station to avoid breaking into an uncomfortable sweat. Understand that getting up at 4 a.m., sequestering yourself in a small room for four hours with someone else who also arose too early, trying to sound alert and cheerful to the strangers who are just waking up and tuning in, then working another four or five hours taping interviews, doing production work, and arguing about how the next day’s presentation should proceed—this is not the sort of stroll in the park that cures costochondritis and rejuvenates the spirit. We did sometimes come unstrung.
One morning, Yvonne and I were discussing on-air whether it was appropriate for a reasonable person to take the day off work to mourn the loss of a cat. Not coincidentally, she had taken the previous day off to mourn the loss of a cat. His name was Otis. I had suggested the topic off-air, and she had agreed to it. I was trying to make the point that, especially in Western cultures, we anthropomorphize our pets to our own detriment (or something like that). Yvonne was just trying to hold herself together.
The segment heated up quickly. Every line on the phone console lit up and flashed red. With Edith in Arlington telling me how insensitive I was, Yvonne lost it.
“I can’t believe you’re making me talk about this,” she said through tears, her voice trembling. “I told you I wasn’t ready to talk about this.”
It was a brilliant bit of gamesmanship. How could I make my case to the audience that I hadn’t forced Yvonne to do anything, that she had agreed Otis’ death was acceptable show material? There was nothing I could say to save myself or the segment. A woman’s tears in the workplace are like atom bombs. All it takes is one. Especially one shed over the death of a cuddly, old, orange cat named Otis. I was furious and felt betrayed. But I also knew I had been beaten. So I stood up, dropped my headphones on the table from such a height as to ensure doing so would be audible, and walked out of the studio. I think she threw it to “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors.
And then it was time to pack up my things.
Can you remember, minute by minute, exactly which radio stations and which particular deejays you listened to in the course of the past week? And would you please take the time—for about $5—to write it all down in a diary and mail it back to me? That’s Arbitron, the antiquated system by which an $18 billion industry measures its success.
I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the Arbitron system because even my superiors at Susquehanna seemed a little confused by it. But here’s what I did learn during my tenure: unlike the television industry’s Nielson system, which not only relies on diaries and phone interviews but actually employs a device mounted on a certain number of televisions to determine what they’re tuned to, Arbitron calls people and invites them to keep a diary of their radio diet. Arbitron pays its diarists between $1 and $5 per week, depending on their demographic profiles. So you can guess how this invitation goes over with most people who earn more than $260 per year—that is to say, the people we considered our listeners. Unless you’re my single friend who requested and actually received two diaries, or unless you’re my aunt who, according to the diary she filled out, suffered a weeklong bout of insomnia during which she listened to the station 24 hours a day, you tell Arbitron to get lost.
All of which explains why our “numbers” were never very impressive. Or at least that’s what I choose to believe. Surely our poor ratings had nothing to do with my making my co-host cry on the air. Right?
In any case, on a Friday last August, at 9:02 a.m., just as “Early Merge” signed off with its customary German orchestral theme music, the program director called me into his office and shut the door. Scott Strong was a decent fellow, even if he had cynophobia and could not cut his own fingernails or spell. “Scott Strong” was even his real name. So it was difficult for him to fire me—or, technically, to tell me that my contract had been “non-renewed.”
I told him not to worry. When I took the job, I knew I didn’t want to be a deejay when I grew up. It was an amazing opportunity and a wonderful learning experience and so on and so forth. I told him I was looking forward to sleeping in Monday morning.
Then I had an idea. One last stunt to entertain the co-workers. I asked Scott if I could write his official e-mail to the entire company announcing my departure. In a vulnerable moment, he let me sit down at his computer.
I wrote: “This is just to let everyone know that today I got to do something I have been looking forward to for many, many months. Effective immediately, Tim Rogers is no longer a part of the Susquehanna nation. I think the reasons for this move are many and obvious. If you have any questions, please see me in private.” I clicked send.
That was how I wound up getting escorted out of the building. Computer pranks pulled by former employees were apparently unappreciated.
So now I’ve returned to civilian life. I still get recognized periodically. At the Cotton Bowl this year, a kippy seated behind me said, “I miss you on the radio.” But, for the most part, when I catch someone staring in a restaurant, I no longer assume she’s trying to make me. I’m just another guy with a bad haircut, wearing leather pants.
Epilogue
As I was writing this, 93.3 FM switched formats yet again. According to the station’s web site, “The new 93.3 the Bone will rock you down to the bone, no bones about it.” Yvonne is still there, spinning AC/DC and Molly Hatchet from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. Over drinks recently, she reported that she, too, is enjoying sleeping in.
