Exciting news!

2009-06-08T14:43:00.002-04:00

Hey y'all,
(That's what we say here in North Carolina.)
I've finished writing the book I'm been working on the past few months and hope to have it available soon. It is one of those memoir things. I'll let you know as soon as it is published.
Stay tuned!
Vernon with a V

The Way It Was #18

2008-09-08T14:08:00.009-04:00

A number of people who have discovered http://www.vernonwithav.com/ in recent months have asked questions that I answered in some of the earlier blogs - before I started numbering them. For you guys - here are the answers to some of the most asked questions.

Why did I leave radio? Here is the short answer; the entire reason is far more complex but this hits the main chords. After proving that I could cut it in the Big Apple, I could have continued doing the same thing for another 20 or 30 years but life is short and I wanted to try my hand at other things. So I left radio in 1979 and went into TV news and stayed with that until 2005. Television was fun but a different kind of fun than radio. Also, about 25 years ago, I started a voice-over company that is still cooking along, although now I only work for people I like. You can get away with that when you are semi-retired. If I had it to do all over again - I would do it all over again.

What was it like working with Don Imus? Imus and I actually began working together in Cleveland, at WGAR, before we went to New York and 66WNBC. Imus did mornings and I did the afternoons in Cleveland, just as we did at WNBC. During those years we put together the styles we would later take to New York radio. We experimented with different types of humor and tested the boundaries of what we could get away with. Radio in the 1960s and 1970s was an Ozzie and Harriet world. What we did in Cleveland seems quite tame now but back then both of the Cleveland newspapers lambasted us weekly for doing 'dirty radio'.

We were creating a new kind of radio in those days. Up until then, every Program Director and consultant in the country hammered it into jocks to "keep a smile on your face and SELL THE MUSIC!" Our little band of radio revolutionaries in Cleveland thought that kind of radio was incredibly boring. John Lund, our Program Director and Jack Thayer, our General Manager, encouraged us to see how many of the traditional radio rules we could break - as long as the ratings kept growing. And the ratings grew like crazy!

While Imus and I worked together for years, we didn't socialize much. Since we worked at opposite ends of the day and he had to get up in the wee hours of the morning, we usually only ran into each other in the middle of the day both in Cleveland and New York.

Why did we make WNBC into WNNNNBC? Can you even say the call letters WNBC without making it WNNNNNBC?

Here is how it happened.

When WNBC hired Cousin Brucie, my radio Dad, they put him on during the evenings just as he had been doing at WABC.

But Program Director, John Lund, had a better idea. His reasoning went like this - thousands of teenie-bopper girls who had listened to Brucie at WABC over the years were now young women. During the 1970s young women translated into housewives or homemakers. And in 1970s radio the 10am to 2pm shift was known as housewife time.

Brucie did not like the idea. I am not sure he realized that radio stations would actually broadcast during the daylight hours! But he went along with the change and an amazing thing happened!

Midday ratings actually went up!!! At WABC!!!! Our research showed that when many women filled out their ratings diaries, they put down that they were listening to Cousin Bruce on WABC!!! Stupid things like that can make or break careers in broadcasting.

Lund looked on it as a challenge. He is the guy who turned Bob Vernon into Vernon with a V in Cleveland when listeners couldn't remember my name. His direct approach worked.

Using the same direct approach at WNBC with the midday challenge, he told all of us jocks, especially Brucie, to hit the N in WNBC as hard as we could.

Meanwhile, Gloria Gibson, our Promotion Director, put up hundreds of billboards, bus cards and subway cards showing Bruce changing the A to an N.

And WNNNNBC midday rating soared. That helped my afternoon drive ratings grow as well.

Is Cousin Brucie really the father of Vernon with a V? I always loved to do running bits that made regular listeners feel like they were insiders on some of the stuff I did on my shows; casual listeners probably never picked up on much of it. It was my way of rewarding the regulars.

That is how the Son of Cousin Brucie thing came about. I already referred to Jack Thayer, the President of NBC Radio as Uncle Jack. Just like I had in Cleveland when he was my General Manager. At WGAR, I would say on the air that people asked me how I got this job. Well, my Uncle is the manager, I would tell them. But in Cleveland, he was a personality in his own right. He was constantly doing editorials and spots telling listeners that WGAR was THEIR radio station and that we worked for them. At WNBC, 99.9% of listeners had no idea who he was so to do the same routine, I needed another relative.

Who could be better to help me bridge the gap from being a Midwesterner to a New Yorker than New York radio legend Bruce Morrow? So after I had been on the air a few weeks, I told listeners that the next day I would be making a startling announcement. This, of course, was during a ratings period. John Lund knew about it and already had the jingle made but Brucie was not in on the secret. On the day of the announcement as Cousin Brucie turned over the studio to me, I told him he might want to listen to what I was going to announce.

When I told the world I was the radio son of Cousin Brucie, Bruce got a strange look on his face and then burst out laughing. I can imagine that he was just getting used to coming on the air after Imus and now he was being followed by THIS nut. Imus and I never did typical 1970s radio.

Not only did Brucie buy into the idea on the air, he and his wonderful wife Jody took my wife Doris and me under their wings and showed us THEIR New York. Cousin Brucie is one of the greatest guys I ever worked with and even though he is only 5 or 6 years older than me he is the best radio dad a guy could ever have.

I hope you enjoy your visit to VernonWithaV.com - don't forget to pop over to the Vernon Classics #18 page.

Vernon Classics #17

2008-09-03T14:27:00.003-04:00

This demo of some of my commercial work contains a couple movie trailers. Can you find them? I'm no Don LaFontaine...but it is a living.

New York and LA agencies always want you to make life easy for them by doing just one type of delivery or 'sound' - guys like me drive them nuts because we go into an audition asking what sound do you want? And they always answer, "What? you do more than one?"

Vernon Classics #16

2008-08-26T11:34:00.003-04:00

Nick was one of the funniest guys I ever worked with but we had two diametrically opposed approaches to humor.

I liked to do quick bits; 60 seconds was a long routine for me - I tried to keep my stuff to 40 seconds or less. Not everyone was going to think every one of my bits is funny but they were likely to stick it out if they knew it would be over in a few seconds.

Nick liked to do long-form humor. I thought some of the long-form things we did were great but others, I thought, fell flat. My concern was always - if the listener didn't like a particular routine, would they be willing to stick around for 3 or 4 minutes hoping they would enjoy what came up next.

With that introduction, here on Vernon Classics #16 is one of the long-form routines we did at WCAR, in Detoit, that I thought worked. This came on a morning when we had just read a newspaper story about people making extra money raising worms for Michigan fishermen.

Vernon With a V

Exciting news!

The Way It Was #18

Vernon Classics #17

Vernon Classics #16