Multiply Day 28 - Doug tribute

  I hate doing blog entries like this. In the grand scheme of things I would rather be yakking about the mundane or trivial, or to bore you all to tears, my life as I know it. Those blogs draw rave reviews as we all know. But that is not where I am going today, instead it will be one last entry about “Uncle Dougie” and then the blog moves on, because in my heart of hearts I sincerely believe Doug would want it that way. I remember Doug's last day on the air, it really didn't have to be his last day, his contract ran through the end of December, but when he found out the station wasn't going to renew his deal for another year or two, he asked and was granted an early release from that deal (roughly two weeks early) simply because he didn't want his last shows to be nothing but goodbyes, he viewed that as bad radio. In the same manner I will try not to do any bad blogging and leave this last post stand on it's own merit before moving on to other things.

I can't recall the first time I heard Doug or what he was talking about on that first time I heard him. I just found it to be good radio, entertaining and funny and eclectic compared to some of the other offerings on the dial, so when I first located his show on 1250 AM WTAE I tried to make it a point to listen whenever I could. The station had what would now be considered a local Who's Who of talk talent, Doug Hoerth, Lynn Cullen, Phil Musick, Myron Cope. All names that those who followed the genre of talk radio in this town surely remember with fondness.

I know at the time I was attending classes at the University of Pittsburgh and working in the kitchen at The Attic. There were many times when I annoyed the people in the kitchen because rather than listen to the latest punk/alternative thing coming down the pike, instead I had the radio tuned to 1250 because I usually liked what I heard. Through a process of being lucky and being in the right place at the right time, my job at The Attic lead directly into my first job in radio, when my sheer circumstance I happened to be working one night when the program director of 1360 AM WIXZ, Sean Carroll, happened into the bar with some friends of his. His station was doing all sports at the time, almost all of the programming coming from a satellite feed, save for some local high school sports and weekend programming that originated in the studios. We struck up a conversation and after springing for a couple of rounds of drinks for his table (I was the bartender that night on the outdoor deck, so I could do such things) he offered me a chance to be an intern in the fall of that year, 1996.

So in August of that year I started my internship, mostly a few evenings a week doing odd things like putting together stats packages for the high school football pregame show we did, or setting up interviews to get soundbites for our sports updates that ran three times an hour. Because I would be in the car heading out of town during rush hour for those shifts I would naturally find myself caught in traffic and listening to the radio, during the time when Doug and Laurence (Gaines, who I have talked about previously in this blog, Laurence passed away a little over a year ago) would be doing their afternoon drive show. The stuff they would do on the air was hilarious. On the air, Doug was an open book about his life, and it was an odd tale of a recovering alcoholic, complete with all of the problems many of us have, relationships, marriage, divorce, ailments, you name it, if it was part of Doug's life, Doug talked about it. We also got a peek into his life outside of radio, which was best described as reclusive and simple. There weren't a lot of extravagances in it, he would readily talk about how in his apartment he had the following, one plate, one spoon and one pot for heating things up. Yet the manner in which he did it was such that it drew the listener in, the way he told a story was fascinating, and because he was so forthright in how he lived and open about his life, it gave him the ability to tell a tall tale and have people believe it. After all, if he was going to be this honest about his life, certainly he wouldn't lie about other things, would he? As a result he was able to pull off some of the most outlandish and longest running gags on radio, because he wasn't above coming back to them and adding to the narrative from time to time. So Doug would be able to convince a significant portion of his audience of tall tales like when he said that Don Ho and Julio Iglesias where in fact brothers separated at birth. Sure it sounds silly now, but at the time you would be surprised how many people bought it. There were others, North Dakota really wasn't a state, that two of his colleagues at 1250, Lynn Cullen ( a staunch liberal) and Dimitri Vassilaros (a staunch libertarian) had in fact ran off and gotten married. I would sit in my car and listen to this, as well as his and Laurence's impressions on everything from the “Godfather” to Little Richard and just marvel at how they could pull this off on a daily basis. If there was a guest on the show, anyone from a porn star to a politician, Doug had the amazing ability to be so well versed in the topic at hand that one had to wonder just what he didn't know. And the same demeanor that allowed him to pull off his bits was able to pull some of the most interesting stories out of his guests.

I was lucky. Not many people can say that, but being stuck in rush hour traffic gave me a reason to listen, even if he was on a different station than the one I worked for.

Then the roof caved in at 1250. The station was sold and resold a number of times. Talents that had a home found that their services were no longer required. The station that was doing talk was in the process of changing formats and switching to sports talk, which is exactly what the station I was working at had been doing, but on a lesser signal and with no name local talent. So when 1250 flipped and had some local flavor (as well as a couple of contracts with local teams for play by play), the days for 1360 and sports talk were numbered. Doug and Laurence managed to survive the initial purge at 1250, but not in a manner that benefited them, they were moved from doing a 3 hour show in evening drive to a 5 hour show during morning drive.

As luck would have it, I stayed on at 1360 after my internship and since 1250 flipped formats, so did we, going to a talk format and picking up a few of the talents that 1250 had let go, such as Lynn Cullen, Jane Nugent, and Scott Shalloway. As an added bonus, we started programming 24 hours a day, running Art Bell overnights and since I was low man on the totem pole, it was my job to run the board for Bell's show, a thankless task that consisted of staying up all night to listen to all kinds of crazy conspiracy nonsense. The only things that made the night bearable were the cheap chili dogs and the Crossroads across the street and the notion that when I got off of work I could listen to Doug on the way home. By this time I had figured out enough of the public transportation system in Pittsburgh that a car was not a necessity, plus after having the side of the car hit by a snow plow, the plusses and minuses of having a car in the city from a financial standpoint leaned heavily on the minus category. Any additional travel time I may have by no longer driving was made easier by knowing I could just pop on the headphones and listen to Doug and Laurence to ease the mind of this weary traveller.

Then it happened. A chance to meet Doug. He and Laurence were doing a show and they both mentioned that they wanted something. Doug offered $20 to the first person who could bring him a pack of cigarettes to the studio, while Laurence was looking for a copy of the season finale of “Homicide: Life on the Street”. Since I had set my VCR to tape the show, and because I had a few dollars in my pocket, I took up the challenge, I could be the cool guy who knocked out both requests at the same time, so I hopped off my bus, went and got the tape, stopped and picked up two packs of cigarettes (they were on sale, buy one, get one free so I was going to be super cool) and I made my way to the 1250 studios. I got there and told the receptionist why I was there and less than 5 minutes later here comes this guy, not frail looking, but thin, in a t shirt and sweatpants with a $20 bill in his hand. I must say it wasn't how I pictured Doug Hoerth would look, not that I had a specific image in mind, but I wasn't planning on sweat pants, that's for sure. Content that I had my one and only fleeting brush with greatness when it came to Doug, I left, hopped a bus and went home. Fate had other plans however.

As 1250 drifted more to a sports format eventually Doug's show was cancelled as well, and with it Doug's morning show with Laurence came to and end.

Meanwhile back at the 1360 ranch, the process of changing our station from one which did sports talk to one which did talk was taking place. We had already hired Lynn, Jane and Scott and were in the process of trying to do local talk all day during the days (Jane and Scott were both weekend programs, Jane's focusing on gardening, Scott's like his column for the PG, was a nature type show) and we had signed on Jerry Bowyer, at that time head of a local think tank, the Allegheny Institute, to host a show as well. With Doug now no longer employed, the station went and hired him as well, giving us three weekday talents to host a 3 hour show each, giving us local talk for a good portion of the broadcast day. Unlike Doug, the station did not bother to offer a contract to Laurence, maybe they thought that they had no need for another producer, of which we had three, or maybe they were just to cheap, I do not know, but Doug's sojourn to our station would be sans Laurence. It should be noted that while Laurence did not get to make the move to our station, he did land on his feet, he became the producer of the nationally syndicated Bev Smith Show from the AURN studios in downtown Pittsburgh. And Laurence would remain one of Doug's most frequent guests, so there were plenty of opportunities for listeners to hear the band back together again during Doug's time on 1360.

While Doug and I were working for the same station, I didn't get to hear his show as much as I did previously because we were on at different times of the day, I was working with Jerry Bowyer on mornings, while Doug's show was on in afternoons, usually when I was busy trying to help line up guests for Jerry's show, or out working a second job which was par for the course for much of my time in radio. Doug and I would know  each other enough after a time to say hi to each other while passing in the hall, but I can't say we really knew each other much beyond that.

Of course if there is one thing in radio that is constant it is that nothing ever stays the same for too long. After working with Jerry for roughly 5 years, he had requested a change in time slot. It had nothing to do with how the show was being run, it had to do with the fact that he had bought a new house a little further away from Pittsburgh and the hour long commute was a little much for him with his other commitments (which are many and varied and would require an awful long listing of irrelevant information to be posted here) and Jerry was also getting offers to do other radio shows, both in Pittsburgh and in other markets around the country. I know just before he left our station (he would have a brief run on 101.5 FM, a Christian station before leaving the radio business due to health concerns) he would do a 3pm-6pm show for us, then drive up the road and do a show from another studio, a three hour show that was being broadcast in Los Angeles. 

Jerry's decision meant that we had to rearrange the deck chairs a little bit and as a result Doug got shifted to mornings with me. We had a weird policy, where unlike the show hosts, the producers at the station pretty much kept their time slots, so I would produce for whoever was on in the mornings and not just follow around a specific show. I had heard enough of Doug's show over the years that I “got it” as he would say. He often said, half jokingly, that some people just didn't get him, and that may very well be true. By the same token I had listened to what he and Laurence did together, if there was anyone who really got Doug it was Laurence, and I realized that I was never going to be another Laurence. It just wasn't in my DNA as it were. But I had an understanding going in of what type of show Doug wanted to do, and some of the things that Doug would find funny or interesting. But as much as I got Doug and had an understanding of his show, I also knew a sad fact, that being that when he and Laurence were forced into mornings on 1250, doing a 5 hour show every day, it wasn't a shift he liked all that much. Maybe it was being up that early, maybe it was the fact that the 1250 signal was for sale more often than a congressional vote during those years, but he didn't view it as an ideal time slot for his talents. Now here I am being told I will be producing Doug's show, but during a time of day that in the past he didn't like doing radio, that being mornings.

I can't tell you how that first show went off, I doubt it was perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but a couple of things began to develop. One, we would always go out just before the show for a cigarette together and two, during that cigarette break I would give him a heads up of the show prep I had gathered off of the web for him and he would always remind me that we were not to talk about the show beforehand. Whatever was to happen over the next three hours, Doug wanted it to be a spontaneous thing. Sure, like he and Laurence, Doug and I would develop “bits” over time, little things that would constantly be part of the show, like every so often Doug would read Rosie O Donnel's blog entry. If you have never read it, consider yourself lucky, it can best be described as a train wreck. So Doug would read this blog, using his typical New York/ New Jersey gangster voice he was known for slipping into from time to time, and while he was reading it I would be playing this god awful French song, “Rosie” by Michel Polnareff that I had found on Kazaa one night.

It was during my time with Doug that he started to come into the 20^th century a little bit as well. He was renowned for talking about how little he actually owned, the one spoon, one plate and one pot again coming to mind, yet for Christmas that year one of his friends, Zimp, had gotten him a computer, a tool Doug thought he would never need or use. Oh how wrong he was, and sadly because we were under certain constraints about what we could and couldn't do on the air, many of those stories about Doug and the internet never saw the broadcasting light of day.

True story coming up. It is well known that Doug had a thing for nostalgia, old time radio shows and radio hosts, older movies like “Blazing Saddles” and “The Godfather” and an absolute love for old music, lots of 50s and 60s rock and roll stuff (he would also host an oldies show on our sister station, 1320 on Sunday nights, where you could see that side of his character as well) and now that he had access to a computer he was becoming just amazed at all of the stuff that was on there. Air checks of people and shows he used to listen to, trivia of people that he watched on TV growing up, information about places all over the world. These are all things that we, as semi techie type people (I say that because you either have a blog or are reading this, so you have a workable Internet savvy toolset), but for Doug who was late to the party, it was like Christmas morning all over again, and I was enjoying watching this unfold. Because of Doug's varied interests in all things old time, eventually he took it upon himself to look up some older porn stars. During one such trip on the world wide web, his computer froze up. Just locked up and wouldn't do anything. Because this problem couldn't be solved by any of the three tools in the Hoerth household; the plate, the pot or the spoon he did the following, he ripped the plug out of the socket and ran from the room. When he told me this I doubled over with laughter and I wished he would have used this on the air, but I know us talking about internet porn, no matter how funny or how tamped down we did it, would have never passed muster with the powers that be.

For 9 glorious months I was Doug's producer before another rearranging of the deck chairs at the station would place me with Lynn Cullen, but during those 9 months I can honestly say that, save for having a guest booked, by and large it was 9 months of just seat of your pants radio, whatever tangent Doug was going to go off on, you just went along for the ride, and more often than not you were thankful for the experience. One of the most humbling moments of my time at the station came toward the end of that run, we all knew that the show was being moved and because producers stayed in the same slot I was not going to be Doug's producer in his new time slot, and I also knew previously how much Doug had not liked the 5am-10am slot at his previous station, yet he came to me and said that he really enjoyed doing mornings and was going to miss having me as his producer. Please, this was a guy that was an idol in my eyes, one that I was so eager to meet that I went out and bought him a pack of cigarettes years earlier in hopes I might get a chance to meet him. No Doug, trust me, the pleasure was all mine.

Not that that would be the last I saw of Doug, we aren't to the teary eyed farewell yet. He was just moving timeslots after all. And he still let me have a hand in his show, I was still trying to do some things for him, and did manage after nearly two years of tracking him down of getting Doug an interview with Christopher Hitchens (yes blog readers, you can partially blame Doug for my fascination with Hitchens). It was something Doug asked me to look into when we started working together, but it would seem every time I would get a lead it would dry up, and the one time I thought I might be able to actually put an interview together, Hitchens ends up in a place in Iran where he can't communicate out, lest it be discovered where he was. Finally though Doug did get his Hitchens interview, and I got to go back to being more of a fan than a day to day presence on the show. Doug did have me back a number of times, as old time followers to the blog can attest, he would do a Friday Group show, where he would invite three people, usually friends of his or other times it would be people he selected at random from asking people if they wanted to be on the show and he would then spend three hours in studio with whatever collection of people he put in there. I was part of that group on quite a few occasions. And when I sat in as a guest host for Lynn, or when I was invited on OffQ, one of the first people who would give me feedback on how I did would be Doug.

Every now and then I would be stuck at the radio station doing production work on Sunday nights and I would get to see another side of Doug, the music side as I would be in the neighboring booth trying to get some recording done, usually backed up commercial inventory, or dropping programming into the system for the following weekend, and there Doug would be in all his glory, singing and dancing along with the music, sometimes the music would be turned up so loud that trying to get recording done in the neighboring studio was problematic at best. We would even have discussions about the Sunday night show, Doug believed that even if the station decided to drop the talk show, he was under the understanding that he would at least still have his 6 hours Sunday nights of spinning oldies. Sadly that wasn't to be the case.

When Doug was pulled aside by management in early December of 2007 and told that his contract was not going to be renewed, not only were they taking away the talk show, something that he had thought was a distinct possibility given the economics of radio, but that they were taking away his Sunday night show as well. It was probably as devastating a blow as could be given to him. He had reached the point age wise where local stations would be wary of taking him on because the audience he would draw would not be the one advertisers covet, and he had been at this for too long (27 years in Pittsburgh) to just pack up and start from square one in a new market. Instead it left him a broken man, a man who had one defining skill set, that of being a radio personality, and no place to ply his trade.

I would end up talking to Doug a handful of times after he was let go, it would seem we always had other things to do, and at best our chances of reaching each other turned into an elongated game of phone tag, nearly as long as tracking down Hitchens was. Others were more lucky in that regard, there were some friends who got to talk to him on a more frequent basis, or break bread with him at one of his favorite dining spots, usually Eat N Park or The Rusty Nail, and some people like Laurence would urge Doug to get back in the game, whether it be on another radio station, or via the web by either podcasting, video streaming or some other means. Despite Laurence's prodding Doug never pursued those avenues, or any other for that matter. I know he had kicked around the idea of writing a book at one point, I suggested to him if he really wanted to he might want to talk to Mark Madden, a local talk show host who considers Doug one of his most profound influences and has done some book writing in the past including being an editor on Ric Flair's autobiography. Whether he actually followed up on any of that advice I do not know, but since no book was ever written I am guessing probably not.

Then roughly a year ago Laurence passed away, again something readers of the blog already know, and it was pretty much the last straw for Doug. He had referred to his 5 years working with Laurence and the 5 happiest years of his life, and anyone who listened to those two together could easily understand why. I talked to Doug once or twice after Laurence had passed and as Lynn put it most adeptly, Doug was bereft. In radio you can have the most talented person, but if they are surrounded by people of lesser skills it shows on the air. So on those occasions when you have people of comparable yet immeasurable skill sets working together, that too shows through and that was the case with Doug and Laurence and the city of Pittsburgh should feel blessed for having the time with both of them that they had.

As you know, the story winds down from there, to Wednesday when I first got the call from Phil Marcus at work saying that Doug had died. Despite both Phil and I being out of radio for a while now, he and I are still in touch and usually take in a lunch or dinner now and then. When I first heard he had called at work, I was hoping that was what the call would be about, so when I returned his call and got the news, it was just devastating. I hopped on a computer at work and checked with the local papers websites to confirm the story. The Post Gazette had just a small blurb at the time, it was still relatively breaking news in newspaper time so that wasn't a shocker (the other, longer version is already posted on this blog as stolen content). What was a shocker was when I checked out the other local paper, the Tribune Review, and saw their first story on Doug. Not because of the news of his passing, which by now I had at least had accepted as fact, but because of what was in it.

From the article

In a statement, Alan Serena, vice president for operations at Renda Broadcasting in Green Tree, said Hoerth knew so much about many different topics.

“His WPTT afternoon shows were entertaining and not what you typically expected to hear on a talk station. From politics to pro wrestling to porn stars, Doug was as well versed as he was diverse in his subject matter,” Serena wrote. “His passion was music, especially the oldies he played Sunday nights on WJAS. He was a unique individual. Off air he was a quiet, reclusive person. News of his sudden passing was sad. I know a lot of Pittsburghers hope they get a chance to say their final farewells to a broadcasting legend.”

This is the part of the entry where my anger is going to shine through. Yes, the very person who pulled Doug aside and said that his shows weren't good enough for Doug's contract to be renewed now wants to speak all glowingly about Doug. Excuse me while I say, Alan, shut the fuck up. In all of my years of knowing Doug, not once did he say a bad thing about the station. When they wanted him to tone down his show from what he did on 1250, he did that. When they wanted him to jump from timeslot to timeslot, he did that too, and not one negative word was uttered by Doug through this entire process. When they left Doug with the impression that no matter what happened Doug would still have his Sunday night Oldies show and then they took that away from him as well and now Alan has the gall to speak so glowingly about a man and a talent that he basically kicked to the curb, really fuck you Alan. I don't know how anyone could work for you right now without feeling a little sick in their stomach. It's one thing for someone who worked with or around Doug to speak highly of him, it is quite another when someone who valued him so little that he didn't want Doug on his airwaves to now come out and speak so glowingly. Alan, you are right about one thing, there are places for people to say their final farewells. As Lynn pointed out in her podcast on the 27^th, the Twitterverse literally lit up on the news Doug had passed, many of the TV stations in town have comment threads for Doug, Facebook fan groups for Doug have been inundated with comments, audio clips of his show have even started popping up on Youtube so there are plenty of outlets for those that wish to say goodbye to Doug and thankfully none of them involve any of your stations, you hypocritical bastard.

Sorry, but I really needed to get that off of my chest. Yes there is some anger still built up, one might say it is part of the grieving process, I would say that it is just appropriately focused outrage.

My anger aside, it doesn't change the inarguable fact that Doug is gone, and Pittsburgh is a lesser city for it. There really is only one way to end this entry, and anyone who is a Doug fan knows what it is. For those that aren't, it is the song he closed every show with....