Blogger 365 Day 28 - Three years and two cuts

     I know that I have been goofing a bit recently including yesterday's Grammy post, but it would be wrong of me not to remember that just over 3 years ago (Jan 25, 2011) Doug Hoerth passed away.  I have talked at length about him in previous blog entries, those of you that have been with me for the long haul already know that, so rather than just repeat myself I decided to upload an hour of a show Doug did back in the day, when he interviewed Robert Klein and I was lucky enough to be sitting in the producer's chair (I also booked the interview, but that was an easy get, Klein was already in Pittsburgh for another event).  Rather than me prattle on tonight, I will let Doug do the prattling for me

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....

Stolen Content - Sad

For those of you who were here yesterday and read the post you already know what this is about.  You got a brief look in as it were.  The story behind it is just sad.  I wish I had the vocabulary to come up with something better than that three letter description, but if it is out there it is eluding me at this point.

Obituary: Doug Hoerth / Off-the-cuff 'Uncle Dougie' had 3-decade radio run in Pittsburgh

Died Jan. 25, 2011

Thursday, January 27, 2011

By Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Painting by Bob Daley

A painting of Doug Hoerth, by Brookline artist Bob Daley.

Doug Hoerth, a Pittsburgh radio talk show fixture for nearly three decades whose on-air "Uncle Dougie" persona regaled listeners with discussions, dissections and debates of pop culture, current events, the arcane, and the good, bad and ugly of his personal life, was found dead in his Bellevue apartment Tuesday evening. He was 66.

His body was discovered by Bellevue police, who were dispatched to check on his well being because Mr. Hoerth's former co-worker Phil Lenz couldn't reach him for about a week, although the two close friends usually talked every other day. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office ruled Wednesday that Mr. Hoerth died of natural causes.

Mr. Lenz and others who knew Mr. Hoerth said he had become unmoored, lonely and, in a way, had given up on life when he lost his last on-air job, at WPTT-AM, in December 2007. They said he further fell into depression in November 2009 upon the death of Laurence Gaines Jr., 43, his good friend, former producer and on-air sidekick at WTAE-AM from 1993 through 1998.

"The sad thing is that once he lost his radio show the last time and he knew he was not going to get back on the air, it broke his heart," said close friend Bill Zimpleman, who had known the broadcaster since shortly after Mr. Hoerth went on the air here in September 1980.

"He felt, 'What's the use of doing anything any more?' He became a recluse. He didn't eat much and lost a lot of weight."

And, he said, the situation was compounded with Mr. Gaines' death. "That hit him hard. He loved Laurence. He and Laurence did a great radio show together. He was hurt so bad when Laurence died. He was one of the few friends he had beside myself."

Former radio talk show host Lynn Cullen said that for Mr. Hoerth, her WTAE co-worker for about a decade, being on the radio was much more than a job.

"He was very gifted. He was made for radio. It was his life. His audience was his family. And when both were taken away from him, I think he was bereft," she said. "He was also bereft by [Mr. Gaines' death]. No two people were funnier on the air together. I think Laurence's premature death took so much from Doug, coming after he'd lost his show."

In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obituary about Mr. Gaines, Mr. Hoerth said their years working together "were five of the happiest years of my life."

His happiness was palpable whenever he was on the air, his joy carried undiminished by the radio waves.

"I love what I do for a living," he said in a 1996 Post-Gazette profile. "They pay me to have fun on the radio ... and I get my own sandbox and I get what's inside my system out of my system."

Zany, irreverent and freewheeling -- more frat boy than shock-jock -- Mr. Hoerth constructed a spontaneous show around all the things on his mind right then and there -- from the glory of early rock 'n' roll to his take on the news of the day to whose presidential candidate's wife was hotter, to acting out the lines from favorite movies, such as "The Godfather" and "Blazing Saddles." He interviewed an eclectic mix of guests and wasn't above spoofing listeners, famously having them believe for years that singers Don Ho and Julio Iglesias were brothers separated at birth.

But when it came to his own life, Mr. Hoerth was brutally honest. Listeners knew -- because he told them -- that he was an only child from Bricktown, N.J., a recovering alcoholic and a former bug exterminator in Florida. His lifelong dream to be on the radio came true after he called a Florida talk show and told the general manager he could do better than any of his disc jockeys.

"He was so open -- some would say too open -- about every aspect of his life," Ms. Cullen said. "His audience lived through the minutiae of his relationships, marriage, divorce -- through his hemorrhoids -- and yet he could pull it off."

His multisubject, multidimensional, usually funny and sometimes poignant show reflected the varied interests, knowledge and moods of its host, she said.

"He knew everything about '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll. ... He was an extraordinary interviewer. He never went to college, but he knew more about more stuff than most people with college degrees. He was self-educated, with a voracious mind and a steel trap memory. He was one of the greatest storytellers in broadcasting. He could hold an audience."

On Nov. 2, 2005, a little more than two years before his last contract expired and wasn't renewed, Mr. Hoerth marked his 25th anniversary on the Pittsburgh airwaves -- an amazing run for a radio talent in a single market. "The reason I've lasted is I never lost my passion for this," he said at the time.

He first signed on Nov. 2, 1980, on WWSW-AM followed by stints at KQV-AM, KDKA and WTAE-AM before joining WPTT in January 1999. He also hosted "Uncle Dougie's Rock 'n' Roll Oldies Party" on sister station WJAS-AM.

"The Doug Hoerth Silver Anniversary Special" covered some of his career highlights and included excerpts from notable interviews, such as the late writer/radio personality Jean Shepherd and the late Pittsburgh radio personality Rege Cordic and the late Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince.

"It's very sad. In my mind, he was one of the best talk show hosts there was," said Mr. Lenz, who was chief engineer at WPTT and WJAS. "He could talk politics but that wasn't his show. His show was whatever he wanted to talk about. Doug was a comic."

Mr. Hoerth daily read nine newspapers, Mr. Lenz said, and had a phenomenal memory. Because of that "he knew how to make good radio. I think he did better interviews than anybody on the face of this earth."

Ms. Cullen, who noted Mr. Hoerth's generosity toward her when she started in radio in 1986, said it was a sad reflection on the current state of talk radio that a talent like Mr. Hoerth couldn't find work.

"Radio changed," she noted. "It stopped wanting the audience he attracted ... older baby boomers. And because there's not the kind of eclectic talk he specialized in. Nobody does that anymore. Radio only wants vituperative political talk. He could do it, but that was not what wanted to do."

Mr. Hoerth, who had no surviving family members, requested there be no service for him but his friends said they may hold some kind of a memorial.

Mr. Zimpleman, who had dinner with Mr. Hoerth at the Bellevue Eat'n Park nearly every Tuesday, said Mr. Hoerth would bring to their get-togethers a list of things he wanted to talk about -- just like the lists he once prepared for his radio shows.

"He just loved to be on the radio," Mr. Zimpleman said of his departed friend. "He just wished he could still be on."

Michael A. Fuoco: mfuoco@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1968. Staff writers Mackenzie Carpenter and Adrian McCoy contributed.

First published on January 27, 2011 at 12:00 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11027/1120914-455.stm#ixzz1CGtFSw7F

Multiply 365 Day 26 - Reprints

I come to the blog with bad news today, as I was at work I received a call from Phil Marcus.  Normally if I get a call from Phil it involves when we will next be going out for lunch or dinner and where, but those calls are almost always reserved for home and not work, so my curiosity was piqued.  I wish it hadn't been.  The call was to inform me that Doug Hoerth was found dead in his apartment.  When I got home there were messages from a couple of other people as well, Lynn called me and Marla left me a message in my Facebook inbox. 

Rather than go into a long story of what Doug meant to me, instead I am going to repost something that I had written in my Yahoo 360 days, back on 11/05/2005 when Doug was being recognized for 25 tears in broadcasting. (I will try to fix any typos from back then, but the content will remain the same.)

      Well, let's get the congratulatory stuff out of the way first.  Kudos to one Doug Hoerth on his 25 years of broadcasting here in the 'Burgh.  Doug has worked at a handful of stations in this market, currently he is employed by our station.  I have always been a fan of his, so it was more than fun to actually sit in as his producer for the 9 months we had him on in the mornings (he has since been moved to the afternoon drive).   I would explain what goes through producing a typical episode of the Doug Hoerth Show, but there is no such animal.  Asking Doug what the show was about ahead of time was pointless, because either he didn't know, or he had an idea, but he didn't want to tell in order to keep the show "fresh".  Needless to say, doing his show meant you basically had to plan on most anything happening. 

 

      For me, prepping for his show involved reading a lot every morning, at least enough to make myself familiar with the contents of the NY Post, NY Daily News, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Drudge Report, and Radar Online.  And that was just to cover the bases.  It was also a good idea to have taken a look at the traffic person (Trisha Pittman) over on Channel 11, because we would most likely be talking about her fashion sense, which is very good by the way.

 

       A little after 7am, the show would start.  By the time we got out of the news break at the top of the hour, I had also checked out the weather person on Channel 11 (Krista Viarreal) and her fashion sense, which usually consisted of a comment on how she stole Doug's drapes again, a cursory glance at Denise Austin on Lifetime (she can't really be 48 and look that good can she?) and some channel hopping, because who knows what Doug is watching on the TV in his booth.

     The conversations that would happen before we went on the air were probably as funny, if not moreso than anything we did on the air.  Prime example, one morning we were doing our channel hopping prior to the show and we ended up on a faith healer (7am cable is quite an experience) who was all but slapping these people as they would fall back or collapse before claiming that they were healed (Praise the Lord!).  Well this one woman came up to the Reverend (Ernest Ainsley is his name if I remember correctly) and while I had the sound off (I usually watch with close captioning so as not to interfere with any open mikes) I could tell by the pics that first she was very heavy and second that she was very heavy in the chest department as well.  Mr. Ainsley goes about his ritual (about 5 minutes after the hour, with us starting the radio show about 6 after the hour) and low and behold she is healed.  Not just healed, but excitedly healed as she bounded around the stage in all her glory, her massive mammaries going in all sorts of directions.  Now mind you, the clock is ticking on us to start the show, and just before we go on the air, I talk into Doug's headset and say the following "You would think while God was around, he would have fixed her bra as well".  We must have laughed through the entire first segment of the show, with most everyone else just not in on the joke.  This is what we would call par for the course, usually one of us breaking the other up before we go on the air.  I can't describe how much fun it was to do that show.   Not that we didn't have our serious moments, but at the end of the day we are still just doing a show, and truth be told, lots of people would kill to be doing what we were doing, so we had fun with it.

    Kudos Uncle Douggie, it nice know that after 25 years, the City of Pittsburgh had an official Doug Hoerth Day, a honor that both you and Boy George can now lay claim too.  I heard they were going to have a Rosie O'Donnell Day as well, but when they went to give her the key to the city, she thought it was a Cheeto, and ate it. 

Dismissed

I am not sure how to begin this blog entry. It has been a while since I blogged, not because there hasn't been anything to say, those that live here would confirm that, but it has been a matter of trying to get a handle on all of the things that have taken place.

I have blogged at length about my radio career and how much I enjoy the business, and that hasn't changed but this past week has show just how much of a cruel mistress radio can really be. As easy as it is to just turn the thing on in the home or the car and expect moise of one form or another to come out, behind the scenes there are far more things that take place. It is equal parts technical, people and numbers and this past week, numbers reared their ugly head.

On the numbers front, radio is driven by the 2 R's, ratings and revenue. An ideal shows scores high in both numbers, it has adequate listenership and generates considerable revenue for its station. Not so ideal but workable is to score well in one of the two numbers, if you have high ratings, then there are listeners out there, but for whatever reason converting those numbers into dollars is problematic whether that be an ineffective sales staff or targeting an audience that is unwilling or unable to part with their dinero. If you have high revenue but not high ratings, you have what is best called a loyal listener base, those that listen to your show tend to spend their dollars on your specific advertisers, but it leaves very little margin for error.

The worst is when you have low ratings and low revenue and surviving that dubious pairing is at best problematic, at worst, impossible. It is that sad convergence that reared its ugly head Monday at the radio station. Let me be the first to say, the station I work at has never been one of the powerhouses of the market. It tends to fall somewhere in the #17-#20 range in the market, depending on the ratings book. Mind you this is a far cry from when I first started there 11 years ago when the numbers were so small that management was happy if they showed up in the book. I don't attribute any modest climb to my employment, only making a simple statement of fact. Still, it makes for little margin of error to lay out significant amounts of cash on a signal whose audience isn't the largest. Those places where money is spent need to be able to turn the station an adequate amount of cash in order to continue. I am lucky in that working with Lynn, we tend to have the highest ratings of any show on the station (we tend to do double or better the station's overall rating, which is measured from 6A-6P) though again this isn't me taking credit, just stating a fact. Lynn has a decent number of loyal listeners and as well, a significant number of loyal advertisers. It is not uncommon for Lynn to be doing 8 or more live reads (commercials read during the show by the host as opposed to pretaped spots) in a three hour show as well as a decent number of advertisers that want their spots to run in her show.

Doug, who I mention probably more often than Lynn due to my apperances on his show, doesn't pull the same numbers, in either ratings or revenue. That being said, I will be one of the people who could say that I enjoyed his show. When I first got into radio, back in August of 1996 as an intern, I would often come to the station in the mid day/evening slot. Mind you, in those days we were a sports talk station, and air shifts consisted of just doing sports updates 3 times an hour. My job, as being an intern I was not on the air, even doing those updates, was to do production work, cutting commercial spots from network feeds, doing interviews and cutting them for sound and research for our high school football pregame show we did on Fridays. When I would climb into the car to go to work, I, like many people would click on the radio. My commute usually consisted f listening to Doug on the way to work, even though at the time he was working for a different station. In December of that year, I was actually hired as an employee of the station, and again I was stuck with evening shifts, allowing me the opportunity to listen to Doug while on my way to work. Doug's show would air then from 3P-6P and usually my shifts at the station would start at 7P and run until 1A when I would take the station off of the air (we didn't go to 24 hour programming until we switched format to talk). Funny thing was, when we switched to talk, Doug's station switched to sports talk, blowing out all of their local talent, save for Doug's show, which moved to the 5A-10A slot. Meanwhile we went all talk and 24 hour programming, meaning a lot of my shifts ended up being overnight shifts listening to Art Bell. The saving grace of that shift was when I got done, I could leave the station and listen to Doug do his morning show. As we tried to identify ourselves as more of a talk station, we would hire Lynn (who coincidentally, had worked at Doug's station prior to them switching formats) in an effort to get our station a "name" and give our station a local perspective as well as the national shows we were carrying at the time. Eventually, Doug's station let him go as well, finishing of their switch to all sports and our station picked him up, giving us a second local host. We eventually would add Jerry Bowyer, giving us three local hosts and that was when I would get my first break, going from part time to full time status. But here it is, little old me, now not only a fan of Doug's, but through some unpredictable set of circumstances, working at the very same radio station as Doug. I would work with Jerry for about 5 years before he asked to first be switched to the afternoons, having 7 kids at home and a number of other commitments outside the station, Jerry wanted to be able to sleep later than 4am, which is the usual time to climb out of bed to host a 7am show. When the switch was made, Doug became the morning host and for the first time in my radio career I was now working directly with a guy who I had listened to regularly on the air. There is a ego rush that goes with that that is very hard to describe, being able to actually sit directly across the glass from someone in the business that you idolized. What was even better was that Doug liked the work I was doing for him, asking regularly for input into the show. It was in many ways a dream come true. Doug and I would only be together for a year or so, Jerry would leave the station to take a gig at a Christian talk station on the FM dial, and once again our lineup would be shuffled, with Doug moving to afternoons and Lynn being shifted to mornings with me. Probably one of the most flattering things that ever happened to me occurred then, when both Lynn and Doug wanted me as their producer, Lynn asked the program director to keep me in mornings for her show, Doug asked to have me moved to afternoons to continue working with him. Here are two people, both names in the market with a combined 50+ years in broadcasting and they both want you. Rather than make me pick, the program director made the call, saying that I would work mornings with Lynn and Greg would do Doug's show in the afternoon. To be honest, I am glad he made the call because I am not sure I could have, nor would I have wanted to.

Anyway, while Doug's show was shifted to the afternoon, Doug always did a couple of things that kept me involved in his program. One was the holiday shows, where he would invite all of his former producers to sit in with him. Since I had produced his show, I qualified for that duty, and it served a purpose in that on holidays, getting calls into a show can be problematic at best, this allowed him the ability of talking to people that he knew without relying on listeners to call in to move the show along. The second and more impressive on me, was the Friday shows, the Doug and the Group efforts. These would occur most Fridays and involve Doug and three of his friends and we would all sit in and to the blathering that comes requisite with doing radio. The fact Doug put me on that list, as a friend, as opposed to the holiday shows, meant more to me than I can possibly describe on this page. I have put some of those shows on this page from tie to time, because working with Doug has always been a pleasure of mine. he was the touchstone in reminding me that what we do, while we can be informative, should at first be fun, that those of us with jobs in radio are blessed in a way, we get paid not to do any form of manual labor, but instead to talk. Who wouldn't want to have fun doing that? How much fun is it to come to work and just be miserable all of the time? With Doug, having fun was never a problem.

I will tell a story (I would say a quick story but I know how I ramble on) and it is one that some of you have read before, but it goes to show the fun Doug and I had working together. One of the things about the show was that we never talked about what we would talk about prior to the show, everything was very much spontaneous and off the cuff. Doug and I might spend some time together prior to a broadcast having a cigarette or two, but never did we talk about what would be talked about on the air. The only talking we did in that regard was just before going on the air, Doug and I each had a TV in our respective booths and prior to show time (and sometimes during commercial breaks) we would talk about stuff on TV, usually involving the wardrobes of the local TV news people that were finishing up their morning newscasts at 7A, just before we would go on the air. We would talk about the relative hotness of Trisha Pittman, or how Krista Villareal's clothes once again resemble Doug's curtains. Anyway, as we are sitting down to get ready for the show, Doug pulls my attention to a TV preacher who is on doing the whole "healing" thing, which involves a person who suffers some unknown malady and the preachers doing some form of "Praise Jesus" and the whole do you accept your savior routine, followed by smacking them on the head and them falling down, only to stand up immediately afterward and claim they were cured. One such lady, a very heavy set black woman with large breasts came up to the preacher and she proceeded to talk about all of the pain that she is suffering from. Al the while we are getting closer and closer to show time, literally less than 2 minutes before air time. The preacher starts his routine, a combination of sermon from sermongenerator.com and hand gestures resembling something out of a Bruce Lee film. All of a sudden, he does the smack to her forehead claiming that the woman is healed. She does the requisite tumbling to the altar with aplomb and proceeded to get up and start jumping up and down claiming that she is in fact healed. The thing about this particular woman is that, since she was heavy set, her bouncing up and down lead to parts of her anatomy going in directions that they normally wouldn't, including her breasts, which were going all sort of willy nilly, and if she would have been wearing tassels, it would have made Sikorsky proud. That being said, the clock is clicking down to show time, and I just happen to say in Doug's ear "You know, while God was in the neighborhood, he might have went about fixing her bra". We laughed for like the first 20 minutes of the show, the audience completely not in on the joke, we tried to explain it, but it was something that had to be witnessed to be believed. It was that type of just complete inanity that we approached most of our broadcasts, just go in and have fun for three hours.

By now, you have to be wondering where this long diatribe is going. If I may continue, Doug's contract with the station is due to end on December 31st, and while those of us don't have to go through this progress, those that do have contracts then have to sit down with management where they go over the 2R's and the sides haggle out some sort of agreement regarding a new contract, or they part their separate ways. Doug's meeting with management was on Monday, and according to the paper (I refuse to speculate what went on behind closed doors) no new contract from the station was forthcoming from management for Doug. This could be for a number of reasons, not high enough ratings, and inability to sell the show, the show becoming stale (many of Doug's stories were some of the same stories he has used fr the last odd number of years) or it could have been stubbornness from Doug's side of the table in negotiating, I don't know, I just know that when no contract was forthcoming, Doug opted to make Monday his last day.

This trickles down however, because a subsequent email from management suggested that they would no longer run any radio station for more revenue than they could bring in. I get the business side of the equation, but it also sends the shockwaves through the station of who else will get the ax. After all, Greg and I are both full time producers and with only one radio show now as opposed to two, either one of us could get the ax as well as some sort of cost cutting measure and management has been particularly quiet in regards to whether or not anyone else will be let go. To our program directors credit, he is trying to keep both of us, arguing that there is more than enough work for both Greg and myself to do, which he is probably correct in making that assessment. Lynn has said that she would put in a good word for me if needed, but I don't want to put her in that position. Heck, there was even slight buzz amongst some of the employees that I should replace Doug as a show host. While I appreciate the sentiment and have no doubt that I could host a show if asked, I am not sure that even if offered it would be a position I wanted, knowing that it would come with built in resentment of those people that were and are fans of Doug and would then blame whoever took over that spot for his release from the station. Not that I think management is even thinking in that regard, this was more just some sales people talking amongst themselves during our First Friday thing we do every month. I doubt management is thinking anything beyond what type of sattelite programming can we get for the least amount of money and let the issue rest there.

Amazing that I haven't spoken of anything fantasy, asshat or change meter related, but that hasn't been on my mind the last few days, the only thing has been whether or not I will show up for work and have a job at the end of the day. For those looking for the other things I do with this page, I am sure they will be back in due time, they just aren't my primary concern these days.