John Gehron: Respected radio boss

John Gehron is the COO at Accuradio and has built a good reputation at the numerous radio stations he's worked at, including WLS, where he became well-known through Garry Meier and Steve Dahl's show; Oprah Radio on satellite; Clear Channel's WNUA; CBS in Philadelphia and WCBS in New York; WCCO in Minneapolis; and WRKO in Boston. He talks about the future of online radio, consolidation, personalities such as John Landecker, Norm N Knight, Dick Heatherton, Charlie Greer, Ron Lundy, and Dan Ingraham; the East Coast vs Midwest radio scene; voicetracking, ABC management, and payola; diaries vs the PPM rating system; and American Radio Systems, which owned radio stations that he and others sold to CBS.

Click the link below to play, or download it by right-clicking (on a PC) or holding down the CTRL key and clicking on it (for Mac).

http://radiogirl.us/audio/RG98.mp3

Rick Gieser: sports radio and more

Rick Gieser has just been elected as a village trustee in Carol Stream, but also does a lot more: he's the producer of Sports Central on WGN radio, was the first morning show producer at WSCR/The Score with host Tom Shaer, does public relations for Zanies, where he has met a lot of comedians including Drew Carey and Jeff Garlin, and does PR for Monster Jam, Disney Stars on Ice, Woodfield Mall, and Ringling Bros Circus. He talks about his radio career, which started in an Amtrak train car at WDME in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, and included time at WNDE in Indianapolis and WFBQ with the Bob and Tom Show. He's done a lot and has plenty of photos to prove it at his Facebook page...friend him and find out! He also brought delicious doughnuts from Sweet Mornings Cafe, which I guess you could say supplied the "craft service" for this podcast :p

Click the link below to play, or download it by right-clicking (on a PC) or holding down the CTRL key and clicking on it (for Mac).

http://radiogirl.us/audio/RG97.mp3

Rick O'Dell: Smooth Jazz online

Rick O'Dell, creator and host of Smooth Jazz Chicago.net, talks about how he got his broadcast name (his real name is Ralph Nozaki), how Japanese was his first language, the memo his elementary school sent out when his family moved to La Grange, his career at WNUA (where he worked for almost 20 years), WPGU, WAUR, and WCLR, what he thinks of terrestrial vs online radio, Mitsuwa, and more.

Click the link below to play, or download it by right-clicking (on a PC) or holding down the CTRL key and clicking on it (for Mac).

http://radiogirl.us/audio/RG96.mp3

Pat Cassidy: Nice News Guy, nice career

Pat Cassidy, who's the morning guy at WBBM Newsradio in Chicago, talks about his sweet career, which includes several years at WBBM, where they seemed to hold his job while he joined Erich Muller (Mancow)'s show at WLS; 25 years at WMAQ; and various gigs at WGLD, WBMX (where he was the only white guy), WNIS, and WEXI (where he was a music program director). He also talks about what he calls "the most embarrassing incident of all time" for the first time publicly, why he went to WLS, what Mort Downey was really like, the future of news radio, if an agent helps, and more.

Click the link below to play, or download it by right-clicking (on a PC) or holding down the CTRL key and clicking on it (for Mac).

http://radiogirl.us/audio/RG95.mp3

Update: I interviewed Pat right before he retired, at the end of 2021. You can listen to the interview at the link below. 

http://radiogirl.us/audio/RG179.mp3