Welcome to the Broadcast page. I was really driven as a teenager to get into announcing, along with other radio interests at the 

time. I suppose growing up in the sixties (listen to John Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. In the USA") with the big clear-channel AM rock stations, as well as the new burgeoning FM album rock sound, was really a strong influence for a lot of us. The link between electronics,

being a musician, and recording was a natural springboard for an interest in radio. Besides, radio was always very much built on air

personalities, and you couldn't help finding the people you wanted to listen to and emulate, no matter what kind of music or stations

you listened to. News and sports announcers even had followings; these people were not only famous, they were ultra professional- a

far cry from the adolescent-minded shock-jocks of today.

     One thing I had great fun with was building low power "pirate" transmitters. Creating most of it from old vacuum tube salvage equipment, I got quite sophisticated near the end, with a mixer, two turntables and my open-reel recorder for "commercials" (I made them up from newspaper ads). I'd change or improve the antenna or transmitter, then go walking around the neighborhoods with a transistor radio to see how much further the signal went. During high school, a local radio station owner invited some of us to spend some evenings at the studio learning a little more about things, and I took full advantage, asking all kinds of questions about the console, transmitter and audio processing gear, and how it all worked. (I actually made several fake "aircheck" tapes at home, and one of them got me on at the college station after I graduated from high school) I also used the experience to learn more about tape recorder technology, and that helped out down the road with my music interests.

     I graduated high school in 1974, with a scholarship to S.I.U. Carbondale (Illinois), and immediately started trying to get an airshift at one of the campus stations (the main station was 100kw FM, the other broadcast at 600khz AM, using "current carrier"- 5 watt transmitters located in each building, feeding the signal into the AC power wiring, so that any radio in the area could pick it up). I got some weekend shifts; here's a clip: WIDB. Following that, I started focusing on other areas of electronics, and it was a couple of years before I started doing weekends at another station in Harrisburg Illinois, WEBQ. During this time I had gotten married and had a daughter, and was working full time in 2-way and consumer electronic repair for a local company. I left that job and the weekend radio work and went back to school for a semester in order to take some courses to allow me to change my working direction. One of my fellow classmates was the music director at a regional station, who got me to pick up some weekend shifts, which eventually led to a short stint doing a fulltime evening show at WMIX, and sometimes doing newscasts. I worked with WMIX from 1978 to 1984, and

it was there that I met my second wife. I continued to produce radio ads for others in my home studio, writing copy and composing and performing the music beds up through the early 1990's, but have not worked on-air since.

Copyright 2008 Paul Gibson / Deep Vertical