Rock 99 - Chapter 3
By H.G. Miller
- Afternoon -
Cracklin' Jack Watley stormed onto the Greater Cincinnati Ohio radio scene when
he was twenty-three years old. His gravely voice lent an air of credibility to
his youthful statements about war, politics and the Reds playoff chances.
Years of working in the business eventually taught him everything he needed to
know about finances, audience demographics and general middle-management
practices. Moving to Los Angeles, he soon found
out how beneficial the truancy of his superiors could be to his own career.
A four-week sabbatical by the general manager of The Rock 99 (at that time, 99
Cool - Everything an Eighties Audience Needs) had left him in control of the
number four ranked radio station in the second-largest media market in the
country. When the general manager returned, he found his station ranked number
two and a gravely-voiced, forty-five year old punk (the general manager's word)
moved into his office. An office he would no longer need as the job of general
manager no longer belonged to him.
Jack Watley was not eighty years old, as his employees all guessed him. His
hair began to whiten in his mid-twenties, and then the added insult of baldness
attacked him just after thirty. His voice maintained the same gravely tone he'd
become famous for, only now instead of transmitting over the airwaves, it was
used to quiet down rooms full of accountants, promoters, lawyers and snotty DJs
who wrongfully-assumed they would be missed by the general populace if he chose
to pull them from the broadcast booth and into radio sales oblivion.
Currently, he poured over the newest rankings in which his station was still
number one, but by a significantly-less margin than a year ago. An unsettling
trend. In the background, on the dual-tape deck radio he kept in his office, he
heard Wolfdog Doug make a joke about the President's constant misuse of the
English language.
His ears perked up and he listened some more. The commercial break came, and he
moved into the hallway and toward the afternoon producer's cage.
“Didn't he make that joke last week?” Mr. Watley asked Jose Nunez before he
could even notice the old man was there.
“Um…” Jose searched for the explanation that would incriminate him the least.
“Sort of.”
“Can you have him come talk to me when his set's finished?” Watley asked. “I
know he's been winging it for a while now, but we can't be recycling our own
jokes.”
“I don't know if he can make it.” Jose said.
“Excuse me?”
“He. Well, he's not really here.”
Jack took a few steps further into the cage and peered through the glass of the
broadcast booth. An empty chair and panels of blinking lights greeted him. He
turned back to Jose.
“I'm playing a tape from last week's broadcast.”
“Last week?”
“It's the same play list.”
“Where is he?”
“Home, I think. Maybe the track. He was gone yesterday, too.”
The general manager rubbed at a pain that was building in the back of his neck
and tried to fathom how out of touch he'd become with his radio station.
“You mean to tell me that for the last two days, we've been playing reruns and
nobody noticed?”
Jose shrugged his shoulders. “The public. They don't notice things so much.
Wolf has pulled this off and on for the last couple of months.”
“Why haven't you told me?”
“I don't know,” Jose began to get nervous. He felt a spark in the old man's
words that he hadn't ever noticed before. “One time was one time, you know.
Just a quick fix. After that, well… I think I dug a hole. Maybe.”
The nervous chatter irritated Mr. Watley. He let the producer ramble on for a
few more minutes to keep himself from making a rash decision. Finally, he found
agreement within himself and turned into the hallway.
Jose's words trailed off and he wondered if he'd managed to save his job.
Mr. Watley returned with Jarrod, the nineteen year old intern who'd been
fetching Jose's coffee for the last couple of months.
“Mr. Nunez,” Mr. Watley spoke calmly, “I'm afraid we won't be needing your
services anymore. Jarrod here will finish your shift.”
Jose's face went white. “He doesn't know which commercials to run,” he argued
for even a few more hours of employment.
“He'll figure it out,” Mr. Watley said. “Good day.”
Jose then watched as the old man moved into the broadcast booth, pulled the
headphones over his head and cleared his throat.
Mr. Watley could feel the blood pulsing through his veins and a strong
sensation of being alive expanding in his chest. He signaled to the kid in the
engineering cage. The “LIVE” light came on…
“Okay, this is Cracklin' Jack and you're listening to The Rock 99. If it was
100, then you'd have to change your dial, and let's be honest, most of you
sheep are incapable of such an extreme act of individualism. Now, let's play
some rock. I hope you're ready, L.A., we're about to shake things up here…”