The Long Slide Down

by Frank Absher

It’s interesting to see some of the comments on the StL Media Board from youngsters who would like to get rid of all the “old guys” on the radio. I can’t ever remember feeling that kind of bitterness.

I do, however, remember coming across some folks in the business who were nearing the end of the long slide down from what they had once been.

Not that all of them had amounted to something. Many were in small markets, trying desperately to create something that would satisfy their egos’ needs. They never succeeded.

One guy had smoked and drunk himself into a precarious health state, and the rest of the folks at the station knew he’d never get another job. He was found one day, dead in his sparse apartment after coworkers became concerned about his not showing up for work.

This was a guy who tried so hard to be suave, but the ruse, if there was any, was unsuccessful. He fooled no one. In the end it was him and the bottle, and the bottle won.

Another one at a semi-small market in Missouri hadn’t quite reached that state when I encountered him. In his mind, he was the star – the one around whom the station revolved.

The boss paid him slave wages but gave him a couple advertising accounts to supplement the income. Like the guy mentioned above, he was alone in life, paying alimony to a couple distant former wives. Kids, if there were any, were never mentioned. He spent most of his free time down at the VFW hall drinking with the guys.

There were the regular in-studio coughing fits from all the cigarettes, and he couldn’t be depended upon to get through a newscast. His reading of the obits in the morning came in fits and starts.

But he thought he was so smooth – so personable – so good.

I never really was able to understand this. Maybe it was the large age difference. I was just out of college and had my whole professional life ahead of me. He had nothing to look forward to, except long nights drinking with his VFW pals commiserating about the long-haired communist hippies who were demonstrating against the Vietnam war.

When the end came to his broadcast career, he was absolutely lost because there was nothing else he was capable of doing. Last I heard he was a prison guard in Jeff City.

You may call me Pollyannaish but I can’t imagine a life so devoid of positives. Why couldn’t/wouldn’t these guys see the writing on the wall? Yes, they were as entitled to jobs in radio as I was, but they were clearly experiencing their last professional gasps, a fact they ignored.

There were no adoring fans in these markets in the ‘70s, and there certainly were no groupies. The pay was lousy. I was willing to pay my dues there, but it’s hard to imagine wanting to spend the rest of a career there.
Yet there they were, these on-the-way-down, bitter, angry men. Then and there I vowed to avoid that situation and to get out when it was time. In my case, that point in time was obvious and clear. There was a lot of regret then, but not now.

I have a great wife, a great son and a great life, and I’m grateful that I’m still healthy and can savor it all. This state of personal contentment came because I saw the writing on the wall and was eventually able to accept it.

My hope is that many of my friends can experience this same enjoyment of life and avoid the long slide down.

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