During a fight in Irish folks here pulled out a fiddle and played for fellow passengers.
You know, when I'm stuck in a long fight, my first thought is, I really hope the guy next
me pulls out a fiddle.
The New York Mats have announced it for the first half of the season Saturday day games
will start at 1.40pm and an effort to bring more families and large groups to the ballpark.
Well, I guess that's easier than being good at baseball.
Travis Kelsey said that he won't be at the Grammys this weekend with Taylor Swift because
he needs to focus on the Super Bowl.
Man, you know your life is good when you can't go to the Grammys because you got a prep
for the Super Bowl.
Did you see this guy thinking it means that we've been lost?
Maybe one less time is all we need.
I can't really help it if my tongue's all tied in knots.
Jumping off a bridge is just a buzzer that I've ever been.
It's 607 at WRJN radio.
I'm Don Rosen.
I want to thank you for joining me here on this Monday morning and today we have another
WRJN historical marker for you.
This is when we're going to do the history of WRJN radio.
It's going to be put in isolation somewhere and it's going to be kept in the archives.
So someday somebody's going to say, I wonder what WRJN was like in 2024 and before and we're
going to be able to tell them because each time we do this, we have a former employee.
And I before I used to say that still alive, but today we were supposed to do Terry Bond.
Terry passed away about a year or so ago.
He was our engineer at WRJN and I worked with him at other radio stations as well.
And how do you do somebody who passed away?
Well, I know a lot about Terry's career, but to fill in the gap was going to be his wife
Linda Bond.
She used to be vice president of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.
Met Terry guy got married and had a great life until, you know, Terry passed away.
So she was going to join me this morning, but unfortunately she had a death in her family
the other day.
But I think it was like yesterday, the death took place.
And she said, I really can't come, but I want to reschedule.
So we will then, you know, we sorry for her loss and we understand it's kind of tough
at a time like this, we need to lose somebody close.
So Linda Bond will be back with us, but pinch hitting helper boy is Ted Alain.
Would you call yourself big helper boy, right?
Big helping boy.
You can always count on Ted Alain to fill in at a pinch, whether it was at the radio station
or doing our WRJN historical marker.
And today we're going to talk about Ted Alain.
Now I know some of your career, but you're going to fill in all the gaps and we're going
to start with Ted Alain.
Where you from originally?
Originally, I'm from Burlington.
I was born and raised here, a graduate of Burlington High School.
And yeah, and I know that, you know, Burlington has a significant mark in the history of WRJN
because at one time I learned this from the late Don Vandesand who ran the Burlington Historical
Society.
WRJN had a Burlington studio.
I think it was like during the 40s, 50s, maybe into the 60s.
And that's how long at the boss, just above the boss dairy barn in the loop in downtown
Burlington.
And so, you know, there is a strong connection between WRJN and this community in Western
Racine County.
So yeah, it's a nice fit seeing that a Burlington boy ends up coming to a WRJN to work
there for about, you know, it was about four, a little over four years of them not mistaken.
We also had studios in West Dallas for some odd reason and received, yeah, we had studios
in West Dallas too.
And we also had them in Kenosha.
They were all over the place.
They don't do that anymore, but back then for some reason, and I tried to get Tom Carco
to commit to why we did that.
I just, I couldn't get an exact reason why, but it was all connected by phone lines.
They didn't have any other way to connect radio stations back then.
So we used very expensive phone lines.
Okay, so you, uh, Burlington High School, you went to the same high school as football
great Tony Roma.
Indeed, indeed.
And, uh, the one thing that Burlington High School had that, uh, had a leg up on a lot
of other high schools around Wisconsin and many across the country, we had an over-the-air
radio station, WBSD.
And I, it's interesting too, Don, because when I was a kid, a little kid, like before,
you know, at preschool, I was listening to the radio all the time, we were listening
to the signals out of Chicago, WLS, WCFL, the two big top 40 stations out of Chicago.
And, you know, one of the things that happened along the way is at the National Food Store
in Burlington, they ended up having copies of the WLS Personality Album.
It had profiles of all the great disc jockeys they had on.
At that time, like, we were on 1966, 67 on WLS, a fellow who is a Wisconsinite originally
and he worked in Milwaukee a number.
In fact, a lot of these guys worked in Milwaukee, Clark Weber, Bernie Allen, I can go through
the whole lineup.
Dex Card, Ron Riley, Art Roberts, and in fact, I had a chance to meet Art Roberts when
I was in high school.
And Don Phillips, who actually worked at WRJN, but ended up doing overnight for a while
at WLS.
And Dex Card was the owner of this radio station at one time.
That's right.
I totally forgot.
He owned WRJN.
He's the one who brought the FM from Taylor Avenue, which was WHKQ at the time, actually
WFNY.
Right.
And he combined WRJN and WFNY and made a combo out of it.
That was Dex Card.
You mentioned here.
Okay.
So, were you on the high school radio station?
Yes, I was.
And I was there for four years and basically I ended up doing the morning program there.
And the one thing I just realized is that doing that, albeit when I listen back to the
way I sounded on the station, I sit there and I wonder why in the heck did I ever think
about getting into radio in the first place.
But it was something that I felt comfortable doing it.
I enjoyed doing it.
And eventually I just went off to college.
I was planning on becoming an English teacher to teach the world how to spell.
And I had gone.
If I went through with that, looking at the post on social media these days, I would have
been very disappointed, I think, because I would have been like Don Coyote, tilting at
windmills or something that comes to teaching the world how to spell.
But whatever the case, I always had this little inkling in the back of my mind that, you
know, you really should get into broadcasting, so eventually what happened, I ended up going
to school at UW-Milwaukee and it got down to the point where I had to declare a major.
And so I said, oh, all right, I give up.
I will declare for mass communication radio TV.
I ended up doing that.
And that basically set me off to really start my career in broadcasting, working in turn
jobs at a couple of stations in Milwaukee and eventually, working my way basically across
the state and a couple of stops in Iowa as well.
I could go through all of them, but it would take up most of this, most of the time we
have here all the stations that I worked at, until basically 19, 19, I mean, 2011 came
around.
And I ended up, and I was working at a radio station in Lake Geneva and I ended up having
a program where I ended up playing 70s music on the station and one of the things I did
to make the program a little more, just more than a music program, because I wanted to
make it more of an experience of the 70s as a whole.
I ended up doing a couple interviews.
One with the great Milwaukee Bucks Broadcaster Eddie DeSette, who was the first broadcaster
for the Bucks and was there for years, and turned a lot of people like me on to NBA basketball.
And another one with one of the guys he was describing the action that he invented,
the word Eddie DeSette did, the rainbow jumper for John McLaughlin and what he was a shot
that he ended up doing on the court.
And I had a chance to talk with John McLaughlin on the program as well.
I ended up taking those two interviews and passed them along to a fellow who was a friend
of mine from working at other stations and along with that, he was the general manager
of WRJN at the time, Chris Moral.
Chris ended up hearing those interviews and then eventually what happened, there was
a slot for an afternoon talk show that opened on WRJN.
Chris gave me a call and said, would you like to do it?
I said, of course, that would be great, I would love that.
So the next thing you know, I joined WRJN, I believe it was September 1st of 2011 and
I became the host of the WRJN afternoon news for a while.
Before you got here, you worked in, well you mentioned Lake Geneva, but you also worked
at a small station out there, it was at MIR, who's that?
Well, yeah, WRMIR, actually that was the first job I ever got paid at.
Yeah, I needed a summer job because I spent my first year at UW-Whitewater and I ended
up going off and working, they had an opening for basically the period between the end of
the afternoon shift on MIR and sign off because the station had to sign off at sunset.
And at that time they needed somebody during the summer time when the hours were a little
longer to fill in that little gap, which was nothing more than 6 until like 8, 8, 30 somewhere
around there.
And so I ended up doing that for a summer, pretty much it was the story.
Interestingly, I ended up coming back to the building that held WMIR in the 2000s, the
early 2000s.
So I ended up working for a Catholic radio organization who ended up buying the frequency
where WMIR was at as well as basically the building, the property, and they ended up firing
the station back up because it had been silenced simply because they really didn't know what
to do with the daytime radio station in Lake Geneva because it turns out the original
WMIR kind of like petered out after they failed to pick up an FM frequency that would have
made the full-time station and it turns out that everybody, you know, advertisers flock
toward the full-time station and so the way it came to that daytime or the next thing
you know, it's like they're advertising dollars diminished to the point where they had
to silence it.
Somebody else tried taking it over but realized basically that that was the same story.
They just couldn't get the revenue out of the place.
So they shut it down again and so this Catholic radio office would end up taking over and
I was selected to be the station's manager more or less.
Oh wow, that's you, top dog.
Exactly, but all together what happened was they, you know, weren't sure what to do with
the property.
I was like, you know, it was one of the things they bought it and they were, okay, we're
going to do this.
Then all of a sudden they shift going to do that and so eventually what happened was they
had to do that.
Ted, hold it right there.
Don't move.
Okay, I got.
Don't move.
Ted Allen.
Ted Allen's here.
It's WRJ and Historical Marker No. 3 today.
Got more of Ted coming up in just un momento.
Ted, WRJ and Radio, a hometown radio refresh to civic media stations here we are.
It's WRJ and Historical Marker No. 3 looking at the history of WRJ and the people
who worked here, Ted Allen is my guest now.
You're talking about daytime radio stations, you know, a lot of people today have no concept
of what a daytime radio station is like.
They used to have to sign off the air like 430 in the winter time and I think about 830
in the summertime when it got dark.
But in the winter time the radio station wasn't even on 12 hours a day and WRJ and you
used to have to lower power at night from 1,250 watts, right, they changed that later
on.
Yeah, exactly and that was, you know, when it came to be a kid trying to tune in a station
like WRJ and from even a place like Burlington, it became kind of a challenge simply because
basically the wattage was almost confined to the local area around Racine so it's like
outside of other reaches of Racine County even it was a challenge hearing WRJ and
but yeah, that was, you know, at that time standard operating procedure simply because
really they're, you know, they have to protect signals from, you know, that have basically
a wider coverage area and a lot of that had to do with the basically civil defense.
That's one of the reasons why we have these radio stations, that the AM stations that
have boomed all over portions of the countries and they're like, they're like saying 38 states
and half of Canada simply because if something is happening that's a national emergency,
they want people to get the word that about, you know, what's happening even like in the
most bank rural areas or whatever.
So yeah, when it came to lesser signals like the one I, the one that I was working at
in Lake Geneva that eventually just went away in a number of them that were daytime only
stations have sadly gone away at this point but yeah, when it comes to those, you know,
those signals, they more or less had to acquiesce to those other stations around the country
that got the authorization to be these stations that would be able to, you know, I'll be it,
there was also a great economic benefit to having that sort of status but yeah,
primarily they were looking at getting a word out about an emergency and that ended up
causing a lot of stations like WMIR and Lake Geneva to shut down like at 430 in the afternoon
during the winter and later on in the summer or WRJN to have to limit it's signal along the way.
So my dad's radio had a little civil defense logo in the middle of it is AM radio in his car.
It was a little triangle with a circle around it and if there was ever, you know,
when you saw the big flash come you said, yeah, I wonder what that is. Let me turn on the radio.
This is big, this is big mushroom cloud. I don't know what it is. Let's turn on.
Let's go right to that civil defense station and find out.
What's interesting, you mentioned that, John, my mom and dad had an old ad moral radio.
I think it was the first radio that they had in the house when they got married back in 1955
and they had these little triangles on there that said CD underneath them and I was always wondering
is it good? What the heck does that mean? I didn't understand it because you're just
around and all of a sudden it's like you saw those things and it wasn't until much later and
basically when I saw the same thing on television for the tests of the emergency broadcast system.
That's what I actually, that's what I finally understood. Okay, that's what it's all about.
Okay, so you came here in 2011 at WRJN doing afternoons. What kind of show did you do in the
afternoon? Was it talk? Was it music? What was it? It was a talk program and basically it was,
what's interesting was, you know, I know I had done interviews before but it really was the first
time I actually sat down and did a talk program and I think it's really a case for anybody and
including yourself, John, when you first started doing talk radio, you sit there and you say to
yourself, how do you do this? Because all together, it's really, I guess the best way to describe it,
it's an opportunity to get information to people and along with that it's also a way to,
more or less, you know, get your personality, your own personality into this, you know,
this presentation but really it was a situation where I sat and I thought, I thought, how do I put
this together and make this something where it's going to be, I'm able to maintain interest,
maintain a listenership and be able to present interesting compelling and hopefully entertaining
programming. Well, what I ended up doing was just put together, it's like a lifestyle sort of
program and it came down to talking to a number of different people. I had a lot of authors on
talking about the books that they had put together that were of an interest in, you know,
topically for not just myself but for listeners. It started out, I ended up doing a segment
called Work Search Monday simply because prior to WRJ and I had been looking for full-time work
for three years and I ended up becoming a part of a group that the Racine County Economic
Development Center had put together to talk, you know, have people who were looking for work,
talk about their efforts for looking work and they also brought in people to talk about how to
go about finding work and so I was thinking, gosh, you know, they provided me with quite a bit
of help regarding my work search, why don't we provide them the opportunity on the air to help
others, you know, find work for themselves if they are in the midst of looking for work and at
that time there were still a lot of people that were trying to find work around the area.
So that was one of the things, we had a number of different segments, one of them had to do
dealt with social media and along with that, you know, the changes that were going on in it
and along with that, just basically learning about new avenues for it and trying to understand
it because in many cases with social media things change so often with the rules and with
everything that happens with social media. So we had a gallon who managed to, she was
wonderful, Sue Gresham was her name and she's somebody who ends up working with social media
and helping businesses and individuals work their way through social media to make a dent when
it comes to economic and as well as, you know, goal oriented matters when it comes to social media.
So yeah, that was just a couple of things that I ended up doing with that program and I'm sure
that we can we can delve further into it as we go along. Yeah, but yeah, go ahead.
Actually, I was going to defer to you, Don. Okay. Well, we're going to take a quick little break
here. Ted, we're talking to Ted Aileen. This is part of our WRJN historical marker series.
We're looking at the history of WRJN radio and the people who worked here. We're trying to get
all the people that are still around because we lost four or five people in the last few years
they used to work here and we can't let any more leave without talking to them and putting their
thoughts on permanent record and that's what we're doing here. Ted Aileen, my guest today,
it's 29 past six in WRJN, a civic media station, hometown radio refreshed and your chance to win
Lauren Dagle tickets coming to the Wisconsin State Fair Friday August 9th coming up in the next
hour. Keep it here, WRJN radio, 1400 AM, 99.9 and 98.1 FF.
I like football. I like the games. I could do without the interviews after the games, though,
because the winning players always give credit to God while the losers blame themselves.
Just once, I'd like to hear players say, yeah, we were in the game until Jesus made me fumble.
He hates our teeth.
I've even seen some boxers thank God for their triumphs. Oh yeah, without Jesus, I couldn't have
crushed my opponent's skull tonight and rendered him brain dead. I've been blessed by the Lord.
I don't want another hard break. I don't need another turn to cry. No, I don't want to learn a hard
way. Baby, hello. Oh, no, goodbye. But you got the lock of rocket. Shooting straight across the sky.
It's the way you love me. It's a feeling like this. It's a deliverable motion. It's a petriot place.
It's that heavy moment. It's impossible. This kiss, this kiss. Unstoppable.
635 at WRGN radio. Thank you for joining us on a Monday morning. It's WRGN historical marker number
three. Ted A. Lynn is here. You've been relegated to just the number three. How's that sound?
Well, I'm in the cleanup spot down that good news. You're just a number now. What do you? I was
number three in the historical marker series. What was your name? Ted A. Lynn used to be on radio
with something one time or another way back when? How old you now? I'm 97 years old. What was radio?
Yeah, what was actually radio thought, you know, radio started back with the first commercial
station in 1919 KDK and Pittsburgh. But it was radio before that. And the first the first
song ever played on radio was silent night, but I think it was silent night. It was one of those,
it was a Christmas song anyway. So here we are. They thought, well, radio TV is coming around.
Dead goodbye radio. Well, TV didn't put radio out. Then they had save free TV. They said,
well, this is it. The cables coming around radio and TV or dead. Well, neither one went away.
TV heard a little bit by cable. Then they came with streaming that, oh, this is it. We're
going to stream music now. We don't need radio anymore. Forget it. Well, radio is still here.
And TV is struggling with streaming. So here we are. We're still here. But you know what a radio
radio adapted. If you listen to what radio was back in the early 20s, 30s and 40s and 50s,
it's not one of this today. I listened to some old time radio shows all the time. Johnny dollar and
mysterious traveler and our miss Brooks and Jack Benioff stole those old time radio. So it's
gun smoke. I love them. Radio evolved into disc jockeys playing popular rock and roll music on
the radio. They had big bands on the radio. But then they evolved to disc jockeys on the radio.
Then, you know, with your love, I'm right. Hadam along came a guy named Rush Limbaugh who
changed the face of radio into high insulting talk radio and getting on people's nerves. Love
more what? He did change the face of radio. Well, Rush Limbaugh and he changed it into a different
kind of talk radio. And so you have talk. You still have music on the radio. Radio still here.
He just keeps evolving into something different. That's the story done. Yeah, that's, you know,
and really that's the key. It's like, people have called radio a cockroach because all the
cockroach adapts to its environment and it's able to continue to live on in one fashion or
another. And yeah, radio has managed to really find its way when it comes to being able to
hang in there and, you know, inform, entertain and and be able to provide a service to the community
that really is unique. And that's the key too. The other key thing is I know it's something
you stress and in civic media stresses with WRJN local. And that's the one thing that streaming
services and it's like podcasts these things can't offer is having a local aspect that they
can be provided, you know, when something happens in the community, boop, you can let people know
about it. Chop chop, no problem. And that's the one aspect of radio that's always going to be
important. That it has that opportunity to let listeners know at the time it's happening,
what is happening when it's an emergency or really anything that's going up. You know,
I first came back to civic media's WRJN after nine years of not being here. They, I said,
well, I don't want to do a screaming political show. I want to do something that's just unique
to receive. We're going to have only received guests on and connoisseur guests and area guests.
And we're going to concentrate on that. And they said, do it. And that's what we've had on the
historical society. We're seeing theater guild. We've had on the Jim Mercer and Carol June 40
doing the history of receiving in the 50s and 60s. We've had on the people who run the old historic
firehouse. And it's just plus current day, we have the DRC talking about what's currently going
on. We're having eventually the new owners of festive, the new managers of festival hall will
be on when they sign in that older conference. We have the mayor on every month. We have alderman
on every month or alders as they call them, forget the older men's alters. And we decided to make
it a recene based morning show and a little bit of the history of WRJN as well. And that's what we
dragged you in today to give us a little bit of history. And to tell the truth, that's really what
what my show was shaped into when I was doing the WRJN afternoon news during the early to mid-20
teams, I guess you could end up calling it. And by the way, say hello to the mayor for me. I used
to talk to him all the time on my program back when he was just a state representative. That was
when that was going to say when I had the mayor Corey Mason in here, he said, I will come in on one
condition. Ted Alins not still there is a, and I said, no, he's not. That was the one precursor to him
coming in. Yes. And those from the South would say bless his heart. Anyway, yes. So you did the
afternoon show here. How many years did you get that for? You did that your whole career here, right?
Yeah, I ended up, yeah, I did. And actually, once ownership changed, I was moved up from doing
afternoon to mid days on the station. And one of the things they ended up doing as well as throwing
some, throwing some music in there as well. But there's one aspect I wanted to mention when it
came to having, you know, the local governmental representatives, she'll recall them on the program.
The one thing I strived to do on the program was to present issues from both sides. So it turns out,
you know, we pretty much had at that time and perhaps still do an even split when it comes to
Republicans and Democrats in the state assembly and the Senate. And so what happened was we ended
up giving them a chunk of space every, you know, either every month or every week when it comes
to the state senators and gave them the opportunity to join us on the program. And it basically
allowed the listener to hear what both sides had to say and be able to make up their own minds
about the issues that were going on. And I think that was something, it turns out that I
know what's the interesting part of that was I was working at the Racine County Fair as WRJN did
for a number of years and we ended up having, you were a part of it Don, you were at the fair
a number of years. And I just remember somebody at one of the other, you know, one of the
a listener who was also working for one of the political parties, I heard them talking and
I heard them mentioning it's like, you know, with him I don't know what side he's on, you know,
simply because, you know, and basically what you do is you end up working with the people that we
had on the air, be it Republican or Democrat, and basically working with them and, you know,
and making sure that when you end up having their points being brought across, you know, that it's,
you know, a fair exchange when it comes to either side and then from there just moving forward
when it comes to presenting what they have to say and allowing the listener to make up their
own mind about what's being said. So, that was one thing, what you're doing on the program.
You've been saying, you had both sides, we actually have a rebuttal person coming on to rebut
everything you're saying today, that'll be in the next hour. We have the other point of view.
Kelly, are you mentioned, you mentioned real briefly, and I meant to mention it before,
that Chris Marrow called you up to come over here. Chris Marrow, of course, is a vice president
of civic media today. Right. And I think he got that position because they said, you know,
you made a good decision back in 2011 to bring Ted A. Lynn aboard. And we like that decision.
Because of that decision, we're making you vice president of civic media. And I think that's,
I think you're the reason why he's there today. That's, I can't help but believe that had
something to do with it. They liked that decision. It was made back in 2011. It's one of these
decisions that go down in history. I got two words to say to you. You're right.
Okay, so you did afternoons here. And the new owners, you said the move into midday,
that was a magnum media move into mid days. And then there was a whole change of program directors.
I left a day magnum middle like my face anymore, I guess. So I left at the end of 2014 Kurt
Volman was morning man here for a number of years, worked here for years in different capacities.
Guy did it. Kurt Volman did everything at this radio station. You nearly did everything.
So then he was program director. That didn't, that didn't go well for a while. And he left
WRJN. And then you became program director. And that was a pretty short period. It, you know,
yeah, what happened there? Well, actually I became call program director with our good friend
the late Lou Turner. And, and basically I didn't remember actually doing anything regarding being
a program director to tell you the truth. But whatever the case, it's I just continued doing my
midday show. And eventually what happened was I ended up learning about an opportunity to
continue what I was doing, hosting a morning talk show at a station in a Jamesville, Wisconsin.
And so it turns out that I jumped at that opportunity simply because what I was, what I was doing was
I was kind of like, you know, jumping between being a talk show host and a disc jacket. And this
was an opportunity where I could just become a talk show host again. So I ended up moving on to the
opportunity in Jamesville. And it was an interesting opportunity too because not only was I,
the talk show host of the program, but I was also the morning news anchor. I doubled up on that.
So basically I was Tom Carco and Kurt Volman all at the same time if you were listening to WRJN
at that time. And so it was really a lot of fun in being able to take care of both the news aspect
and doing what I was doing in receiving to this similar point, being able to just line up a
number of guests and have what we hope could be entertaining, stimulating, and informative
talk and interesting talk as well. So yeah, that was that was pretty much the story.
I should mention one event that I was a part of at WRJN Don that was rather interesting.
And I don't know if we're getting close to needing to take a break, but it's it had to do with
sleeping outside, sleeping outside for a very good cause. And it turns out that because of that,
it got things kicked off for a local organization. And it turned out really wonderful. I don't know
if you want me to expand on that now or not done. Give us a few minutes right after the break.
You'll do that. I do have to ask you said, how long were you program director here for the
executive? I'm trying to keep track of how long everybody was program director even before me.
There was actually a woman program director not too far before me. The only woman they ever had
is program director here at the station. Now we have another one. Catherine Lake is now the
program director. But so who was the so you will look what a month, two months, three months.
It was it really wasn't that long because I'm just trying to take a minute minutes and hours. What
do we do? I all together. It's like it came as a total surprise for me that I ended up
being put in this position. So are you sure you want this to happen? It must have been,
I'm just trying to think the spacing out at that point. I think it would have been like about
four or five months. Okay. So it was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Cause the thing is I think Kurt was
done like about a month after you were let go. And then from there, I ended up leaving in September
of 2015. So I think it was like about five months, maybe a half year. I don't know. Did anybody,
did anybody replace you? Um, basically what happened was, you know, whatever duties I had as
cold program director, I ended up having, I guess those got dumped on Lou Turner. So okay. Hold
you. Hold on. Hold that thought. 649. What are we doing? We're doing our WRJ and historical marker
number three today, Lynn, our guest. Here at a civic media station, WRJ and hometown radio
refreshed on a Monday.
It's WRJ and historical marker. It's 651. Ted Ailen is our third guest in our series. And
when you left WRJN, by the way, you're the happiest person. I can't imagine you ever getting angry at
anybody. I can imagine me getting angry. I can't imagine you getting angry. So it's happened. It's
happened just let me just like get the record straight down. Okay. So you started under blitz
communications. Correct. Right. And it's interesting too, because I know the bumper music leading into
one of the segments was spade hills, this kiss. And somebody thought they were seeing skip blitz,
who was one time or WRJN. Skip is going to be one of our guests. I spoke to skip blitz about a
month. Yeah. And he de-recorded a little bit for us. When we first started doing this, a little
bit. So I spoke to skip and skip blitz is going to be one of our guests. He said, yes, I'd love to
do it. And he's got a lot to say. He could skip on a ton of radio stations. He own newspapers all
over the state, printing presses. And he's got a story to tell. So we'll be talking to skip as well.
So you left WRJN and you went over to Jamesville, big radio. And how long were you there for?
I was there. Let's see. It actually was seven years, wasn't it? Yeah, 2015. And I ended up taking off
in December of 2022. So that would be, yeah, it would be seven years that I spent over there,
working in a variety of different positions. That was a disc jockey. I was a newsman. I was a
talk show host. I changed light bulbs. I've done that here. Yes, I've. Oh, sure. Exactly. Yeah, but
but yeah, and if you're talking about skip blitz and the station Tion, the basically the one of
the last stations I worked for was the station that blitz owned in Jamesville as well. WCLO and WJVL.
So yeah, it was quite an experience working for that organization. But since then,
I have moved on and I am now working as a morning news anchor. And basically,
it carving an hour for Don here outside of my duties as morning news anchor and reporter
for the Wisconsin radio network. And you also do work for WISN radio in Milwaukee as well,
which is nice. Yes, I do. That's pretty good. I do. That's the get to the big guys up in Milwaukee.
So take, take me now back to any great memory and bad memory. I want to hear your, your best
memory and your worst memory of WRJ. Let's start with the worst fungus. Look at that one out of the
way. How many bad memories of the station? Honestly, I really don't. Good for you. Yeah, I just,
if you're asking that, I really can't think of a lot easier to go through the happy memories
when it comes to WRJ. Give us a few happy, give us a few happy ones. Well, one would have to be,
I know I was going, I had more or less brought a precursor to this before we took the break.
An event that happened, it was at the airport in Racine where the folks at Halo helped homeless
people. Ended up putting that on this first annual event. I don't know how long they carried on or
if they still carry it on. It was a sleep out for Halo where what happened was you would end up
sleeping outside and raise money basically as a fundraiser and be sleeping out and basically
recreating the the aspect of many people in the community who are homeless and sleeping outdoors
and all together you were provided with like a tent but it's also okay. It's where your
blanket was like a hunk of cardboard and stuff like that. I wanted to make sure I was a part of
that to bring awareness to the to the effort and it was one of the more unique situations I've
ever lived in and and it did bring a lot of attention to Halo and in fact it ended up the entire
promotion ended up earning the station and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Award. So
that was that's a pretty proud moment for our JN and along with that you know an interesting
experience. Would I ever want to go through it again? I don't know. I assume you won't lose
your job and have to experience that again. But if the wife kicks me out of the house down
there you go. We have a couple of WBA which is the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association award
plaques in our lobby with your name on it. Yeah and it's great to serve the station in that way
and that's the nice part about that when you end up being able to do you know do something for
the station that allows the station to get that sort of recognition that stays there pretty much
for good unless an owner wants to throw stuff out. That's you know that's it's a great feeling it's
real you know it really comes with knowledge and I think you'd agree to done. It's something where
you say to yourself you know this is one of the reasons why I got into this business to help
to serve and to get recognition for the people who provided me with my daily bread. So there you go.
I know go ahead. No go go. You go. All right but yeah that's pretty much the story you know
you know with the people that I ended up working with on a regular basis there were a number of
people that we had as regular guests on the program and you know it's like you know one of our
favorites was you know when he was working as Racine County's Emergency Management Director David
Mack and I'm sure that the Colonel is busy listening this morning so yeah so hello Dave and along with
that and what I and we had bumper music that led into particular people's segments with him
seeing that he was dealing with emergency management and seeing that you know sometimes
emergency emergency management would mean floods we ended up using Led Zeppelin's when the
Levy break says his bumper music into his segment and he I guess he appreciated that when
when it comes to that here's you know rocking our way into David Mack on WRJ yet so but yeah that
you know there there's a number of real fun and you know also working that that wedding gala that
we did every year and had to dress up and the bridal lake Stravaganza that's it yeah that was it
was great fun being able to dress up and do that you know every every every year and me the number
of wonderful people because that's a nice part about live broadcast you get the opportunity to
meet your audience well there you go Don Ted Aileen thank you very much and pinch hitting at the
last minute big helping boy as he as we used to go on big helping boy and we want to thank
him for coming in we were supposed to talk about Terry Bond today but his wife Linda Bond had an
emergency in the family so we're going to reschedule and last night I called Ted Aileen he said I
am big helping boy I will be in to help you this morning and he was and it's so great hearing from
you have a great radio career which is still going gangbusters you're at the pinnacle and I think
there's more big things to come for you Ted and thank you very much I want you to hold on the line
okay sure no problem done hold on don't appreciate it oh yeah hold on the line it WRJ
and historical marker number three Ted Aileen we've got some contesting coming up we've got
tickets to give away I'm going to tell you about a big contest for Valentine's Day coming up