Kathy Szakacs - Former Account Executive - Remembers WHEN
62WHEN Radio Syracuse, NY

"In Her Own Words"

I was hired by Sales Manager Carl Fiorini when Bob Carolin was the G.M. I´m not sure, but I think I recall that I was the first person Carl had ever hired. During my first week I walked by Carl´s office and heard screaming and shouting coming from behind his door. Kevin Dodge, who was late almost every day, was in there getting "a new one" and it scared the crap out of me. I vowed never to be late. I was brought in to sell WONO, not knowing that the nickname I was given by the sales staff was "the poor bastard." And not knowing anything about the radio business (probably why Carl hired me), I had no idea how hard a sell that would be. I cold-called every business in town calling it everything from WONO to WHEN-FM, trying to get someone to listen to me. One day I walked into Carl´s office with a 12-month contract for the station´s Network news feature (ABC? CBS? I was so traumatized by what happened next, I´ve forgotten). Anyway, as I was showing the contract to Carl, Bob walked in and said they were dropping that news feature. The place was so crazy that I had to actually leave to get anything like copywriting done. My favorite times were working with Bruce Siegel on production, listening to his original songs "Boogaloo Brucie and the Barflies," etc. and making great friends with people like Cathy Crawford, Rick Yacobush, Joe Salibra, Tony Bombardo, and yes even Carl once I knew you could make him laugh in the middle of one of his rants, as well as many others who are still around town. I remember egg and olive sandwiches at Two Guys and Serpico´s, bitching about budgets, trying to get out of going to weekend events (I once said I sprained my ankle to get out of going to some skiing event — I HATE cold weather — and had to wear and ace bandage and limp for a week). I think it was the best job I ever had. It was just plain fun. Certainly it´s the job I will recall with more warm memories than any other.