Speaker 1: Arrow dot net. It's more than a podcast, it's a
podcast network, twenty different podcasts to choose from. One of
them being Beyond the Calling. I was challenged to talk
with the men and women who have served this nation
when it comes to the military. Listen to their stories,
grow from their experiences. Now share it with everybody Beyond
the Calling on erow dot net a r r oe
dot net. Enjoy your exploration.
Speaker 2: You were saying that aerow co a r oe. Okay,
that's an interesting spelling.
Speaker 1: That's just a Montana. That's just a Montana's way of
saying I don't want to be called John on the air.
Speaker 3: Very good, very nice to meet you. How you doing nice?
Speaker 1: Meeting you too well, because I mean somewhere along the
line you had to have run into program directors and consultants.
I told you, you know, I'm loving your name. But
you know, those viewers and listeners they I don't know
how they're going to put it in the arbitrary and
they're not going to spell it right, and it's like,
come on stop, there's too much thought going on here.
Speaker 3: I can tell you a little bit about that too.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear that, because I mean because
there's you know, everybody's trying to come up with you know,
I mean, how many Shadows Stevens are there out there?
I love me some Shadow Stevens, but when there's twelve
of them out there? How can I share all that love?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And you know, the rock family is pretty spread across
the country with Johnny Rock and this Rock and that
Rock and you know, popular names though, and their names
are sticking your mind, and that's real the science behind them.
Speaker 1: Don't you think though, that with you calling your book
an accidental career, there's going to be a lot of
broadcasters and journalists that are going to go, wow, I've
never heard it that way. But now I have a
better understanding of the decisions that I made.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, I think you learn about
decisions when it is that you have.
Speaker 3: Done something that's not right and you learn from it. Yep.
Speaker 2: So we are made up of a life full of mistakes,
and we become better versions of ourselves because of it.
Speaker 3: And I think that it takes time.
Speaker 2: It's not your first journey into a business that you're
going to be a pro. It really takes stumbling and
falling down a couple of times. And getting back up
on your feet and realizing I'm not going to do
that again. And then the next day you find something
else to do that you wish you hadn't done. But
I think that you know, this is a life of
mistakes and rewards.
Speaker 1: What's so inspiring about you? How is the way that
you used your name to have fun with it? You
stepped out of that third dimension and became a fourth
dimension player. Basically, we tuned in for your energy, for
what you had to say, And I'm thinking, my god,
that's exactly what we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: You know, I when I was a kid sixteen and
when I started and I ultimately dominot into a job
at a big radio station in Dallas, and it happened
to be owned by a phone named Gordon McClendon. And he,
as I understood it, liked people to have broadcast names.
And so even though I was a guy who collected
requests for music outside the glass window of the disc
jockey that was on the air, they gave me.
Speaker 3: The name of Roger Randall.
Speaker 2: Now, there is nothing that could be further from my
name than Roger Randall, but that's.
Speaker 3: What they gave me.
Speaker 2: And you know, as I went forward in this business,
at some point when I got on the air in
Houston doing news, I thought, you know what, if Vulner
Kronkit can have his name, well can't Hal Eisner have
his name? And I just started using my name. It
actually turned out to be a good name for broadcasts.
It rolls out the tongue, it's memorable, and I was
very happy to start using my name as soon as
I could.
Speaker 1: Oh my mom was upset. I mean, she held out
of that grudge for many decades. And I kept saying, Mom,
I'm just an actor and I would always use John Wayne.
I said, that's not his real name, Mom. He plays
the role of somebody named John Wayne and then changes
it to be somebody else in a movie.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think there are lots of reasons
to go behind what we call a pseudoname. And I
think that, you know, pseudonyms also are for authors as well.
But I think that, you know, it depends on really
what your sense of your job is. I always felt like,
and this is not a reflection on anybody else, but
I always felt like, if I'm going to be credible,
and credibility is the only thing that we own in
this business. Then I'm going to age gracefully, I hope,
and I'm not going to do botox and I'm not
going to dye my hair. And it was the same
thinking I think when it came to my name that,
you know, I felt like, you know what if people
were to trust me, I guess I want to say
who I really am, and I just chose to try
my own name out and it was great. I think
it would have been hard for me to live with
Roger Randolph the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that also include the development of your voice, because
so many people think that we've got to sound like
radio people or even TV people, And it's like, when
did you decide that. It's like, you know what, God
gave me this voice. I'm going to use it the
way that I need to use it. I don't have
to sit there and pull off a Randy radio and
try to sound like somebody like a boss jock of
the sixties.
Speaker 3: I guess it was when I was a little kid.
Speaker 2: And Mom, I want to partial you know, and I
you know, and I I guess, you know, it is
what it is. And I was blessed with a voice
that as I communicated, you know, to the public. It
just got better and better. And you know, if you
listen to tapes of me going way back into the
prehistoric days, you laugh.
Speaker 3: You know. I think it takes time to develop who
you are.
Speaker 2: Look, any skill set takes time to refine, whether that's voice,
whether it's.
Speaker 3: Surgery and you're a surgeony and well whatever it is,
it takes time to refine your skills.
Speaker 2: And I think that that goes along with your voice.
Speaker 1: Well, look at what you did going from radio into television.
That's two completely different personalities. That's going from theater the
mind to actual physical, moving pictures.
Speaker 3: And that was difficult.
Speaker 2: I mean, I it was you know, I believe that
we don't do anything in a vacuum. I believe that
people opened doors for us, and it was incumbent on
me to do that as well. It's why I started
at camp in the year two thousand for aspiring news
reporters and anchors.
Speaker 3: But I think that you.
Speaker 2: Know, we just we just have to, you know, kind
of look back at what we do and who makes
a difference in Larry Lamont was my news director at
an all news radio station in Fortwood, Texas, and later
years later, he became a bureau chief of CNN, and
he became the bureau chief for a Laws Angeles and
Heart even without television training, that I could do this job. Wow,
And he hired me and I went to LA from Texas,
and I will tell you it was one of the
toughest transitions I have ever had in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have a consultant or an operations manager
that would take your passion? Because I do feel your passion.
I've gone back to watch the videos. I see your passion.
Everything about you is passion. But those consultants sometimes will
sit there and say, I don't have time for your passion.
You're interfering with my cash and flow. Did you ever
have to face something like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean anytime you've got a consultant, they've been
hired to fix something, whether it's broken or not right,
and so you know, they will come in with things
that they think are good, and you know what, legitimately
they do have ideas that are good. And you know,
sometimes I would find it kind of a little offensive
because what's wrong with me? But I think that you know,
we have to sort of learn how to live with
each other and work with each other and listen to
ideas that people have and learn from them. I learned
something new every day. That's kind of my mantra. I
learned something new every day. And I think that. You know,
when a consultant comes through, hired by the corporation to
help improve the product, you know, it's incumbent on people
like me to listen to them, see what I can
learn from that, and decide if that's something that makes
me a better product.
Speaker 3: But I didn't. I really didn't have too many people.
Speaker 2: I had a couple they really tried to punch me
into shape a different way.
Speaker 3: And you know, you know, you smile and your brain says, darn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But don't you love those moments though, when you
learn every day and all of a sudden, a little
nibblet of something will come up and you go, oh
my god, I've got to do a story about that.
Where did it come from? I don't know, it just
came to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a little conscious thing sitting on
your shoulder, right and it's talking to you in your ears.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You come up with ideas all different kinds of ways,
and you know, I think that you know, we are
blessed to have brains that are constantly working and constantly
thinking and constantly creating. And you know, the day that
we stop thinking and creating and inventing, then you know
it's over. And I think we always have to try
to be as energetic as possible. You know, I've been
your age several times, and I feel syuthentic that I'm
like in college.
Speaker 1: Yes, well I'm still a seventeen year old inside a
little punk radio station in Building's, Montana. I mean, it's like,
you want me to do what All right, I'm gonna
put this twist on it. If you don't like it,
just tell me. I'll change it, and then you're back
to doing your same stuff again.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, your guideline for what works is your lunch.
Speaker 2: And how long you're on the air in any particular
market is really a tribute to a testament to your
skill sets. You are not there because of having a
pretty face, although you might be, But.
Speaker 3: You're there because you produce ratings.
Speaker 2: You're there because management sees you as an asset. You're
there because you improve the brand, and because you do
those things. These are things in your brand that you've
developed over time, and that time is the answer to everything.
And the more you do, the more you learn, the
better you get, and you become the best version of yourself.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: And that's the stuff that I wish I could take
to all of these broadcasting students because it's no longer
a broadcasting school and they always call it a media
school now because they want to cover everything. But I
mean when you talk about resilience and dedication, that to
me is saying if he does not get this book
inside these media centers where they're teaching people the future,
I mean, that's school is losing out on something that
is so valuable because you lived it well.
Speaker 2: You know. I have talked to a couple of professors
who think it could be a textbook, and I would
encourage you to talk to some of those in your
community and see if they might find it the same,
because I think it does map out the career of
one broadcaster, and it does show the twist and the
turns of one's broadcasting life and how one got into
it and how one when was when he was ready
chose to retire. And I think that, you know, in
my case, I did a two prong retirement. I retired
from daily news reporting on January segment of twenty twenty five,
and that was a forty third anniversary.
Speaker 3: On my first day on TV in Los Angeles. And
then I.
Speaker 2: Stayed on the job for another six months, so I
semi retired. I stayed on the job for another six
months during the Sunday show that we had called Fox
Love of News and Depth. And you know what, that
made it easier because after so many years, nearly sixty
years of working, all of a sudden, just stopping it
and turning out the light switch would have been really, really,
really hard on me. But by breaking it down and
my general manager and all the people involved in in
my station's management was on board with me, and by
stepping off part way and then stepping off the rest
of the way, it made it much more. It made
it much easier for me to do.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for coming back to the conversation. The name
of the book an accidental Career. This is more than
just being a broadcaster. This is an every day book
that you can exercise in whatever position of life you're in.
We're talking with Hal Eisner. How many of those moments included, oh,
four or five o'clock show up time at the television
station or even the radio station. You know that something
went down in the new and now it was time
for you not to necessarily go in there and be
how who's who's on the television show, but rather to
be the journalist that has to make that connection, like
a Walter Cronkite, like those broadcasters of the past.
Speaker 2: End.
Speaker 1: It is now about sharing the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and being in the moment.
Speaker 2: Because when the North Red earthquake happened, you know, I
took care of my family and then I got in
the car and then I went to work.
Speaker 3: And that's what you do when you're a first responder.
Speaker 2: It's your job to get to the scene, to tell
the information on behalf of your company in order to
be a community leader and to share what everybody else
needs to know. And so, yeah, getting up at odd
times and finding yourself in the middle of situations that
ours you should be asleep, that happens. But then again,
this is something you sign up for. This is something
you know getting into the business that this can happen.
And when it does, you know what, it's not a
cup of coffee. It's the adrenaline that gets you going.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it it just reminds me so much
of when when Ronald Reagan was shot. I mean we
were newly weds, my wife and I in Lewistown, Montana,
and I looked at her and I said, I gotta go,
and she goes, what what do you mean? You don't
go on the air till seven o'clock. I gotta go.
I know that I'm not supposed to be here at home.
I gotta go.
Speaker 2: I remember a bush fire that was heading in our direction,
and we packed up the minivan and aimed it outside
towards the street. And once I knew everything was fine,
I left and went to work, and my wife took
large yep.
Speaker 1: So now when you take viewers and readers into the
behind the scenes look at broadcasting, it's almost like showcasing
the wizard behind the curtain. What was that like for
you to write about that? Because I mean that wizard
of what we experience is not the same one that viewers,
you know, for c.
Speaker 2: Look, we're all human beings, we all have lives, We
all from the time we cry our first tears, you know,
are mapping an experience, a human experience, and so you know,
my experience is going to be different than your experience here,
and it's going to be different than other people's experiences.
I think for me, the experience of you know, growing
up how and being able to, you know, suddenly get
into a business like broadcasting, and to suddenly find myself
not just reporting a high school football score on Friday nights,
which is how it all started, but actually becoming a
major broadcaster in Los Angeles, which is the second largest
market in the country, is a journey that I would
never have dreamed could have happened.
Speaker 3: Ever, No, and yet it did. And why did it?
Because I followed the detours.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, those are wise words right there.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if we just you know, move forward
with our eyes open, we have a chance that not
stumbling over a puddle in front of us.
Speaker 1: All right now, you're going to take me into an
air that I kept saying, don't do it, don't do it.
But I have to do it because you set me
up for it. You are a visionary and I was
so afraid to bring that up because people go, no,
I'm living in the moment of now. But everything that
I have read about you, I just feel like that
you envision things and then you stepped into it because
mentally and physically you prepared yourself.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I think we all should do that. I mean we
all have a capability of being able to do that.
You are able to think ahead and say, I wonder
what this is going to be.
Speaker 3: Look, I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I've been doing these interviews about the book with different
people across the country, even in Europe, and got a couple.
Speaker 3: Of times in Canada.
Speaker 2: And you know what, I have now done an interview
like this where I've gone from one station to another
station to another station within a chain of stations, and
you know, I tried to think.
Speaker 3: How do I prepare for that?
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 2: It's as you get on the freeway and you dodge
the cars that are heading in your direction. You know,
it's just, you know, I feel like I've had such
a wonderful experience talking with you and with others this morning.
Nothing I've ever done before like this. And I think
that you just plan ahead, but you also leave room
for flexibility.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm going to give you the question that
nobody else is going to ask you, only because I've
been struggling with this with Alexa, and that is is
that I don't know what to do with all of
the sound, all of the interviews that I've collected for
forty six years. And I ask you the same thing now.
Alexa told me that I can bury it in the
ground in this forest, but she says, put protective things
around it, because it does not belong to us. How
it belongs to a future that needs to experience what
you and I have gone through.
Speaker 2: Well that alexas talking about a time capsule, and I
think that there should be lots of time capsules. Yeah,
but you know, time capsules in many ways can be
a book like an accidental career, because really this is
a history book of stories and humans in Los Angeles, Californias,
and Texas and Pittsburgh and Dallas, and you know, we
have repositories of information on the shelves of bookstores, and.
Speaker 3: So I think that you could.
Speaker 2: First of all, you have to remember that magnetic tape
degrades very quickly. And I had a uptive tapes around
here that I wanted to save, and I sent them
to a place that digitizes, and there was nothing much
to digitize because.
Speaker 3: It had degraded it. And I think that's the unfortunate
part of things.
Speaker 2: Now we're in a digital era and things may be
a little easier to preserve, but I think you try
to save the things that you think are meaningful. I
have a two inch videotape over here on one of
my shelves. It's a big, old two inch reel with
metal on either side. It was my first television resume tape.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. So in reality, you
yourself have lived your mantra, which is the front door
to history. Yeah, oh my god, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean you're in the front row and not only
are you in the front wall watching history, you're writing
the first page of that.
Speaker 1: Yes. That's a lot of power.
Speaker 2: How and you have to be able to control that power.
You have to be responsible, You have to be ethical.
You have to be able to say, I know, I've
got this power, and I'm going to use it in
the proper way.
Speaker 1: How many people do you bump into that are in
this newer age and they don't know what you've done,
and they try to guess who you are and what
you've done, and it's like, I can't tell him, I
don't even know. I always tell people just go google it,
because I'm not going to tell you you won't understand
the journey. What about you?
Speaker 2: You know, I'll take it a little broader if you
don't mind. I did a couple of shows with Alex Trebek,
and one of the shows we went to Vegas to
do a show about It was an hour special about
one of these short dissole shows, Miss Staire or Treasure Island.
And you know, he was big fanatic about cars. He
loved old historical cars. And there was a big, you know,
museum of cars at the Imperial Palace resort on the
Vegas Strip, and so we were shooting and doing things,
and then, you know, one day said what would you
like to go with me to the museum and go
look at some cars? And I said, sure, of course,
I'd love to. And so we got up the next
morning and Alex and I start walking down Las Vegas
full of or the main drag, and.
Speaker 3: You could feel people pointing at him.
Speaker 2: You could feel people saying, I know that guy, you know,
one of the most famous faces on the planet. And
we went to the museum and then we went to
I like to play video kino, and so he wanted
me to teach him how to play video can you
imagine me teaching Alex Rebec anything. And so we sat
down and I showed him a little bit about that
and went over to get some coins from the change
lady and she goes, is that Alex Rebec? Everybody was saying,
is that Alex Trumac? And I talked to him about that.
I said, you know, Alex, what is it about people
coming up to you? Do you get annoyed? You want
to just kind of walk away? Do you want to
say Google, Google anything you want to know about me?
But I've got something busy that He says, No.
Speaker 3: He said, this is all a reflection of my doing
my job.
Speaker 2: And if I got through the screen, the bad means
that people connected with me, and I did my work,
and you know what, I kind of felt the same way.
But I adopted that same thinking that if people came
up to me, that was meaningful. And even today, even today,
a year after retiring, people still come up to me.
And because they had four decades on TV and LA,
they recognize the face and I will take time and
I will when somebody. Just the other day, I'm in
a store and somebody says, hey, how's retirement. I look around,
I don't know who this is, but I said, hey, Hi,
what's your name? And he tells me his name, and
I introduce myself because I never assume people know my name.
Speaker 3: I just look like anybody. And we talked for about.
Speaker 2: Five or ten minutes, and then I moved on because
I will talk to anybody who takes a moment to
talk to me.
Speaker 1: Wow, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. How the door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 3: It would be my pleasure anytime. Just give me a holler.
Speaker 1: You'd be brilliant today. Okay, sir, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: You too,