Mixing it up like juicy berries

by Peter Twitchell

Looking back at my life, say 50 years of working jobs to make a living raising a family, no regrets. It taught me the importance of work ethic to always do my best and get the job done.

When I worked as a broadcaster at KYUK for 24 years, I was made radio operations manager at the age of 25. James Guy Croll who came up from Gallup, New Mexico in 1975 talked me into it and worked with me every day for a year. Then he brought me to the radio station he managed in Gallup, New Mexico and let me work there for a week, then up to Silver Springs, Colorado for more training.

Then I came home and had this hunger to train disk jockeys (D.J.s) for radio board announcing. One of the things they stressed to me was never to clear your throat while speaking on the radio. We had to sound clear, professional, and always upbeat!

For example, never to say, “It’s partly cloudy”. It sounded like doom and gloom over the airwaves. I was taught to say, “Partly sunny”. It was brighter and more enlightening to the human ear/mind, psyche.

I was taught a lot about music and how to mix it up like juicy berries. It was all interesting and as fate would have it I came across radio like, and when I think about it, a hot jock but kept it down and local because I was serving my Yup’ik people.

I was a bilingual announcer. It proved interesting. One minute like Kasey Kasem, then like myself. We were a public radio station but our D.J.s were all good.

It was a big change from when I started in Alaska State Housing Authority dwelling with Levi Lott, Frank Charles, George and Bob Charles, John George Peter, John Paul Jones, and Buster Richardson. It was all good. I was radio operations manager, radio manager from 1971 to 1994.