My experience in commercial radio was a bit different from Kelly's. In the early 1980's, I asked the FCC to allocate a new FM channel to Delphi Indiana. It was a town where my family had roots going back to 1825. But when the Delphi channel came up for application 3 groups applied against me and it went up for hearing at the FCC. I was pissed. These other guys didn't even want Delphi. They wanted to use the frequency to serve larger towns nearby.
There were about 25 more undiscovered channels in Indiana that I knew about. So I started dropping them onto the table of allotments. I was going to keep doing this until I got a CP. I thought the competing Delphi applicants needed stations in their own towns and I put channels in their towns.
I put 106.7 in West Lafayette and I persuaded the president of Purdue University that Purdue needed 101.3 FM.
I just wanted to own a radio station and I would have been happy with just one. But the FCC awarded me 3 construction permits. Two of them were near Lafayette Indiana. The third one was ten miles out of Indianapolis.
During the daytime my stations were eclectic and sold commercials. At night I did the community radio thing with guest DJ's from the community. We did lots of community events and found sponsors to pay the bills.
At the same time, I became the first legally blind person in my state to get a drivers license. That made national news.
I was in commercial radio for 15 years and I worked 7 days a week. I was tied like a dog on a chain to my businesses.
