Photograph by: TROY FLEECE , Regina Leader-Post
By Irene Seiberling
REGINA LEADER-POST
September 13, 2014
They wake up the masses.
No small feat!
Being a morning show personality is demanding. It takes talent especially personal storytelling skills to engage and entertain radio listeners as they start their day.
It takes chemistry between co-hosts.
And it takes commitment whether it’s early in a broadcaster’s career, in mid career, or as a veteran.
Shining as a morning show personality involves much more than getting up super early. To be successful in the coveted morning show time slot requires building a reputation in the community one that stays with a radio personality even after stepping away from the microphone and leaving the studio.
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Broadcasting was once a male-dominated profession. But not anymore.
“When I started here, I was one of two female broadcasters on radio,” recalled Z99’s Lorie Lindsay, who has more than 25 years experience at Rawlco Radio. “Now the market is saturated with broadcasters, and a lot of women are in it.”
The veteran broadcaster concedes “it’s a juggling act.”
In addition to being on air with co-hosts C.C. and Buzz Elliot from 5:30 to 10 a.m., there’s production time to voice commercials, on-location broadcasts in the community, the annual radiothon and numerous appearances as MC at charitable events.
For Lindsay, this is all balanced around a busy family life. She described herself and her police officer husband, Tim Filazek, as “super busy sports parents” with two sons, 16-year-old Parker and 10-year-old Cooper.
“We are go, go, going all the time on weekends, and whenever we pretty much get a chance to watch them, or follow them, or travel with them,” said Lindsay.
“I decided very early on that I wasn’t going to let the radio lifestyle dictate my home lifestyle. And so I have a very normal life in the evenings. I don’t, like a lot of morning people, go to bed at 7:30 or 8 o’clock at night. Sometimes for me, it’s 10:30 (or) 11 o’clock. I’m a bit of a night owl,” Lindsay explained.
To ensure she’s well rested and alert, Lindsay sleeps in shifts. She goes home after work, has lunch with her youngest son, then sleeps in the afternoon until he gets home from school.
“It works out really well,” she said. “And then I just carry on as normal: make supper, go to their things in the evening. And I usually get a second wind.”
When she started in the biz almost three decades ago, management didn’t want women in radio to use their real last name because “it would be a big security risk,” Lindsay said. So the powers that be offered her two options use Lindsay or Larson.
Being a morning-show host in her hometown, is her dream job, she said.
“There’s nothing like radio. It’s addictive.”
*****
Rustie Dean returned to radio after a three-year stint in television.
Leaving Global Regina’s morning show, which Dean co-hosted with her best friend Heather Anderson, “was almost like having a divorce,” she said. “We were so used to being together everyday.”
But when an opportunity to return to radio presented itself, it was too enticing to turn down, Dean said. So she recently moved to Harvard Broadcasting’s morning show on My 92.1 to co-host with Greg Morgan. Both are former TV weather personalities.
