An interview with radio showhost ready to sign off

FRED MILLER

June 19, 2008 at 12:27PM AKST

Editor’s note: Earl Finkler, Barrow’s KBRW morning show host, is leaving Barrow and the station after more than 20 years. Finkler, his wife Chris and their dogs Nuna and Avu will be heading south and leaving the state at the end of June to be with family and friends in the Lower 48.

Friend and aspiring radio host Fred Miller interviewed Finkler about his time in Barrow.

Q: When did you find out that you wanted to be a disc jockey?
A: It was back around 1985, when I was also planning director for the North Slope Borough. I had volunteered to work on a play, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” and I went to the KBRW studios, and that was the first time I had seen anything like that. I got hooked.

Q: Did you go to school to become a disc jockey and if so, where did you go?
A: I had an undergraduate degree in journalism but had only worked with written (journalism) before. Being on the radio was totally different. You write stories differently, but you are still communicating with people — that’s the only common thing.

Q: How long were you in the radio business?
A: Ever since then (1985) in one way or another. I was morning host and I hosted the show “Second Time Around” when the previous station manager left and I broadcast softball games.
The games used to be at the old Bobby Fisher field, but there was no electricity so we couldn’t plug in the transmitter back to the station. We ran a cord to Clancy and Mary Itta’s house, and once we were in this heated softball game. It was a tied score going into the bottom of the seventh round and it was getting tenser and tenser when all of a sudden a road grader comes by and pulls our plug out! So we went off the air and we were searching around and we couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.
We missed the key play that won the game. In radio you get used to a lot of obstacles —many things to overcome.

Q: How did you find out about Barrow?
A: I was working out of Anchorage in 1969 for the Alaska State Housing Authority to help them with their comprehensive plans for their future. One plan that had come up was in Barrow, because the Bureau of Land Management had set out some areas for expansions. People like Eben Hopson and Wyman Panigeo knew they were going to expand, so they asked for a planner and I came up to help.

Q: When did you start here in Barrow?
A: It was 1969 — but I was traveling back and forth from Anchorage. I knew you (Fred Miller) since you were 2 years old.
I met Eben Hopson, and he wanted me to help out with becoming the borough planner, but money ran out so I recommended they hire a city manager. The whole budget for the city was $50,000, and a lot of that went for shooting stray dogs because there had been some serious incidents with stray dogs. But there were no money or resources for forming a borough.
In late 1970s, Eben and I had worked out where I could come out much more often and by then I had been working in Arizona in the planning department. In 1985 I became planning director in the North Slope.
Between 1977 and 1982 I was also there quite a bit. Reminiscing on those times — half my life was working on the haul road. People still call me from the borough to see if I have this document or that document.
Eben (Hopson) was concerned that once the pipeline was done that this road that was just meant to be for building the pipeline would become an open road. He was concerned that people would come up and interfere with the subsistence and resources and also build new communities.
He wanted the borough to be at the table to exercise their views and their concerns. And so that is what we did.

Q: Of all the people you interviewed, which one stands out the most?
A: It was one about the Girl Scouts starting here in Barrow — we had a lot of fun on that one. Ruby Martin was here in the 1950s and got the Girl Scouts going. They took all the Girl Scouts on dog sleds out to Point Barrow so we covered all that at KBRW. I interviewed Samuel Simmonds a lot. When there was a tragedy or serious things happened he would always come for an interview and get people to understand and move on.

Q: You stayed here a good length of time. Have you ever been offered another position as a disc jockey anywhere else?
A: I talked at one point with the Anchorage Public Radio people but they couldn’t understand that we broadcast softball live.
I also talked with KENI, a commercial radio station, just to see. But their whole news room was as big as this table, three by seven feet, and they did news for three or four minutes at a time. They did nothing like live interviews. They would just go to the Associated Press machine and rip it out and read it.
KBRW is way ahead of any place that I would think of within Alaska at least.

Q: A lot of people come and go here in Barrow, what made you decide to stay?
A: Well, when I first came in 1969, Edward Itta and I were on a plane together. He said, “Earl, the Arctic gets in your blood — you’ll be back.”
I traveled with my first wife and the kids, and we went back to Chicago and then Milwaukee because my dad had emphysema and I wanted to be by him for a while. But Alaska was always on our mind, and Barrow is part of Alaska.
Barrow is one of the main focal points in Alaska because Barrow is not a big city like Fairbanks and Anchorage and people really have a relationship to the land and traditions.  
When I was working with Doreen Simmonds doing the news, we cooperated in so many ways. No matter what the weather was like, we had to get something out, whatever it took.
We had to all work together because it’s sometimes hard enough to get to the station or you are working and suddenly your transmitter goes dead — you still have to keep going. You cannot have dead air. No matter what is going on. Don’t let the listener go without hearing something.
One time we doing “Second Time Around” on Saturday and we had a big storm where roofs were coming off and the planes were flipping over.
No one could come in and relieve me at 10 a.m., so I called Chris about noon and I said: “I don’t think I am going anywhere, you wanna come and keep me company and maybe help me on the phones?”
So Chris came to bring me some food and help me and she almost missed KBRW — she walked on the street and couldn’t see it - she would have wound up on the tundra.
She came and answered the phone and we were there till 6 p.m., when someone came on a snowmachine to relieve us. I was there from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Q: Did “WKRP in Cincinnati” have any meaning to you?
A: I thought DJs were cool, I thought about being one when I was a child.

Q: Was there anyone that you looked up to that was a radio host or VJ?  
A: They were all good but there was one thing — they had all these people but only one or two VJs. There not much emphasis on who’s on the air. It helped me understand a little bit about who’s on radio.

Q: Do you have anything to pass on to the next morning radio host/DJ?
A: Show up every day on time no matter what and always be aware that there are listeners there and that is your main job to serve the listeners.
If there’s weather info or police info whatever is coming in, work hard to make sure people get this information.
Encouragement is important — no matter how bad the weather is or how dark it is — have a hearty good morning. It’s gonna be a good day and stay strong.
Be kind to each other. I saw these things and I really mean them. I try to put myself in the position of who’s listening and maybe what they’re going through. I visualize people, not like you’re looking though a wall.
I went to a workshop by Alaska Public Radio Network. ... They said, “Don’t just talk to the wall. Think of somebody that’s there.”
It can’t be someone you’re emotionally involved with — think of somebody you can really tell everything to, so I settled on Lou Grant and Mary Tyler Moore. I am not talking to the wall, I am telling Lou Grant about the weather in Barrow. He would listen.