Hey y'all,(That's what we say here in North Carolina.)I've finished writing the book I'm been working on the past few months and hope to have it available soon. It is one of those memoir things. I'll let you know as soon as it is published.Stay tuned!Vernon with a V Read Full Story

A number of people who have discovered http://www.vernonwithav.com/ in recent months have asked questions that I answered in some of the earlier blogs - before I started numbering them. For you guys - here are the answers to some of the most asked questions.Why did I leave radio? Here is the short answer; the entire reason is far more complex but this hits the main chords. After proving that I could cut it in the Big Apple, I could have continued doing the same thing for another 20 or 30 year... Read Full Story

It continually amazes me that after all these years, there are still airchecks of my work floating around out there from 30 or 40 years ago.Being a personality jock is like any other art form; some days can be really good and other days can really stink. I've heard some airchecks of my work that I'd like to destroy and others that I've listened to and realized that I was hitting on all cylinders that particular day.Unfortunately, very few days of my work were recorded and saved.... Read Full Story

Some guys, like 'Vernon With A V', give good radio. Some guys give good Movie Trailers. Don LaFontaine, a Los Angeles voice-over guy was the King of Movie Trailers. He died this week at the age of 68. We'll miss him and his voice. While I was at 66WNBC, I spent a lot of time during records - on the phone - lining up commercial gigs. Hey, no snickers about those 1970's glasses...they were the coolest of the cool back then. Voice over guys are an interesting breed; usually... Read Full Story

This demo of some of my commercial work contains a couple movie trailers. Can you find them? I'm no Don LaFontaine...but it is a living.New York and LA agencies always want you to make life easy for them by doing just one type of delivery or 'sound' - guys like me drive them nuts because we go into an audition asking what sound do you want? And they always answer, "What? you do more than one?" Read Full Story

As I left you in The Way It Was #15, I was getting out of KLZ, in Denver, because it was just too wierd!I went to WCAR, in Detroit, where I thought life would be a little more normal. Wrong.WCAR hired me to do afternoon drive. What I didn't know was that the studios were in a former funeral home that just happened to be haunted! Honest. More on that later.Our Program Director was married to a beautiful woman who was a model. Models have specialties. Some have beautiful hands and they mode... Read Full Story

Nick was one of the funniest guys I ever worked with but we had two diametrically opposed approaches to humor.I liked to do quick bits; 60 seconds was a long routine for me - I tried to keep my stuff to 40 seconds or less. Not everyone was going to think every one of my bits is funny but they were likely to stick it out if they knew it would be over in a few seconds.Nick liked to do long-form humor. I thought some of the long-form things we did were great but others, I thought, fell flat.... Read Full Story

Hey, I'm sorry about going two weeks without updating http://www.vernonwithav.com/, but I've been on vacation. I honestly intended to update it while I was on vacation...and then I reminded myself...Self, you are on vacation! So I didn't do it.We were out in Denver visiting one of our sons and his family. Actually, I had worked in Denver radio for about a year after I left WNBC, in New York.It is difficult to imagine now in the almost anything goes radio world, but the radio Imus ... Read Full Story

Uncle Mike, whom you'll hear me mention in this Denver air check was the morning jock when I arrived at KLZ. He was not...let me repeat...WAS NOT...the morning guy I talk about in "The Way It Was #15". Uncle Mike was a very talented guy who moved to another Denver radio station about 6 months after I got there.One thing the Program Director did that I liked...he set up a tape recorder that went on whenever our mike switch was turned on. He did it so he could later critique ... Read Full Story

Some people think Big Time Big Deal Jocks like me - Vernon with a V - spring on the scene with all of our skills and talents already fully developed. Nope. We paid our dues like everyone else.This is a picture of me (on the left) in my first radio job at my hometown station, WIMA, in Lima, Ohio. That is my first radio mentor, Tom Francis, showing me the copy he wants me to read and hoping I'll pronounce all the names correctly.For you youngsters - that is a turntable in the foreground. We... Read Full Story