Bill Virgin's Radio Beat September 4, 2008

Includes archive of Bill Virgin's columns fromJ une 2006 - March 2009

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat September 4, 2008

Postby radiofan » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:27 pm

Broadcaster puts career on hold to write memoir
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER

Eric Slocum spent much of his broadcast career on TV, although he was a radio guy at heart, and he spent 32 years in broadcasting despite being a writer at heart.

Just as he got the chance six years ago to get back to the radio part of his heritage, now he's embarking on a major career shift in which writing will become the focus of his time and attention.

Slocum, the co-host of KOMO-AM/1000's afternoon news, is leaving the station at the end of September to work full time on a memoir. The station hasn't named a replacement yet.

Although Slocum was introduced to Seattle as a television anchor -- he worked for KOMO/4 from 1990 to 2001 -- he bookended his years on TV with radio.

He got his start in 1976 at a tiny radio station in a small town near Lubbock, Texas, where he was going to college. "I was the turn-on-the-transmitter guy," he remembers.

But that first break launched a career. That same year he moved to a TV station in Lubbock, then on to Wichita, Kan., and Oklahoma City, before landing in Seattle. (He'd worked in other cities as Dan Slocum, but KOMO already had a Dan -- anchorman Dan Lewis. He volunteered to use his middle name, Bruce. But that didn't work either, since KOMO had sportscaster Bruce King. So he became Eric.)

After taking a buyout from the TV station, he soon wound up back at KOMO, this time on the radio side, when the station landed the Mariners contract and switched to a news format.

Moving back to radio was tough at first, Slocum says, because the technology had changed so much in the intervening years. "I had to learn digital everything," he says, crediting the mentoring of Manda Factor, with whom he was initially paired, and the help of afternoon co-host Lisa Brooks and market veteran Bill Yeend for getting him through. "They taught me to do radio again."

For all those years in broadcasting, Slocum maintained a desire to write.

Growing up in Dallas, he worked on the high school newspaper and the yearbook. He has written short stories and poems over the years, having a collection of the latter, "New Words," printed in 1996 as a fundraiser for Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center to support pediatric AIDS research.

The memoir, however, is a much more intense project. Slocum says "In Danger" (the working title) will chronicle how he has dealt with alcoholism (sobering up in 1993 with a rehab stint), obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and the decision to come out of the closet as a gay man.

"Acceptance of myself was really a struggle," he says.

Slocum believes readers don't have to have dealt with any of those issues personally "to relate to the human ramifications of those challenges."

To write that book "the right way" means devoting full attention to it, rather than trying to squeeze it in during off hours. While he imagines the finished work -- written under the name Dan Eric Slocum -- will be cathartic for him, he's also hoping someone will want to buy and read it. He's giving himself a year to write it (he has three chapters done so far and 27 more outlined), find a literary agent and get it sold.

Slocum, 50, emphasizes he is "certainly not retiring from journalism." The plan is to eventually return to KOMO as a fill-in.

As a kid, he listened to a station out of Chicago at nights and fantasized about being on radio. That came true. Now the idea of writing full time is "a fantasy come true." But it's also, he adds, "an experiment in a way."

In other radio notes:

Speaking of KOMO-AM and morning news co-host Yeend, the station announced he has renewed his contract. Yeend joined KOMO in 2002, after retiring from KIRO-AM/710 in 2000 following 27 years there.


"Audioasis" at 6:30 p.m. Saturday on KEXP-FM/90.3 features live performances by Palodine and Barton Carroll from the High Dive in Fremont.

Jim Wilke's "Jazz Northwest" at 1 p.m. Sunday on KPLU-FM/88.5 features a recent performance by clarinet and alto-sax player Paquito D'Rivera.

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com.

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat Thursdays in the Seattle P-I
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Postby kat » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:49 am

When I saw the headline on this column, I thought the story was about our very own John Sykes. :?
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