Pamela V. Brown
Write Path, an L.L.C.
Kauai Business Report November 2005
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Pamela V. Brown Write Path, an L.L.C. |
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Kauai Business Report November 2005 |
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Life of Wiley: Ron Wiley nears 40 years in radio Serving the community is his primary goal
By Pamela V. Brown
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By the
time you read this, people will still be phoning longtime Kauai radio
personality Ron Wiley at KONG Radio asking him if the “Our
responsibility is multi-faceted. We’re companions, we’re a source
of information and we are the first line in an emergency,” he said
“The basic fact that gets slammed up against me daily is that lack
of information is frightening to people.” (For the record, the In 38 years on the air, Wiley, who jokes that he’ll remain
ageless if he doesn’t disclose his age, has experienced everything
from broadcasting live from 17 stories above ground on the arm of a
crane at a |
Laura and Ron Wiley with Wilbur, the newest addition to their family. Photo by Pam Brown. |
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For weeks
after the storm, Wiley spent endless hours at the radio station
fielding calls from people looking for missing friends, relatives or
pets, hosting experts who told listeners how to do things like
temporarily weather-proof their damaged roofs and from masses of
children calling to find out if their schools had re-opened. In was in
1992 that the phrase “Get school today?” heard on KONG Radio,
became part of the When you hear him on the air talking about white puffy clouds that look like chickens or laughing through an edition of “Did you know or do you care,” his morning trivia game, it’s hard to imagine Wiley being serious for any length of time. But he says it’s easy for him to move from one mode to another. “If I’m doing the lightest, silliest, most ridiculous, worthless bit of talk on the air and someone calls me and tells me there’s a person’s life in the balance, I switch gears just like you would,” he said, noting that it’s second nature to him. “Somewhere along the line I got the confidence that no matter what was thrown at me, I’d be able to handle it.” He jokes that he hasn’t always been able to handle it in actuality, but he’s got the confidence. Energetic and glib while on the air, Wiley is quietly reflective while contemplating his career. He sees radio work as one of the arts – the art of communication – including the advertising. “Our artwork is intended to have people have a more successful business while artistically entertaining great masses of people, from a 10 year old to a 95 year old,” he said. Like
a Dancer It’s a daily challenge to keep the balance, especially when he’s passionate about something – or someone - specifically his wife, Laura. “I have to be a little bit like a dancer who can see himself from outside of his body,” he said. “If I get too much inside me, I’ll be talking about Laura all day long or the gas prices or whatever. And believe me, it happens, as everyone knows.” That’s where he relies on his audience to shape his time on the air. “Their perception is reality,” he said. And thanks to the immediacy and interactive quality of radio, he gets that feedback right away. “It sounds trite but we are either a huge reflection of the community or we’re actually shaping it. Or maybe a combination of the two.” Wiley’s radio career began at a Spanish language radio station in Tucson, AZ in 1967 when he received a scholarship available to bilingual people who wanted to learn broadcasting. Speaking only in Spanish, his job was to fill the approximate 15 minute gap when the main on-air personality was late for work – which happened almost every day. “That’s one of my qualities,” Wiley says smiling. “I always show up.” Armed with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and working his way to becoming a systems engineer in computer science, Wiley noticed he kept attending college without entering into a career related to his studies. It was his then-wife who could see he was hooked on radio and asked him why he didn’t just go into radio seriously. “She sort of gave me the permission to let got of the desire to achieve because of my education, and just be a silly foolish guy on the radio.” Of
course, Wiley is anything but foolish, but he’s got his silly streak
which his listeners enjoy. Though he has done lots of wacky things
since arriving on Kauai on April Fool’s Day 1989, some of his
craziest on-air stunts happened when he worked on He did a two-hour broadcast from a hang glider over Makapu’u with remote microphones strapped to his arm and chest. He did a show from a waterbed showroom so he can now say he was in bed with 100 women. Then there was the time he was on the crane arm during which he was scared the entire four hours while the device swayed in the breeze. He was buried alive in a casket once, and even broadcast from the back of an elephant for 4 hours – a decidedly stinky experience. “Elephant smell is not washable,” Wiley said. “It really smells bad for days after you’re off of it.” Maybe the
wildest – or at least most revealing – show was the one he did
from a nudist camp in Kahuku during which he even played volleyball.
Must have been a memorable event: “Several people on Wiley looks back with fond memories on other remarkable experiences that his radio career has allowed him to experience – with clothes. He’s played ice hockey with a professional team, basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters, gotten in the ring with – and been knocked out on the air by – a professional boxer, did a show in a shark tank with six finned friends and has interviewed many well-known people including Martin Luther King, Jr., Olympic swimming legend Mark Spitz and Rolling Stone Keith Richards. Live
or Memorex? When he
first came to “We would sit in the studio and pretend we were calling the games,” using information that came in over the Associated Press wire, Wiley said. They’d even imitate a public address announcer asking the person in a 1978 Ford with license plate number such-and-such to report to the parking lot. One time when there was an interruption in the AP service, there was a long delay during which Wiley and company received no information about the game. “So we created a problem with a cat coming onto the field and they couldn’t catch the cat,” Wiley said. “That’s where I learned the creative side of radio – the theater of the mind. I thought I did pretty good cat sound effects, too.” It’s one thing to invent baseball field antics on the air, but what about broadcasting details of your personal life? That’s part of the package when you marry a radio personality, as Wiley’s wife found out early on, with, among other things, his frequent and heartfelt on-air declarations of “I love you, Laura.” They both acknowledge that he forewarned her. “I told her very early on that it would be a ménage-a-trois: radio, her and me,” he said. “I don’t think she really knew the extent of it but she got the message pretty soon.” Laura Wiley agrees and says in the beginning it was fun – a whole new life. “The first time I was ever taken aback by it was the morning I put [her beloved dog] Taki to sleep. He went on the air with it,” she said. “But it was beautiful. People called and wrote and sent cards. He does everything really beautifully.” Though Wiley is careful to keep certain personal experiences private, he makes no apologies for living through radio. “My life is a human radio experience coupled with recreating my human experience . . . from what I had for breakfast to accidentally picking up the hair cream to brush my teeth with,” he said. “I try to recreate it as quickly as I can for folks so they can understand something like what it’s like to be in a gas line and inadvertently blocking someone’s driveway.” As he approaches a milestone of 40 years on the air, Wiley looks back fondly at all his memories and a lifetime of doing for a living what he absolutely loves. “I can’t imagine my life without radio,” he said. “Better said, I don’t want to imagine it.” |
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Contact Information: Pamela V. Brown (808) 651-3533 cell (808) 821-1027 fax |
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"Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art." --- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose |
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© Copyright 2004 Write Path, an L.L.C. and Pamela V. Brown All material, pictures, concepts, intellectual property and rights reserved. |
© Copyright 2004 Magical Concepts §©ª¨ |
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