Hey everyone!
Back again with the last installment of my ongoing series of interviews that I've been conducting this summer with friends of mine who are radio DJ's. This week, I'm interviewing my friend Jadd Naamani who works as a DJ at 3 New England area radio stations. He works as a DJ at Kiss 108, 106.1 WCOD, and Fun 107 down on the Cape. I conducted the interview this past weekend during Jadd's shift on Fun 107 to find out how Jadd got his start in radio among other questions. And without further ado, here is the interview!:
Give your name and your current job title here at Fun 107?
My name is Jadd Naamani and at Fun 107 I'm an on-air DJ, they call it on-air swing or weekend swing which means I work primarily on the weekends and then swing means that if they need somebody during the week, they'll call me to see if I can fill in for them.
How did you get this position at the station?
I found out there was an opening and I applied. I actually knew the kid that was leaving, he got a full time job in Ithaca, so he gave me a heads up that he was leaving, so I ended up putting in my stuff and they decided to put me on.
Let's go back to the beginning, when did you first become interested in working in radio?
Honestly, not until I was in college at Curry. I always wanted to do journalism and that's actually what I went to Curry for, but you know that kind of fizzled out and then I was working at the radio station my freshman year, I only did 2 shows the entire year. I liked it so I ended up doing more shows sophomore year and then I got my own show second semester sophomore year and it just kind of took off from there.
Describe what it was like to be on the radio for the first time at Curry?
It was nerve wracking. I was in the sports department during the year they split the station in different departments, I was in sports which meant I had to do color commentary, play-by-play and produce one live broadcast for a game. And we also did sports flashes once a week, my very first sports flash I messed up the call letters, it's WMLN and I said WLMN, so I mixed it up but everybody was cool with it, they knew it was my first time.
Can you give me a rundown of the different shows you hosted while at Curry?
I did a tag team with this girl Kerry called Rock Candy, I did a tag team with this girl Kara called The Renegades of Rock and then after 2 tag team shows, you really need good chemistry with somebody to do a team show with them, we were friends behind the scenes but at the same time, we just didn't have that good on-air chemistry, so then I went solo after that for my last 2 years with a show called Rock Block.
What radio personalities did you look up to while you were growing up and how have they helped shape your radio persona?
Like I said, I really didn't know I wanted to do radio until college, so until I started doing internships and working in radio, that's really when I realized who to idolize, and I would have to say my biggest one is probably Jackson Blue, he does a night show at Kiss, he also does mornings in Baltimore and he has a nationally syndicated show. I knew he was going to be successful before he got the national show and I just like his energy and the way he presented himself on the mic and all that, he is probably my biggest idol. I guess you can say Matty in the Morning too just because he was my first internship and I just kind of saw how he did things with the talk show and all that and tried really to incorporate some of the elements they do over there to my show at Curry.
What are the most difficult parts of being a professional disc jockey?
A lot of times you have to play music you don't really like. It depends on the rotation of the station too, there's some stations out there that play the same song once a hour and they can get kind of nerve wracking. Outside of that, that's really it, radio business is tough because of automation taking over now so alot of stations or companies that provide money to stations try to take shortcuts and they have some of their shifts automated during the day to save money so they don't have to actually pay somebody more money to do it here, they can do it on the cheaper to have somebody automate it, but other than that I can't really complain about my job in radio.
In addition to your job at Fun 107, you also work at 106.1 WCOD and Kiss 108, can you talk about how you got those two gigs?
WCOD was my first on-air gig. After I graduated I made fake tapes of me being on-air and I sent them to a bunch of stations, WCOD was one of them and the program director down there Kevin Matthews actually got back to me and said "You know, we're gonna try you out on Saturdays 6 in the morning to 10 in the morning shift." So that's how I got on air there. As far as Kiss goes, I interned there for the morning show and then I took a semester off, and then I went back and interned for Romeo and from there I got involved doing some street team work and board-oping which is just producing a show that's going on the air, it happened to be a live broadcast they do on Friday and Saturday nights from clubs, and then I got into the traffic department there and then got brought up to full time and I've been doing the same thing since, I started producing the Seacrest show too which has kind of worked my way up one after another.
How can you manage 3 separate radio gigs and being in the same place all at once?
It's a matter of working on no sleep. (Laughter) Honestly, my work at Kiss is just during the week Monday-Friday I'm at Kiss. There are times where I have to work multiple jobs during the week like a couple of weeks ago, I filled in for afternoon drive sown at WCOD so I worked Kiss 5 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon, drove right down to the Cape and then did the 3-7 show there and then drove home, slept, then did it all over again. Mainly, my normal schedule is Kiss Monday-Friday and then I do WCOD 10-2 on Saturday and Saturday I do Fun 107 from 4-8 so it's just kind of all lined up.
Are there any differences between your on-air radio personality and your personality in real life?
More or less 95% of me is the same person, I mean 5% of me does have to be subdued because I'm on the air so I have to watch myself with what I say cause some of the things I say behind the scenes or in real life I can't really say on the air so mostly it's what you see is what you get, it's just content or my verbal usage as far as what language I like to talk.
Are you a big admirer of the music you play on the radio or do you listen to other genres of music on your spare time?
I usually listen to rock which is funny because WCOD is more adult contemporary so it's geared towards soccer moms and all that, and Fun 107 and Kiss 108 are both Top 40, which alot of the big listeners are girl teenagers who go crazy over Justin Bieber, so obviously Justin Bieber is not on my iPod, but there are some songs that cross over that I like, or some that we play that I'm like "Oh hey, I like that." For instance, I'm at Fun 107 right now playing Flo Rida and I like that song, but like I said I'm more of a rock guy but there are some songs that I like, there are others that I'm not crazy about, but it's not enough to get me to leave the station.
If you weren't working in radio, what do you think you would be doing careerwise?
Honestly, I have no idea now, but when radio started getting tough and then they started going with automation, where it's really kind of at a point now you have to be that great where you can make it big or else you're in trouble. I've thought about going back to school, and I don't know what I would go back to school for. Honestly I don't know what I would do, crime scene investigation interests me, I've always kind of been into mysteries and stuff like that, and I was going to go to school to be a CSI, but I heard the criminal justice field is pretty tough, not that radio is any less tough but I would probably say that.
Any memorable moments that have happened to you on-air during your professional radio career?
At WMLN, there was one time when I was doing a shift where this girl was on before me so I went on and started doing my show, and she came back, thought she was going to plug something about a drama show that was going on at Curry later on in the week, and instead she decided to get on the air and talk about how she didn't hook up with one kid and then commented on the lack of his penis size, so that was a little tough. There have been times where either I'm on WCOD or Fun 107 where like I said, my personality on the air is alot like my personalty off the air, so there are times where I talk the same way and I'll catch myself before I slip up, but nobody can really tell unless I point it out.
What is the single most important lesson you've learned whole working in radio?
Always make sure the microphone is off before you talk. (Laughter) You've gotta really want something. If I didn't really want to be on the air full time, if I didn't want to make radio my life, then I wouldn't be in it because it's insanely tough, but it's a good test for yourself too if there's any point where you're doubting something you want to do, then maybe it's not the right thing for you, but I haven't doubted what I wanted to do, it's just a matter of working hard enough to make it happen.
Thanks once again to my friend Jadd for carving some time out of his schedule to do this interview! This wraps up my series of interviews with local DJ's, keep an eye out for some more interviews that I will be doing with local musicians later on in the fall!
