WYBC: Ken Devoe

Just about everything good that’s happened in my adult life is a direct result of my experience at WYBC.

When I got to Yale, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do post-Yale. My plans or lack of them didn’t include going into radio. In fact, I had no idea that college radio even existed.

I discovered WYBC quite by accident. I was in my room at Farnam Hall one Saturday afternoon with my transistor radio on and heard what sounded like a couple of people my age broadcasting play-by-play of a Yale football game. I was astounded. College kids on radio?

As a kid growing up in Chicago, I was fascinated listening to play-by-play announcers for my beloved Cubs, Bears and Blackhawks. I used to fantasize about doing play-by-play but never thought of it as a career option. But then I joined WYBC and their Sports Department. One of the seniors took me under his wing and taught me the basics of play-by-play. Soon I got to broadcast Yale basketball games.

I also was hooked on becoming a Rock Jock. I became the radio equivalent of a gym rat. I hung out at the station at every opportunity. Whenever an on-air shift became unexpectedly available, I was there to fill in. I would work any time, day or night.

I knew that some WYBC guys who came before me got jobs in radio while they were students, and I really wanted to do so, too. Kevin McKeown blazed that trail for me when he landed a gig at New Haven’s WNHC radio, one of the two Top 40 stations in town (the other was WAVZ).

I made demo tapes (air checks as we call them in the biz) and knocked on doors and finally got an interview at WNHC with the Program Director. He liked my tape but said he didn’t have any openings. A year later, he did. I got hired to do weekends and vacation fill-ins my junior and senior years. And, literally the day after graduating from Yale, I went to work full time for WPLR, the former WNHC-FM.

With the exception of a year at grad school at Indiana University in 1970-71, I was on the air at stations in New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport for 18 years.

I learned the “tricks of the trade” of DJ-ing at WYBC. I also learned how to write and produce commercials at YBC and spent a lot of time in the production studio honing my skills. To teach myself how to splice tape, I decided one night to grab a bunch of records from the AM studio and record as many “nonsense lyrics” as I could, cutting bits of audiotape and reassembling them into a musical montage I called (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) “The Most Profound Rock ‘N’ Roll Lyrics of All Time.” Check it out. You’ll get a kick out of it. As a challenge, see if you can identify all the songs that are in there.

Thanks to WYBC, I got into professional radio. Thanks to being in professional radio, I met my wife-to-be – the lovely Cindy – at one of the stations where we both worked. We got married in 1981 and have been happily married ever since. We have a wonderful son and two adorable granddaughters.

Also, thanks to WYBC, I learned to write and produce radio commercials. As a result, I got a gig freelancing as a copywriter for a New Haven area company called Sound Concepts and wrote spots for local, regional and national advertisers. In 1984, I started my own copywriting business, writing commercials, videos and web content for Fortune 100 companies – even for Yale.

And, of course, I made lifelong friends.

None of the above would have happened were it not for WYBC. I owe the station a lot and have tried to give back as much a possible. I joined the WYBC Board of Governors in the early ‘90s and served as chairman for four years, after which Andy Schnier assumed the position (as it were). I’m still on the Board to this day.

It’s been a blast!