Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / I Don't Write the Headlines

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I Don't Write the Headlines · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:05
From the On Air Across America newsroom, this is your Morning
0:09
News update. The Postal Service says it has
0:11
stopped work on a computer system intended to check voter
0:14
lists before processing mail ballots.
0:17
Postmaster General David Steiner says the agency will follow
0:20
established election mail procedures this November after a
0:24
court order blocked the new requirements.
0:26
He advises voters mailing ballots to do so at least seven
0:30
days early. Senators from both parties have
0:32
criticized aspects of a classified Pentagon briefing on
0:36
US defense strategy. Other senators gave the session
0:39
a more favorable assessment. Their concerns included the Iran
0:42
war and munitions supplies. The Navy is asking industry for
0:46
proposals for a containerized system that could carry at least
0:50
60 lower cost interceptors against drones and cruise
0:53
missiles. No system has been awarded or
0:56
deployed under that request. Iran says it struck a commercial
1:00
the tanker attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz.
1:03
An independent assessment of the incident was not immediately
1:06
available. In baseball, the Dodgers
1:08
clinched the National League West with an 8 to two win over
1:11
Cincinnati. The Mariners begin a series at
1:14
Colorado tonight for the On Air Across America network.
1:18
I'm Alex Ross. The world is a complicated
1:35
place. Fortunately, Dave Bowman has
1:38
opinions, some informed, some inconvenient, and a few that may
1:42
require supporting documentation, history,
1:45
politics, and the absurdity of modern life.
1:48
This is Well, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are,
1:59
whatever you do. A lot of things happening in the
2:01
world today, most of them are far beyond our control, you
2:03
might say. So perhaps it's time we took a
2:06
pause and thought about life. What about the laws of gravity
2:11
changes? The Mariners don't touch that
2:17
dial. Just try to hear me out for a
2:19
little while. On the morning of January 9th,
2:23
2026. I'm sorry, 2006, not 26.
2:29
That would be absurd. The Modesto Bee carried a column
2:34
by a community columnist by, well, it was me, and it had this
2:39
headline, quote, KFIV replaced what we liked with air, quote,
2:45
voice, UN quote. That isn't ours, UN quote.
2:51
OK, I've been saying this since the week after that, and I will
2:55
continue to say it hopefully one last time today.
2:58
I don't write the headlines. I, I don't, I wrote the article.
3:03
I didn't write the headline. I mean, if you know anything
3:06
about how the newspapers work, you know that that's the case.
3:09
The gist of the article, if you happen to read it, was that
3:12
Clear Channel. Then Clear Channel was jerking
3:16
us modest tunes around yet again.
3:20
The year before they had they had dumped local talk radio for
3:24
corporate syndication from out of market.
3:28
Stuff that, alas, you can actually still hear today.
3:33
But that article, for which again, I did not write the
3:37
headline, changed everything. It's why I'm sitting here on
3:43
this RE320 microphone this morning recording into a Road
3:48
Caster Pro 2. And it's why I've spent the last
3:50
few years getting up at 242 O 4:00 AM on Tuesdays to tell you
3:55
some story from history that I hoped would inspire or perhaps
3:59
motivate you and move you in some way.
4:02
But it all started with that article.
4:05
Some guy from West Virginia who landed in Modesto with no idea
4:09
what was about to happen as a bee columnist.
4:15
And, and I enjoyed that very much.
4:17
I, I, I was a community, what they call the community
4:20
columnist for the bee. The idea here was that you would
4:23
write a community based column, 500 words.
4:28
And if your column got run one a month, you got a $35 check,
4:33
which in those days was good enough for, you know, a nice
4:35
meal or tank of gas, whatever. This was in the days before the
4:39
$5 gallon gasoline. The the bottom line of that was
4:44
that you're supposed to write one a month.
4:47
And there were about 40 of us, as I recall.
4:52
And many of them would just write the one and, and got into
4:56
it with 1 gal who would, it would take her weeks to edit
4:59
her, her article and blah, blah, blah.
5:02
Look, I just sit down and write and I would send 567 columns to,
5:06
to Judy Sly over at the B and, and with with the note on look,
5:09
just pick the one you like And that's what she would do.
5:12
And that's how we, we worked that out.
5:15
So a year before I wrote that article in 2000, January 20 of
5:20
2006, KFIV Clear Channel had pulled our local morning show.
5:28
They told us it was for the better.
5:30
They put on a Sacramento morning show.
5:34
And while this may not mean anything to you, you need to
5:38
understand that Modesto is not Sacramento in the same way that
5:42
Tacoma is not Seattle. Are they relative?
5:45
Are they related or then same general geographic area?
5:48
Sure. Do we get our television in
5:50
Modesto from from Sacramento? Yes.
5:54
But Modesto decidedly not Sacramento.
5:58
And so it was taken away from us.
6:00
And I wrote a column at the time, I wrote a column based on
6:05
a on a newspaper article that was a news reader who was, it
6:09
held Men's Health magazine, I guess, wrote an article about
6:11
the dumbest cities in the country or something.
6:13
And anyway, the whole point was that now that they had taken
6:17
away our local talk radio, we were going to be even Dumber.
6:20
And I was, I was pissed off at Clear Channel for doing that and
6:25
yadda, yadda, yadda. A year later they announced that
6:27
they were bringing it back. I still maintain that it was
6:32
because, you know, look, all of these decisions are business
6:35
driven folks, that that's just the fact of life.
6:39
Clear Channel, I heart doesn't do anything if there's no money
6:44
in it for them. They just don't.
6:46
So when when Clear Channel says, oh, we're doing it for the
6:49
community, blah, blah, blah, yeah, they're doing it for the
6:52
bottom line. So it's always been that way.
6:54
So anyway, they announced they were bringing back local talk
6:56
radio and we were all excited because while we had a morning
6:59
host, he wasn't, I'll be honest with you, he wasn't my cup of
7:05
tea, but at least he was there. And I say that knowing that I'm
7:09
not everybody's cup of tea. So, so be it.
7:15
So we were all expecting him to come back is what we were
7:18
expecting. That did not happen.
7:20
And the next thing you know, we get this announcement that this
7:22
guy from West Virginia via Florida is coming in and he's
7:26
going to be the new host and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
7:30
So January rolls around. They do the, the first week
7:34
those shows and I listen then. And I, I liked it.
7:38
It was good enough that it did. It was good enough that really
7:40
up to that point, morning talk radio had been hit and miss.
7:44
I was really listening for traffic reports on my way to
7:47
work. But you don't need weather
7:50
reports in Modesto because the weather is always 90° and sunny,
7:55
but traffic is a is a is a bear on 99.
7:59
So I listened to the first couple ones and at the end of
8:02
the day, it got me if not hooked, at least it got me
8:07
started listening to this guy from from Florida, West
8:10
Virginia. I wrote that column and it says
8:15
in that column, there's a line in that column that says I
8:18
enjoyed it. I hope he does well.
8:20
I'm, I'm supportive of this. I, I'm OK with this.
8:25
And yet somehow or another, because I don't write the
8:28
headlines, some other idiot wrote the headline.
8:31
And that turned into a brouhaha sitting in my office.
8:37
At the time, I was the business administrator for a local
8:41
nonprofit and I was sitting in my office minding my business as
8:46
I so often do, and the intercom rang.
8:48
It was my my receptionist and she says there's some guy from
8:54
the radio station on line three wants to talk to you.
8:58
OK. So I answer the phone because,
9:01
look, part of my business was PR stuff.
9:02
So she didn't say it was from KFIV.
9:06
She said it was just from some radio station.
9:09
So it's Bill Nick and he invites me to come on the show.
9:13
Now, look, it was mockery. I mean, that's what they were
9:21
doing. They were making fun of me
9:22
because I, I made they, they, they, they glammed onto that
9:26
headline, especially his boss and, and they were like, well,
9:30
how dare you say that you're not from here either, blah, blah,
9:33
blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it was, it was, but it
9:36
was fun. We had a good time.
9:38
And more importantly, Bill had a sponsor at the time called the
9:41
Coffee Element, which made this coffee that was just incredible.
9:47
To to this day, I'm not sure I've ever had better coffee.
9:50
I probably have somewhere along the way.
9:54
But on a day-to-day basis, it was the best coffee I'd ever had
9:57
up to that point in my life. And so since the station was not
10:03
terribly out of the way from my drive to work, and in fact, in
10:09
some ways it, it wasn't any quicker.
10:13
It was just going through the city instead of going down Hwy.
10:16
99. And so I started dropping in
10:20
just to get the coffee. I'd, I would drop in, say hi and
10:24
do the coff, get a cup of coffee and wave and go on in those.
10:28
In those days, you could actually get into the studio
10:31
before with without a security badge and those kind of things.
10:34
Anyway, Bill and I started developing this friendship over
10:37
this over the coffee and over the the fact the way that this
10:41
whole thing got started. And again, I want to be clear
10:43
about this. I did not write that headline.
10:46
If you read the actual article, it's not very pro Clear Channel,
10:53
but it was very pro Bill Mick. It was very, hey, this is going
10:57
to be good. We'll do fine.
11:00
I didn't write the headline. I don't have any control over
11:03
the headlines. I still can't change the
11:05
headlines. So be it.
11:09
Over the few months of of, of 2006, Bill and I became pretty
11:15
good friends and eventually for reasons that I'm not going to go
11:20
into here, they were programming issues.
11:23
He claims they were programming issues.
11:25
I claim it's because he's obsessive, but the show runs
11:29
from 6 to 9, as you know, in the morning.
11:32
And but he would start at 5:30 with this news half hour thing.
11:37
And Bill, I'm going to tell you this now, everybody hated you
11:42
for that. Everybody hated that half hour.
11:44
We all hated it. We all God, I, I could tell you
11:49
some behind the scenes conversations about that half
11:51
hour, but at any rate, I would sometimes just hang out for that
11:54
half hour. And eventually Bill says to me,
11:57
you know, I need a sports guy for the station.
12:01
I'm a sports guy. I'm also a a business
12:04
administrator and HCFO, an HR manager, all these kind of, but
12:09
I'm a sports guy at heart. So I said, well, that sounds
12:13
fun. And he hired me to do sports
12:18
Kfiv in that half hour. So the first 5 minutes was, you
12:21
know, national headlines and then some other headlines and
12:24
and then we do a news, a sports section.
12:27
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I took to it
12:29
like a fish out of water because I did the first day I was live
12:35
on the air. He turns to me and says, and now
12:37
here's Dave Diamond with sports. And yes, it was Dave Diamond
12:39
because the company I was working for did not want me on
12:42
the air as me. And he pushed the button and it
12:45
the light went red and I went. The A's defeated the Toronto
12:50
Blue Jays 322 in a Major League. It was bad.
12:56
It was it was so bad. It was almost embarrassingly
12:59
bad. But as time went by, it got
13:02
better. This 5:30 in the morning thing.
13:05
Eventually there was a day where Bill had to be in Fresno for a,
13:12
as I recall, he may correct me on this, but it was a sexual
13:16
harassment seminar of some kind company wide, you know, thing.
13:20
I didn't have to go because I was just a junior flunky at that
13:24
point. And so I got to handle the, the
13:28
530 half hour gets solo on that. And that I guess convinced him
13:34
that I was able to handle things well enough.
13:38
And over the course of 18 months, I got more and more
13:41
comfortable with it. I got more and more the, the
13:43
technology of it thrills me. I did, I, I've said this on
13:47
numerous occasions, I'm a tech guy, I'm a buttons guy, I'm a
13:50
fire control technician. So for me, pushing all those
13:53
buttons and learning all that technology, I was also at the
13:57
time, I don't talk about this a lot.
13:59
I was in a band, I was a professional musician on the
14:02
side. And so learning all this audio
14:05
stuff was it was fantastic and it was helpful.
14:08
Over the course of 18 months, Bill gave me more and more.
14:13
I was brought on more, more responsibilities from sports.
14:18
I was brought into news and those kind of things as the, as
14:21
the filling guy for the for the news folks.
14:24
I was actually the news guy on the desk the day of the
14:27
Virginia, Virginia Tech shooting.
14:30
And so I had to handle that all day.
14:34
But all this time I'm still doing my full time real job, as
14:37
it were. There came a moment where Bill
14:41
was going to take a vacation and I was not Privy to any of the
14:44
behind the scenes stuff. I I didn't know any of the stuff
14:46
that was going on. Bill decided to take a vacation
14:50
and he needed somebody to fill in for a week and he said you
14:54
want to do it. So I took a week's vacation from
14:56
my other job, filled in for a week had and then just the time
15:01
of my life. I mean, it was, it was that much
15:02
fun. It was, it was interesting, it
15:04
was fun and it was great. And that ended on a Friday as I
15:13
recall. It was mid August and Monday
15:17
things went back to normal. As I recall things happening.
15:22
They were on a, it was on a Tuesday and I, I actually went
15:25
back and I went back through the newspapers and I went back
15:27
through all the, the articles and calendars and stuff.
15:30
So I can tell you that it was Tuesday, August 14th, 2007.
15:35
And as we got done with the half hour of the Morning News thing
15:39
and we were getting ready to transit to the, to the show and
15:42
I was getting ready to leave. Bill says to me, Hey, can you
15:45
hang around for a while again? I'm the boss at my other job.
15:49
So yeah, I can. So I called my secretary.
15:52
I said I'll, I'll be a little bit late, no biggie.
15:57
And the 6:00 hour shows starts and first thing that that
16:03
happens is the the general managers in the studio.
16:06
And I'm like, what's this about? Bill announces, announces again.
16:13
I don't write the headlines. He announces on the air that
16:18
he's leaving, he's going back to Florida and he announces that
16:25
I'm going to take over the show. Now I'm like time out, dude.
16:30
I got a full time job. Look, I, you know, I'm CFO, I'm,
16:38
I'm making, you know, not it's non profit money, but I'm making
16:42
decent money and radio anyway, he just sort of announced it and
16:51
that was the beginning. I don't remember the exact date
16:55
he left. It was a little bit later in the
16:56
month, but I for a few months from, from basically September,
17:03
the first day, the first Tuesday in September, which was, you
17:06
know, the day after Labor Day until December 31st.
17:09
I was basically the temp fill in while they decided what they
17:13
were going to do. Now for me, it was it was fun,
17:18
was interesting, it was challenging.
17:21
I went through three producers in in that amount of time.
17:26
The first one, Heather left because she got promoted to the
17:28
be the program director. Tom Cody came in and and we had
17:32
a great time. But was this temporary?
17:36
Was this was this going to be permanent?
17:38
What, what was this going to be? And over those 90 days, I was
17:43
really, what are we going to do here?
17:46
And you know how the universe sometimes just speaks, The
17:49
universe just comes out and says, and here I was in the
17:54
middle of my third career. Very, it was very stable.
18:01
It was very comfortable. It was very what I was used to.
18:05
It was, it was So what I was used to that everything that I
18:08
basically did, I had automated all the processes for.
18:12
I could write a $5 million budget in about an hour because
18:16
I had automated all those processes.
18:17
But it frankly, and I say this with love, it was boring.
18:24
And I got to the point where I had to make a decision, am I
18:28
going to go? Am I going to take this radio
18:30
job if it's even offered, It hadn't been offered yet.
18:33
Or am I going to stay where I was?
18:35
And I made the decision to stay where I was.
18:37
And that afternoon things changed at the radio station and
18:42
a new general manager came in who wanted to meet with me.
18:46
And so I went back over there and we sat down and he said, how
18:50
come you're not full time? Nobody's hired me full time.
18:53
Well, as of now, you're hired full time.
18:56
The universe speaks sometimes and that's where Afternoons Live
19:00
was born. The first thing he did was we're
19:02
moving you to afternoons. I don't like this morning stuff
19:05
you're going to be on on afternoons.
19:07
And so that was literally the birth of, of afternoons live,
19:11
what would eventually become the Dave Bowman show.
19:13
And through all of that, Bill was always there.
19:15
I can always pick up the phone and say, hey, how do you do
19:17
this? How do you handle that?
19:18
What happens when corporate Clear Channel says this?
19:21
What do they mean? Because I don't, you know, I, I
19:24
speak corporate pretty well and I feel like I'm good at that
19:29
stuff, but I don't know what they mean.
19:31
Bill was always there with those answers, with those questions to
19:36
give guidance, to give help. He was there when we, when we
19:39
got to our fifth year anniversary, he had, he came on
19:43
the show. We had a great time.
19:44
And it was always, you know, it was as technology evolved, it
19:48
was texts, it was emails. We were constantly in contact.
19:51
I don't think, I don't think we ever went more than a couple
19:53
days without talking about something, sharing stories,
19:56
talking about those kinds of things and and going through
19:59
there. But the days always come, even
20:04
for Alexander the Great. The day has finally come and,
20:07
and I was blessed when I got married to Cami in 2009 and Ben
20:13
came along and this was a it was a different kind of experience
20:19
for me. I'd never been through this
20:21
before. My wife has raised four other
20:23
children. She was, she's a labor and
20:25
delivery nurse. I had no experience with it, but
20:29
I wanted that experience. And I found myself at odds with
20:35
things with the show, with Clear Channel being required to do
20:40
things that were taking me away from my son.
20:45
And indeed, my son had a performance one day at preschool
20:49
holiday, some kind of holiday performance.
20:51
And I wanted to go, but we had a quote, mandatory, mandatory
20:56
promotions meeting. So I was sitting in this
20:59
promotions meeting thinking to myself, why am I even here?
21:01
I don't have anything to do with promotions.
21:03
I don't write the headlines. I had nothing to do with that.
21:07
I didn't have anything to say in the meeting.
21:09
No questions for me, nothing. And the whole time I'm thinking
21:13
my son is doing his performance and I'm missing it because I'm
21:17
here. I made the decision in January
21:22
of 2015 to, to leave radio. I, I chose my own path.
21:27
And it's, it's kind of interesting because there's a
21:29
saying in radio that goes like this.
21:32
You don't really work in radio until you've been fired.
21:37
But I didn't get fired. So did I really work in radio?
21:40
I mean, I had the rough longest running show in Modesto history.
21:45
And it's intriguing to me that, you know, Bill stepped away as
21:49
well. He retired this morning, as you
21:51
know. So neither of us got fired.
21:55
Did we technically really work in radio?
21:58
I don't know. For me, that moment was life
22:02
changing. I've been very close to my son
22:05
for 16 years. We've, we've, it's just been a
22:08
joy. And I've been blessed with a
22:10
wife who was very willing to not just allow me to do that, but
22:16
but encouraged it. And so I've been basically a
22:20
stay at home dad since January of 2015.
22:22
There are a couple of times in there where I was able to work
22:25
my knees, you know, obviously have been an issue and my health
22:28
has been an issue. But it's been nice to spend that
22:30
time with Ben. After I left radio, I still
22:37
wanted to keep talking. I still wanted to keep doing
22:39
things. I still particularly wanted to
22:41
do Constitution Thursday. And that was easy.
22:43
It was an easy transition then to the podcast world, the birth
22:48
of plausibly live, which is a name that I shamelessly stole
22:51
from my my friend Steve Zabin. And then of course, that turned
22:56
into other things. And eventually we ended up with
23:01
with Bill calling me and saying, Hey, why don't you come on my
23:03
show once a week. And we started doing that and
23:06
that led to the birth of Dave does history, which led to
23:09
Liberty 250, which was just, I got to be honest with you, I was
23:13
always very proud of what we did with Constitution.
23:15
Thursday, Liberty 250 was better.
23:18
I mean, it just really was. So it was it was important.
23:23
And on this day where Bill finally doesn't he's finally
23:27
steps down. I can still say with unequivocal
23:30
joy, Bill, I didn't write the headline, but it did lead to
23:35
changing both of our lives in a lot of ways.
23:37
And there you go. One of the earliest meetings I
23:41
had with the with listeners was a, an event that I'd gone to and
23:47
one of the listeners, I was still relatively new, came up to
23:50
me. And he'd been a long time
23:51
listener to Bill, long time listener of the people before
23:54
you know us. And one of the things he said
23:56
was are you real? So what do you mean am I real?
24:01
He says, well, I know Dave Diamond's not your real name,
24:03
but you've never hidden that fact.
24:06
So, you know, it's OK. But are you really who we hear
24:11
on the air? And I, and I think that's what
24:14
listeners across the board doesn't really matter.
24:17
The show, they really want that. They want their host to be real.
24:20
And I take that to heart every day when I sit down with this
24:23
microphone. I know bill took it to heart.
24:26
The bill you heard on the radio is the same bill minus the
24:31
jokes. And, and again, he's a cop.
24:34
He has the same gallows humor that I have.
24:37
So he can't really do that on the air because the FCC.
24:40
But minus that, that is the same bill that you hear.
24:44
And I, I can pretty much assure you that with the exception of
24:47
the fact that at a party or something, I tend to be a
24:49
wallflower, This is who I am. We are real.
24:53
We are real people. At the end of the day.
24:56
I'm Dave and at the end of a career in radio, a 25 year
25:01
career in radio and at the start of a career in something else.
25:08
I would just like to say thanks to Bill for, you know, reading
25:12
beyond the headline, I guess is is the important thing and
25:15
understand that his life is changing.
25:18
All of our lives change, hairstyles change, interest
25:21
rates fluctuate, but at the end of the day, we're still who we
25:25
are. And in this business, I'm happy
25:27
to say that I was taught to do it by Bill Mick.
25:30
Congratulations on your retirement, Bill, and I'm sure
25:33
because I already know, we'll talk to you real soon.
25:37
Thanks everybody, have a great day.
25:39
See you next time for plausibly live The Dave Bellman Show.