Jim McGovern

The names I am going to drop in this post need no introduction from me.  Both of them are better known and have done more big things in their radio careers than I could ever hope to do.

Jim McGovern was the GM at KMPS who made me a Seattle PD.

Pat O'Day told a very revealing story at Jim's wake:

When Les Smith and Danny Kaye owned WUBE/Cincinnati, Jim was the manager and Pat went to visit his old Seattle friend over a long Memorial Day weekend they decided to drive up to see the Indianapolis 500.

The instant the idea came up, O'Day got on the phone and started calling in favors.  Eventually, he was able to pull strings and get a pair of passes to both the pits and the press box.

As they were walking from the car to the track, McGovern asked O'Day to wait a moment so that he could try to sell the pair of tickets he had in his pocket all along.

Pat exclaimed, "you let me go through all that and you had tickets????"

McGovern replied, "sure, because what you were getting was much better than what I had."

The lesson I learned from Jim McGovern:  don't micromanage.  Your team will often exceed expectations.

Jim always had a "plan B" -- which the people who worked for him seldom found out about (as long as their "plan A" was superior to it).