Being a radio personality is a glamorous, easy way to make a living. Just go to a broadcasting school-a degree is necessary even though deejaying is a cinch-and get a job at one of the many stations in the Chicago area. Anyone can do it. Really.
Tell that to Marc Arturi and he`ll laugh hysterically. Arturi is a deejay at WKKD-FM, Aurora, a small station with a Naperville, Aurora, Fox Valley audience. Still, it is a cog in the third-largest radio market wheel:
Chicagoland.
”Very seldom does someone start out in a big market with a big contract for big money,” Arturi said. ”You have to start out at a really small station and work for very little money first. Not many people are willing to do that.”
Arturi, 32, began his radio career in 1981 at a low-power station in tiny Port Huron, Mich. He grew up in a suburb just outside Chicago and, until the day of his interview at WHLS, never considered himself a city slicker. Over-estimating the travel time to Port Huron, Arturi arrived two hours early wearing a suit and tie.
”I decided to get a cup of coffee at a local diner,” he said. ”I never felt more out of place in my life. It was filled with some of the scariest people I`d ever seen: women with no teeth, big tobacco-chewing guys with International Harvester caps and a couple of waitresses with five o`clock shadows.” A sampling of his audience.
The people at the radio station were a little more sophisticated, Arturi said. ”They were wearing nicer flannel shirts.” He took the part-time job for $4 an hour.
Arturi stayed in Port Huron until 1985 and juggled deejaying there with a Detroit traffic-reporting job and a stint as host of a home-shopping television show. He also did some modeling for local clothing stores at the pinnacle of haute couture. ”If you want to get into radio, be ready for monetary and cultural shock,” he admonished.
From there, he moved on to WKKD, was fired, went to work for WAUR (now Y108), left to host a music show on Centel Cable in Wheaton and found his way back to WKKD. To make extra money, he teaches part-time at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting in Lombard and deejays at a nightclub in Sugar Grove called The Point.
”I`m always thinking of ways to improve my show,” he said. ”Sometimes I`ll think of something late at night, and I won`t be able to sleep. Or I won`t be able to sleep because I screwed something up that day. There`s no way to wing it to the top. Radio is hard work.”
