A.J. Woodson knows how to say no. As a late-night deejay on WNNS-FM “Lite Rock 99,” he has received hundreds of phone calls over the years from listeners wanting to hear their favorite songs. If the song was on the station’s playlist, Woodson was happy to oblige. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. It was against station policy.
But last Sunday night, around 10:30, Woodson got a call from a woman he recognized as a longtime fan of the station. She was excited because a sonogram showed she was pregnant with a baby girl. After eight years of marriage and no children, this baby was almost a miracle. Her husband immediately decided to name the little girl Sarah. To celebrate, they asked Woodson to play the 1980s Jefferson Starship hit, “Sara.”
Mindful of station policy, Woodson had already turned down a half dozen requests that night. But this caller’s story tugged at his heart. He played “Sara.” And the next day, he was fired.
In an e-mail written Monday morning, program director Kellie Michaels explained to Woodson why he was terminated:
“Last night at 10:19 pm, you played Sara by Starship. . . . That was a conscious decision on your part to violate a rule that has been in place for years. You may have done it before and I didn’t hear. But this time, you got caught red handed.”
Woodson, who has worked at WNNS for eight and a half years, is trying to stay upbeat about what happened. “It has been an awesome run, with no regrets!” he wrote in an e-mail to a listener. “I put the listener before company policy (I have always been guilty of that)! Maybe that means I don’t belong in radio. . . . Either way, I have only positive feelings about my years at the Rock!”
The pregnant listener, who does not want her name in the newspaper, didn’t take it so well when Illinois Times told her what had happened.
“Why? Why? I wouldn’t have called! I didn’t know he would get in trouble,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe that. I cannot believe that!”
Michaels, who has been progam director since 1988 and does the morning drive-time show, says any commercial radio station in the country would have done the same thing.
“The point is that he played a song that we do not play. He is not authorized to select any song that he wants to play. No one is,” she says. “A.J.’s a nice guy, but this is a business, and we need to run our radio station as a business.”
Michaels says “Sara” wasn’t the first off-list song Woodson has played. And Woodson admits he occasionally gives in to particularly poignant listener requests, “one or two songs every two or three weeks.”
Michaels disagrees. “I’m not going to comment. You can say whatever you want, but it’s more than that.”
Like most commercial stations, WNNS adheres to a specific format planned by professional programmers. At WNNS, it’s “adult contemporary,” which includes songs from the 1980s to the present. Michaels won’t say how many songs are on the playlist, or even whether the number is more or less than 100. “That’s proprietary information,” she says. But she does confirm that the playlist completely excludes Jefferson Starship. That’s why Woodson’s decision to honor a listener’s request was inexcusable.
“That’s letting one listener control three or four minutes of programming for how many thousands of people? What radio station can afford to do that?” she asks. “We spend a lot of money to image our radio station, and then one person takes it upon himself to decide they know better? That’s an awesome responsibility for a part-timer to take with a multimillion-dollar business!”
Woodson, whose main job is working at a convenience store, makes no apologies for breaking the station’s rules. “I always had an outstanding relationship with listeners. I wasn’t there for money or prestige. I was there because I just love radio,” he says. “I really don’t think ‘Sara’ by Starship hurt the multimillion-dollar empire.”
This article appears in May 8-14, 2003.
