What up with your job?: Shawn Campbell
Issue #23
By Amy Schroeder
Published: March 1st, 2005 | 11:59am
Age: 33
City: Chicago
Occupation: radio program director and DJ for (WLUW) 88.7 FM and associate producer of “Sound Opinions” music talk show on WXRT (93.1 FM) in Chicago
When you were in high school in Mendota, Illinois, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be on the radio from the time I was 10. I always thought, “what a cool thing to get paid to play records!” Fortunately, my musical taste is much better now. In 1986, I thought it would be pretty great to get paid to play Whitney Houston and Bon Jovi.
You completed a double major in speech-communications-theater and sociology from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, in 1993. Did your major prepare you for your career after college?
I’m one of those rare cases where my major prepared me for my career by allowing me to get really good at a version of what I planned to do for a job. I worked at the college radio station for four years, in all capacities, from DJ to assistant music director to special projects coordinator. I planned events and managed a staff. I was on the air during college for something like 2,000 hours – so I graduated with four years of job-related experience.
While in college, you also interned for WXRT in Chicago. Then when you graduated college, you landed your first job as an overnight DJ at a brand-new alternative station in a small town in Indiana. What was the first job like?
It was a good experience and a terrible experience rolled into one. It was 1993, the height of the alternative boom. The experience was positive in that — working for a new station with a limited number of employees in a small market — I learned how to do a lot of different jobs, something that's almost mandatory these days to have a career in radio. I was on the air as a DJ, adding songs and assembling playlists as a music director, organizing promotions, and assisting the program director and filling in for him when he was away. And because the "alternative" format was still new, it hadn't fallen into the cookie-cutter patterns you see today. I was playing music ranging from the Smiths to the Indigo Girls to Nirvana to the Velvet Underground to Danzig.
The downside was that I didn't do anything but work. I had just moved to a new state, had no friends, and was working 2-6 a.m., six days a week. After about a month, I got promoted to music director, but they didn't move me out of the overnight shift, so I'd be on the air 2-6 a.m., go home and sleep 7 a.m.-2 p.m., go back and do music-department work from 2-8 p.m., eat dinner, and then go back to be on the air. All that for $11,000 a year.
You worked at the Indiana station for a year, and then you went on to work a number of other DJ jobs in the Chicago area. In 1999, you started workingfor WLUW, where you work now. What are your responsibilities as the program director?
I'm responsible for the overall sound of the station. I supervise the DJs and work with the music, news, promotions, and production directors to make sure all departments of the station are working together coherently, in keeping with the station's mission statement.
How competitive is the radio field?
As a performance field like music or acting, radio has always been highly competitive, and is even more so now. I'm afraid it's kind of a bleak picture I have to paint. Since the radio industry was deregulated in 1996 through the Federal Telecommunications Act, the number of radio jobs has been shrinking. The act removed the national ownership limits that used to be in place, allowing corporations like Clear Channel to own as many stations nationally as they want — although they can't own more than eight in a single market.
Do you like your current job?
I love it. I’m extraordinarily lucky in that I get paid to do everything I love. WLUW lets me combine my passions for music, media, politics, and activism. I have the freedom to program the station with music and talk that I believe in and think is important, not just what I think will make the station the most money. Unfortunately, that’s what much of commercial radio has become.
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