What’s life like after retiring as a radio disc jockey?
No one ever really covers it but there are more than a few DJs that have left the studio and attempted to live life at a slower pace. One example of a retired DJ that has finally made the transition to retirement is radio personality H. David Allen, who decided to leave his position at the KXPC in Albany after working there for 36 years. After trying to retire many times, this time it is sticking and life is forever changed.
Allen contemplated leaving the radio gig more than five years ago but couldn’t go through with it. According to him, once radio flows through your veins, it is impossible to eliminate completely. This is a sentiment shared by many DJs that near the retirement age. Especially with more companies leaning towards hiring younger people, it sometimes takes a push from atop that forces many established radio personalities to finally hang in the towel and seek other forms of employment or direct retirement. How many of them envision pushing around a vacuum after being in front of a mic for years? For David Allen, his world changed immensely both during his radio years and of course, after he decided to leave the world of radio too.
Since childhood, Allen has been in radio in some way, shape, or form. Even in high school, he was building radio transmitters from bit parts of scrap metal. After joining the Navy after high school, he specialized in communications and, after leaving the Navy at the age of 21, he applied for a job part-time at KMCM. It was at this station in McMinnville that he received his big break and from there he never looked back. It was there that Allen learned how to use a motherboard on the fly because of a plane crash. He was placed on air to cover the motherboard while other people made their way to the site of the crash. After proving his mettle during this emergency, the station hired him to work at KMCM full-time. Seemingly overnight, Allen went from being a big kid to being a full-time radio personality.
Fast forward to more current times and Allen has now worked in radio as a program director, on-air personality, operations manager, and even the music director for several stations all over the country, from KGAY in Salem, KUMA in Pendleton, KROW in Dallas, and KFAT in Corvallis. No matter where he has worked, he had listeners follow him and his antics at each station and according to him, nothing is as flattering as that feeling.
Working in the business for so long had a set of drawbacks too, however. According to David, such long work hours and no holidays meant little to no place for family. Is first wife left him and he threw himself even more into work. But, he also notes that radio work has changed dramatically over the last forty years. According to Allen, radio consolidation has meant that the majority of radio stations have begun to stop offering news on the radio altogether.
Because of this transformation, Allen has given lots of advice to young people that want a career in radio. These days, he’s advising that they seek out other forms of employment. His opinion of radio now is that it’s become basically dead end territory, with people in the business now leaving it in droves as opportunities shrink and corporations merge more and more to save money.
After retiring, Allen continues to stay busy, but not in the radio world. He took a job working for Hewlett-Packard, operating from a warehouse that is automated. Now that he has left the communications world, he has no qualms about ever returning to radio. He now plans to take more care of his health and reduce his stress levels as much as possible. While he still loves the business, Allen understands that being a broadcaster can take a serious toll on the body and he plans to use retirement as the long vacation he needs to heal every part of his body.