A Personal Note

Twelve years ago, my microphone went live for the first time.

As most of you know, I fell into radio by accident. The local guy on WMAC in Macon, Kenny Burgamy, left his long-time role as the voice of Middle Georgia. The station, owned by Cumulus, brought in a new guy from out of town, and that guy got arrested.

The station reached out to me. I was on CNN at the time. They asked if I thought I might be able to do radio. Rush Limbaugh, whose birthday is tomorrow, encouraged me to do it. So I did it from 6 am to 9 am. I am not a morning person.

One day turned into two days, which turned into the rest of that week. That turned into three months, and I got paid in an expired gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse.

While that was happening, the President of Cox Media Group heard me on the radio driving to Disney World and thought it was my show. He knew Herman Cain was running for President. He had the company’s talk consultant, Greg Moceri, reach out to me for a weekend show. I was not interested.

So then the company asked if I’d fill in for Herman Cain one night. I agreed. That’s when they told me he was running for President and really wanted me to take his job. I wasn’t sure I wanted to or had the bandwidth. My wife was adamant that I should. Rush Limbaugh told me he’d never speak to me again if I didn’t and offered to give me as much advice as I wanted.

Today, twelve years ago, I started the Erick Erickson Show. An ice storm had rolled through Atlanta. An hour and a half from home on undrivable roads, I slept on the office floor the first night before getting into a hotel. I did five nights of radio with no phones. They had been taken out by the ice. It was just me. To give you a sense of how bad the ice storm was, two days after it happened, people were still ice skating on Peachtree Street.

It is the longest job I’ve ever had and now I cannot imagine doing anything else.

Thanks for your continued listenership, readership, and support. You can hear me every day, right here. You can also text ERICK to 33777 to get the podcast, live stream, 24/7 stream, social media links, etc.

By the way, this was my car at the time, frozen in place. I had parked at the hotel by my office. The valet couldn’t get it in the garage. It sat there for two days and I couldn’t get from the studio back to the hotel because the ice on the street made it unpassable.