radio people know their radio station..

Good piece from The Star

"I feel like I'm a horrible person,' says Billie Holiday. "I'm taking six weeks."

That's maternity leave, not vacation and, please, no tut-tutting. Holiday, of the Breakfast Show with Mad Dog and Billie on Virgin Radio 99.9, is expecting her first baby at any moment, but in the be-here-now world of commercial radio, six weeks can be a lifetime. She needs to be back on the air the last week in August in time for fall ratings.

"Everyone says, `So you're taking a year?'" says Holiday, whose last day of work was July 3. "Are you crazy? It's a long time to be away from work. It's a pretty competitive industry. You want to make sure you're there and current."

And that you are still wanted. "If you're away too long, there's a long line of people who want your job."

So to keep that lifeline with listeners, Holiday is blogging and will be filming from her hospital room. She held on-air baby showers for pregnant fans. "You get attached to your job and like talking about your life," she says.

But summer can be an anxious time for mile-a-minute radio show hosts and sometimes even their listeners. Traditionally, a week's vacation, sometimes two, is plenty.

After all, the connection to the host is everything. "We don't like hosts taking two, three, four weeks," says Steve Kowch, operations manager at CFRB, a popular talk radio station. "It's a long time to be away and listeners get very restless. They ask: `What have you done?'"

"I'm sort of lost," admits Donna Mills, a semi-retired mortgage broker, referring to when CHFI morning hosts Erin Davis and Mike Cooper take vacations. Mills is so connected to the show that she named her black lab Cooper. "You get used to a rhythm, a certain kind of humour and your routine's thrown off when they are away."

Mike Cooper explains that for years most radio hosts' jobs were sealed with a handshake or a piece of paper confirming employment. "If you took one week's vacation, you're all right, but two weeks ... the guy who took over for you is going to try extra hard for that job."

He's seen hosts dumped in favour of their replacements when they returned rested and ready to work after vacation. "It's all about survival ... I know the audience is fickle and management is fickle and are always looking for that perfect chemistry."

He and Davis have found just that – they have a seven-year contract with the station.

Bob McCown, host of Prime Time Sports on the FAN, says it's common sense to take one week's vacation at a time, and that it's hard to use up all his holiday time. He, too, has a contract. Fear of being replaced? "God, no. It never occurred to me. I don't know if it's ego or self-confidence ..."

Holiday's short maternity leave is nothing new in the business. Davis only took a week off when her daughter, Lauren, was born in 1991. For three months she worked from home, then rejoined her then-on air partner, Don Daynard. "We didn't lose a step in the ratings. It was revolutionary at the time."

Davis remembers a former boss warning her off a long vacation. "He told me, `I guarantee if you go away for three weeks, no one will remember your name.' I'd been on CHFI for 10 years and we were the No. 1 morning show in the city. It was his way of being a jerk, but that's the mentality in radio."

Listeners clamoured to have her back after she was fired in 2003. Now, she gets about 6,000 visitors a week to her blog (erindavis.com). "That kind of loyalty is so rare – it is a debt I may never fully repay."

Besides, she loves being on air. "When she's not working, she's thinking about working," says her husband, Rob.

Davis and Cooper, who live in the same building near the radio station, have both just started a two-week vacation. Davis is going to blog and post photos from her family trip to Newfoundland. "It's a way to stay with (fans)."

Cooper's going to New Brunswick, and then spending the rest of his vacation at his cottage in the Kawarthas. "Just in case they need me, I can always come back."

That hints at another side to the radio host personality, says Jerry Chomyn, director of broadcast media at Humber College. "They genuinely love going to work every day. It's not a job, it's almost like a calling ... and they are at the centre of a universe of listeners. You are it, every morning.

"But like a lot of performers, comedians or actors, there's an awful lot of insecurity in on-air people. They recognize what they are doing is talking, and deep down they fear anybody can do this. "But the truth is, nobody can pick up the reins of Billie Holiday or Erin Davis. They are at the top of their game."

As is Maureen Holloway, who's on Derringer in the Morning on Q107. For the first time in her career she's taking a lot of vacation time. She's had two weeks and is about to take another three. She'll be back for the fall ratings.

But that will change, she notes, because of a new audience measurement system, to be introduced in Toronto by BBM Canada in September. Instead of asking listeners to keep written diaries of what they are listening to during four ratings periods, as is the current practice, audiences will be measured using what's called a portable people metre, which tracks codes embedded in the audio of various electronic media. Station managers will be able to know how their programs are doing every day of the year, not just during the sweeps.

"This is going to change everything, including the idea that we have to stay close to work to be assured of any longevity in our jobs," Holloway says. "We can't work 52 weeks a year and no one will be able to say you can't go away during ratings."

Holloway, who has two boys, 10 and 16, had a wonderful time on her recent vacation in Italy. "But I was anxious to get back. I missed talking radio. It's really a strange thing – a personal conversation, but with lots of people listening. It's intimate, but show-offy."

She's heard on stations from Halifax to Vancouver and isn't replaced when she's away. "If you're being replaced by some young, brighter thing ... I don't think I would take three weeks.

"You know they want your job. Who wouldn't?"