By Rick Kaempfer
YOUNG RADIO VETERAN
I
f you listen to the veterans of the radio
world, you begin to hear a few common
themes. One is that there is a dearth of
young talent. Another is that the young tal-
ent that has emerged doesn’t know and
appreciate radio history, and are therefore
unappreciative of what radio was and what
it can be at its best.
Those radio veterans probably have not
met Brandon Herman. Until recently he
was the station manager and show host at
WONC in Naperville (North Central
College). He is about to branch out and
launch a non-commercial network to syndi-
cate his show. This 21-year-old kid is
already a grizzled veteran with more than
five years of experience. It began at his high
school radio station at
WLTL in LaGrange Photo by
Matt Begeman
(Lyons Township).
From the very
beginning, he didn’t
think small. “I was sur-
prised that nobody had
done anything with the
people who lived in the
area. There’s a gold-
mine of music people.
The first people I
reached out to were
musicians. The first
guy I had on was
Jimmy Sohns, the front-
man from Shadows of
Knight. Doing research
on local music, I
learned there were so
many great bands from
here. Tons of them.
Bands from the '60s
and '70s and a lot of
them came on my
show.”
As he did more research about the music
that came out before he was born, he dis-
covered a little concert recently featured in
the movie Bohemian Rhapsody.
“I did a special one year about the histo-
ry of Live Aid – and was fascinated by the
concert. I ordered it from the library and
watched it in its entirety. At first, I thought
the special would be about two hours long,
but I reached out to as many people as I
could that performed in it, or were involved
in some aspect of it. It ended up being an 8
hour special. We played songs from every
set, and we even had Graham Nash on the
show. That blew away my general manager
Chris Thomas. He was incredibly support-
ive.”
Then Herman began to learn about the
rich history that we have here on the
Chicago radio dial. “I knew Steve Dahl
lived nearby, and he came out to the studio
on a Saturday night and spent two hours on
the show. I had listened to him on WLS, and
my parents were big fans – they had lis-
tened to him since they were young adults.
That was incredible. I got the whole WLUP
lineup on my high school show, and that
got me into the history of the Loop. I went
to Jonathon Brandmeier’s studio to inter-
view him, and I was never so nervous in my
life. Kevin Matthews invited me out to his
home studio, and I did an interview there.
Garry Meier invited me out to his podcast
studio, and I was a guest on his podcast,
too. And Chet Coppock too.”
For those of you keeping score at home
– a high school kid was able to get the full
line up from the classic Loop on the air to
16 illinoisentertainer.com april
2019
pay tribute – something even the Loop itself
couldn’t do for their last show on the air.
Learning about the Loop sent him even fur-
ther back, and he discovered more of the
incredible talent we still have in the
Chicago area.
“The more I learned about the Loop, and
the more I heard the old archival shows, the
more I realized that the Loop was a game
changer. They really influenced me from the
talk radio perspective, and from the disc
jockey point of view, I loved the guys on the
Drive and WLS-FM. But I must say, I was
dumbfounded that WLS had this incredible
lineup of talent. And I had researched them
and heard their earlier work, and they were
among the greatest of all-time. The incredi-
Brandon Herman
ble line up of talent - Robert Murphy, John
Landecker, Dick Biondi - and they weren’t
allowed to speak more than ten seconds at a
time. So that’s what inspired me to reach
out to them, and I had them on my show.”
After he graduated high school, Herman
brought his show to his college station
WONC in Naperville and continued to
hone and improve his skills. All the while
he kept scoring these incredible guests, and
he started developing a following. “I
learned a lot when I worked at WONC
under the direction of John Madormo,”
Herman explains. “They gave me the
chance to really try new things.”
Brandon not only rose through the ranks
at WONC, becoming the station manager,
but he was also becoming noticed in the col-
lege radio world. That culminated recently
in his being asked to be a presenter at the
Intercollegiate Broadcasting System's annu-
al conference in New York City, where he
talked about interviewing and show prep.
After that experience, he decided it was
time to launch the network. At press time
there were about a dozen non-commercial
stations in the Midwest interested in carry-
ing The Herman Show. “I have begun work-
ing as a supervisor at WLTL 88.1 FM (Lyons
Township High School in La Grange),
where I am mentoring students in an advi-
sory role, and as such, it made sense to
move The Herman Show to WLTL. So our
home station is WLTL.”
Keep an eye on this kid. If he’s accom-
plished all of this before going pro, imagine
what he can do when someone actually
pays him to do it.