More About Tom Dean PIC Pilot In Command

My aka and me are proof that any young wannabe can get a job in media.

Sex talk on a country music station was a shocking idea that ruined more than just one radio career. The show was designed by edgycated broadcasters I worked for to draw attention to, and sell, WDEE radio in Detroit, the nation's 5th largest market in the early 70s. 

God only knows why they picked me as its titivating talk show host. I had zero experience and half an electrical trade high school education. I don't know how it succeeded or how I lasted 10 years doing the show, longer than any other copy cat PhDJ. "Several markets tried Fem Forum and were shut down by the FCC," said The New York Times. 

I survived more than one ownership change but not the divorces.  If I could do it all over again, I'd wire houses.

Fem Forum failed in Detroit after WDEE was sold a third time to religious broadcasters and ABC picked it up for WXYZ. The American Broadcasting Company was trying to minimize the loss of Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Purtan to CKLW. Turns out that was not at all a well thought idea on the part of ABC.  WDEE had succeeded with the format because of the year long research that had helped build the idea. 

Fem Forum was a gold mine on a major market country music station that succeeded for a decade with listeners willing to say anything to a fake talk show host on the phone. WXYZ had a north of 8 mile audience. The mass communications boss at ABC who hired me was canned, too. The nation's most identifiable station, WXYZ RADIO was sold and forever silenced shortly after that embarrassing screw up."


Who are the people who own America's media? The famous black basketball team, the Harlem Globetrotters, bought WDEE the nation's first most popular country music station with a sex talk show!  Its host, me, was given half interest in a Detroit Lions Silverdome area bar by a drooling fan of Fem Forum callers who happened to have millions of dollars.

We hired the biggest stars to perform. One of them wouldn't take the full $5,000 we'd agreed to pay: "small crowd, my fault" said the Bandit's truck driving Snowman, Jerry Reed. If we owned that bar today Taylor Swift might have been cheering from our owner's private box. 

I am proof that anybody can get a job in the media.

Logic would suggest Tom Dean should never have happened the way it did. My sister and I came from insane homes (3 to 5 fathers, grandfathers, divorces). Everything took longer for Susie and me to learn, unlearn or do. At age 14 without a mentor I mistakenly selected a downtown Detroit electronics trade high school simply because it was 10 miles further away from witnessing a defenseless mother and our drunken stiefväter. My sister said she stopped me from %^$#@ him when I was 10.

The man was actually likeable when he grew up (long after I'd left home).

After 3 years I graduated with a fake diploma discovering that Detroit "trade" (electronics) high school students received 50% less academic class time (English, social studies, history, etc) which resulted in me not passing the exam to the US Air Force Academy to which I'd been nominated. 

The nominator was Detroit Democrat lawyer, U.S. Congresswoman and Lt. Governor of Michigan, Martha W. Griffiths. Did you ever meet someone who didn't know WTF they were nominating?

I enlisted instead. 

During 4 years of USAF military level noise, I worked 8 hour shifts inside "SAGE" the world's biggest computer ever built. The monster took up the entire 2nd floor (22,000 square feet) with endless coke bottle sized heat generating vacuum tubes and fans to cool them.
 

After that, I grabbed a civilian job which allowed me to wear noise reduction headphones. Being a DJ was easy (3 hours a day) but not also while hosting the longest running titillating sexy nut talk radio show at the time. Jealous, otherwise troubled or insane listeners with guns gave me years of sleepless nights.

Google: "Tom Dean Fem Forum"  

Those short on the air shifts gave me lots of time to attend a variety of schools trying to make up for what I'd missed as a kid -- commercial pilot, traffic reporter/pilot, computer programming, web development, photography, graphics design, sales and marketing. Turned out the character I played on radio helped power me up to a full real estate broker who gained valuable networking and web development experience. 

I created AirSho.com in 1996.  

Using my multi-engine / instrument and instructor ratings training, I logged 1,500 hours as a commercial pilot flying in the 4 seasons of Michigan weather for which I am grateful. Perfect weather can lure any pilot into a sense of complacency.  

In the video below my friend Craig Smith piloting News Chopper 15 was distracted from flying by what was going on below him (on the ground) in Phoenix. The lack of a non-pilot reporter (cost cutting) is responsible for this accident said the FAA.