WMOM Radio - Always Listen To Your Mom!

Saturday June 14^th, 2014 – Island Lake, IL

   Here is the first of several posts I made on Facebook in the last week or so. I am posting them here for those that aren’t Facebook friends, so please forgive me if you are and it’s a duplicate. I am just trying to get everyone on the same page, and a lot of things have happened of late.

   This is one about my radio mentor, and being able to pay back someone who really helped me:

   Everybody has mentors, and my biggest one in radio without question is the great Patrick Lopeman aka Pat Martin. He helped me get my first job at WMMQ in Lansing, MI in 1990. What a thrill it is to get one's first morning show, and I won't forget it.

   Since then I've bounced around and have worked all over the country. It's an insane business, with ZERO stability - but I still learned a lot about life and had fun doing it. Not only that I met a ton of really creative and wonderful people.

   Management at most radio stations are apes, but the rest of the people are almost always great. There isn't a station I've ever worked at where I am not in touch with someone to this day.

   This past weekend, Pat hired me to consult his morning show on the station he owns in Ludington, MI. It's called WMOM or 'Mom'. They have a GREAT catch phrase in "Always listen to your Mom". They were are the age now I was when I started, and it was fulfilling to be able to come back for a day and pass on some of the hard earned knowledge I have gotten in my travels - and from Pat.

   Pat is in a word brilliant and is still as passionate about radio today as when I met him decades ago. He's a fantastic mentor, loyal friend and goes out of his way to help others. That's probably why you may not have heard of him before. Nice people rarely get the recognition they deserve, and I want to do what I can to change that. If you are a fan of CHR radio, listen to WMOM. www.wmom.fm.

   It sounds as good or better than any other new music station in the biggest markets, and there's only one reason for it - the great Patrick Lopeman. Thanks Pat! I appreciate you very much. Your kindness lives on in many – including and especially me.

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   I wanted to write this mainly because it’s all true, but I also wanted Pat’s friends and family to see it in print. I know it’s only the internet, but these days that’s as good as what it used to mean to get something in the newspaper or a magazine. I’m not a major publication, but I wanted Pat’s inner circle to see this and it totally worked. I know he did too, and he called to thank me for it.

   People like Pat are WAY undervalued in my opinion. He’s considered a borderline wacko by a segment of the radio fraternity because he does things his own way. What they fail to give credit for is that his way WORKS. The guy is a brilliant radio mind, and lives and breathes it each day.

   I am in that same category with some as well, so I go out of my way to toot the horn of the Pat Martins of the world. May he continue to live his dream, and I will support him any way I can.

WMOM is a CHR radio station in Ludington, MI that sounds as good or better than any major market anywhere.