I work for a printing corporation in Baltimore and the press room has several presses. At one end against a wall is a twenty- nine inch Heidelberg Speedmaster (SM), 4-color. This beast is twenty-seven foot  overall and the four individual units are spread out between sixteen feet. Most of the workings are underneath which puts you up off the floor by about three in a half feet. The units are an impressive seven foot in height and you sit between them to work with the plates and blankets. In the middle of the floor is a Heidelberg GTO five color press. This smaller brethren is fifteen feet long and tops out about chest height.

Against the other wall are a couple of small 2-color presses and the company radio, which is tuned to some sort of popular, easy listening music, country, 50s or even occasionally jazz. The tuning changes when someone is bored or is interested in a change of pace or mood. I started my evening shift and immediately started working on the GTO. After about ten minutes in, I started listening and it took me about another five minutes to get the attention of the pressman working on the SM.  I pointed to the radio and had to ask, "Hey! What is this shit!"

He replied, "That's 98ROCK!"

I took a double take, "No way! You're kidding!"

"No. That's some new guy named Mickey."

"Well, he ain't going to be new for very long!"

We both laughed and contemplated how long he was going to remain being on the air. I chimed in, "If 98ROCK is a good company to work for, they will give him two weeks."

We had a gentleman's wager going so we protected the radio and listened intently. One was greeted with a smattering of music, sexuality based humor, radio bits and interchange with callers. But what prompted the most laughter was, the show was a production fiasco. Mickey had no sense of radio timing and couldn't run the board. He was paired with a lady named, "Jen," and she was just as new to radio as well. To be honest, she did her fair share of radio chores, but seemed to me to be more of Mickey's side kick.

It was great! Commercials were miss-timed, sometimes two played at once and things were mis cued. Sometimes they missed them completely and an intervention was necessary. Also, they held private studio discussions on the air. I was constantly exclaiming, "This sure beats college radio!"

One time, they went from an on air discussion to an argument and then Mickey chimed in, "I think you... hit this button...." The station went off air for about fifteen minutes. We felt that when it came back on again, there would be a new personality filling in for their spot. Our shop discussion was about why we enjoyed it and we came to the conclusion that it makes us feel human about our own screw ups. Not being fired about that, we started to listen as we now rooted for the underdog's success.

After a while, the other pressmen said, "I can't believe that they are still on the air."

Huh? It made me think, and I replied, "Well, we're still listening. You have to admit that regardless, it is still great entertainment." After that I started to listen even more intently, I began trying to glean answers to my thoughts, taking a good look at things."

In previous chapters, I mentioned that I really didn't like the penis, vibrator and sex humor as I feel it was not only poorly done, but overdone. Mickey's show was an exception and we usually rolled with laughter. The laughter that Mickey was able to achieve was actually the opposite most of us operate from. It was derived from real life, with its vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies. This type of humor was also just a smattering, and Mickey had a great sense of not only timing, but when to stop it. Well, for the most part... Even when this humor went on a tangent, he deftly guided it.

There was also a great variety of humor, including involving work, management, life in general, family and even race. However when something more serious came up, he handled it equally as well. Mickey wasn't without his controversies; his worst act was canceling the, "Mandatory Metallica Rock Block." This had the Metallica fans up in arms and demanding his head, not to mention threats of revenge. Still, he was able to turn this tide to his advantage. The other one was he had the producers and other employees of 98ROCK on the air. It took only a short while for the management to put an end to this. He was pissed and vowed to put stop  to this excluding practice and fix the problem of other employees coming over the air waves.

It took a while, but Mickey kept his listeners informed. It was a union problem with language put into their contracts that had to be renegotiated. It seemed that some of the personalities in radio were intimidated and put in a clause of the producers contract that they could not speak over the air waves. He never discussed those negotiations, but my guess is that the language of those contracts was changed to, "At the discretion of the show hosts."

This not only added to making radio more enjoyable, but it also added to the total sense of the radio as, not only a complete corporation, but also gave their station a more family-like atmosphere. Personally, I feel it is a great accolade for the people that work hard behind the scenes making their the shows successful.

Then there came the moment that Jen not only admitted to doing a certain sexual act, but also saying that she enjoyed it. If you were in our print shop you would see two people popping their heads out of the Speenmaster trying to find the other. I immediately said, "She just didn't say?"

"Yes, I think that she did."

"Oh, this isn't going to be good!"

In the ensuing days, the callers wouldn't let her live it down. My coworker and I were pissed. Not at the show, not at Jen, but at the callers; in a sense we considered ourselves part of the 98ROCK crowd and felt disgraced at the caller's insistence of the one track mind that was taken. It seemed like not one caller could let her live things down. Jen was off of the air in a short amount of time and in my opinion, through no fault of her own, though it was an understandable decision. Luckily with a little time, she once again found the airwaves at another radio station.

In to replace Jen, came Amelia. Right off the bat, in her own way, she made it known that she wasn't going to become a side kick for Mickey, "I was hired to run the board." To me personally, I continued to listen as I enjoyed listening to both Mickey and Amelia set the limits and test the other, not only to come into their own, but become true co-hosts. To both of their credits, they remained individuals; both their varying talents lent themselves to a complimentary relationship.

He was the dreamer and the person to capitalize on the various situations presented, and Amelia was that matter of fact, "straight," person who kept the show running smoothly and on time, adding her own comments or observations. I believe that Mickey appreciated her and she also had her own way of slipping in her own brand of humor, which took a little less of a sexually bent. I believe that one time, Mickey brought up vibrators and she gave her preferential battery size and Amelia ended up scaring both Mickey and callers alike.

What I enjoyed was that both, Mickey and Amelia allowed their real self to air. Amelia had a tom boy aspect as her goal was to finally get her Harley, which became an on air saga. Hitting at the heart-strings; was her lament of not finding a decent guy to befriend. Leave it to the 98ROCK listeners to help; one ending up calling up and apologizing for his advance, "I only wanted to give you a massage; you didn't have to belt me." 

Well actually it seemed to be a knock out and like a sister, she explained, "I didn't know who you were or what you were trying to do. You should have least try to talk to me first and ask." At the shop, the pressman and myself were howling and I commented that it's good to know know it would be a, "Klingon," routine."

The Mickey and Amelia's show would end up switched to afternoons. Personally I found it aggravating as they had to play more music. I kept in touch with the show, but I preferred my music. Some of the music I liked was harder than the station played such as Ted Nugent. I also liked a large variety such as classical, old country, new age that then navigated to music of various ethnicities. In the end I got fairly good at radio timing myself, as I was able to keep with the hosts commentary and bits, yet enjoy what I wanted to listen to.

Mickey Cucchiella is a self admitted passionate and attention deficit disordered person, who quit school in ninth grade and immediately started working, doing odd jobs and playing in a rock band. The jobs included construction and eventually he worked in a bar and moved towards managing them. He worked as a manager at Baltimore's famed Hammer Jacks while it was still located at Camden Yards; now the site of the Oriole's stadium.

The comedy started as work between the sets of his band and people liked it to the extent that he became involved with comedy. He not only performs comedy, but became part owner of Baltimore's Comedy Factory. Mickey started as a guest at 98ROCK, doing comedy segments of the, "Morning Show," in 2002 and was encouraged to enter into radio, doing guest sit ins at first, then getting his own show.  Another aspect is that he appears on their sister station's AM side, WBAL radio, which is more talk oriented. One segment that he does, involves a panel of debating people mainly over political and opinion issues and is quite high spirited and humored.

Amelia grew up in Laurel, Maryland and started broadcasting in Radio in White Rock, NM in the early nineties and was bitten by the proverbial radio bug. She went to New Mexico State to learn more and eventually moved across the country to move up the radio ladder. As she puts it, "I landed my dream gig at 98 with Mickey in 2003. We started on the night shift, moved to afternoons in 8 months and then finally the morning show in 2006." 

I give 98ROCK a lot of credit and appreciation for letting Mickey on and allowing him to develop the show; it not only shows a lot of trust, but also gives their listeners a chance to, "view," a work in progress.