Welcome!
Welcome to PBRTV - Pittsburgh Radio and Television. It is nice to have you here. I am Eric O'Brien, a life-long Pittsburgher and broadcasting enthusiast. Actually, I really want to be on the air and not just on the sidelines, but if you know this business as well as many people do, you know that it's not always easy! Actually, my interest in broadcasting came from a time in my childhood when I couldn't sleep. My mom would tune in the beautiful (we're talkin' elevator) music on WSHH-FM so that I would drift into dreamland. I soon found myself listening to the station all the time, while most people my age were tuned to top-40 WBZZ-FM. My parents and grandparents usually had on WQED-FM or WSHH-FM (depending on which member was listening) and my musical tastes have stemmed from that. You could find me listening to anything now. I have Andy Williams, The BeeGees, Rachmaninoff, Bach, and other various artists prior to 1980. I will admit though that I do have a SmashMouth CD. I also have a Christina Aguilera album, but she's from Pittsburgh and I'm supportive of all Pittsburghers!
The group that I most identify with is Peter, Paul and Mary. I first heard them on the radio singing "Leavin On A Jet Plane" and have loved singing "Puff" since I was a kid. I have seen them in concert four times and even got to meet Peter Yarrow on a couple of those occasions. I can also be seen at the console of my church's pipe organ practicing away. Not that I intend to become a concert or church organist, but it's a fun, relaxing activity which could be considered a family trait. But enough about me!
My true love for radio came from the man pictured here. When Jack Bogut joined the staff of WSHH in 1988, I had every desire to meet this humorous guy. A few days shy of my thirteenth birthday in 1989, my mom made sure that happened. Jack was in the middle of his newly created Make-A-Wish Broadcast when I appeared in his eyesight. Noting that I had a donation, I was invited up to the microphone to make my presentation. I was overjoyed. That was when I decided that radio was something I really wanted to do. Jack is now morning host at WSHH's sister station WJAS.
I graduated from Vincentian High School in 1995 and moved on to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. It was there that I learned the ins and outs of the radio/TV business and the recording industry. Having had a little education in filming at AIP, I returned to Vincentian in 1996 to help start a school news production known as VTV. I also did some "on-air" work on the AIP one-watt (if that) radio station WMVB. My friends dubbed me the "Son of Bogut". I guess I sounded enough like him to them or something. Well, if you're going to be an "SOB" that's the only way to be one!
In 1997, I had the pleasure of doing an internship at WSHH-FM/WJAS-AM. While there I had the priviledge of working in the old studios where there were CD's and cart machines as well as the current studios where everything was on computer hard-drive. While I had the opportunity to run the boards, I was mainly there early in the morning to write news and help produce the morning shows. I also did the occasional remote broadcast. One of the folks I had the pleasure to work with was "Banana" Don Jefferson who had been on morning radio in Pittsburgh for several years at WBZZ and WZPT before joining WSHH.
In 1998, I had a brief stint as programming/promotions assistant at WJJJ-FM while it was a Smooth Jazz station. The stint was cut short when it and other SFX Broadcasting stations were purchased by then corporate giant, Chancellor Media Corporation. Ironically enough, it was around that time that I found a website by Dave Hughes called DC Radio and TV which eventually became "DCRTV". I contacted Dave in late September of that year to see if he would assist me in producing a Pittsburgh radio and television website and frankly he wasn't all that interested!
About three weeks later, Dave contacted me and said that he would like to include Pittsburgh in his group of websites. He was working with Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and New England at the time. PB Radio and TV was born as a sister site on October 21, 1998. Like any new website, it took time to establish an audience and to make the site known. It slowly grew into a "miniature" version of Dave's DC website by February, 1999. Dave Hughes and I met on May 18, 1999 after about six months of communicating only via email!
February, 2000 brought on a new challenge for me as Dave handed complete control of PBRTV over to me. (He claimed that I owed him $.70 for the transfer, but I think he waived that just for taking the workload from his shoulders!) While I had no prior expereince writing HTML, I found it was quite easy. PBRTV was on it's way. In fact, Jason Togyer wrote a piece about it in the July 29, 2000 issue of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. After realizing it was his final radio/TV column for the Trib, I asked him to write for PBRTV and he agreed.
This site, could NOT be possible without your help however. Your visits, emails, comments and opinions are what enables this website to be what it is.
Oh, by the way, PBRTV is dedicated to the memory of a Washington, D.C. institution that was tragically lost to corporate quagmire. The institution in question is the former WGAY 99.5 FM, a landmark Easy Listening station which was housed for many years in the World Building in nearby Silver Spring, MD.
