Dodson - and his career - keep moving
By Patrick Smith
J Alumni News staff
He can't sit still. Not even for one second.
His hands are constantly moving. He taps the table. He plays with his glasses.
He crosses his legs, then uncrosses them, leans back and then forward in his chair. It's a wonder he isn't up pacing the room.
Roger Dodson's motor has been in high gear for 59 years now, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.
"High energy, that's the way to describe him," said Whitney Dodson, Roger's 34-year-old son. "I'd say he's wildly energetic. He's been like that ever since I can remember."
And even before then.
Roger Dodson, a farmboy from Nehawka, broke into the radio business at the age of 14, when he took a job at KNCY in Nebraska City.
He graduated from UNL in 1964 with a degree in broadcasting and built his career at KRGI in Grand Island until 1980.
Then, in a partnership with Jim Long and country singer Charley Pride, he became president of Long-Pride Broadcasting. Before the partners sold the company in 1988, Dodson was profiled as one of the nation's top radio managers.
While managing Radio One, a group of 10 Midwestern radio stations, he was named Radio Ink Magazine's broadcaster of the year in 1995.
Following that honor, he become the senior vice president of the Radio Advertising Bureau's training division, a title he still holds. Most recently, Dodson was named the 2003 outstanding broadcasting alumnus for UNL's College of Journalism and Mass Communications and a 2003 inductee to the Nebraska Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
"This honest to goodness just sounds goofy, but I haven't had a day in my career that I didn't enjoy," he said. "I loved being on the air. I loved selling. I loved managing. I love what I do today."
What he does today is help radio advertisers better reach consumers.
That means researching consumer tendencies, developing strategies, holding workshops all over the world and "all of the kinds of things that go into helping the client that buys advertising in radio be more effective."
He's constantly on the move, logging more than 120,000 air miles last year. In the eight years since joining RAB, he's traveled much of the United States and Europe.
"I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. I never imagined I would get to go to all of these places," he said. "The travel is thrilling."
Dodson said while European markets tend to be more homogeneous than markets in America, things in the broader scheme aren't that different.
"Most of us are no different from one or the other," he said. "We have the same hopes, dreams and aspirations."
That's why Dodson is quick to help those who are just starting out. He looks back at those who helped him along the way, like Roger Larson at KFOR and Dick Chapin at KRGI. Dodson remembers when he was a greenhorn in broadcasting, and he's happy to help those starting out on the path.
His son, an account executive at KLBJ radio in Austin, Texas, knows that firsthand. After majoring in English at Kansas, Whitney Dodson took a job as a mortgage loan officer. But it wasn't long before he decided to follow in his father's footsteps.
"My dad always made it look like fun," Whitney said. "It didn't look easy, but I could tell he was having fun."
The father got his son in touch with KLBJ's Jim Gustafson, who became a mentor to the younger Dodson.
"Did I help him get his job? Sure." Roger Dodson said. "But he was good enough to keep it. That's what's important."
Meanwhile, what's important to Dodson is to keep moving.
Retirement is a dirty word.
"You know how old you could get real quickly if you didn't stay in touch with guys your age?" he asked a student. "I really love being out with stations and clients and students and people. That's just fun. I have to be around people."
Whitney Dodson has seen his father in action for 34 years now and can't imagine it any other way.
"I don't think he would plan on retiring," he said. "I think this is as slow as he's going to get."
