From the first class of Fellows..
"In 1970, there was a flyer announcing the beginning of the annual “IRTF Internship Program” on the bulletin board of Radio, TV & Motion Pictures Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. I wish I had a copy of my neatly-typed application because it was good enough to have been selected.
WOW. Eight weeks immersed in broadcasting in NYC!
My folks lived in Princeton so I took the Suburban Transit bus for the daily commute. I learned that if you were working in Manhattan, you wanted to live there too.
The best part was the two weeks I spent at WPIX-Channel 11. NEW YORK’S VERY OWN. Jim McCann was VP of Sales and he took me under his wing. He encouraged me to move to NYC and seek a sales job in radio or TV immediately after I graduated from UNC. And that’s what I did in 1974.
With the help of IRTS’s Steve Labunski, I interviewed to be sales AE at WCBS-AM, WNEW-AM, WHN and Blair TV. Dick O’Donnell hired me as the first member of Blair TV’s new training program. But they weren’t quite ready to run a formal training program so I got my own agency list a month later in the Blair-TV “Market Division”.
Obviously, IRTS had a HUGE influence on my life and career. And marriage.
It was wonderful. After 5 years in NYC at Blair TV and another 5 years at Blair Radio, and meeting the love of my life Mary Schuck Peiser, we moved to San Antonio to be Director of Sales at KTSA/KTFM for the legendary Bernie Waterman.
After 20 years in San Antonio, Mary and I moved to Pensacola to build a new, 100,000-watt FM station on 98.7. Today we own WYCT/CatCountry98.7, WNRP/NewsRadio 1620 and WEBY/ESPN Pensacola 1330. We are hyper-engaged in serving our local community and love our lives as BROADCASTERS."
-Dave Hoxeng, 1970 (inaugural class of IRTS Summer Fellows!)