MODERN ROCK: Don Jantzen, PD, KTBZ/Houston

Recently anointed KTBZ/Houston Program Director Don Jantzensleeps in his office… literally. Or at least he did while Hurricane Ike rolled through town. We caught up with Don and re-lived what it was like for him and others at the station in the days and weeks that followed one of the most devastating storms in recent U.S. history.

e-QB presents excerpts from the November FMQB magazine Modern Rock Up Close with KTBZ/Houston Program Director Don Jantzen

On the environment in Houston after Hurricane Ike…
As soon as it was no longer sexy to have your news anchor standing in the middle of it, then the story just went away.
We were kind of amazed by that.  Within two or three days the national story went from being front page on Web sites and news features to just a tag line.  When it went to just a tag line there were still two-million people here without electricity… Alot of it depends on where you’re at.  In Galveston, they have power in most places there, but those places don’t even need power back because there are no houses there.  That was the thing.  I don’t think anybody, myself included, thought it was going to be that bad.

On being at the station during the storm…  I lived at the radio station for three-and-a-half days, and that Friday night it was like a party.  Everyone was having fun, because you get so many of these that come up and they’re just a storm and they move on.  They take such weird turns once they hit land, and this one came right through… My music director and I were basically the only two people at the radio station for three days…Going down to the basement, taking showers in the dark was strange.  When you’re running on two hours sleep and you can’t go to sleep because you’re watching the destruction that’s happening… That Friday night I saw the most wicked looking sunset I have ever seen.  We were just kind of hanging out, and I told our Facilities Manager that I wanted to go up to the roof and take a picture. He found our Building Engineer, and I went up to the 21^st floor to take the picture, and I felt drunk.  I felt really off-balance, and the Building Engineer said we’re moving three- to four-feet up here.

On Clear Channel stepping up for its employees and the listeners… I’m sure every company’s got people who have negative things to say about them. This company, being as big as it is, you tend to have the target on your back. But not only did our Facilities Manager have food for us, and good food, and cooked for us the entire time, but Clear Channel also really stepped up. They were able to procure gas for employees at no charge. It was about eight hours before FEMA had any supplies into this town. They had four semi-trucks full of ice and water for people. To organize that, and then to have their staff members out there who don’t have their own electricity and don’t have anything in their houses, out there handing stuff out was kind of cool to watch.

On the experience in general… Everybody, at least on our staff, made it through and is just kind of starting to recover.  It’s still a crazy feeling when you go through these neighborhoods and there are trees that are 200-years-old that have been pulled up along with ten feet of ground around five-feet deep with the roots, everything’s out and the tree is laying through someone’s house.  And driving down the causeway in Galveston and seeing a 60-foot boat a quarter of a mile from the nearest piece of water is just crazy.
Looking at the people here and watching those that really have nothing give stuff to their neighbor who really lost everything.  People really stepped up — and I’m sure that’s probably the case in any market.  To watch it at that level where you realize that people are willing to do whatever it takes to help people out, and to see people who have lost a lot out giving and doing stuff for other people was incredible.

** QB Content by Mike Bacon **