2023 Radio Hall of Fame Inductee Pat St. John
Pat St. John at the SXM control panel.
In Pat St.John’s senior year at Southfield High School, Pat began broadcasting from WSHJ,their ten-watt radio station. He was required by the Federal Communications Commissionto get a broadcasting license. Upon graduation in 1968 at the age of seventeen,Pat was hired as an announcer on WWWW-FM in Detroit.
Young andambitious, Pat made a demo tape and took it to CKLW-AM, a 50,000 watt station acrossthe Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The station’s strong signal wasa regional powerhouse reaching well beyond the Detroit/Windsor area to severaladjoining states and Provinces.
CKLW-AMhired Pat in 1969 as a weekend personality and news reporter on the station’s20/20 newscasts. He also worked as a booth announcer for CKLW TV-Channel 9. Patleft CKLW late in 1970 when he was hired at Detroit’s popular WKNR (Keener 13)until 1972, when he was lured away to join ABC’s WRIF-FM, 101.1.
Musicaltastes had shifted from Top 40 pop music to album-oriented rock. In the early1970s, FM radio began dominating AM stations because they broadcast in stereoand allowed for a wider range of music beyond the Top 40 playlists, staples ofmany AM stations.
Pat St. John’sratings in the Motor City were noticed by ABC’s network brass in New York andthey convinced him to leave his hometown Detroit, America’s fifth-largest media marketat the time, and move to The Big Apple, the largest media market in the UnitedStates. Radio stations in New York reached 14% of American listeners. The more listeners a Dee-Jay could attract,the more money was at stake for the company’s advertising revenue.
St. Johnbegan his New York broadcasting career at WPLJ-FM in 1973 where he stayed almost fifteen years.Arbitron, radio’s consumer research service, ranked Pat the most listened-toafternoon radio personality in the country for most of the years he worked atWPLJ.
From 1987through 1998, Pat worked at WNEW-FM in New York, both as a personality and thestation’s program director for several years of his eleven year stay there.He left WNEW-FM when the station changed to a “talk radio” format. Patwas immediately approached by Sirius XM satellite radio to become theirDirector of Rock Programming, making him one of the first people hired by thecompany.
Now, Pat isone of the longest-serving employees at SXM, having worked on several of their channelsfrom pop to rock to blues. Today, Pat can be heard live across the United States and Canada every weekday afternoon(3 pm Eastern/12 pm Pacific) and Saturday evenings (8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific) on Channel 73, 60’s Gold.
Pat continued working on New York (terrestrial) radio part-time for fun at WCBS-FM(2000-2015) while working full-time at Sirius XM. His final CBS-FM New Yorkbroadcast was on April 12, 2015, marking the end of Pat’s forty-two-year run in the New York broadcastingmarket, making him New York City’s longest-running on-air personality up tothat time.Pat andhis wife Jan moved to San Diego, California in 2015 to be closer to their twodaughters and grandchildren where he broadcasts from his home studio. Pat’s 60sGold show begins with a six-note fanfare reminding Pat’s Great Lakes listenersof his CKLW radio roots. Then, comes his theme song “Zing Went the Strings ofMy Heart” by Les Elgart and his Orchestra setting the stage for the show. Listenersalways know from the opening that they are in for a good time.
Pat St. John’son-air style is conversational and upbeat as he shares behind-the-scenesanecdotes about the music and performers between the music he plays. Pat hasinterviewed virtually everybody in the music business from Little Richard andBo Diddley to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He has been called “awalking, music encyclopedia."
Pat St. John with his Radio Hall of Fame Award.
With overfifty-five years in broadcasting, Pat St. John was inducted into the Radio Hallof Fame in 2023 for his lifetime of service to the industry. Not bad for a highschool kid from Southfield, Michigan.
Pat St. John SXM Compilation (Six minutes)
