“In case you’re just tuning in this morning, you’re listening to ‘Sunday Morning Magazine.’ I’m Rodney Lear.”
The voice plays at the push of a button – or rather, a click on an icon – part of a public affairs radio program recorded and prepped to air some Sunday morning.
Rodney Lear controls the whole show from behind a microphone, a soundboard and a bank of five computer monitors in a pristine radio studio at the new digs for the media company Hubbard Cincinnati in Oakley.
The technology is light years from how it was when he started in the business. The ageless Lear looks too young to have been working in broadcasting for three decades.
As public affairs director, he has hosted “Sunday Morning Magazine” on WKRQ-FM (Q102) since the 1990s. When he started, he recorded on reel-to-reel tapes. To edit, he had to physically cut the tape and splice the pieces together with adhesive tape.
“It left little chance to mess up,” Lear says. “You had to get it right. You didn’t want to go back and splice up tape after tape after tape.”
You have to get up pretty early to catch his show Sundays at 6 a.m., and then again at 7 a.m., played on all four of Hubbard’s stations: Q102, Mix 94.9, B-105 and 97.3 The Wolf.
Not an early bird? That’s fine. You can catch the show on Facebook, or on your favorite podcast app. (These days, an automated system on the computer runs the program on Sunday mornings so Lear doesn’t have to be in the studio at that time, either.)
The time slot is not the best, so he works to make it interesting, to bring something different to the show. A bit of himself.
“It’s everyday life. Things that I’m going through personally in my life that I think that someone could benefit,” he says. “I have a chronically ill child, so that became a show. It was a two-part series on how to raise a chronically ill child. It’s everything that I hear.”
A family member asks about how to get a raise. That’s a show. An immigrant character in a novel he read sparks a two-week discussion on immigration.
“I want to bring a sense of diversity to this program,” Lear says. “I want to provide a voice for a diverse community to make sure that everyone is included, that we’re talking to every listener of the station.”
One-man show
His radio career is not entirely what Lear envisioned, but it’s close.
“In high school, I used to love listening to Mike Motley and the Motley Crew on WBLZ here in Cincinnati and I instantly knew that that’s what I wanted to do,” he says. That is, to be a DJ playing music on the air.
Lear grew up in what he describes as “three of the most challenging neighborhoods in Cincinnati.” His family lived in Winton Terrace. One grandmother lived in West End, the other in Millville.
“I spent a lot of times, summers and weekends, very close to my grandmothers,” he says. “That gave me a perspective of how the world is. How dangerous maybe things can be, especially for kids.”
Lear attended C.A.P.E. – the Cincinnati Academy of Physical Education – a magnet school located in his backyard in Winton Terrace. One problem: This magnet school had an emphasis on sports and Lear didn't play any.
That didn’t mean the school didn’t see his potential. The school newspaper projected that in 20 years he would be behind the microphone and someone would deliver LaRosa’s pizza to him on the air.
While Lear was growing up, his father worked two jobs. His mother had a job she didn’t like and went to college at the same time. “I think I get my hustle from my parents,” Lear says. But, heeding his mother's experience, he told himself he wouldn’t do work he didn’t enjoy.
After high school, he attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, studying radio and television – but mostly radio.
But, as luck would have it, his first job upon returning to Cincinnati was as a stage manager for WCPO Channel 9, working the teleprompter and cameras. “I should have paid more attention to my TV classes,” he says.
In the early 1990s, Lear took a job in Q102’s research department just to get a foot in the door. The "research" was calling folks up at dinner time asking if they liked or disliked certain songs.
Promoted to public affairs, he started producing the show when it was called “Captions,” hosted by Dennis Rooney, and Lear did occasional on-air stories for Black History Month. When Rooney moved on, the program was handed to Lear.
It’s a one-man show. He researches the topics, schedules the interviews, edits the interviews.
“What I try to do is create a format where people can come on and we can discuss things to help people learn, to help people grow, to help people be better people,” Lear says. “So that they can move their life forward. Or they can see someone else’s perspective.”
‘I just see so much of myself’
Lear has never forgotten where he came from.
For the past 10 years, he has mentored students at Winton Hills Academy, the same school he attended when it was known as Winton Terrace Elementary.
“When I walk into that community I feel like I’m that kid again,” Lear says. “I feel like I can get out of my car and walk to our apartment and my family will still be in there. I mean, that’s how familiar it is.
“With these young people, I just see so much of myself, so much of the struggles of growing up in this inner-city environment. Some of the situations that these kids are in, I understand. My family may have been there, too.”
His recommended summer reading list is a big show every year. He spends months reading dozens of picture books, middle school chapter books and young adult novels, with an eye to diversity and different types of readers.
“I was a reluctant reader, so that’s one of the reasons that I do that show because I want to encourage the next generation, to promote literacy and reading,” Lear says.
The reading list comes out in the middle of the summer. The timing is intentional.
“When I was a kid I enjoyed summer so I at least give them a little bit of June,” he says, “then we get into the summer reading list in July.”
Family, as always, is important. Lear’s wife and mother frequently join him on the air for holiday shows.
After the death of his father, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, Lear served eight years on the board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Cincinnati.
His mother remains his biggest fan. She catches the show at both 6 and 7 a.m. every week. She and a friend call one another to see if the other is listening. Even though, with technology today, they could catch it anytime.
After 30 years, Lear is still energized.
“I get up every morning, as soon as the alarm goes off, I’m off and running. I love what I do.”
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