A former Sheridan High School DJ has been immortalized alongside many other Wyoming Broadcasting legends.
Dennis Switzer, who graduated from Sheridan High School in 1978 and has owned KKTY radio in Douglas since 1995, was recently inducted into the Wyoming Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
His career included stints at KROE and KWYO radio, as well as stations in Newcastle and Gillette.
Switzer recalls the first time he worked in Sheridan at KROE as being enjoyable, and while that run came to an end due to his own actions, it was a beginning.
“I was a junior in high school, and got a job spinning records in the afternoons and so I did weekends through the summer, between my junior and senior year. I was delivering flowers for Babe’s Flowers before that, so I came out of the flower shop and spun records and had a blast, loved the job. Kim Love fired me. It’s the only time that I’ve been fired that had stuck and Kim was right to fire me, because I wasn’t showing up for work. I might have been 17, so I went back to delivering flowers.”
Switzer adds while the technology has changed, the overall goal of radio media has not.
“At the end of the day, we’re still crafting a good product and so instead of spinning vinyl, we’re running the keyboard, running the computers, but at the end of the day, we’re still trying to do the same thing we were 45 years ago and that’s make good radio and that’s serve the community, that’s be to the community what the community needs and wants.”
He says that regardless of how technology changes, radio stations will continue to do what they’ve always done: use the tools to make good radio.
