For nearly four decades, John Madormo (simply referred to as “John” or at one point “Maddog” by students) has been a professor at North Central College and the general manager of WONC. In his time at the college he has taught thousands of students about the world of media and how to be successful in it. That kind of success can be seen as you walk in the front door and look at the trophy case on the wall filled with the awards that WONC has won in Madormo’s 38 years with the station.
Photos by Tom Miller
Many might think that someone with this big of an impact on the broadcasting world always had plans to be where he is today. For Madormo, that wasn’t really the case.
“I got the broadcasting bug in high school. My high school (Saint Patrick High School in Chicago) had a closed-circuit television station,” he said. “I wandered in there one day by accident and I got hooked. From that point on that’s where I wanted to go.” Madormo would go on to attend Northern Illinois University where he would double-major in broadcasting and advertising.
At age 22, he sent out 150 applications (100 to broadcast stations and 50 to advertising agencies). One station that responded was WGN. “I later found out that a producer there had resigned the morning that my letter got to the program director. So rather than going into his file cabinet of old candidates he just told his secretary, ‘send this guy a note and tell him if he’s interested we’ll give him an interview,’” he recalls.
Upon arriving in the city, WGN gave Madormo a test. They asked him to write a promo for one of their programs and do a 15-minute music program script. He gave them two of each. Week after week, he continued to call and see if he had passed.
“I got on a first-name basis with the secretary. I felt like a pest,” he said. It would pay off though as six weeks later, on July 1, 1974, when John was called in for a second meeting where he would be offered the job. “They said that nobody had given them more than they had asked for. It turns out that being a pest actually worked in my favor,” Madormo said.
He was immediately thrown into the fire. “Three days after I was hired it was a holiday and the other producers wanted the day off. That meant the new guy had to produce and direct this three-hour talk show. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was baptism by fire, but I probably learned more in those three hours than I could ever have learned by just sitting and watching somebody do it.”
During his six years at WGN, Madormo would go on to produce an agricultural program with Orion Samuelson and an afternoon-drive talk program with Bill Berg.
When asked why he ended up at North Central, Madormo quickly replied, “well, that’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question.” At only 28 years old, he had produced every program at WGN at least once. There was increasing pressure at the station with people being fired on a weekly basis.
“I remember going into the program managers office and I asked him if I should be concerned. He said, ‘you have nothing to worry about. You don’t make enough money.'”
In addition to wanting to escape the stress of commercial radio, he wanted to try his hand at management. “I just didn’t see the opportunity for advancement. They kept saying, ‘you’re management material. Stick around.’ Well, I got impatient and decided I wanted a chance to run my own ship.”
He found that chance in a copy of Broadcasting Magazine where the college was advertising for the position of general manager at WONC. He sent in a letter and resumé (only one of each this time) and received a call from Jim Taylor, the academic dean at the time. Madormo went in for a day-long interview with various administration members and students. After a few days, he was offered the job. “They said, ‘if you want it, it’s yours.’ I said yes.”
When Madormo arrived, he took it upon himself to turn things around at WONC. “It was FM-Mono when I came (the station would switch to stereo in 1984). The equipment was old and beat and it needed replacing.”
In addition to the general manager job, Madormo was also asked if he would be OK teaching a class. “I thought ‘OK, I can do that.’ It was a throw-in at the time and now it’s become more of what I do here.” Now he teaches five classes.
Madormo didn’t come to North Central with the intention of staying too long. “What I wanted to do was stay about five years, get some managerial experience and then go back to commercial radio. That never happened.” Madormo fell in love with the relaxed environment at the college compared to the world of commercial radio that he had been in for six years. It also helped that he lives just minutes from Oliver Hall, the home of WONC.
The drive wasn’t the only plus, though. By working so close to home, Madormo was able to spend much more time with his family.
“My kids were going to school here. My wife worked downtown. I could get up with them, get them dressed and fed, drive them to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. It was a good family opportunity. It was a great community to raise a family in.”
During his time at WONC, Madormo has helped push things forward and make sure that those students who are seriously considering a career in radio have as smooth of a transition as possible. A big switch in recent years happened when the station switched from having a wall full of CDs to having all the music in a digital format.
Thanks to donations from supporters, alumni and former college president Harold Wilde, WONC was able to switch to the AudioVAULT system that is used at a number of professional stations around the country. Today, you’ll find all of those old CDs decorating the wall of the hallway outside of the production studios where students use the latest audio editing software to create projects for classes and various pieces that will end up on-air.
After 38 years, you would imagine a man in his position would have some stories to tell but his favorite moments after all these years are the ones when the station has won awards.
“I’m relatively quiet, but I’m extremely competitive. I love to win,” he said.
And he has won. Year after year the station continues to pull in awards. One of the first big wins for WONC came in 1993 when the station won three out of the six categories at the Marconi College Radio Awards. “That’s when people started to look at us a little differently. I always felt that our program had gotten to the point where we could compete with anybody in the country, but I couldn’t prove it. This was a way to do that. It was a way to get the North Central name out there. WONC wasn’t just this place where students went to play radio.”
The other big win came in 2015 when WONC was named the best college radio station in the nation. “The beauty of that was that we didn’t have to put anything in parentheses. We were the best of all of them from the largest university to the smallest college.”
While Madormo might be hanging up his headphones (or “cans” as you would learn to call them if you took one of his production classes) he has no intention of chaining himself up to a recliner anytime soon. When he isn’t teaching or running a radio station, Madormo can be found at the library working on a new novel. Having found success writing the “Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire” series, he’s releasing a new story in March that focuses on the adventures of Rutherford, a basset hound comedian who dreams of becoming a watchdog.
In addition to having more time to write, Madormo is also looking forward to something else. “Sleep. I love to sleep and when the alarm goes off I keep thinking about how in just a few months I won’t have to set an alarm.”
As for the future of Madormo’s position at North Central, it’s actually being split in two. A faculty member will end up teaching a bulk of the courses while a new general manager takes the office that sits above studio A (named the “honorary John V. Madormo studio” according to a plaque on the door).
He did hint at a number of WONC alumni being interested in the job. “Over the years I can’t tell you how many students I’ve had say to me ‘let me know when you’re retiring. I want your job.’ When they hear the salary of the job they might be less interested.”
No matter what comes next for the school and the radio station, Madormo’s impact on the college and its students have created a legacy at North Central. To this day he still gets the occasional visit from past students who haven’t walked into the station in decades.
“There have been interesting times when alums you haven’t seen for years have poked their head in the door. There have even been times when a student has come in and said, ‘well my dad is so and so’ and I realize that I’m now starting to teach the kids of my former students. Some of the students I had in the early days are now getting into their 50s. They’re getting old. I haven’t quite figured out whether or not I’m getting old.”
*Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct grammar in a direct quote.
