LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — DJ Mike O’Brian is putting the finishing touches on a career that has seen vast changes to the community he served for decades.
Whether on purpose or by accident, most Las Vegans have likely switched the radio dial to 96.3 KKLZ at some point over the last few decades.
If it happened to be during the morning commute, you probably heard the voice of Mike O’Brian: the man who has been a mainstay in Las Vegas radio since the 1980s.
“I tell my wife a lot of times, and my kids, I said, I really didn’t realize the impact that I had on so many lives, whether I did or not,” O’Brian said.
A child of South Chicago, O’Brian always had a career in radio on the brain. The road to that dream began in Phoenix at a religious radio station.
“I wasn’t playing religious music. I wasn’t a jock or anything. You ran tapes of preachers and stuff,” O’Brian said. “I worked part-time at an AM country station. Then I worked a little south of Phoenix in Casa Grande at an AM daytimer country station. After that, I finally got a reasonable part-time gig at a radio station, a KZZP, that was owned by a company that owned KLUC here in town.”
That was O’Brian’s gateway to Las Vegas airwaves, earning an afternoon/evening slot before making his morning radio debut on New Year’s Day 1986: a position he has held onto dearly for nearly 40 years.
“You could still cruise down Fremont Street when I got here,” O’Brian said. “I’ve had friends say, ‘When are you going to leave? When are you going to go on to a bigger market?’ I told them my family’s here, my kids are here. I’m doing okay. In fact, I think I’ll let the market grow up around me.”
Las Vegas certainly did grow.
From Freemont Street and the Strip to the Tropicana flyover and the 215, the infrastructure of the city has changed a lot through O’Brian’s career.
Similarly, the radio industry has undergone a shift, giving way to an era led by digital and social media.
“No more carts, no more records, no more any of that. That was a big change for me,” O’Brian said. “We did radio because we didn’t want to be on TV. We didn’t want to be seen. It wasn’t that big of a deal to us. Not that I mind that. I get it. I understand it.”
O’Brian told FOX5 he got into radio for the mystique. The magic, in his words, one could create through a microphone.
He highlighted the three things that he always hoped to do every time he got on air.
“You have to make the listener smile, make them think and then the third is to react,” O’Brian said.
“In the 40 years, if we could make people smile, forget about all the problems, just smile, to make them think about what we’re talking about, and more importantly, make them react,” he said. “Be a part of the show, less than 10% of the audience is willing to call in. If you can make them do all those three things, that’s pretty good.”
There’s been a lot to react to over the year, both good and bad. O’Brian reflected on some of the tragedies that hit our city and how the community stayed together in spite of the dark times.
“One October, the PEPCON blast, the fire, when people rallied together just like they would in any other community, which is so nice to see,” O’Brian said. “Vegas is very misunderstood from the outside. It’s a great community. People bond together when they need to.”
It’s a community that O’Brian will still be calling home after he signs off on Friday, October 31, forever a fixture in the place that he can now only call home.
“I’ll miss Carla Rea, Morty, our producer. I’ll miss the energy in the morning. I’ll miss creating the magic, as we say. I’ll miss the listeners interacting. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be able to do whatever I want,” he said. “If I had an impact on your life, thank you for letting me be that and do that. Thank you for letting me wake you up for 40 years. It’s been fun.”
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