Father and Daughter, Competing as Radio Personalities in Same Market

When Molly Carroll heard that Jim Shafer was moving to the morning show at WLYT, she called to congratulate him, then phoned her husband with the news.

“And he said, `Molly, you realize he’s going to be on the air up against you?’ ” she recalls.

Well, no, she hadn’t.

Carroll, who shares morning duties with Jon Robinson at WDYT-AM (1220), and Shafer, a veteran of WLYT-FM (”Lite” 102.9) and the old “Magic,” are an odd couple in the world of broadcasting — one of the few, if not the only, father-daughter combinations sharing the same time period in the same city at competing stations.

They are also each other’s biggest fans.

“There was never a thought, other than I’m so proud of my father,” says Carroll, 34.

“She has a lot of her mother’s sparkle,” says Shafer, 57.

They live five blocks apart in Charlotte and even in her rebellious teenage years, it was her dad she chose to write about for an essay on her favorite person.

“Girls idolize their dads,” Carroll says. “We don’t realize our moms are our best friends until we get married.”

Shafer was doing a midday shift on WADR-AM in Remsen, N.Y. (then population 400), when he met Maggie, the station’s business manager, and fell at first sight. They have been married for 36 years. Their other child, Michael Shafer, 30, is an administrator at UNC Charlotte.

Growing up as kids in a nomadic radio family, Carroll says, had its drawbacks, but also its perks. There was the time they got to meet the Judds backstage at a concert, drove Lee Greenwood to the airport, and — her favorite — finding a message from Randy “Macho Man” Savage on the answering machine when her dad was a ring announcer for professional wrestling in Tampa.

“We played it for everyone in the neighborhood,” Carroll recalls.

As Shafer climbed the ladder in the industry, they moved from town to town. They spent a short time in St. Louis, where he had landed a good gig, only to have management suddenly change and get summarily fired.

His daughter learned to read by the time she was 4, and as a child was, well, intensely verbal. Still is. “As if that’s a surprise,” says Shafer.

“Clearly, public speaking is not an issue for a daughter of a radio guy,” says Carroll.

Carroll was interested in journalism in college, graduating from UNC Chapel Hill with a broadcasting degree. She worked for nonprofits, in the sales department of “Magic,” did occasional voice-overs and eventually started her own business, selling baby onesies. She and her husband Troy, married 12 years, have two daughters, ages 3 and 6.

Last summer, she got a call to try out on WDYT, a newcomer to the Charlotte talk radio universe. She auditioned by being a guest host with Danny Fontana and wound up on the morning show with Robinson, replacing Liz Luke in September.

A news junkie and pop culture fan, Carroll says she loves the work, though she feels the audience for the conservative talk station doesn’t always quite get her.

“Sometimes people say I’m a liberal shill. I’m not. I’m a registered independent. I like doing my own thinking. I look at an issue and make my own decision on it.”

She says her father always gave her one piece of advice about the media business: Never burn bridges. You don’t know when you’ll have to cross them again.

And this, too. “Remember, you’re not talking to a huge audience out there,” says Shafer. “It’s just a conversation with one person.”

Adds Carroll: “If you couple that with a lack of fear of saying something stupid, it works.”

Source: Charlotte.com