Heyl: Longtime disc jockey Jimmy Roach to turn dismissal into brighter times

For the first time in decades, Jimmy Roach gets to enjoy sleeping in every day.

The legendary Pittsburgh disc jockey likes it so much that he doesn't appear upset that the extra slumber time comes courtesy of his abrupt dismissal last week as morning-drive co-host on country station Y-108 (WDSY-FM).

“I've been fired quite a few times, five or six probably. You get used to it,” an upbeat Roach, 65, said on Thursday from his Bethel Park home. “I was considering retiring soon anyway. I just hadn't figured out the date.”

That the date finally appears to have arrived likely will sadden anyone familiar with Roach's 45-year radio career, most of which occurred over local airwaves. After initially working in his native Columbus, Roach in 1973 was hired for an afternoon shift at Pittsburgh rock station WDVE-FM.

“I thought I was working,” he recalled. “I had an afternoon job where I slept in. That wasn't working. That was stealing.”

The thievery ended in 1980, when Roach and Steve Hansen were paired on WDVE's morning show. In 1987, the duo moved to classic-rock station Magic 97 (now BOB-FM, WRRK), where they worked until 1991.

Roach transitioned to country with an initial stint at WDSY from 1991-98. After working at a few other stations, he went to Froggy country radio in 2000 and stayed there until rejoining WDSY in 2012.

The radio business today is vastly different from what it was when Roach was starting out.

“Good lord, the first few years I was a free-form jock,” he said. “I brought in my friends, and we'd play whatever we wanted to for six hours.”

Today's tightly regimented formats “aren't as much fun,” Roach said.

But with the radio industry having become increasingly homogenized, Roach considers himself fortunate he was allowed to inject personality into his shows no matter where he worked.

“At most of my stops, I got to come on and not just give the time and temperature, but talk about real things,” he said. “Talking about things that matter — you get that one-to-one communication with (listeners) on a daily basis. You know them and they know you. It's not fake.”

Roach would have liked to have said an on-air goodbye.

“But in radio, people tend to just disappear. One day you're on the air. The next, you're kind of a non-person, bleached from the public record,” he said.

Besides doing freelance voice-over work in his small home studio, Roach has no firm plans other than maintaining a workout routine and relaxing. He won't rule out a return to radio if the call comes, but the ability to finally stay up to watch the end of a Pirates game has quashed any desire for another morning shift.

“I've been getting up at 3 a.m. for a hundred years,” he said. “It's weird to see how the other side lives.”

Eric Heyl is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him at 412-320-7857 or eheyl@tribweb.com.