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Her radio career took a few years off after college, but resumed with her first stint on WMTR, hosting a popular lunchtime interview show from the Governor Morris Inn hotel in Morristown, where she began attracting local and national celebrities.įour years later, Frees began her long run on WVNJ, which ended when the station was sold in 1981. When she did go home for a visit, "I packed a bunch of bottles of Dr. "I loved that so much that when the other kids went home for holidays, I would stay to do the show," she said. Pepper, an unknown product at the time in the Northeast. "The final winner was awarded a $500 college scholarship."įrees kept at it in college, hosting a show on WDVA at Averett College in Virginia, where she was sponsored by Dr. "Someone from Barringer High School would meet someone from, say, Bloomfield High School, in the studio, right in Newark," Frees said. The weekly program presented a talent show pitting students from different schools. "The principal called me in and told me I had my own show," she said. Hitching a trolley from Caldwell to Newark, Frees did just that: She signed rug company Sandler & Worth as her first sponsor. "One said, 'Tell you what, if you go sell your own sponsor, we'll give you the show.' " I didn't think they were listening to me, but they were," she said. She capitalized on that experience as a Caldwell High School student, pitching her own show to a station operated by the now-defunct Newark Evening News. Accompanied by her mother and school principal, the eighth grader went to New York to appear on the New York Times-sponsored WQXR program "Words in the News: What Do They Mean?" Like her daughter, Frees got an early start in radio. "On the way, you would have to think of things you could sell this client with."īriggs recalls writing her first commercial at age 12, with lines like "What can you do in a Kempler shoe?" "I was 11 or 12 when she took me on sales calls," Briggs recalled. Briggs later spent several years doing TV news in California before returning East to team up with her mom. It was during that time she exposed her daughter and future radio partner to both sides of the radio business. WVNJ told listeners it came out of Newark, "but the towers, studios and everything were on Route 10 in Livingston, not even a mile from my home in Florham Park," she said. "It was very convenient while my children were young. "Not one woman was selling airtime at the time," Frees said of her 17 years at WVNJ, where she became the lead salesperson while hosting shows on both the AM and FM sides of the station. "He had so many rings on his fingers," Frees recalled of Liberace.Īs she frequently focused on topical issues during stints on seven different stations, her political guests have ranged from two presidents to countless New Jersey senators and Congress members, including the legendary Millicent Fenwick.īefore WMTR, Frees blazed a trail from station to station in North Jersey, breaking radio's glass ceiling as one of the first female advertising sellers in the male-dominated business.
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