The 13-second tape-recorded introduction ends, and a man with a distinctive radio voice greets listeners who’ve tuned in for the Boat Show, the local Wednesday afternoon radio program aimed at recreational boaters in the Annapolis area. Rick Franke is on the air.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to the 1430 WNAV Boat Show,” says Franke, who is the program’s host. “It’s a pretty quiet day out on our waters,” he tells listeners. “The air temperature seems fine, but in the water it’s still dangerously cold. So be very careful if you’re around the water, and make sure that if you do fall in, you can get back out again.”
Franke, a relative newcomer to the radio business, has done more than 30 of these once-a-week programs. He took over from the previous Boat Show host, Dave Hanson, who retired in November 2015 after having filled that slot for 14 years. Franke insists he’s still getting used to it, but he sounds decidedly comfortable. “It’s been a learning experience,” he declares.
The WNAV Boat Show is something of an anomaly. The only radio show for boaters in the Annapolis listening area, it’s a potpourri of calendar items, bulletin-board announcements about local events, weather forecasts, boating-safety tips, fishing notes, and interviews with special guests from maritime-related organizations. All of it is informal and very low key.
Franke brings unusual credentials to the job. An Anne Arundel County native, he has a wealth of experience on the water. A Coast Guard-licensed captain, he’s worked as a part-time instructor—and later as general manager—of the Annapolis Sailing School and a tour boat captain for Watermark tours and the Schooner Woodwind.
But radio still seems new to Franke, who started out as a teacher and spent much of his career as an Annapolis Boat Show staffer and eventually as an administrator for a non-profit organization. Before he took the job as WNAV Boat Show host, his only experience in broadcasting was a brief stint on a college station and as a guest and later a co-host on Hanson’s show.
For Franke, opportunity knocked in the spring of 2006, after he retired from his full-time job at the non-profit and ran into Hanson at the Eastport Yacht Club. When Hanson asked what Franke was going to do now that he’d retired, Franke casually recited his bucket list: “Write, use my [captain’s] license, and maybe try radio.”
Two days later, Hanson called and asked if Franke was serious about going into radio, and tapped the newly retired Annapolitan as his co-host—effectively a sort of on-the-air sidekick and occasional assistant. In the fall of 2015, when Hanson himself decided to retire and move to Florida, Franke seemed the natural choice for his replacement.
Hosting the Boat Show program isn’t Franke’s only retirement job. Besides writing monthly for PropTalk (and occasionally for SpinSheet), he also works part-time as a Watermark tour boat captain and as a volunteer for the U.S. Sailing Association, where he helps develop the organization’s on-the-water standards. His wife, Barbara, is a part-time bookkeeper.
As happens in Annapolis’s close-knit boating community, Franke’s interests often intersect with one another. Someone he interviews for a PropTalk article may turn out to be a good prospect for a radio appearance. A day operating a tour boat may spark an idea for an article he’s writing. “For me, it’s a synergy,” Franke says.
Franke’s transition to radio host hasn’t been totally clear sailing. Despite his pleasing baritone and easy-paced delivery, he quickly discovered some speech characteristics that he’s had to overcome, with coaching from Terry Alley, a WNAV staffer. “Say ‘double-yew’ instead of ‘dubya,’ she told him. Say ‘and,’ not aaaaand. And stop saying ‘um’ so often.”
“The first couple of times I was terrible, and you can’t get away with that in broadcasting,” Franke recalls. But, he says, he’s striven to become more precise and enunciate carefully. “You really have to work at that—it’s a whole different persona,” Franke says. He’s, um, not quite there yet, he concedes, but he’s come a long way.
Franke broadcasts from a small, cluttered studio at WNAV’s plain, late-1940s-vintage headquarters building just off West Street in Annapolis. With him is co-host Scott Anderson, manager at Harbour Cove Marina in Deale, MD, who serves as an on-the-air assistant (as Franke had done for Hanson). The two work well together.
Now 73, the WNAV Boat Show’s “captain” estimates he puts in about five hours a week to prepare for and broadcast the hour-long program. He chooses the guests, researches the material he’ll need, and handles various production-related duties.
To many listeners, the radio hasn’t changed much since Franke took over. While Hanson had a soft spot for sailing, Franke is comfortable with powerboating as well and has sought what he calls “a more-balanced approach.” Franke signed up an expert on fishing—Erik Zlokovitz, a fisheries official at the Department of Natural Resources—as a regular call-in guest.
After six months as the show’s official host, Franke rates the job as “probably more fun than I thought it was going to be.” When Hanson had the helm, being his co-host was fun, Franke recalls, because “Dave had done all the hard work; I did what he told me. Now, I’m doing the hard work, and it’s rewarding.”
Not a bad start in the radio business.
Story and photos by Captain Art Pine