Plymouth Magazine, November 2005

Local Production

Behind the scenes at WCCO radio with Jimmy Erickson

By Kelly Westhoff

Jimmy Erickson grew up listening to WCCO talk radio. “I listened to Boone and Erickson,” he says. “I remember the Steve Cannon show. I remember his theme song. I even remember his voice.”

For Erickson, those childhood moments in front of the radio have turned into a career. Today, he is a producer at WCCO radio, producing the daily Don Shelby Show and working with sports personalities, Dark Star and Mike Max.

It was his love of sports that first drove Erickson into radio. Growing up in Brooklyn Center, Erickson wanted to be a sports commentator and so he chose to study broadcasting at Brown Institute. After a string of internships with local media stations and a first job at a country music station in a small, North Dakota town, Erickson landed back in the Twin Cities as a producer at KFAN, the all sports radio station.

While he was living his dream—all sports all the time—a former co-worker coaxed him away from KFAN by inviting him to take a job at WCCO. “All I thought about was sports, sports, sports, so I turned that job down,” he says. “But I grew up here, listening to WCCO. I knew it was a big deal to work there, so a few months later, when there was another opening, I took it.”

Erickson’s job as a producer at WCCO is one that he relishes, but it is also a job that is hard to leave in the office at the end of the day. As a radio producer, Erickson is responsible for booking many of the guests that appear on the shows he produces. He is always looking for an attention-grabbing topic, issue or person that can fill a time slot.

The remainder of this article can be found in the November 2005 issue of Plymouth Magazine.