The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 66

i J' ii'rftittlft 'ilTt'iiBi ft SptaTView-Qrdway-does it the hard way By Jack Craig Globe Staff jlenn Ordway's voice is really too eutteral for radio. And he's fUtoo centle to deflect the occa- sional obnoxious callers who example, last Monday night he interviewed Ed Garvey, NFL Players Assn. president, who had much to say and knew how to express it. Garvey's counterpart in baseball, Marvin Miller, also has been a guest. During his short span in the 8-9 p.m.

slot immediately following Clif and Claf, Ordway has held a three-night series on gambling which had the ring of authenticity, right down to the fellow who used an alias. One of the best interviews ever, in terms of timeliness, was having both Ken Norton and Jimmy Young on the program direct from Las Vegas the very night before their fight earlier last month. Ordway interviews the guests for about 20 minutes, then turns them over to the phone-ins. "Some callers think I dominate them interviewing myself, but I think it's the right thing," says Ordway. He's so right.

To allow a program to be determined solely by the callers is to risk losing control of it. Ordway departs from the guest format on Fridays to invite a sports poll from callers, Ordway also has had several sportswriters on the program, which brings the heaviest call-in demand, he says. "Fans love to go one-on-one with writers more than athletes, I think." Ordway, 26 and single, came to WMEX from WMOL in Beverly, where he had handled a variety of assignments since 1972, when he left New York resigned that there was very little acting in his future. Ordway is a graduate of the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. The high point of his film career was a walk-on role in "Out of Towners" starring Jack Lemon and Sandy Dennis.

His stage pinnacle was a feature role in an off-Broadway production entitled "The Most Important Thing in the World," which died after 16 nights. "You couldn't collect unemployment on that short a run," he said. "The trick was to get into a play that ran at least 90 days." Ordway came home after that and landed the job at WMLO "with the help of a few lies about my experience," he recalls. Disc jockey, talk show host, play-by-play on basketball and hockey and even on a little Salem State baseball followed. "It's funny how you get stereotyped, but play-by-play is my strong suit, I believe," he said of his sudden emergence in Boston as a talk show host.

Prior to that, Ordway had been host of the now defunct "Sports Wrapup" show for more than a year on WMEX. Ordway's athletic background includes baseball and football at the high school level. "I was a slow pulling guard," he laughed. Not surprising given his bulky, short frame. A voice that might offer nice range in the theater is not ideal for talking into a microphone just a few inches away.

But content counts and Ordway chuckles at some well intended criticism he gets in the mail. "You know, they write things like 'Your voice is irritating, change he said. But Ordway's voice problem is more than offset by his pleasant disposition on the air. "Some people have something to say but just don't know how to say it," he patiently says of on-air dumbbells. Ordway is listed as a part time employee at WMEX, even though he is host of a four-hour Saturday morning talk show in addition to the nightly program.

As such, deciding where to place excess cash is not now a problem. "I adopt the attitude that I'm still paying my dues," he says of the contrast between himself and some other hosts on the all-talk station. Meanwhile, Ordway's sunny manner and his reputation for boundless energy is not going unnoticed in the local radio market, where there is a rising opinion that his dues are about paid up.B plague talk shows. Anyway, he was trained for the theater. Why then, after less than two months, is Ordway's nightly sports talk show on WMEX the very best of the genre around here? Probably for the same reason Jimmy Carter outran the odds to become president.

He works much harder. Most radio sports hosts go downwind with their programs. Today's news is tonight's topic and a frantic scramble begins for the newsmaker's phone number for an on-air interview. The formula sounds solid on top of the news and all of that. In fact, it does not always come out that way because athletic prowess often de-velops in inverse proportion to conversational skills.

Ordway's program plan can be summed up easiest with the observation that he already is lining up January's guests. Along with producer Jack Kirby, Ordway tries to contact articulate guests on broad subjects. For WHEELS WHEELS WHEELS 1977 VOLARE 4 DR. AIT air cond vinyl roof, lease car. W332 $3695 1976 PLY.

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