Imagine being young and wanting to be a radio disc jockey so badly you started calling the local radio station again and again to get them to cut you a break. Well, dreams do come true. Just take Rick Tower from KOOL 99.3 for instance. Tower (a.k.a. Ryan Branham and occasionally known as “The Tower of Power”) grew up in Chambersburg, PA, where he first got his big break into radio by doing just that. With no formal education in communications or broadcasting, persistence paid off and Tower was off-and-running. That was seven years and four stations ago, and now Tower is the new voice during the seven to midnight slot on KOOL.

If you tune in while Tower is on the air, it’s likely you will remember the “One Hit Wonders” or many of the favorites being played from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, such as The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens or Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers. Tower says he appreciates the “oldies,” especially since so much of the songs today are remakes. “These are the originals,” he says. Since moving to KOOL 99.3 in November, Tower has become very familiar with the music recently ranked number one with Harrisburg’s baby boomers (ages 35-64 years), and enjoys answering music questions from callers while he’s on the air.

With WKKL 99.3 being broadcast over the internet (with only a five-second delay from real time), Tower is getting world-wide exposure. E-mail from the KOOL station website gets sent right into the sound booth while the show is running. Tower says he regularly gets email from Canada, Germany, and Australia, as well as throughout the United States (with a repeat email fan in Kansas). He explains that radio over the internet is fairly common now but that KOOL 99.3 was the first radio station in Harrisburg to broadcast on the internet.

Although the station is digitally equipped, there’s still plenty of things to keep Tower busy in the sound booth. “Localtivity” is mainly what you hear on the radio end, but behind the scenes there’s plenty of action. His smile and positive attitude can be heard in his voice even when he’s not speaking into a microphone. He says he likes meets a lot of interesting people in radio, some celebrities and some long-time radio personalities, and gets along with “about 95 percent of people.”

One of Tower’s early radio memories is clearing out a station he worked at by accidentally spraying pepper spray mace he found in the sound booth. The pepper spray traveled throughout the air vents in the office and started everyone coughing and choking. “It was just a little bit,” he laughs, but everyone else went home. “I ran the station alone that day.”

Off the air, Tower prefers listening to rhythmic dance by bands like Savage Garden while he’s running from project to project. A highly energetic entrepreneur, Tower can be found at his Cotton Candy and Fun Foods business at the Capitol City Mall on weekends or studying at Penn State Mont Alto where he’s majoring in Business Administration. Tower, not into “the suit and tie scene,” says he chose a business administration major over a communications major because the experience it offered wouldn’t be valuable to his plans.

A Star Trek fan (of the old and new shows) and a “huge” fan of drive-in movie theaters, Tower can tell you where to find the remaining drive-in theaters in the central Pennsylvania area. He even helps an on-line internet friend keep a nation-wide drive-in theater website current.