‘It’s been quite a career’: Samuelson retires after 60 years as farm broadcaster

CHICAGO — Becoming a successful broadcaster requires the ability to be a good listener.

“The lesson I share with young people is in order to make a living talking you have got to be a good listener,” said Orion Samuelson, farm broadcaster at WGN Radio. “If you don’t listen to your interview guest’s response, you won’t be able to respond with something that is knowledgeable.”

Samuelson has spent over 60 years perfecting this talent, first at radio stations in Wisconsin before starting his job at Chicago’s WGN Radio in September 1960.

“It took me about two weeks to decide to accept the WGN job and it scares me to think it took that long to join a station like WGN,” said Samuelson, who retired from WGN on Dec. 31. “This job changed the direction of my career immensely.”

Samuelson was working at WBAY in Green Bay, Wisconsin, when Norm Kraft, WGN farm director resigned on the air.

“The president of WGN who believed firmly in serving the audience beyond Chicago out into the farmland of the Midwest didn’t want a break in the farm broadcast coverage,” Samuelson said. “He called the manager of the station in Green Bay and said he was going to try to steal his farm director.”

Over the past six decades, Samuelson said, he has worked with some of the greatest broadcast people, including Wally Phillips, Bob Collins and Spike O’Dell.

“That’s why I tell young people today to learn everything you can about everything and you’ll always have a job,” Samuelson said.

“Obviously the highlight of my career is the opportunity to work with farmers, ranchers and food producers because they’re my favorite people,” he said. “In addition to that, I’ve interviewed nine presidents, including George H.W. Bush, who invited me to join him at the White House studio for the interview.”

Samuelson’s travels took him to 44 countries.

“I saw agriculture through the eyes of my TV cameraman and I had the opportunity to shake hands with people like Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev,” Samuelson said.

“That’s why I titled my book, ‘You Can’t Dream Big Enough,’” Samuelson said about his book published in 2012. “As a farm boy on a milk stool on a cold January morning in a barn in Wisconsin, I could have never dreamed I would have the opportunity to do what I’ve done and meet the people I’ve met.”

In addition, the farm broadcaster also met several stars including Sophia Loren, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

“It’s been quite a career,” Samuelson said.

Once Samuelson started his job at WGN, it didn’t take him long to realize that urban people didn’t understand farmers or ranchers.

“They had a lot of misconceptions about the role food producers play in our economy and our society,” Samuelson said.

“I think I’ve made some progress and then I’ll get a call or letter from a listener who wants to know how to tell if a watermelon is ripe just by looking at it,” he said. “Then I realize we’ve got more work to do.”

The question Samuelson has been asked the most is, “What is a frozen pork belly?”

“We don’t quote the frozen pork belly market any more, but my quick answer to that question is, ‘if you had a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich today, you had a frozen pork belly,’” Samuelson said.

“I think what has been missed by many is that Orion was an ‘agvocate’ at least 40 years before most farmers knew they should be,” said Max Armstrong, who has worked with Samuelson for the past 43 years. “Orion was bridging the gap between the farm and the city before anyone else in the country thought about it.”

“The first time I heard Max do the Farm Bureau reports, I said to my producer that if we ever need to get an associate at WGN farm department, I’m going to call him,” Samuelson recalled. “That’s what I did and it took me a couple of weeks to convince Max to make the move from Bloomington to Chicago. I told him I’ve done it and you can do it, too.”

“Orion is one of the hardest working people you’ll every run into — he has a tremendous work ethic,” Armstrong said. “There was a time we were doing 190 broadcasts per week on WGN Radio and the television show, ‘This Week in AgriBusiness,’ so we were busy boys.”

When Armstrong started at WGN, he was surrounded by announcers and personalities who were significantly older.

“I was the youngest at the radio station by nine years,” he recalled.

“Orion through his work ethic, knowledge and personality had earned the respect of the people there and that helped me immensely when I came on board,” he said. “The engineers, stage hands and people on the air liked Orion, so it was much easier for me being the kid coming on board to slide right in because I was welcomed just by working with Orion.”

Working with Armstrong was a success, Samuelson said, because both of them are good listeners.

“I would listen to Max’s ideas and he would listen to mine and that would evolve into stories that made interesting watching and listening on the radio and television stations we were on,” he explained. “And we accepted ideas from other people because if you stop learning, you stop living.”

“Orion worked with the Illinois Farm Bureau to put together a farm-city exchange in the early ’70s and it was still going in 1977 when I started at WGN,” Armstrong said. “Families from the city would spend the weekend on a farm and then the farmers would go into the city for a weekend.”

The farm broadcaster duo also assisted with Farm Visit Sundays which was organized by the University of Illinois Extension.

“There were host farms in northern Illinois that opened on Sundays for consumers to visit,” Armstrong said. “Orion and I played a significant role in helping publicize that which happened 45 or 50 years ago.”

“It’s a remarkable thing that Orion has been on the air at the same station in a major market in the U.S. for 60 years,” Armstrong stressed. “That is unheard of in this industry.”