So you can hardly blame the guy for thinking he's got a dream job - or jobs. "I'm definitely doing my dream job,"says Frost, the 45-year-old host of the extremely popular Psychedelic Psunday radio show on Toronto's Q107 FM and the public address announcer for the Toronto Maple Leafs at Air Canada Centre. Frost has come a long way from his childhood days in Winnipeg, tuning in WLS 890 AM in Chicago on a fuzzy transistor radio. He's now one of Toronto's most recognizable voices, but it wasn't always that way. His first radio job happened almost by accident.
"I used to listen to CJUM, the University of Manitoba station, and I remember hearing someone who couldn't put a sentence together and I thought, 'Hey, I can do this,'" says Frost, who became a volunteer announcer for the station shortly thereafter.
He was an announcer and waiter for a year and a half before CITI FM in Winnipeg decided to pay Frost for his radio talents.
Then the affable host got the chance to work on Winnipeg Jets' hockey broadcasts, which he did for three seasons before Q107 came calling. "It was a very difficult decision," Frost says of leaving his home town and giving up Jets broadcasts in 1985. "I thought my NHL announcing career was over, but (moving to Toronto) was the right opportunity."
Frost became the inaugural host of Psychedelic Psunday and later hosted Overnight, a coast-to-coast, syndicated, satellite show on the Rock Radio Network from 1991 to '97.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs moved from Maple Leaf Gardens to Air Canada Centre near the end of the 1998-99 season, they also decided to change public address announcers, eventually replacing the legendary Paul Morris, who called nearly 1,500 consecutive Leafs games, at the end of the '99 playoffs. Not surprisingly, hundreds of people, Frost included, sent in demo tapes to be the next voice of Canada's most popular hockey team. Frost says he was put on a shortlist of about 10 people, then five, then three.
"We had to do a live audition in the Air Canada Centre, with Mr. Dryden (Leafs' president Ken) in the stands." Dryden called a few days later to inform Frost he was the new voice of the Maple Leafs. "It was a huge surprise," Frost says. "I could never replace (Morris) because he's a legend, but it worked in my favour that they were moving to a new venue."
Frost made his debut on opening night of the 1999-2000 season, a 4-0 win by the Leafs over the Boston Bruins before 18,927 fans. Surprisingly, the radio veteran says he wasn't nervous. "The biggest thing was getting used to the sound system," he says. "I've been behind microphones before, but never a sound system like that."
Source: Q107 25th Anniversary Supplement, Toronto Sun