95.5 WSB afternoon host Eric Von Haessler has had a long radio career. However, he says his trophy shelf has been, and will forever be, empty.
The deadline to submit applications for the Gabby Awards from the Georgia Association of Broadcasters is coming up, and Von Haessler joked with his team that entering a submission would be an exercise in futility.
“It’s never going to happen. You’re wasting your time. Nothing I have ever done in radio has gotten an award, anywhere. And never will,” Von Haessler said when producer Jared Yamamoto shared that he was being “forced” to submit a clip of the show to be nominated for an award.
“They can go through the motions all they want, but I know me and my career, and my career is nothing,” The Von Haessler Doctrine host continued. “What might happen, something like 15 years after my death, my grandchildren maybe (will see me get inducted).”
He noted that he doesn’t ever believe he’ll be inducted into any Hall of Fame, and said he learned a valuable lesson when he first got to Atlanta.
“I learned my lesson very early on. I was here for two weeks in 1998. And there was an award thing, it doesn’t exist anymore. We had just come to town, and they worked it out to where we would present some award, because we hadn’t been here long enough to do anything. And I watched this person who worked in the same building as that station. And she won like five awards. I had just came into town. I was like ‘Wow, she must be untouchable.’ Then she was fired like two weeks later.
“And that’s the lesson that hit me with just like, man, I was 34 years old. That was a great time to learn the lesson ‘awards don’t mean anything.’ Audience size, audience size, audience size. That’s all that matters. And that’s how I felt.”
It is worth noting that Eric Von Haessler finished in second place — behind KFI AM-640 host Tim Conway Jr. — for BNM’s Top 20 Major Market Afternoon Hosts in 2023.
