Dan Mason spent decades shaping some of radio’s most storied brands, leading major companies such as CBS Radio. But it took a stranger on a cable news program to convince him his own story deserved the same treatment.
The longtime programmer and executive has put his story to paper in Fearless: The Life and Times of a Media Maverick, a memoir that traces his path from a mischievous contest-winning teenager to one of the industry’s most respected leaders. The idea didn’t arrive as a grand plan. It arrived while Mason was flipping channels.
“I saw on television, one of the cable channels — I don’t remember where — but they were interviewing someone, and that person said the reason they wanted to write a book was to have a written account of their life,” Mason said. “I thought, yeah, that really makes sense.”
That small spark grew into a two-year commitment. Mason quickly learned the project would demand far more than he expected.
A Longer Road Than Expected
Mason initially assumed the process would move at a reasonable pace. Instead, he found himself navigating chapter-by-chapter interviews, transcription reviews, cover photography, typesetting and a publisher search — all before the book ever reached shelves.
“I thought it would be a moderate process. I didn’t think it would be easy, but it was harder than I thought, because there are a lot of things involved,” Mason said. He credited co-writer John St. Augustine with helping shape the manuscript, explaining that each chapter began with an hour-long interview before returning as a transcript for revision.
Because the finished product spans ten chapters, Mason wanted the book to reflect the full range of a career built across formats and decades. Consequently, he pushed the writing process well past any quick turnaround.
“In my book, it’s ten chapters, and it covers just about everything; there’s every emotion that could possibly be in it,” Mason said. “So you don’t do that in sixty days.”
Once the writing wrapped, the real production work began. Mason then had to select cover art, track down a photographer and send the manuscript to a typesetter for review. After receiving what’s known as an artist’s proof, he had to approve the layout before shopping the finished product to publishers — a process that, as he put it, simply couldn’t be rushed.
Reliving the Emotional Moments
Writing an honest memoir meant revisiting memories Mason hadn’t touched in years, and he didn’t shy away from the emotional weight that came with it. The longtime radio executive shared that authenticity required a level of vulnerability he hadn’t initially anticipated.
“I think anybody who does it fairly to the audience and to themselves has to expose certain parts of their feelings — otherwise it’s not authentic,” Mason said. “Things came out that I hadn’t really thought of in a long time.”
Some of those memories brought humor along with them, while others carried more weight. Because Mason’s career spanned radio, sports broadcasting and acting, the book pulls from a wide array of professional chapters rather than focusing narrowly on any single medium.
“Some funny things came out that I’d forgotten,” Mason said. “Some of it is personal, some of it involves radio, some of it involves sports broadcasting, which I did, and some of it involves acting, which I did.”
That range, he noted, forced him to confront the industry’s evolution as much as his own personal history. Radio’s transformation over the past two decades weighed heavily on Mason as he wrote, particularly the shift away from the staffing models he came up under.
“That’s another interesting question. The first quarter of next year, I’d like to come out with a fifty-page book,” Mason said, describing a planned follow-up focused specifically on programming philosophy. “This book was 200 pages, but this one, fifty pages, about the pure art of radio programming. I think I’m perfectly capable of writing it, because that’s all I’ve done — programming and product.”
An Ever-Changing Media World
Mason was careful to note that radio isn’t alone in facing disruption. Industries far removed from broadcasting have undergone similar upheaval, he argued, and radio’s struggles shouldn’t be viewed in isolation.
“It’s not only radio — every industry has changed,” Mason said. “Look at banking. My wife is a dentist in Northern Virginia, and even her industry has turned upside down somewhat.”
The First of Several?
Despite the planned follow-up, Mason was quick to distance himself from authors who churn out books at a rapid clip. He drew a clear line between his approach and those who lend their name to a project without doing the actual writing.
“There’s no series,” Mason said. “You see a lot of people say, ‘This is my tenth book,’ and I don’t believe they wrote it. I believe somebody else did, and they just put their stamp of approval on it.”
The finished project didn’t stop at print, either. Mason also recorded an audio version, adding another layer of work to an already lengthy process.
“We haven’t even addressed Audible. After you write the book and it comes out, you then have to read the book back for the audio version, which I did,” stated the Fearless author. The book is currently available on Lulu and Amazon, with the audiobook expected shortly. It can also be found by clicking here.
For readers curious about surprises inside the memoir, Mason pointed to his teenage years as a likely highlight. Long before his executive career began, he built a reputation as a relentless radio contest winner throughout his neighborhood.
“They’d probably laugh at all the things I did when I was about fourteen years old with radio,” said Mason. “I never did that — I just terrorized radio stations all during my teens. They called me a ‘contest pig,’ because I won so many things they couldn’t handle it.”
Even after being banned from entering contests on his street for thirty days, Mason simply found a new one. That same persistence, carried him through four decades in the industry, now through the writing of his own story.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.