Mindy Baer Opens Up: Power 96, Betrayal, Divorce & Starting Over

Felix Sama (0:05)

Welcome back to The Felix Sama Podcast. Today feels, it really does though, it feels more like a reunion than an interview. Mindy Baer and I go way back to Power 96, back in the 90s during an unforgettable period in South Florida radio. You know, when I arrived around 1990, Mindy and Bo, you guys were already on, right?

Mindy Baer (0:25)

We were already on, or maybe just on, yeah. Because I started in the 80s, and then they put Bo and I together on my second go-round at Power 96 So yeah, we probably were together.

Felix Sama (0:35)

You spent about 15 years in radio, right?

Mindy Baer (0:38)

Yes, yes.

Felix Sama (0:39)

So today, we're going to go beyond radio. We're going to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly of Power 96, your relationship with Bo Griffin, what happened after radio, divorce, being a single mom, finding love again, starting over, health injuries. I know you had one recently, over thinking, multitasking, the pressure of always auditioning for everybody else. You talk about that on your podcast show again, and finding your real voice as you get older. Very important. Not a lot of people can do that. And we're going to get into bigger questions. A lot of us have, start to ask ourselves the stage of life. How do we want to spend the rest of our lives? Today, Mindy is a communication and life coach, speaker, voice actor, or actress, whichever you want to pick, and the host of Life Take Two, Mindy Baer. Welcome to The Felix Sama Podcast, sweetheart.

Mindy Baer (1:34)

Thank you, Felix Sama. Honey, it is good to be here. And for those who may not know the name Mindy Baer, I of course was Mindy Frumkus. All those years that I was on the air, what an unforgettable name that is. And it was my real name until I got married the first time.

Felix Sama (1:48)

Yeah. Now I know that recently you did like a little snippet on your Facebook, I guess on the rest of your social platforms as well, kind of going back to the way you started in radio that you relocated to Miami when you did an audition and Tanner heard your air check and you got the job right away. Was it really?

Mindy Baer (2:09)

That's sort of kind of how it happened. I'm a Miami girl. I grew up in Coconut Grove and Carl Gables. And I went to college out of town and then I went to graduate school in Manhattan. I just wanted to be single and be in Manhattan and I struck a deal with my parents.

I went to school in Manhattan and I didn't want to stay there. So I came back down and I thought that I wanted to be a news producer. You know, that sounded very official and there was this movie out at the time called Broadcast News. And I thought all this on air stuff, you know, behind, you know, in front of the camera, in front of the mic, it's just going to be exhausting. It's not a great career. I'm going to become a producer. I'd had two interviews at the ABC affiliate in Miami.

And a friend of mine called me and said, you should go talk to Bill Tanner, Tanner in the morning. You're up listening to Tanner in the morning.

And he's not going to hire you. You're nobody, you're nothing. I was 20 or 21 Thanks for the encouragement. Yeah, thanks. But he'll take your call because you know me and you should just get the, you know, the landscape of, you know, radio and TV down there. I said, okay. I was a little excited because I grew up with Tanner and I called him and he took my call because of my friend. And I went to see him and little known to me, 96X was just about to go off the air and Tanner was putting Power 96 on the air. This was just dumb luck on my part. I came in and he said, so tell me what you do. I had nothing to lose. I took a deep breath and just started talking, talking, talking, talking. And at the end of the hour or hour and a half we had together, he hired me for his new morning show. It was not what I had planned.

Felix Sama (3:39)

Yeah, you like what you were talking about, obviously.

Mindy Baer (3:41)

Yeah, I was just, I was talking a lot of you know what, but it worked out well. And of course, he couldn't be on the air with us at that time because he was sitting out of No Compete from Hot 105, which he had created.