Airlift Mike (as John Saint John) personal certificate proclaiming him an “Elephant Equestrian Extraordinaire” in the Greatest Show on Earth
Here in 2026, Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus has given way to changing times, dwindling ticket sales & digital distractions, as well as a growing respect for the dignity of all animals – and taken down the tent poles for the FINAL time.
Allow me to sidestep the front-page politics and animal rights issues for some rather remarkable personal reflection.
As Sherman on Rocky & Bullwinkle used to say, “Mr. Peabody, set the Way-back machine for 1978!”
Years before New Orleans, the days of ‘Mike McCann’, and my decades-long contributions to the broadcast backdrop of the Crescent City, there was this incredible story…
It was May that year, shortly before my WKBO/Harrisburg exit for St. Louis that yours truly – as John Saint John – felt the calling.
“The Smell of the Greasepaint and the Roar of the Crowd!”
You see, as afternoon drive air personality for five years at WKBO, I was invited by the PR Team at Ringling Brothers to ‘run off to join the circus’ – to help promote the circus coming to town.
Gunther Gebel-Williams showing-off! Hey, it’s his JOB.
That May day in 1978 I showed up in Hershey, PA to help out with the circus parade, as all the animals made their way from the nearest train tracks on to the Hershey Park Arena for the show.
Gunther Gebel-Williams himself, long-famous at this point for his appearances with Johnny Carson & Ed Sullivan, the heroic, blonde, Germanic ‘Caesar of the Sawdust’ & Head Animal Trainer shouted to me, “John, let me help you UP”
John Saint John high atop the largest elephant in the Greatest Show on Earth
He then cupped his hands at knee-height, I stepped in, and he proceeded to catapult me to the top of the largest African bull elephant in the show for my circus parade ride to the arena.
Wow-ee-wow! There I was riding this humongous animal bareback, no saddle – his skin felt like corrugated cardboard – and there I was, steering him as I held him BY THE EARS!
As if this experience wasn’t already enough, after reaching the arena I was escorted past the maze of entertainers from all over the world, listening to a symphony of foreign tongues from all around the earth… to a makeup trailer.
Lou Jacobs, Dean of Clowns for over 60 years with Ringling Brothers
So, Lou proceeds to personally make me up for the show… red-nosed, white-faced, arched eyebrows, a shockingly-orange wig and some crazy duds, so I can join them IN PERFORMANCE!
Micheal Ziants all ‘tricked-out’ as a Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey ‘Clown for a Day’, Hershey Park Arena, May 1978
Now I’m IN the “Clown Car” – a wild customized VW Beetle with all the seats taken out and the windows painted so no one could see in, and they pile a dozen of us into this one little car.
We tear into the arena on-cue and are stopped to a screeching halt on the sawdust by a fellow clown cop who then proceeds to knock us all out as we exit the car!
All to the shrieks and howls of the delighted packed crowd.
What seemed so remarkable at this moment to me was that this was the first time I’d ever made people laugh – WITHOUT EVEN OPENING MY MOUTH!
Heading back to my humble apartment later that May night I couldn’t help but feel a bit small, ya know?
Backstage at the circus I listened to every voice and tongue you can imagine, from entertainers who’d traveled from all over the planet to Hershey, PA – the high wire act was from Rio de Janeiro, Gunther & Lou were from Germany, the dog act crowd was Parisian, etc. – and I was just this over-hyped, fast-talking, ego-filled American disc jockey, born just north of Pittsburgh in New Castle.
But I certainly learned a lot about life that day. About community. About teamwork. And a love & appreciation for the most majestic creature on the face of the earth – the elephant.
“Mike McCann sounds good over any music…he used to be on WQUE when I was a kid. And I thought that if I’m gonna’ do a national show, he’s gonna’ be my voice!” ~ Michael DelGiorno, Host of iHeart/Premiere Network’s “Your Morning Show”
In early 1980, Nashville was a very different place. Today’s Country SuperStars were on the playgrounds, if they were even born yet… Conway Twitty was very much alive, George Jones was still rattin’ the Printers Alley bars… and yours truly was ridin’ herd on the afternoon radio rodeo – as John Saint John!
Think about it: Forty-five years ago, Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office, John Travolta’s ‘Urban Cowboy’ was huge at the box office, and my “office” was the afternoon drive air chair at WLAC, Nashville.
The internet, world wide web, digital audio and mp3 downloads weren’t even dreams yet in a tech head’s head. Radio – and AM at that – was king!
~ 15-WLAC Logo, during it’s final hurrah as a music station, before yielding to changing times and becoming All News & Talk in late 1980 ~
Picked up ‘on waivers’ from KSD radio in Saint Louis, I was freshly hired by Billboard Broadcasting to do the afternoon drive shift from their swanky showroom studios at 14 Music Circle East every afternoon on the legendary 50,000 watt blowtorch – WLAC Radio.
Together with RJ Harris, Spider Harrison, Dennis John Cahill, Smokey Rivers, ‘Captain Sunshine’, Randy Davis and Jeff Warren, we held court as the last bastions of music on WLAC.
What an exciting and truly awesome gig this was. To work for Billboard Magazine in Music City, USA and broadcast every afternoon to the entire mid-south. No tape delay, no second takes…it was all LIVE – from my mouth into tens of thousands of ears in a split second!
~ Airlift Productions’ Micheal Ziants as alter-ego John Saint John, in the WLAC, Nashville Studios in 1980 ~
As most know, but few give thought to, Nashville is not only Music City USA, it is also the capital city of the great state of Tennessee, so much of the talk was centered around politics. In early 1980, that talk revolved around Carter, Reagan & Bush.
And do you remember the music of the 1980s? No, we weren’t playing country. It was more like Donna Summer, Boz Scaggs, Doobie Brothers, Michael Jackson, Eagles, Christopher Cross, Kim Carnes and the Electric Light Orchestra!
As John Saint John, I served them up like this —-
~ WLAC Radio & John Saint John, Wednesday July 30th, 1980 – broadcasting LIVE from Nashville’s Music Row ~
And the doors that were opened to me as afternoon air personality for WLAC ; to talk with – and get to know – the Legends of Nashville music: Brenda Lee, Charlie Daniels, George Jones, Dottie West, I even co-emceed an auto show benefit for Nashville’s Humane Society with Conway Twitty!
During my brief tour of duty at WLAC, I interviewed and sat down with Eddie Money, Ted Nugent, Terry Bradshaw, Eagles’ lead guitar Don Felder, the comic Gallagher … and Lawrence Welk ran his music publishing company in the offices upstairs. In fact, when he was in town, he’d occasionally knock on the studio window, make faces, and wave at me!
But you can never separate the words Radio & Business. And in the early 1980s, the handwriting was on the wall – FM penetration, together with it’s stereo & higher fidelity proved the death knell for music-formatted AM radio.
And with it went my job.
In the Fall of 1980, in fact it was Halloween weekend that year, thirteen months after I was hired, WLAC fired/terminated it’s entire air staff- “Trick or Treat”!! In favor of new owners… and a new all News/Talk format which forty-five years later it still is today.
As I sat in Antioch, TN – with a pregnant wife and our first child on the way!
Now, looking back on all these years, I have to admit that it was in the subsequent days of unemployment in Nashville that the seeds of one day being my own boss, having my own business – a recording studio – were first planted.
But there were still fields yet to plow, and Airlift Productions and New Orleans were not even on my radar yet. But we’ll save Philadelphia, WIFI-FM and that wacky city of Brotherly Love for another day.
That’s a story for another blog and another time.
But here in 2025, sweet irony of all ironies: 45 years later, same guy (me) as Mike McCann, has returned to the WLAC airwaves every weekday morning, serving as Imaging Announcer for Michael DelGiorno and his i-Heart Premiere Networks’ national ‘YOUR MORNING SHOW’!
Proof positive, I guess, of that old saying, ‘what goes around, comes around.’
To say nothing of being karmically kinda kinky,
In the meantime, the creative juices still bubble over daily at the Airlift Productions Studios on Pomona in New Orleans. Stop by for a cold one when you can. We’ll leave the mics hot for you!
“I met Mike in the mid 80’s when I was first starting out in the business … a consummate professional and just a really nice guy. He has seen me through the highs and lows of this business during my 33 year career. I walked away in 2014. He has produced countless air checks for me when I was fired and looking for a new gig. I have recorded in all 3 of his studios from a closet at Rock Creek in Metairie, Mid City, and just recently when I recorded a few pages of an audio book as a demo for a friend/author who just released a new book. Mike is a true friend.” ~ BO WALKER, New Orleans radio legend & Former Production Director, I-Heart Media, NOLA
< Editor’s Note: Given that here in 2025 I have been dubbed the Imaging Announcer for the Premiere Network’s “YOUR MORNING SHOW WITH MICHAEL DELGIORNO” every weekday morning on finer iHeart Radio Stations across America, I’m re-posting this choice, fun & funny interview from 2017 wherein the two Mikes finally meet!
Sadly, the Country Music Concert Slaughter in Las Vegas & the death of Tom Petty were what spurred the phone call in 2017. Enjoy…mgz >
WTN Nashville’s Talk Show Host MICHAEL DELGIORNO at the studios, along with a close friend, Donald who?
Would I be able to make myself available for an interview the following morning with Michael DelGiorno?
Well, color me intrigued.
Of course I agreed, and then found myself back on the air in Nashville on October 4th, 2017 being “grilled, chilled and thrilled” (sorry Acme Oyster House) by Michael DelGiorno himself!
As the fates would have it, growing up in New Orleans as the son of famed WWL talk show host Bob DelGiorno, young Michael was an unabashed fan of that Q-93 Radio Mike McCann dude.
Together with stories about meeting me briefly back in the 1980s at the WQUE studios and the huge impact my on-air work had on him back in the day, he salt ‘n peppered-in probing questions about the way I dressed back then (my choice of jeans) – and even this choice one, “Did you ever date (then-WDSU-TV Anchor) Lynn Gansar?”
It was all a lot of FUN. And very, very flattering.
We reminisced, caught up and laughed – HARD – about many things – my early WGNO-Tribune TV announcer days, Scoot’s transition to talk radio (not pretty), and the times I recorded both his dad, for TV-radio spots, and his brother Bobby, for Ray Brandt TV-radio campaigns at the Airlift Productions Iberville location in the ’90s.
And it all came out of Nashville radios like this….
**** 10-4-17 WTN Nashville Interview with Mike McCann ***
Gee, the POWER of radio, huh?
As I traveled town-to-town all those years – Harrisburg to St. Louis, on into Nashville, then Philadelphia, and on to New Orleans, I always thought of myself as a modern day ‘Johnny Appleseed’, sowing little seeds and nuggets of wisdom & whimsy among the records I played.
But little did I know, until just last week, that one would find fertile soil in the heart, soul and mind of little Mikey DelGiorno.
I do now.
Chalk another one up to the powerful – yet intimate – MAGIC of radio.
Oh yeah, and a free dinner and Tennessee Titans game are now but a cell phone call and a road trip car ride away.
L-R, Heath Allen, Theresa Andersson, Micheal Ziants, Rich Lenz – during a break from the original HEALING HOUSE sessions, Airlift Productions 2004
“For years, I have worked with Micheal Ziants and Airlift Productionsrecording songs for Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Miracle Network. Mike’s attention to detail is legendary, but his commitment to the kids and the challenges they face goes far beyond that. He gets it. Professionally, he’s as good as it gets. Everyone SOUNDS better after a session with Mike. And no matter what the audio project, you FEEL better after a session with Airlift. That’s “Z” truth! ~ Heath Allen, WDSU-TV Reporter, and veteran guitar picker
From AudioBook-fed earbuds on a London commuter train to grief-stricken Cancer patients gathered around iPads in New Orleans… now throw in interstate-clogged, radio-driven commutes into work from Sacramento, CA to Washington, DC & from Akron, Ohio to Tampa Bay, Fla. – how remarkable here in 2024 to be…
EVERYTHING.
EVERYWHERE.
ALL AT ONCE.
But the fact is that AudioBooks I have narrated and/or produced here at Airlift PROductions are being consumed at any given moment on any given continent, while at the same time, weekday mornings my radio imaging VO tracks are LIVE driving conservative talk iHeart radio stations across America!
Airlift Mike narrates “The Evil I Have Seen” from Robbo & P.J. Jones * Excerpts
As “Mike McCann” ** Radio Imaging for Michael DelGiorno on iHeart Radio
Meanwhile, at the very same time, the podcasts I’ve produced for the gang down at Ochsner Health Institute continue to dole out downloadable sage advice around the clock 24/7/365 to the Gulf South and beyond on surviving “The Big C”.
Ochsner Cancer Docs Colon Cancer Podcast Excerpt
See what I’m sayin’?
EVERYTHING.
EVERYWHERE.
ALL AT ONCE.
What a trip, huh? And a virtual one, at that. All made possible by harnessing the tech – analogue & digital toys & slick DAWs connected to wicked-fast internet fiber – and marrying it to an exhilaratingly creative, relentless, indefatigable (you like these words?) work ethic.
What a trip is right! And one that would have given pause to old H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or George Orwell. Even old Rod Serling would’ve lit up a lung dart to stare unblinkingly into the camera and muse over the possibilities.
Yours truly at the Airlift Productions Spirit Soundcraft mixing desk
“I met Mike in 2004 working on a recording project for WDSU’s Children’s Miracle Network telethon benefiting Children’s Hospital and we became instant friends. He’s the best at what he does, an all-around great guy and fun to hang out with. The folks that call Bag of Donuts’ hotline to book my band and buy our merchandise are greeted with a first impression of Mr. Ziants navigating their call and have told me that our professionalism stands out, which is exactly what we are going for and why we partner up with the best!” — JERRY CHRISTOPHER, JR * FOUNDER & BAND LEADER OF BAG O’DONUTS, NEW ORLEANS’ MUSIC HALL OF FAME HONORED ALL-TIME FAVE COVER BAND
Original Airlift Productions LOGO – 1984 by Harrel Grey
It’s kind of strange the way inspiration works. I was sitting at a bar here in downtown New Orleans that no longer exists in a hotel that no longer exists while dreaming of a business that didn’t yet exist – and it struck!
In my second year on Q-93 radio ( WQUE-FM, New Orleans ) as afternoon air personality Mike McCann, I was frustrated and, to be honest, somewhat frightened and more than a bit concerned.
After all, I would not have been at Q-93 had a format change not led to my being terminated/fired from my on-air job in Philadelphia! And wouldn’t have been in Philly had they not let the entire air staff go in Nashville! A similar story – station sale & format change – led to my exit from St. Louis.
Short story longer, I used to wake up in a cold sweat on the waterbed (hey, it was the 1980s) in the middle of the night wondering where I’d be when I reached age 40, to say nothing of 50 or 60 if I stayed on my current path.
So, my Q-93 partner in crimeRon Chatman and I were sitting around the bar at Bert’s, a bar on the first floor of a now-imploded and long-gone hotel on Canal Street, having a few and comparing battle scars while musing about our collective futures.
Bing-Search-Generated Image page for Airlift Productions
I grabbed a bar napkin and started doodling, sketching, dreaming – and came up with the first crude version of the Airlift Productions logo.
Airlift – as in ‘to the rescue’, with all it’s heroic connotations. If all radio & TV commercials are indeed sent over the air, “Let me give your Air a Lift!” Alphabetical listings being what they are, I’d also be listed first in all the recording studio listings.
** Airlift Mike narrates James Patterson’s best-seller “The Chef”, now available on worldwide AudioBook platforms **
Plus, I somehow knew all those years ago that the studio would be involved in projects bigger and loftier than just commercials, so it just had to be Airlift ‘Productions’. I knew that I was on to something.
The year was 1984.
After hiring local artist, the late Harrel Grey to fine-tune my crude bar napkin logo rendering, I trademarked it with Baton Rouge officials, got my first bonafide freelance account – WGNO-TV/Tribune Broadcasting – and was off to the races.
Airlift Productions Logo Reboot ~ re-imagined by Digital Artist Ethan Anderson ~ 2012
Today in 2024, if one were to do an internet search with just those two words ‘airlift productions‘ in a search engine – with no qualifiers, no country or state, nothing else – out of over several million possibilities worldwide and worldwide-web-wise – there I am.
Hard to believe that as I write these words it is forty years later, but that’s what the calendar tells me.
Meanwhile, the technology, the recording gear & the delivery methods somehow grew into my dream & vision.
And the jobs? Well, Airlift Productions has today recorded and delivered audio all around the world – literally!
Mandarin Chinese-translated video for the Port of New Orleans, Shell Oil Industrial Narrations for Melbourne, Australia… Arabicaudio for MBC (Middle East Broadcasting) in Dubai…and AudioBook production for every major player on Manhattan Island in New York City.
Furthermore, the latest “plum” fallen from this marketing tree?
I am now heard nationwide as the Imaging/Announcer Voice for iHeart Radio’s Michael DelGiorno & his “Your Morning Show” Talk Show every weekday morning – from Sacramento to Nashville and from Tampa Bay to Youngstown/Akron.
With Anchorage and Washington D.C. waiting in the wings….
As I provide the “Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson” – Four breaks an hour through three hours of conservative talk every weekday morning across America!
Yes, while most my age have thrown in the towel, walked away… or passed away, here in 2024, I find myself still writing new & exciting chapters.
So, what’s in a logo? In a word – Everything!
And I do mean every little and BIG thing.
Airlift Productions Recording Studio, New Orleans, Panoramic Studio Pic
Steve Scalise & Airlift Mike during a break from “Back In The Game”, Airlift Productions NOLA, October 2018
“Mike, I can’t thank you enough for the great job you did coaching me through the audio recording of my new book, ‘Back in the Game!’ Since this was the first book I’ve ever written (and recorded), it was all new territory for me. You made the entire process go very smoothly, and I am incredibly happy with the final product.
I appreciate all you did to bring this book to life. You know you are really good when both James Carville and I are in complete agreement that you are great to work with!!” – CONGRESSMAN STEVE SCALISE
