"My audition consisted of 'Kid, can you work Christmas?'" Herman recalled. "The program director said, 'I haven't had Christmas off for awhile.' I said, 'Sure.' And I've been doing it ever since."

Fifty-five years later Herman, 75, is finally ready to retire. "I saw the virtue of getting out while there is still something left of me to enjoy," he said.

Herman's last day on Cincinnati radio will be Friday on WSAI-AM (1530) during his regular morning news shift with host Nick Clooney. If anyone kept track of these things, he has probably set some kind of record, working at the same 1530 frequency for 41 years since he came to Cincinnati in 1961 -- first when the station was called WCKY and, for the last eight years, as WSAI.

Herman is known to long-time radio  listeners for his sonorous, velvet voice and conversational style. His writing has always been literate, often adding a line or two of perspective that has always set a Herman newscast apart from what passes for hit-you-over-the-head spot radio headlines. He earned his legacy years ago: He already has been inducted into the Cincinnati Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame and has collected numerous awards, including a Marconi.

Friends talk of Herman's sly wit and subtle satire. Looking back on his career Herman notes -- half seriously, with a twinkle in his eye -- the nature of news can be stranger than fiction.

"I was told by one teacher you should try to write fiction. One could say I went into news, and I have indeed been writing it."

Herman came to WCKY in 1961 saying he was looking for a career where he could focus on one thing. His early broadcasting days had been a scattered life in his native Detroit and Ann Arbor as an announcer, newsman, English teacher and photography stringer for the Detroit Free Press. He continued his education, earning a master's in speech from Michigan.

"When I broke into the business you couldn't say 'diaper' on the air," Herman says with a chuckle. "I remember the big stir that it caused when I had to read a brassiere commercial. -- I remember getting sweaty palms getting through (the script)."

The envelope has been pushed a lot since those days, but Herman thinks the essential element of the medium hasn't changed. "Anything that's breaking news is still a good radio story. Anything with immediacy.

"It's the nature of radio to do this. All you have to have is a guy and a means of transmission."

When asked to name one of his favorite radio stories, he immediately points to the first one he covered in Cincinnati. After one week here, his boss assigned him to moderate a debate between local union organizer Jim Luken and Jimmy Hoffa. It was a story of national significance as the Kennedy administration was going after Hoffa, and Luken was pulling his milk delivery drivers out of the Teamsters.

"I thought I had died and gone to news heaven," Herman remembered.

In the past 15 years, Herman has seen the decline of Cincinnati's once proud, heavily staffed radio news departments. Deregulation and radio consolidation gutted radio news. Where the Cincinnati market once had several full-service radio news outlets (WLW, WCKY, WKRC, WCPO, WSAI), it now has only one, with Jacor and later Clear Channel putting all their news marbles in WLW. But Herman is not bitter about the changes; he recognizes them as a fact of life.

"I've never known when the bottom line hasn't been important in this business," he acknowledges.

While he was often reduced to a spot news reader at the reconfigured WSAI, Herman actually found new life there teamed with his contemporaries. The new owners carved out a big band and standards format featuring local radio legends, including James Francis Patrick O'Neil, Wirt Cain and Bob Braun. Ironically, when Herman was paired with Braun in 1994, it was the first time the two had met, though they had been local broadcasts compatriots for 35 years.

"I was on the air about three minutes with him, and I realized this was gong to be fun. There were no pretenses with Bob. That was one reason I kept on working." It was Braun who recommended Herman read poetry on the air, and his "Poet's Corner" remains one of the station's most popular features as Herman expanded the concept to read vignettes and other homilies listeners send in.

When Braun retired in 2000, he was replaced by Clooney, with whom Herman had worked in the early '70s at WCKY.

While Herman has faith in the essential mission of radio, he knows times have forced it to change.

"The competition for attention has gotten more intense," he says. "At first there was just AM radio and television. Now there's the proliferation of cable and all its manifestations, with computers, cell phones, satellites -- and all those interconnect. The share of the radio pie has narrowed so there is a desire to do something attention-getting. That's why you hear the rough language, the blood and guts and scandals. This is not to say any of these stories are not news, but they explain what seems to be a preoccupation with these things."

Indeed, a Herman newscast the last decade sounded delightfully out of place. He simply tells the news, never bombastic with self-congratulatory promos that scream at listeners like most radio newscasts.

Herman is looking forward to retirement with Mary, his wife of 53 years. "I'll get to know my wife all over again. I was the guy never there for Sundays, Thanksgivings, Christmas. I couldn't go to some of my kid's graduations because I had to work on the air."

Herman says he won't miss arriving at work at 2:30 a.m., but he admits, "The whole import will dawn on me when it's over. I'll be sitting there with all the din and hubbub over and realize, I did it."