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drinking before an airshift

My voice goes up about three octaves when I drink so I had to wait until after my shift but I was the exception at a few stations. My colleagues? They considered pre-air cocktails to be "show prep!" 🤣
I was envious but refrained...
 
One cluster where I worked had a news person who was unhappy she was having to work the weekend in addition to her regular weekday shift. She came in completely plastered and did okay until she has to read the sports report. If you listened to her report, Georgia played three games in a single day. Impressive!
 
being from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, i would safely say the Russ Martin Show was infamous for having the host and his crew drink on the air, they always were drinking on the air, some would say his alcoholism is what killed Russ Martin in 2021.
 
I always wondered about remotes from Hooters and Twin Peaks. Especially 92.9 Atlanta's game. The afternoon guys have an Ale "hey man" named after their show's intro.
 
The late Ted Brown, who did PM drive on WNEW(AM) for many years, would get intentionally drunk on the air around the holidays (with a police officer in the studio) to illustrate the dangers of drunk driving.
 
I'm sure everyone recalls Johnny Fever on the WKRP TV show drinking with a police officer to show how your agility and response time slows when getting drunk. Johnny starts the shift with the officer reading his alcohol content which is very high. As Johnny drinks, the alcohol level drops with every drink until near the end of his show it is a 0.0 after consumer large amounts of alcohol.
 
The "Crunch and Roll" podcast consists of intimate interviews with various people, mostly people who were on British local commercial radio in the 90s and 2000s.

What struck me when listening to them (as someone who was at school in the 1990s and not working in radio in the 1990s) was the amount of drinking-related and sometimes drug-related stories in the interviews. It doesn't sound like music radio in those days was a particularly happy place - you had a lot of mostly young men moving miles from home for low-paid airshifts in fairly unlovely cities (Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, Preston), living in relative poverty in pretty crappy and isolated situations in places where they don't know anyone and ending up on the booze. It all sounds a bit depressing.
 
Miss Tuned said:
The "Crunch and Roll" podcast consists of intimate interviews with various people, mostly people who were on British local commercial radio in the 90s and 2000s.

What struck me when listening to them (as someone who was at school in the 1990s and not working in radio in the 1990s) was the amount of drinking-related and sometimes drug-related stories in the interviews. It doesn't sound like music radio in those days was a particularly happy place - you had a lot of mostly young men moving miles from home for low-paid airshifts in fairly unlovely cities (Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, Preston), living in relative poverty in pretty crappy and isolated situations in places where they don't know anyone and ending up on the booze. It all sounds a bit depressing.
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Sounds very much like American radio in the 70s when a young man (women broadcasters had not yet been invented) would answer an ad in Broadcasting Magazine for a job in a small station on the other end of the country and end up working for crappy wages at a station that was using 1947 GE board, old ET type turntables and cart machines that might or might not stop at the stop tone. All that in an unfriendly little town that didn't like newcomers, and drinking was about the only relief. Even calling home was an expensive toll call in those days. It could be a lonely time. I think a lot of those guys were pretty much drunks when they were not working. In the early 70s, drugs were less of an issue than later on. Alcohol was king
 
b-turner said:
I'm sure everyone recalls Johnny Fever on the WKRP TV show drinking with a police officer to show how your agility and response time slows when getting drunk. Johnny starts the shift with the officer reading his alcohol content which is very high. As Johnny drinks, the alcohol level drops with every drink until near the end of his show it is a 0.0 after consumer large amounts of alcohol.
Click to expand...
I thought his reaction time improved.
 
Miss Tuned said:
The "Crunch and Roll" podcast consists of intimate interviews with various people, mostly people who were on British local commercial radio in the 90s and 2000s.

What struck me when listening to them (as someone who was at school in the 1990s and not working in radio in the 1990s) was the amount of drinking-related and sometimes drug-related stories in the interviews. It doesn't sound like music radio in those days was a particularly happy place - you had a lot of mostly young men moving miles from home for low-paid airshifts in fairly unlovely cities (Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, Preston), living in relative poverty in pretty crappy and isolated situations in places where they don't know anyone and ending up on the booze. It all sounds a bit depressing.
Click to expand...
Did they talk about boozing/drugging at live appearances/concerts? I know someone who did that when they were in radio.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I thought his reaction time improved.
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Yes, Johnny's reaction time improved the drunker he got.
Keep in mind, this was a Comedy show. There was also an episode where Carlson the manager sprinkled Cocaine on his feet. He thought it was foot powder.

Booze and Cocaine were pretty common at many stations I worked at. After 5pm, it often became the Wild West...
 
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