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Aging DJ's

A

attackpoodle

Guest
Now this is funny!

[size=10pt]You know you're an Aging Radio DJ when...

-You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before
becoming GM.
-You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of "dead air" on the
competitor's station.
-Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor.
-Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the
manufacturer.
-You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it.
-Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball
team every summer.
-You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared.
-You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap
reel-to-reel tape.
-Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant
minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given
time, and still made money.
-You have a white grease pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M
splicing tape in your desk drawer -- just in case.
-You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using that
razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra
long cotton swab on a wooden stick.
-You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be
back in 2:50 for the segue.
-You only did "make-goods" if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?
-Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.
-You still refer to CDs as "records".
-Your family thinks you're successful, but you know better.
-You answer your home phone with the station call letters.
-You knew how to change the ribbon on the teletype machine, but you hated
-to do it because "...that's the news guy's job."
-You know at least two people in sales that take credit for you keeping
your job.
-You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find
the control room door.
-You've ever told a listener "Yeah. I'll get that right on for you."
-You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with
corroded batteries inside them.
-You remember when record promotion men brought a new release to the
station - and you programmed it on the same day.
-You wish you could have been on "Name! That Tune" because you would
have won a million bucks.
-You even REMEMBER "Name That Tune".
-You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the
directions you received from the sales person.
-You've run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and
gave the tickets to your cousin.
-You remember when people actually thought radio was important
[/size]
 
Some of those are pretty rough, but I think I'm guilty on all counts.
 
Bob, I KNOW I am 100% Guilty as Charged. I am glad I still can remember those simple little things
that were life as we knew it. It's certainly all changed.

I really miss those white (or yellow) grease pencils. Not the Old Spice, so much. But, mostly, the last
item on the list, I wish I never had to be guilty of believeing is true.

Cool post attackpoodle. Old is good.
 
attackpoodle said:
-You remember when people actually thought radio was important[/color][/size][/size]

People still do think radio is important. Just not quite as many people... and just not quite as important.

Overall, the erosion in listeners is very slight over the past five years--from about 95 percent of the population to about 93 percent today. In "listening" or TSL--it's more pronounced in younger demos, but in many markets has been offset by longer TSL in older demos.

To check your own market, create a station "combo" of Overall Listening containing ALL stations, then track cume rating & TSL. In my market--a big college market--the standard sales objection we get is "college kids don't listen to radio anymore--they're all on their iPods!" We point out that iPods killed the CD industry, not the radio industry. Cume rating among 18-24 year olds IS down over the past 5 years, from 85 percent to 80 percent; TSL is down about 5 percent. So, college kids are only listening an "incredible" amount now-a-days... down from "unbelievable." (Fact is, college kids have always had other priorities: getting drunk and getting ___). Radio has always been a distant third...
 
hey redneck - you must be a old programmer .. pull your head out of arbitron and look at what's going on around you in the real world. the list of "you know your an aging DJ when" is supposed to be humorous not taken so damn seriously. Lighten up.
 
Amen.

If I wanted to hear that kind of talk, I'd spend more time at the office.

Bob
 
Hey, Here's another one for the list.

Placing coins on the tone arm while the record is playing to try to keep it from skipping.

Don't tell me I'm the only one that ever did that.

Bob
 
Bob Dillehay said:
Placing coins on the tone arm while the record is playing to try to keep it from skipping.

Don't tell me I'm the only one that ever did that.

We used a fair amount of records at a Tallahassee station as recently as 2004.

There was a penny permanently taped to the tone arm for just that reason. ;D
 
Thanks for bringing back all those memories. I am guilty of all of them. Anybody else have that trained ear, that could actually hear the secondary and terse tones on the carts? How many times a night would ya play "Stairway to Heaven " or other long cuts because you were bored or talking on the phone to "a Hot Chick" What age do ya think you actually "Age Out" of Radio?
 
I would put an alligator clip across the run button on the Ampex 350 si it would run continuously!
 
I need an explanation for that one. The Ampex 350 series (350 and 351) didn't have "Run" buttons. They had "Play" buttons. Once depressed, they would play until either the "Stop" button was pressed, or they ran out of tape.

Was this part of an automation system that had EOM tones (25hz, left channel)?


Bob
 
Been there, done that RADIO DX. I've got the air checks to prove it.

Bob
 
' Shame there's no way to post airchecks on this site. You would only need to listen about ten seconds before you would know why I'm in Engineering now.

Bob
 
;D Yeah Bob, Part of a system that had tones on it..Clipped across the play button so I could sleep.

You know you are out of it also when you go into a "Goodwill" store and look at the used CD's and cassettes and you have never heard of any of them!!!
 
funny, the thing i remembered most from the list was "good tape from bad"...i remember carrying the same reel of tape around til i couldn't use it any more cause of all the edits, but the tape wouldn't stretch or rip, and it had good high-end capability, so i wanted it all for me!...i also remember having to have the pot down in the beginning of cue-burned records...that reminds me, lets not forget crappy tape being used on carts...i think, in atlantic city, the copy of "don't you forget about me" by the simple minds is still dragging...by the way...anybody else have big cuticles now that you don't have a razor blade around to constantly trim those bad-boys...
 
I remember a guy that used a Q-tip to clean his ears with Ampex head cleaner. He only did that once.

Speaking of doing things only once;

I, like a dumb a**, once used the Ampex head cleaner to clean the face of a VU meter on a cart machine. The meter case was plastic. Can you say "time for a new new meter"?

Bob
 
Remember 'hot-cueing' records? I remember I was so proud when I developed the motor-skill coordination to hold a 45 in place while the turntable spun with the needle at the start of the tune, past the cue burns, and the thrill when I popped my finger away from that black vinyl.
I worked through 45s, LPs, Reel-to-Reel, carts, and CDs. I got out before music was loaded straight to the hard drive. I don't know how much fun jocks have any more....
 
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