How about a little humor

[BobDillehay]

I’d like to start a thread about tricks engineers have played on announcers. I’ll start out with this one.

WMBR, (AM 1460) Jacksonville, Florida, 1977.

The studio was in a null, and couldn’t hear the station at night so we put in a radio loop from the modulation monitor at the transmitter to the studio for off-air monitoring.

One night I rolled an Ampex AG-440 over the rack, set the output to “Input” and put it in the loop via the patch panel. I rolled a tape at 7 1/2ips and waited until I was pretty sure the jock wasn’t listening. Then I flipped the output switch to “Tape”.

The first thing he was to say were the call letters. I heard Duuuuuhhhhhh Baaaaaaallll Uuuuuuuu. Then I heard the headphones fly across the room.

Of course I knew nothing about it when he called the transmitter to see what was wrong.

Bob

 

[Tom Wells]

I'm crying from laughing on this one. I can picture his FACE!!

 

[Doctor_Technical]

From back in the day when 1) we had carts and 2) cart labels were sturdy enough for several cycles of application and removal, I've heard rumors about the labels being swapped around on jocks' personal-ID carts.

/Who me? What straight-edged razor blade?

 

[SirRoxalot]

Cart-ography

From back in the day when 1) we had carts and 2) cart labels were sturdy enough for several cycles of application and removal, I've heard rumors about the labels being swapped around on jocks' personal-ID carts.

The modern-day version is "The file name is the same, but the contents have been changed to protect the (not so) innocent"...

 

[BobDillehay]

OK, I'll spice it up a little with another one.

I was CE at Rock 105 (WFYV, 104.5, Jacksonville, 1-80 until 7-91).

We were playing LPs on SP-10s. I could always tell when the jock was planning a trip to the can because he would put on a long record. My office was right across the hall from the bathrooms. We had speakers in there so you could hear what was on the air.

I would give him a few minutes to get "comfortable" then I would kill the house monitoring system. Sure enough, ten or fifteen seconds later he would come flying out, pulling his pants up while heading for the control room.

Who me, Never....

 

[BobDillehay]

OK, one more

WSNY, AM 600, (Sunny 60) Jacksonville, 1979.

We had four Scully 270s in the studio, each with a switch to tell it what to do at the EOM.

Example: If deck one was playing, the choices would be, start deck two, start deck three, start deck four, stop.

When I built the studio I put a red light where the announcer could see it. I was going to connect it so, when a deck was selected to stop, the EOM would light it, as a cue for the announcer.

I was in the studio connecting it when the announcer asked what it was for.

I told him it was connected to this device I had constructed that could tell when an announcer was about to say something stupid, and it would light just before it as a warning.

Next break, he was ready, headphones on, mic on. Just as he started to speak, the light came on.

There were several seconds of dead air before he started the spot set and turned off the mic. He said nothing.

 

[radiorob2.0]

This was circa 1991 and involved a Denon CD cart player. We had a part timer on a Sunday night who would find a long song then wonder over to the FM studio and gab with the jock. It was an weekly activity and it was time to teach this part timer a valuable lesson. To break him of this habit, the overnight jock walked into the AM control room and activated the search feature. Suddenly "American Pie" became

"na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-
na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-
na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-
na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na"

Well, you get the idea. The part time AM jock asked the FM jock to check the AM only to hear the repeating frame. I believe this jock holds the record of making it back to the AM control room in record time and his FM visits stopped for a while.

 

[radiorob2.0]

The Atlanta board had a similar topic. The first post is a doozy!

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,61129.0.html

 

[tomservo]

Great stores - keep 'em coming! ;D

 

[SirRoxalot]

The Good Old Days

Today's youngsters will never know the joy of feeding the playback head of an old Ampex 440 in program record mode into the headphones of a jock who keeps the studio monitors turned down...

Or swapping the CDs in the cartridges used for playback in the old Denon machines...

Or adding a couple "custom" liners for jocks who NEVER pre-read new copy...

Or creating "custom" wire copy for rip 'n read news guys... especially morning show news guys...

Or adding a few new cuts to their jock shouts or custom jock jingle carts...

Or helping out bored jocks who wander to other studios by switching the studio monitors into "audition" and fast-forwarding well into a copy of the cut the jock has on the air so that it ends a lot earlier than anticipated... Especially if they panic and hit the mic switch without putting on their headphones.... and without realizing that the mic is ALSO in audition, not program...

Of course, now that you can control the "board" using the backscreen in another room, there are a whole new set of options for helping jocks stay in the studio and keep their mind on their work.

 

[MaiTKwinn]

Back in late 1967 at WELW, we had a mid-day jock, Bob Adair, who used to
come out of the 10:30AM break EVERYDAY by playing "Chattanooga Choo
Choo" by Harper's Bizarre. He took particular pride in talking up the intro
(about 20 seconds or so) right to the post. This particular song was on a cart
so one day I pulled the "label switch" on him. The song started with the sound
of the train steam & whistle and then after several seconds of chugging along
progressed into the music. Well this cart had about 2 1/2 minutes of a steam
train starting up and chugging up to full speed before the music started. As
he was talking up the intro, he suddenly realized that he had been babbling
for close to a minute and still no music to be heard. He looked up from the
board in the studio and saw the rest of the staff standing there laughing at
him. All he could say was "What the ???? Wait a minute, I've been had !!!"
He finally stopped using the song everyday at the same time.....

 

[Sgeirk]

One of my favorites doesn't involve a CE, it involves another PD from a competitor with the hotline number to the station calling a pt'er on a weekend morning, pretending to be the station's chief engineer and asking the p.t. to put him on the air live over the phone to test the transmitter.

Another story involves a competitor convincing a p.t.'er to turn the transmitter off entirely.

 

[phatdaddy]

My favorite took place at a two-way radio shop where I used to work. We had an installer who knew enough about electronics to be totally dangerous. He liked to listen to a local religious radio station while he was busy in the install bay, which happened to be right next to the radio shop. One day I cranked up the service monitor to max generator output on the religious station's frequency and fed in audio from one of the local classic rockers. It was a total scream to watch this guy start beating on the top of his radio, then take off the back and start cranking on the IF cans, thinking his radio had suddenly gone out of alignment.

 

[ChiefEngineer]

I only heard about this and heard it live...

Indianapolis

A local noncommercial kept running consecutive EBS tests. Not just one, but two or three or four in a row. On a regular basis.

Seems the "FCC" called from Chicago. They talked with a weekend board op and indicated the EBS equipment wasn't working and it needed to be tested to show it was working.

Since the "FCC" was listening in Chicago they had them air the test.

Apparently it went something like "no, it didn't work, you must have done something wrong, do it again." Apparently after multiple "tests" the prankster decided he'd heard enough.

I only heard this on one station but this apparently happened on several non com and commercial stations in the 1980's.

 

[sparks794]

OK here is one from the early 80's:

I used to work at a AM/FM/TV combo. On the weekends the AM station ran a show until 1:00AM that was kind of a dance/party show aimed at young teens. This jock used to brag about all the calls he got for "his" show. One night I walked into the studio building and told the jock about a phone call I had received from a loyal listener and this male caller was in love with him and wanted to meet him after the show. He would be waiting for him by the entrance so they could meet.

After several #$*^%# comments the jock wasn't about to leave the station after sign off until I started laughing at him sooo hard that tears were flowing.

He didn't brag very often after that.