jocks who never made it

[STICKBOY]

Who were some of the worst jocks?
Who are the people that turned on the mike and asked to leave?
Who were the poeple who should have never been on the air?

 

[masterg]

I can think of more than a few who made you wonder just how it was they got the job in the first place, but I sure don't have a taste for naming names, know what I mean?

But here's a true story about a guy whose name I'd never remember in a thousand years.

I was working at a 500 watt day-timer, we were in desperate need of weekend relief, without another body we were all facing continued 8-9 hour shifts, and at times, doing it 7 days a week. It was dreadful.

Somehow, and how I have no idea how, we came across a guy who REALLY wanted that first break, so our PD hired him. On a Sunday, I sat and "trained" this guy during what had to be at least a 6 hour shift. He was so nervous that I wouldn't have been surprised if he peed his pants at some point. I mean he was pouring flop-sweat, and twitching and trembling the entire time behind the board. I gave it all I had to make him comfortable, but it just didn't work. After a couple hours, I left the room, thinking maybe that would help, but it didn't; this guy just kept looking like he was going to blow into a million little pieces.

And that was it...he worked the one shift, drove away, never came back. Never called, never contacted anyone, just went away and was never heard from again.

 

[scmidlapp]

I have a similar story----
there was this guy who worked as a salesman for one of the local beer distributors. He was constantly calling our PD and asking him for a shot. I guess the guy did some weekend gigs for a local DJ service and thought he had the right stuff to be on the air.
The PD gave him the 6-10 Sunday AM shift---live from 6-7, God Squad from 7-9, live again from 9-10.
I was asked to Babysit.
The guy froze, literally FROZE. He was paralyzed. Cracked the mike at 6:20 after some prodding from me to say "Here's a little Clapton for ya"....at my prodding he cracked the mike again at 6:40 to say "Here's a little Beatles for ya." At that point I sent him home and did the rest of the shift myself.
And, as with the last tale, we never saw the guy again.

 

[The Former Mac Austin]

Good call not naming names, but there are absolutely some stories that need to be shared. Here are a couple of mine from my PD days in Bloomsburg:

-- We ran an Arrakis system that automated everything - music, liners, jingles, etc. The only time it stopped was during a live shift to give pause between the last song and the upcoming stopset. So, our jocks only had to open the mic every couple of songs and talk up an intro. We found this guy who had one of "those voices" - a really deep old time radio announcer voice - and hired him to do some weekend stuff while waiting for an opening during the week. Well, the computer really freaked him out, and he asked if he had to use it. Since it played all of the music and such, we said yes. He wasn't happy with that, so he never opened the mic AT ALL ... he just sat there and pushed the button to go from music to spots. The worst was the weather bed into the weather close jingle - no talking, 10 seconds of bed followed by the jingle. Needless to say he was gone in a week.

-- Had one guy who wasn't a country fan and didn't know the performers well who quite obviously didn't know how to see which song was playing, so he kept introducing the wrong song/artist every time. He didn't understand why people were calling him upset when he introduced a Trisha Yearwood song by saying it was Merle Haggard, so he quit in the middle of his shift.

-- And last, but certainly not least, was the woman who got hired as our news person for the morning show. Her aircheck was great and she had good references. The only thing she did not tell us was that she stuttered terribly when she was nervous (which, unfortunately, was EVERY TIME she opened the mic). Every day was excruciating as it took four minutes for her to read three news stories. She lasted a whole week.

Plenty of other one-time incidents could be mentioned here, but most of those people were actually good jocks who just made bad decisions every now and then.

 

[ThomasCarten]

I used to train weekenders at one station where I worked. Oh, the humanity! Some guys took right to it and I just got out of their way; others you knew from the first thirty seconds they didn't have it and never would. One guy would pot down the previous record about halfway and you'd hear it in the background as the next item ran. I couldn't get him to dump it all the way; he was just too timid.

Another person came into the studio and said, "My destiny is radio!" She froze. Two or three attempts and that was it. Whatever her destiny was, it sure did not include radio.

Another person had a bad speech problem. He'd have been great in production, as he knew his stuff, but he insisted on doing air, where he didn't belong. No matter what I said, it was air or nothing. Too bad; he was really talented in other ways.

Another station I was at, the chief announcer used to tell people how much he hated living in that city, hated the population, hated the local newspaper. He had a terrible voice and you could hardly understand him. You couldn't fire him; he was the owner. The numbers were good, as people liked him -- he was, as they called him, "a Jewish Yankee," who said what was on his mind. The more he talked, the more they liked him. I wrote a piece about this gosh-awful station for either Broadcasting or Variety and called it "Golden Pond Radio - an evolutionary throwback to radio's early days."