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King of pranks

B

BigSteveG

Guest
April 1st is around the corner. I wonder what is your all time local April Fool's pranks. Several Ron Olsen pranks come to mind. Motley Crue at the Main Library and old Twenty Dollar bills being obsolete. I also like the one back when Andy Montgomery and Ron Olsen switched morning shows. Ones that didn't work for me was when Steve Conley and Kelly Cruise pretended to fight on-air and Polyester 100. I don't remember other stations doing much. Also, who is the one personality or show you would like to get pun'ked?
 
My favorite April Fools prank was an Olson/Conley prank in 2001 or 2002 (I think...i had just moved to Memphis) Olson called the assignment desk at Fox 13 and said that he was a MLGW official (he used someone's real name). He told them that everyone needed to get their showers before 8:00am because MLGW was going to be doing some work and would be turning off the hot water at 8:00. The person at the desk checked out the name, and since it was on the media call list, rushed the story over to the set. They broke into the newscast with this "Breaking News Story"... Nevermind that the hot water comes from inside your house, not MLGW! LOVED IT!

On air personality to punk...i can think of one, but no one would be listening, so it wouldn't have much of an effect....
 
Of course, one way to have made the story even more believable would have been to say they were turning off the hot water -- for everyone but Edmund Ford.

Sorry. Too obvious to ignore.

DE
 
On Friday, April 1, 1984 during that brief time that Janis Fullilove worked at WMC AM. They had a brash young program director named Jim Casale who was willing to test the limits of newstalk radio. Janis opened her show that afternoon by telling her audience that she had been to her cardiologist and he had discovered a severe heart problem that made it necessary for her to resign from her radio show. Janis was a good enough actress to pull it off and after talking about it for a while she began to cry rivers of tears (fake of course). After a few moments of dead air and crying in the background, the GM, Sidney Mendelson, came on the air and announced that Janis' show would no longer be on in the afternoons. He asked that everyone keep Janis in their thoughts and then took a commercial break. When the break was over they switched back to the talk studio and Ray Roberts came on the air explaining again about Janis' heart condition and that she could no longer be part of the stations's line up. (Ray had been called and informed of the prank and finished Janis' show that day.) Janis and Ray were so cinvincing, not a single person called to suggest that it might be a April Fools Day hoax
 
Maybe it was 1994, not 1984. In 1984, WMC was still "Best Country WMC 79." I don't think Janis was hanging out with Aunt Eloise.

My favorite Janis Fullilove stunt was when she acted like she was drunk on the air, and then got a DUI a few days later, and then got fired ...

Oops ... that wasn't a stunt, that really happened.
 
This isn't in the Memphis Market,

but my favorite prank was in Jackson when WTNV 104.1 (country) swaped with the cluster's rock station (WYNU 92.3)... If you know Conrad DeLaney... just picture him on 92 into-ing Van Halen and Kiss...

That's just funny.
 
You're right Grapevine, it was 1994 and not 1984.....sorry for the error. But, your attempt at humor regarding a problem she had with alcohol/perscription drugs at the time is in very poor taste. She checked herself into a rehab facility shortly after that and got clean. Unfortunately, she will to some extent always be defined by that exstremely difficult time in her life. There are many things about her stint at WMC that you don't know and it goes far beyond the hate mail.....like her dog being mutilated and death threats that she received. I'm not sure you could have stood up under the pressure either Grapevine.
 
Well Lola, some people can't resist using selective memory to take a cheap shot at someone because of one low point in an otherwise productive career. Grapevine obviously hasn't been around long enough to appreciate the doors that Janis, Claudia Barr and a couple of others opened on the radio in this market for women and african americans.
 
You know, I don't have a problem with poking fun at someone for being a doofus... because, well, you can stop yourself from typing stupid messages and making yourself look like a doofus... And every message board need a doofus to make it interesting... But substance abuse is just not something to poke fun at... Not funny. Never is.

So back to the topic at hand....Anyone else got another good Olson Punks Memphis story? There seem to be plenty!
 
littlebigradio said:
There are many things about her stint at WMC that you don't know and it goes far beyond the hate mail.....like her dog being mutilated and death threats that she received. I'm not sure you could have stood up under the pressure either Grapevine.
Click to expand...

But I WAS there in the middle of it all...in management, in fact. Some of that was true, some not. I wasn't that impressed with Janice.
 
apparently not.....you don't even know how to spell her name.
 
....and please tell me what part of it in your opinion was not true....you may not know as much about the situation as you think you do.
 
Apologies for the typo.

However, the situation was discussed in depth in management meetings at the time. There were in fact some pretty sorry individuals out there harassing Janis and she did have some personal issues. There were also some incidents that were found to be exaggerated or simply made up. There was more than one responsible party.

You are the one who mentioned selective memory. I'm just pointing out Janis wasn't squeaky clean in all this.

'Nuff said. Back to the pranks.
 
...nuff said indeed. Grapevine's comment just hit me wrong. You gotta admit it though the April fools stunt was a hellava good prank. The best part was, it was on a Friday and people had to wait the whole weekend to find out it was an April Fool's joke.
 
littlebigradio said:
...nuff said indeed. Grapevine's comment just hit me wrong. You gotta admit it though the April fools stunt was a hellava good prank. The best part was, it was on a Friday and people had to wait the whole weekend to find out it was an April Fool's joke.
Click to expand...

For the record, I didn't think it was appropriate either...but anyhow....

I suspect today's legal atmosphere is putting the lid on a lot of potential April Fool's stunts.
 
So let me get this straight ...

I'm the anti-Christ for jabbing at Janis for being a wino, and you're making her out to be the greatest black woman pioneer since Rosa Parks.

Uh, no sale.

You heap praise on Janis about how she "opened doors" for people. Are you serious?

Jackie Robinson opened doors. Rosa Parks opened doors. Martin Luther King opened doors. The only thing Janis opened was a bottle of Thunderbird.

I wonder how dismissive of her alcohol abuse you would be if she had killed some of your family members the night she got her DUI. Ask Dave Brown what he thinks about losers who get loaded and then hit the streets.

As for your love of her April Fool's prank, it shows how deep in lunar orbit you are.

On a news/talk station, where your credibility means everything, Janis lied to her audience about having a life-threatening heart condition that would force her to leave her show.

This didn't take place on a wacky classic rock morning show. This was on Memphis' only news/talk station at the time. The same station that just two months earlier had been an absolute pillar of this community with their response to the ice storm.

Hey, maybe during the next TV sweeps we can get a local anchor to fake a heart attack on the air. Just think of the potential overnights on that!
 
Whatever, Grapevine.......everyone's entitled to their opinion. I wish now I hadn't have even mentioned it. I guess as far as Janis is concerned, she is, and always has been a flash point.....which means that she has been effective and had some impact in the community or else she wouldn't stir up such emotion in people like you. In my opinion, it's better to be a "has been" than a "never was" like a lot of us (including you, I'm guessing) who post on this board.
 
I remember when 96X flipped from Alternitive to Oldies on the last day of March back in 2000 then on April 1st they strted Oldies - all the listeners thought it was a GREAT April Fools Day joke. That was until the next day rolled around and it was still Oldies. Man that took a while for it settle down - thing is just a couple days after the flip the book came out and 96X had the best showing ever.

Go Figure.
 
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