Gordon,
Interesting question!
One of the very first mistakes I made when I was a student was miss-announcing that very same artist! I said “Gladys Knight & the Pipes”. Not as funny as “Pimps”, however it’s a memory that stays with me.
As far as other student DJ mistakes I have personally heard, this one tops the list. At the time we were still based at West Mesquite High School, and I think this even pre-dates when we had an air check deck. A female student, whose name I don’t even know, finished a break and sent it back to music. What was heard immediately after was a few seconds of silence, then you hear the same student say the “S” word, and then she snickers.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a few others, but they have escaped my memory at the moment. I’ll try to post a few others that I happen to recall.
Now the biggest mistake ever I have heard on KEOM was committed by a former weekend part-timer. I will leave her name out, for obvious reasons, and I’ll just call her Jane.
This one goes back to 1997, at the point when we weren’t 24 / 7. I was the last one out the door at Midnight one Saturday evening. In those days I usually stayed up all night, and slept during the day. So I’d catch a number of Sunday morning KEOM sign on operations.
We had just moved into our present studio, and had been broadcasting from the main studio for about two weeks. Jane opened Sunday mornings for both of those weeks. She didn’t have any problems with her first Sunday shift, but her second one a week later was a mess.
She turned the transmitter on, and then started playing the National Anthem. But about a second or two into the NA, the audio goes dead. For the next two or three minutes, there was only silence. Then I noticed the sounds of Jane frantically typing on one of the computer keyboards, and pounding the countertop.
About three or four minutes later, it sounded like someone had called the station, because you hear Jane talking. She states that she’s trying to figure out what the “F word” is going on, and that nothing was on the air. I assume the person she is talking to, must have told her they could hear her, but she denied the Mic was even turned on.
Long story short, I believe Jane had forgotten to switch the modulation monitor into operate mode, and panicked when she heard no audio. At some point she must have turned the Mic on and didn’t realize it. Considering there’s no “On Air” light in the actual studio, and given the circumstances, neglecting to actually look at the Mic switch is quite plausible.
Thanks for sharing the information about the mistake you heard! I'd love to hear about any others, from any of you.
R
