I saw a few threads about April fools jokes..got me to remembering some funny stuff done "back in the day" I'll bet Frank F has a few good ones, as does SBE1..here's a few starters..What did you ever do as a station prank? The original, and best of course was the Y95 "Play D.O.A. by Bloodrock prank" pulled off by Tedd Webb, and Ben Umburger..Classic..get Teddy to tell you the full story on that one..but here are a couple of inside jobs..
At the original 1250/WDAE at 101 N Tampa St, We had a big light that went off if anyone called the studio hot line. (Do they still have those for the PD or GM to call and ream out the jock?) We labled the light bulb with a real official looking sign..I had it made at a professional sign shop so it looked absolutely real..Most all of us full-timers thought it was funny, but it had been there so long we forgot about it..
it said:
"EXTREME RADIATION HAZARD WHEN FLASHING! SHUT DOWN TRANSMITTER AND VACATE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT USE TELEPHONE OR TWO-WAY RADIO! ENGINEERING WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY NOTIFIED"
Needless to say..the new PD called this poor girl one saturday morning to say he was ready to test the phone line for a "big" remote from Disney World...well she saw the light, and she shut the place down, locked the building and drove to her parent's home in Brooksville in a panic. The engineer and most of management were 100 miles away in Orlando..station was off the air over 6 hours as nobody could contact anyone with a key on a Saturday.
At the same station in the late 70's the new owners (Taft) had hired a whole new set of part timers, and we would always initiate them somehow..We would caution them not to EVER store a cart with the opening (where the heads went) upside down on the table..the "sound would leak out"..As was the station custom as one shift ended and the "newbie" came on the air, we would stack thier next hour of carts..music and spots for them. One weekend in April..on April 1st of course, we had a new guy start, and we stacked the carts as usual. It was his first day on the air there, and each cart had been bulked and re-recorded with a woman screaming..we heard him run one, and then dead air..then another and more dead air..then nothing for about two minutes..then another cart..another screaming woman. Finally the guy cracked the mic, went on the air, and tried to explain, but eventually shut off the mic, and went to the beautiful music station accross the hall and borrowed a Bonneville automation tape, and strung it up on the Scully..those tapes were always stored tails out (so it ran backwards when he started it..but hey...the meters were jumping so it was, at least, SOMETHING other than a screaming lady..the rest of us were dying at the bar down the street, and were laughing so hard none of us could drive..or walk..might have been the beers..but most of the hilarity came from this poor guy..who eventually became a very well known consultant! Who knew?
But he must have stored the carts on thier ends..
At the original 1250/WDAE at 101 N Tampa St, We had a big light that went off if anyone called the studio hot line. (Do they still have those for the PD or GM to call and ream out the jock?) We labled the light bulb with a real official looking sign..I had it made at a professional sign shop so it looked absolutely real..Most all of us full-timers thought it was funny, but it had been there so long we forgot about it..
it said:
"EXTREME RADIATION HAZARD WHEN FLASHING! SHUT DOWN TRANSMITTER AND VACATE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT USE TELEPHONE OR TWO-WAY RADIO! ENGINEERING WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY NOTIFIED"
Needless to say..the new PD called this poor girl one saturday morning to say he was ready to test the phone line for a "big" remote from Disney World...well she saw the light, and she shut the place down, locked the building and drove to her parent's home in Brooksville in a panic. The engineer and most of management were 100 miles away in Orlando..station was off the air over 6 hours as nobody could contact anyone with a key on a Saturday.
At the same station in the late 70's the new owners (Taft) had hired a whole new set of part timers, and we would always initiate them somehow..We would caution them not to EVER store a cart with the opening (where the heads went) upside down on the table..the "sound would leak out"..As was the station custom as one shift ended and the "newbie" came on the air, we would stack thier next hour of carts..music and spots for them. One weekend in April..on April 1st of course, we had a new guy start, and we stacked the carts as usual. It was his first day on the air there, and each cart had been bulked and re-recorded with a woman screaming..we heard him run one, and then dead air..then another and more dead air..then nothing for about two minutes..then another cart..another screaming woman. Finally the guy cracked the mic, went on the air, and tried to explain, but eventually shut off the mic, and went to the beautiful music station accross the hall and borrowed a Bonneville automation tape, and strung it up on the Scully..those tapes were always stored tails out (so it ran backwards when he started it..but hey...the meters were jumping so it was, at least, SOMETHING other than a screaming lady..the rest of us were dying at the bar down the street, and were laughing so hard none of us could drive..or walk..might have been the beers..but most of the hilarity came from this poor guy..who eventually became a very well known consultant! Who knew?
But he must have stored the carts on thier ends..