The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to You in a Radio Station

[cyberdad]

My story about the exploding air conditioner in studio. While I was on the air. With the mic open has led to David suggesting that we use "the worst thing" being a thread topic. He's right. Let's see if we can have a little fun with this.....

Actually, aside from getting fired once "in studio" (mic was off) or the station owner discovering that we had beer stashed in the pop machine. Most of my days in radio (and TV) were pretty uneventful. To be sure, there were a few moments. Like the time I got a phone call from an FCC field engineer (for being slightly off frequency), or the time I substituted the name of a local businessman for a similarly-named arrested criminal, or the time listeners got a 15% discount at a local jewelry stor instead of the intended 10% because the secretary in charge of our notebook with live tags put the wrong tag into a binder, and I didn't catch it.

But I remember one incident in 1972 that was one of the best....and worst. It actually happened on the TV side of WHBF-TV, channel 4 in the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities (Davenport). I was working on the radio side in news as a reporter and morning drive anchor. One boring slow news day Friday afternoon, a bunch of us were just sort of hanging out in the newsroom talking about football. At least half of us were Packers fans, lamenting the fact that we were on the Bears network, and thus would not to see the Packers game with playoffs on the line because we'd be forced to carry a completely meaningless Bears game. So...someone got the bright idea to call CBS to see if they'd switch our game to the Packers. To our astonishment, the suit on the other end of the line didn't argue at all. The deed was done!

Now for the worst part. Sunday morning. Word had gotten out that our game had switched. I had to work a 4am-noon shift. The switchboard was closed on Sundays. And all phone calls rang in to the newsroom. It was a TORRENT! All irate. I was alone in the newsroom until the end of my shift, so I had to sit there and listen to it. I didn't get to do any writing, editing, news calls, etc. What got me through it was responding to the venom by saying stuff like, "Well, gee whiz, that was CBS's decision. You'll have to take it up with them." I don't think management ever suspected anything out of line. To this day, I'm sure they all just assumed it was CBS' call.

 

[Deleted User]

worst thing?

I was hired

 

[davideduardo]

I have a couple, and will toss them out if this thread takes off.

First one: I was implementing the Beautiful Music format I syndicated at Radio Omega in Lima, Perú around 1993. The station was in a nice 10-story building in what would be similar to the 5th Avenue area of Manhattan or Beverly Hills in LA. We were up on the 6th floor, and the tower and antenna were on the roof.

As we were going over things like tape rotation, suddenly the building shook and we heard a huge explosion. Being in an earthquake zone, the first thought was a shaker. But we realize there was only one shock wave, and quakes don't explode.

Quickly we realized that the bank on the ground floor had exploded. The "Shining Path" Maoist terrorists had left a bomb there. Smoke was coming out of the windows. The building lost power and we were off the air. Afraid to go downstairs in case the rebels were outside shooting, we all gathered in the conference room until police and soldiers arrived.

As soon as the authorities arrived and let everyone know that all was safe, the station manager had our messenger run across the street to the store. He came back with several bottles of strong alcoholic beverages and paper shot cups. We all downed shots and everyone started telling their other guerilla stories. No work was done the rest of the day.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Doing a live friday afternoon shift with the automation in manual, put in a long song and went to the porcelain deficatorium...... and went to leave the bathroom.. the door was locked.

Couldnt get out... with 20 seconds left in the song, i made it out..

no one ever told me the door handle locks from the inside when you push it in



and not so much the worst thing, but i worked at one station in coastal New Hampshire where the copy machine was 2 feet across the bathroom from the toilet and the microwave was next to it

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

worst thing?

I was hired

boy, how true, if everyone here only knew you half as well as I do, @MRBIboredop

 

[Deus Ex Machiato]

Sitting through a staff meeting at a small market CHR station in 1987 where the GM/owner insisted that "if only people had heard these Elton John album tracks, they'd have been huge hits!" as justification for adding them into rotation.

Watching the PD calmly explain that this was not how Top 40 worked. Then watching the GM/owner not get it. He eventually relented, but we still had "Incense and Peppermints" by The Strawberry Alarm Clock in the "gold" category because he really liked it. Of course, we skipped that card every time it came up.

 

[CTListener]

Sitting through a staff meeting at a small market CHR station in 1987 where the GM/owner insisted that "if only people had heard these Elton John album tracks, they'd have been huge hits!" as justification for adding them into rotation.

If one of those tracks was "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" (from Honky Chateau), I'd have put it immediately into power rotation! "Blues for Baby and Me" (from Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player), also would be added without a peep of protest.

 

[Deleted User]

The Heart " Live In Seattle" version of Mona Lisa's And Mad Hatters is a great take BTW

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Though it wasn't personally the worst for me, some here might have some residual trauma in their radio dreams at night because if it.. Maybe someone can fix that day and date and perhaps the exact time.

1970 ? Weekend day. The EBS test was scheduled to come over the teletype. And it sure did. But iIrc, it was four bells instead if the three important 'bulletin' bells.

Both the CE (who was there from his own morning air shift) and myself went blank for a few moments. Now, Gene ordinarily was quite the stickler for rules and regs. I was just a kid doing a weekend shift at the time. And adding to the confusion were the conflicting settings of the station. Our building was in the featureless Long Island pine barrens, to be sure -- but also a short siren or two from the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Gene told me to stay on the air with straight music segues and made a few phone calls. The situation -- apt word -- took about an hour to resolve safely. It seems at that precise moment, someone in Washington evidently had sent the wrong test message -- the actual alert one instead of the test.

Anyone else remember that occasion ?

 

[cyberdad]

Anyone else remember that occasion ?

Remember it very well. Along with the fact that it happened on my day off! Probably a good thing because I was working 50-60 hours a week as the ultimate swing man. Evening jock, Fill-in morning news guy (when the regular guy we had hired was too drunk to come in), sold time, wrote ad copy, and did production work. And yes, I even cleaned toilets.

 

[cyberdad]

Couldnt get out... with 20 seconds left in the song, i made it out..

Multiple scary moments and close calls, but I always made it.

When I was at WHBF, the jocks must've been supermen. The studio was on the third floor, but the restrooms were on the second. (TV studios and control room were on the fourth floor. Which I guess made sense, since we were on channel 4. Anyway, the setup wasn't an issue for me. I only had to go to the third floor to do newscasts And in the process, gave the jock a break. Unless of course, I brought up carts for him to play....LOL!

 

[gar hi]

It was a college radio station 'WRMC' at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania my freshman year where I had a once a week 2 hour slot playing album oriented rock.

I was told it would be good to also play tracks from comedy albums once in a while just to mix things up a little.

So there was an album by National Lampoon in the racks that I had never heard before but I decided to fit in a track from it between songs.

That was when I learned the hard way how it's best to know what it is you are putting over the air before playing it.

But I figured since the album was in the studio that it was OK.

The track I picked just at random was a satire on announcers at the Olympics covering a gymnastic performance by Nadia Comaneci.

It didn't seem too bad at first until the man doing the role as the announcer said "Would I like to f#%k her!"

I will never forget how I just froze with fear and anxiety, especially because I knew the station was always on in the college cafeteria.

So I took the needle off the record as best I could with my hands shaking in panic and started the song ready to go on the other turntable.

Then I thought I was in big trouble and it seemed like an eternity waiting for the station director to come back.

I explained the mistake I made and he told me there had been an issue with some others who brought their own albums to the studio without them having been screened first.

 

[gr8oldies]

Remember it very well. Along with the fact that it happened on my day off! Probably a good thing because I was working 50-60 hours a week as the ultimate swing man. Evening jock, Fill-in morning news guy (when the regular guy we had hired was too drunk to come in), sold time, wrote ad copy, and did production work. And yes, I even cleaned toilets.

That occasion was memorialized by being airchecked on WOWO

 

[cyberdad]

It was a college radio station 'WRMC' at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania my freshman year where I had a once a week 2 hour slot playing album oriented rock.

I was told it would be good to also play tracks from comedy albums once in a while just to mix things up a little.

So

The track I picked just at random was a satire on announcers at the Olympics covering a gymnastic performance by Nadia Comaneci.

It didn't seem too bad at first until the man doing the role as the announcer said "Would I like to f#%k her!"

I will never forget how I just froze with fear and anxiety, especially because I knew the station was always on in the college cafeteria.

So I took the needle off the record as best I could with my hands shaking in panic and started the song ready to go on the other turntable.

Then I thought I was in big trouble and it seemed like an eternity waiting for the station director to come back.

I explained the mistake I made and he told me there had been an issue with some others who brought their own albums to the studio without them having been screened first.

I had a college radio incident not unlike that one directly....other than the fact that I was the PD. Late one Friday night, our jock who had been overserved meant to introduce a record by "The fabulous Buckinghams". Only it didn't come out that way! I wasn't too worried about it. We were carrier current (on 570khz), so the FCC hearing us wasn't a concern. As for the Dean....who was always looking for an excuse to shut us down...he was too busy doing what he normally did on Friday nights....which was. sitting in his parked car spying on whoever was coming and going from the small town Iowa local bar!

 

[gr8oldies]

This has been published in Robin Marshall's "Is This Thing On?"
I had just started weekends at Kool 95/WPTW in the Dayton market (in reality bulk of advertising was in the northern Miami Valley). It was a Saturday midday shift, and the guy on before me left via the back door and set the alarm. The very elderly owner came in the front door that was not locked. The alarm starts blaring, I run to enter my code into the alarm system and...nothing. The code I was given did not work. While that was happening, the computer automation system picked that very moment to crash (this was 1996 and the system ran Digital Juke Box...known as the Mattel computer). With the alarm still blaring, the police show up, the general manager shows up and the alarm gets shut off. Figuring that was probably the last time I would blow air across the Western Ohio farmland, I got the system rebooted and on the air. Things seemed to be OK and I continued to be back and eventually got hired for evenings. This was my real-life radio dream.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Good tale there, CyberDad!
Great buddy of line came out of our commercial station studio once. He was ashen. Gasping.
'I just said the big one,' he admitted. 'Twice.'

Turns out that Harry had to read a safety tag for some PSA. 'And remember to buckle up and fasten your seat belts' was not how it came out. For a long while as I drove him back and forth (he was legally blind) I'd tease him by asking exactly how to basten a seat belt.