The first time I did commercial talk it was on a station in east Tennessee that said I had to go solo- no producer.
But that was nothing. The big thing here was when a guy called in, the equipment we had was so primitive rings of the phone went on the air.
Furthermore, they didn't give me a studio line. They gave me a business line. And I was simultaneously supposed to do my show while fielding calls on things about everything BUT the subject at hand.
Naturally, I started to do my show without being dependent on calls. Still, I was chastised for not taking calls- not for the show- but for the station's own business affairs.
I wasn't a sports talk show host, I was a secretary. And incidentily, they were happy to have me do these sort of secretarial duties over the air.
Oh, so many memories- all bad-
A- A co-host who once told the audience Deion Sanders should play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in a wishbone formation. Sanders was also a great tackler in this man's opinion.
By the way, the station had recently cut their ties as an affiliate with the Dallas Cowboys. They played on Sunday, you see, and so that wasn't to be allowed since listeners could be offended since we weren't airing gospel music on Sunday.
We also were told to refer to the local high school team- the Blue Devils- as the "Big Blue" or "Lady Blues" because otherwise it could offend our audience.
B- We'd often have calls from parents and the like complaining that we didn't talk enough about how good their kids were on the local high school team. Instead of merely stating where we did mention them and thank them for listening, management would instruct me to cater to their wishes and literally make stuff up about the team. Once I had a big interview with a major league baseball figure from the area I worked weeks on getting. I almost had to scrap it to talk high school basketball. To this day I dispise high school basketball.
C- I was actually criticized for NOT saying the local high school team had made the football playoffs when they had been eliminated the week before.
I could go on and on. We could discuss lack of promotion and such, but what bothered me was that they had no concept of promoting talk radio. If there was a break with no sponsors- we were told to run FREE ADS for our sponsors rather than promos for the programming on our station.
Nobody knew what was being aired as a result. I finally figured out that since these guys had simply played records for 30 years they didn't realize the need to play promotional spots or promote specific shows- as they had never had them before.
We'd have taped syndicated shows sent to us and they would air at all different times without any announcement. They literally couldn't decipher between a song- which could be played at any time without any annoucement- and Leonard's Losers.
So our audience literally didn't know when "Leonard's Losers" or "Southern Pikwit Football," or the scoreboard show would be on (insert joke that that was the listener's gain here- though to be honest- I always kinda liked Leonard).
I'd get called into the office because I said "Gosh Darn" on the air and was literally told that "I could say 'Ding Dang' but not 'Gosh Darn!'" I once stated on the air that I didn't know what "gun blueing" was, and was told I was insulting a sponsor that sold guns.
Let's just say I was rather happy to leave that monstrosity for minor league baseball play-by-play.
In the years hence it's only got worse. I know one DJ from there that went on to be a Division I play-by-play announcer. He was fired from the station for absolutely no reason, which may not be that uncommon in this business but still is disapointing when it happens.
When he went to get his unemployment benefits, the station actually made stuff up about him. They said he showed up for work drunk.
It's been years since I left that place- and I literally wax poetic for the time in my internship at a major 50,000 watt AM in a big market where the sports director once tried to physically assault a female news reporter because he didn't like where she was standing.
