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Your all-time favorite radio story

J

johnbasalla

Don't know where else to put this question, so since it seems to go historical in nature, I thought I'd try it here.

What is your favorite radio story? It doesn't matter whether you worked in the business or not. I have, but my favorite story is one I read decades ago in "DB-The Sound Engineering Magazine". They had a whole bunch of hilarious technical stories. My favorite was on about a small market station where the owner was a drunk. Some potentially devastating thing occurred with the transmitter, but their Chief Engineer was able to jury-rig and patch things up temporarily. Problem was, the owner was happy with it, and initially wasn't in any hurry to purchase a new transmitter and related equipment. The technical plant was at least potentially dangerous. I believe the Chief Engineer was even using high branches in a tree for something! One day the C.E. called for a meeting with the owner. The owner agreed to meet with him at some bar.
When the C.E. arrived, the owner was already sloshed. The engineer went ahead explaining everything. The owner took it all in, and agreed with the C.E. that it was 'time to move'. The Chief Engineer had all the paper work ready for him, and the owner signed it. A couple of weeks later a brand new shiny transmitter arrived at the station. The owner was p...ed! He called out the C.E., who, acting all innocent, said things like... "You did Mr. (Owner). At the meeting we had at the bar, you said it was time to move". The owner demanded to see the paperwork, and was shocked to see his signature. He had no recollection of signing the order.
 
I read a very similar story in an engineering trade magazine, Radio Guide, back in the late 80s. As I recall, the author was the director of engineering for one of the big AMs in the Tampa market, and he wrote several other anecdotes of a similar nature for Radio Guide.

I believe he is an occasional RI poster, though perhaps not on this particular board. Hopefully he will share some of his stories here, as they were quite colorful and well-written.
 
My favorite radio story is actually a very heartbreaking one, but was given in a college class by my teacher to point out that you should never give information involving a deadly accident until family members have been notified. He gave an example of this that had involved him personally.

In August, 1953, he was compiling the news for a newscast on a Cincinnati radio station. In telephoning authorities for any recent events, he was told that a two-car accident in the northeast section of the county had taken the life of country singer Betty Jack Davis who performed as one of the "Davis Sisters" with Skeeter Davis. My teacher took down the information and asked if all next of kin had been notified. When told that they had, he typed up the story and gave it on the next newscast. After finishing up, he became aware of an incoming telephone call and picked up the phone. The caller was a woman who questioned if the story he had just read on the death of the singer was correct. When he confirmed that it was, he heard a horrible scream over the phone. It turned out that the caller was an aunt of the deceased and she had not been advised beforehand. Although this was not his fault because he had asked, my teacher used this incident to stress the importance of finding out if all next of kin had been notified before reading stories that involve fatalities over the air.
 
A guy I know worked at a very small station in a town of about 7000 people in the Northeast.
He should write a book about the place because he has some of the funniest stories I've ever heard.
Some of his better ones included:

- One of the duties given to the night shift jock was to make sure the station's trash got burned each night. So he would throw on a long record and go out back to light the trash barrel. One night
while burning the trash he locked himself out of the building, leading to a couple of hours of dead air.

- The owner of the station made his money in insurance and real estate. He knew nothing about radio. He went to his first NAB convention, and after a few drinks, bought a transmitter. The company went bankrupt shortly afterward, and they had to have all needed parts specially made. One time a coil blew out and they were going to be off the air for 2 wks., so their engineer wrapped some wire around a pencil and stuck it in the transmitter, which kept them going till the part arrived.

- That same chief engineer was also a Harley-Davidson afficianado, and would often take off on roadtrips. Invariably that's when they would get hit by lightning or something else happened to take them off the air. They would have to call all over trying to track him down, and when they finally did reach him he'd be hundreds of miles away. He would then have to talk my friend who is not an engineer through the repair. (poking around the internals of a 5kW transmitter when you don't know what you are doing can be quite intimidating, I'm told)

- The station receptionist was also their news writer. She was a high-school dropout.
He told me he would be live on-air, she'd walk in and hand him a bulletin. He would start to read it cold and be halfway through before realizing "My gawd....I'm not making any sense!"
 
1973. I'm the 17 year old music director at KIBS, Bishop, California. It's the only station in the town where I grew up from age 9 onward...3,000 people midway between Los Angeles and Reno on the east face of the Sierra Nevada.

It's early evening...7 or so...and I'm in my office, going through the new records that arrived earlier that day (while I was in school). One of the new singles is "My Girl", the old Temptations song...by Wolfman Jack.

While KIBS was the only station in town...and the only audible signal in the daytime, at night, a lot of Los Angeles and San Francisco stations came in strong. Most Bishop teenagers had their five car radio presets set this way:

1. KFRC, San Francisco

2. KHJ, Los Angeles

3. KRLA, Los Angeles

4. KIBS, Bishop

5. KDAY, Los Angeles (where Wolfman was doing evenings live at the time)


Knowing that, I went to the jock on the air at the time and told him I wasn't going to add Wolfman to the playlist, but if he wanted to give it a spin just for fun every now and then, that was fine. I left the 45 and went back to my office.

As soon as the next record ended, I heard the jock on the air monitor.

"Hey, we've got a brand new record by Wolfman Jack...and I thought it would be cool to have Wolfman introduce it for us, so...."

(dial tone followed by rotary dial clicking sound)

He's had no time to set this up. This can't be good. I'm expecting a busy signal. Instead the phone rings.

And rings.

And rings.

And rings.

I'm getting out of my chair...about to go suggest that he dump out of this, when the phone picks up.

"Hello! K-DAY!

"Wolfman?"

"Who dis?"

"I'm calling from KIBS in Bishop and we have your new record and...."

"K-I- what, man?"

"KIBS in Bishop and we have your new...."

"K-I-what, man?"

"KIBS in Bishop and we..."

"K-I-what, man?"

"KIBS in Bishop and..."

K-I-what, man?"

"BS."

"You mean like bullshit?"

There was a faint scream, followed by the record.

The jock never put another phone call on the air for as long as he was at the station.
 
There are so many great stories that could be written about the late Top 40 station Z-93(WGTZ/Dayton, now Adult Hits "Fly 92.9"), but some of my favorites are:
The Alan Kaye Fiasco, March 1991. Morning show host AK is canned, but is under an iron-clad contract. Kaye sues-and wins-and it makes you wonder why the then-GM, David Macejko, ended up with an 8 year tenure at 'GTZ. Yes, this is an extremely shortened version of the story.
Wilbur Wright plays Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" 16 times in a row in March, 1992. He informs the audience that then-PD Kevin Kenney is "Out of town" and he's going to keep playing it as long as he feels like. Kenney was actually listening...and orchestrating the entire stunt via the hotline.
Z-Country-In the days and weeks leading up to April 1, 1993, a short announcement that played during stopsets said that "GT Broadcasting is doing it again-putting Dayton radio on its ear-for details listen 7 AM April 1st to (Jeff) Wicker in the Morning". 7 AM April 1st comes and they announce that Z-93 is changing to "Z-Country", followed by Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" and then several listener calls/complaints about the change in format. An hour later Wicker says that it was all an April Fool's Joke.
What would you do for Duran Duran Tickets? was probably the most well-known Z-93 "stunt" of all-time in that it got national attention for a woman actually driving to work naked, and later getting arrested, along with Producer Dave...I believe the charges were later dropped.
Z-93 Stunts!-On November 1, 2007, Main Line Broadcasting, who took over operations of Z-93 in May, plays Green Day's "Good Riddance(Time of your Life)" and then has then-PD Scott Sharp go on air to announce that "We are saying goodbye to our old friend Z-93" followed by 24 hours of stunting with an electronic voice doing the "Countdown of doom" over Pink Floyd's "On the Run". 24 hours later, Adult Hits Fly 92.9 launches with Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like An Eagle" and Sugar Ray's "Fly"...and then Bryan Adams "Summer of '69".
 
OK, here we go...


One time in a production house in Dallas, the secretary’s office was being enlarged and repainted, so the secretaries were temporarily moved to the empty balcony area over the lunchroom during the construction work.

This included one particular secretary (We’ll call her Louise.) Everybody knew when she was in the room. She was a really nice person, but rather loud and boisterous – you know the type – you never have to wonder what they are thinking. They’ll let you know whether you want to hear it or not.

Also, this new guy was hired (We’ll call him Benny.) as an editor assistant. He didn’t know much about the place, and all shifts were filled that day anyway, so he was told to go into the audio room and familiarize himself with the sound effects library so he could find one quickly if needed. Benny was a very shy person.

In the audio room, Benny has been figuring out the controls on the amplifier. He got sound when the control was set to “A”, nothing when it was set to “B” and sound again when it was set to “A-B”. He didn’t know channel “B” fed the speakers above the balcony in the lunchroom where the secretaries (including Louise) were temporarily stationed, so he left it on “A-B”.

It was 12:30 pm. The lunchroom was packed with staffers and clients. A new sound effects CD from Network had arrived that morning, and Benny started listening to it. The title of the CD was “Bodily Sounds”. (I’m not making this up.)

Everybody looked up at Louise when the burping started coming out of the speakers. One client called out, “Louise, you having a problem up there?”

Louise screamed back, “That’s not me!”

“Well, you know, we’re trying to eat down here.”

“That’s NOT me!”

Network had put together a wide variety of burps – the next one slightly longer and more gross than the one before. We caught on to what was happening and sent one of the staffers to take care of the problem. He never made it. We found him later doubled over in the hallway almost dying of laughter. Cut 2 on the CD had started with the most fantastic collection of farts ever recorded.

“Louise!”

Louise leaned over the railing and said, “Now, THAT is REALLY not me!!!”

“Yeah, right.” We tried to eat; we honestly did, but had no success. The whole lunchroom was shaking with laughter. Louise was pissed. The farts rang out – louder and longer – and Benny was still oblivious to what was going on. We finally dispatched someone who could get to the audio room (stepping over the first one) who flipped the switch to “A” and informed Benny of what happened.

No one saw Benny the rest of the day; he had stayed in that room until time to go home. In the days following, we went out of our way to be nice to him, but you couldn’t erase the smile off our faces whenever we talked to him. He realized he was labeled as long as he worked there, so he quit at the end of the week. Hopefully, we’ll see him again so we can show our appreciation, but I don’t think that will ever happen.

We never had to use “Bodily Sounds” in any production. I think the CD was given to Louise.
 
Here's mine. It's from 1975 or so. I have a link to a portion of "Now This..." a documentary on the early days of WJMA radio in Orange, VA. The speakers are talking about Chet Burgess. Chet was a very serious news guy. After starting the news department at WJMA he went to WTAR radio & TV in Norfolk, VA and later was one of the original hires at CNN in 1980. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpcbOqS_BqE. There's more info on WJMA at http://www.wjma.radiohistory.net

Ross Hunter
Orange, VA
 
December 1982, I think. It was an AM radio station near a resort town. The weather was a perfect, sunny 70 degrees and highly unusual for Tennessee in the winter. And it was the day of the town's Christmas parade. Half the station, including the GM, hopped on the station Jeep and rode in the parade. The afternoon guy radioed in some live reports from the Jeep and mentioned something on air about the parade's Santa looking frustrated. The kid on the air was the weekend part-timer. He said, "Cut Santa a break. He only comes once a year." The staff laughed so hard they almost fell out of the Jeep.

After the parade the GM went into the control room, told the kid what he said was very funny, but be more careful next time.
 
The series of stories John Long posted about his radio career, especially his time at XEROK in El Paso/Juarez, are very interesting. I go back and read them about once a year. Great look at the trials, tribulations and successes of life in radio. Here is the link:

http://www.oidar.com/POTH.htm
 
I had an experience while on the air at 1380 WAMS Wilmington Delaware, back in 1987. I was a part time weekend jock at this Oldies station. One week the station had a promotion for one of the local Dunkin Donuts franchises in the Wilmington area, where we'd take the 7th caller and they'd win a dozen donuts. We were supposed to ask the caller what they like about WAMS and get them to promote the station, etc. We were to record the call so that when the record we were playing ended, we could play the tape. I answered the 7th caller this one Saturday night, and it's a kid of about 10 year of age. I say W A M S, you're the 7th caller and you win the donuts !! So tell me what you like about the station. The kid says he hates the station, but his mother listens and made him make the phone call, etc, etc. So I stop the tape and naturally my record was ending (remember most oldies from the 50-60's were 2-3 minutes in length. So I took a chance and went "live" with the kid and asked him his name and said something about him winning a dozen donuts, and asked him what kind of donuts he liked, and then put him on hold and took a spot break. A couple of minutes later, the owner of the station called up. He had a moble phone and was out with his girl friend and was trying to show off for her, that he's some big shot, because he owns a radio station or something (from what I was told by some of the other jocks later - he was married at the time and must have been steppin' out on the missus). Anyhow he proceeds to ream me a new anal orifice, cussing me out, etc, because the kid didn't promote the station. So I then lost my cool and told him what had happened and that I don't tolerate anyone, including him, talking to me that way, and as I'm the only person in this building right now, you've got a problem, because when this record that's playing ends, I'm going to play that tape on air and walk out the door leaving you with dead air. Your crap isn't worth the lousy $5 bucks an hour you pay. So you know where you can put your $5 bucks an hour and your radio station? Well you never heard a big shot executive back pedal so fast. He profusely apologized and begged me to not play the tape and to please not leave, etc, as I had indeed done the right thing by not playing the tape and had thought on my feet, etc, etc. I let him grovel for a minute and then I told him I'd stay on. I fully expected to be fired the following week, but when I saw him, at the station, he was as nice as you could imagine. From then on, we got along just fine.
 
If I had a hat on, I'd be tipping it also to Mike.

I went to work for an AM Christian-formatted daytimer in late 1983. At that time, everything on the station was done maually - music was on 45s and LPs, Christian shows were on cassette and reel, and commercials on cart. It was not uncommon for some of us to work from sign-on until sign-off on the weekend.

On one of those sunrise-to-sunset Saturdays it was around 1:00 in the afternoon when the phone rang. I had just started the weekly Christian countdown show, which was on cassette,
and when I answered the phone, it was a young guy who told me that he "was ready to commit suicide because there was no reason to keep living."

For the next two hours I kept this guy talking. Of course, I had to keep telling him, "Can you hold on just a second? I have to go on the air." A lot of the ads had live tags, etc. But I didn't put him on hold. I laid the receiver on the counter so he could hear what was happening in the studio.

I was finally able to connect him with a young pastor. For several days I was kind of shaken by the incident. On Friday, the station receptionist told me, "Some guy wanted your home number, which of course we don't give out. He said to tell you thanks for the help last weekend and he is okay. We didn't know what he meant."

Whew.

And..a colleague of mine worked in radio and TV in Tennessee. One night he was working late doing some engineering and noticed a lone DJ in the radio control room, spinning records. So this friend decided to have a little fun. He went to the breaker box and flipped breakers, causing the turntables to come to a screeching halt. When the DJ would turn to check the turntable, he'd flip the breaker again and the TT would resume. He apparently did this for quite some time. I don't know if he ever told that poor DJ what was really happening.

This same fellow and I were working together in 2002. I was on the air in the middle of a PSA when he walked in and began furiously rubbing the front of his shirt with a paper towel. I was a little amused already, figuring he'd spilled coffee on his shirt. He got more and more furious with the paper towel until I finally lost it and burst out laughing on the air. Barely made it to the end and then said something like "I don't know if I'll be working here tomorrow after this.." I had a lot of fun working with him for several more years after that.
 
Thanks for the tipped hat John and Alan.

However, Alan, I'd say that the Lord used you in a powerful way, that day in 1983. You could have easily blown the guy off, but you didn't. You actually practiced what you probably had said at some point on the air during your air shift about loving folks as Christ does. Whew is right. Besides folks like me tipping my hat off to you, the Lord must have been very blessed by your heart that day and tipped his hat to you too.
 
My two are from when I was at WHBF in Rock Island, IL in the early '70s. By coincidence, both involve beverages.....

In morning drive, we took the "CBS World News Roundup" from the network and dropped in our own spots during the breaks.
Here's what happened one morning when Daniel Schoor presented a depressing medical report on the cumulative effects of alcoholism.....

Schoor: ".....and so, the researchers tell us, even so much as one drink a day can cause irreparable harm....(blah blah, blah)....Daniel Schoor, CBS News Washington

Spot: "Hi Everybody, Harry Caray here for Falstaff Beer......"

Then there was the time the wife of the local Pepsi Cola bottler passed away. The bottler also happened to be a major sponsor and, in fact, was sponsoring the newscast where we had the story of her passing....

Newscaster....." and so, longtime civic leader and member of the XXXXXX family of bottlers is dead at the age of XX"
Spot....."(Jingle)......"Come alive!....Come alive! You're in the Pepsi Generation!.......

I was in the building for both of these....but to this day I'm grateful neither incident happened with me on the board! (Circa 1973).
 
That's some funny stuff! I read on the Miami listing that during the early 80s a radio station was stunting, playing the same song over and over before a major format change. An old lady who must have been a loyal listener of the station called 911 or the cops telling them the DJ had a heart attach because the same song keeps playing.

On a less funny note, when I was young I loved listening to Joe Niagra in Philly. I was happy he started on another station after he left a station years ago. On the one year anniversary of his new radio gig I called him to say Hi and mention it was his one year anniversary. I was on hold for an hour, it just kept ringing. I was not listening to his show since I was on the phone. All of a sudden he answered, He asked me for the answer to the question. I didn't know what to say since I did not know he asked a question on the air. So, I asked...the question? he sort of yelled, Yes! I said ....Ummmm. He hung up on me.
 
At least 20 years ago, I was commuting to work listening to my then favorite morning DJ - a funny guy and sometimes actor named Terry McGovern on K-101-FM. With some fanfare, he had introduced his brand new traffic reporter, Michelyn Meyers, up in the "K-101 Traffic Copter." After a couple of reports, Meyers started sounding shaky and announced she was suffering from air-sickness. Naturally, McGovern started to tease her about it, and would get updates every few minutes on her condition. Being a good sport, Meyers was trying to play along, but it was clear she was getting sicker and sicker.

Not being naive, I knew that the "K-101 Copter" was the same as all the other traffic copters in the Bay Area - there was just ONE - operated by KGO-AM, then the market's dominant News/Talk station. Naturally, I tuned over to KGO just in time to hear their acerbic and veteran traffic reporter - Katie Leaver - announcing that she had to sign off "because the woman sitting behind me is about to blow chunks all over my back."

Meyers got over her motion sickness and continued on the copter for at least a few years, and KGO recently sold the copter to cut expenses. Leaver still works for KGO - from the ground, I'm sure.
 
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