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Your worst remote ever?

C

craig_ashwood

Had a laugh at today's Tom Taylor TRI newsletter, with the no-names bad radio stories; today, about remotes....for me, the worst ever was the late Saturday afternoon/evening "grand opening" of a strip mall somewhere in Dunwoody, maybe 1986 or so. I've blocked it out of my mind until reading Tom's email today. This one was miraculously scheduled simultaneously to the Georgia/Ga. Tech football game. I mean, at the EXACT same time. Setting aside that successful remotes are always tough to make work, this one was predictably going to be in-the-bag bad: the mall was way off the main street and tucked behind other businesses so as not to be visible from the street. Anyhow, not a single person showed up during the entire 2 hours, and the center had scheduled all kinds of crap for the "hordes" of people our AE had assured them would be there. So there was the karate store class demo'ing an entire karate class of kicks and thrusts to nobody, the dry-cleaner offering up 30% off coupons to nobody, a dance class from the dance academy store dancing for nobody, etc. etc. That was the first hour. Then...the sun went down. And here's me, spinning platters and making with the deejay yucko chit-chat, to an entire empty parking lot, in the dark. I mean, NOBODY was there except me and my equipment.

Oh--the AE? He never showed up, as he was watching the Ga/Ga. Tech game. Just like the rest of humanity.

People wonder why I drink.
 
I'm speaking as an advertising person, but several years ago, Associated Credit Union had a car sale on a Saturday. A number of dealers brought cars over, and Associated Credit Union provided financing on the spot. I scheduled 2 remotes, one with Kicks and the other with Praise.

The Kicks remote went off without a hitch. Jill from the morning show was there along with a country band.

Praise had called Associated the day prior to ask if Associated was all ready for the remote. However, Praise didn't show up. Finally, after I frantically called everyone I knew associated with the station, a couple of people showed up and set up a table. But nothing got on the air.

It actually worked out well because Praise gave me a free advertising schedule for a week after that.
 
My worst remotes came right after our station owner flipped from a highly successful and exclusive oldies format to become the fifth country station in the market. We showed up at our weekly classic car show with our big station remote vehicle playing country music instead of oldies and things went downhill very quickly. This show was the biggest weekly cruise-in in the mid-west, with hundreds of cars every Friday evening. People were screaming and cursing at me and my engineer to "cut the country crap and play the oldies". Then it came to pushing us up against a wall and threatening to beat us up. I pulled the plug on the remote and we "got out of Dodge" in a hurry! The next weekend we did a remote at a car dealership. We had tons of free pizza, free t-shirts and a drawing for Wynonna tix. No one showed up. The dealer's staff scarfed down al the pizza, and wore our t-shirts home. The Wynonna tix? They were won by a salesman from a car dealer across the street who had wandered over just to see what we were doing. I've done some other "hilarious" remotes that involved police and paramedics among other things, but these were 2 of my particular favorites.
 
I guess it's a toss up between the car dealership that tried to sue the station because his sales went DOWN the day of our remote, or the one we tried to do with a hand held two watt Marti unit fifteen miles from the station. :-\
 
1976 in Gallatin, TN. used to drive the station vehicle (converted mail van) to a failing furniture store on the town square:
no copy...had to ad-lib a :60 every quarter hour from a full page newspaper ad that hadn't been updated in years.
wait...there's more: the station owner insisted that the music be played from the vehicle...parked on an angle...on home-quality
BSR turntables. only the spots were originated from the station. remote was 8am - noon...then 1pm - 5pm every Friday...and
no one ever showed up...and no extra pay involved. and yes, the owner of the store would want to say 'hello' to friends and family.
finally, the Marti unit shared a frequency with (then) WSIX-AM in Nashville...and their air traffic reports would break in. good times.
 
One of the many great stories would be when a remote tech drove the station van (which had a marti mast coming out of the top) into the client's building. The best part though, is that the tech didn't tell anyone. The client saw this happen through the window and when the AE got there the client asked if the tech had told the AE about running in to the building with the van and mast? Nothing like having a client tell you that your staff ran in to their building with the station van. needless to say, we have not been back to that business and that tech has seen a drastic cut in hours.
 
One of the worst remotes was last year at an ice cream place for a charity event they were holding. My first live break turned out to be my last one there, since a big dead air gap and a cassette fill tape followed the break as the studio computer shut down and the new tech couldn't start it. There was no backup person on this summer weekend, so I had to excuse myself and go 15 minutes up the road to the studio to try and fix the computer and do a mock remote from there. It was a mystery how whenever the board tech, through no fault of his own, got near the board the computer would stop! I did the rest of the breaks - live and tracked - myself and made sure the board op stayed away from the studio. At the very end of the two-hour adventure, I was back at the remote just to wrap up only to have a guy there ready to cry because I couldn't go live to give a shout out to his one-year-old baby! At least I got a hot dog out of it! As the sales brochure says: "The excitement of a live remote broadcast!"
 
The day after the tornado hit downtown Atlanta, I did @ remote for kicks @ the sprint pcs store in cartersville.... during the broadcast tornado sirens go off, cops rush up & down joe frank harris parkway & then w/a couple customers, the manager MAKES us go 3 doors up & we bunker down in the papa johns cooler all the while a pizza delivery guy is taping us w/his cellphone "just in case" we take a direct hit....
or
while @ us101 in chattanooga, was sent to a dive bar in a REALLY seedy part of town for the ugliest bartender promotion benifiting the MS society... ended up being a ladies only night 'cause one of the bartenders was also a male stripper & had several of his "buddies" there stripping for charity... I was introduced to the stage w/all the very frisky women chanting "take it off, take it off, take it off..." oh wait, this was one of my BEST remotes ever, sorry...
 
2 for ya!

I was doing the night shift at WFMF Baton Rouge in 95 and was scheduled a remote 90 minutes away in Tickfaw. When I got there the owner knew nothing of the remote, the place wasn't open and you couldn't hear the station.

Still at FMF had a remote at Illusions Night Club of Sherwood Forest. After the remote I'm driving back on I-10 and the van electrical system went down. After parking on the side of the highway and walking back to call a tow I hear CRASH... a drunk
hit the van...
 
My first remotes were with the Bill Heard flagship in Columbus, GA.  Their marketing director was, at the time, Phill Carter, who was known for going on-air as spokeman live on more than one station at a time on overlapping stopsets before the days of voicetracking.  Those were fun; no problems with getting paid great for pimping pizza and Pepsi while Phill handled the microphone.

My worst remote was my second or third, I think.  It was a haunted house, and a part-time salesperson.  When I got there, there was absolutely no copy.  As an 18-year-old overnight jock without experience other than introducing records, I was nervous.  The copy that saleswoman scribbled was not helpful. I tried to get some crowd interaction but... no crowd.  So after my first break was short by about :35, there turned up a former jock from my station on the haunted house staff, who gladly assisted me with the live breaks. 

Boy did I learn how to improvise after that.
 
My worst experience came right after the station discovered that it could automate live remotes without having a person at the station. It was a Saturday morning at a J.C. Penney and the automation would play an intro cut and turn on the Marti and I would have 90 seconds to talk. Unfortunately, after my first 90 second break, the automation went into some type of loop and I realized I was still on the air! I had no idea how long I was going to have to broadcast or if anyone on staff was listening and could get to the station and take me off the air! Talk about sweating bullets!! Fortunately, after the second 90 seconds, the automation self-corrected and went back to regular programming. I'll never forgot that experience!
 
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