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Sat. Mar 20, 2004

Watch Your P's and A's

Watch Your P’s and A’s – ”The Regular Guys,” morning DJ’s at Atlanta’s 96 Rock, have stepped knee deep into the broadcast indecency hub-bub, and they claim it happened entirely by accident.

I believe them. But I chuckle nonetheless.

What follows is partially my speculation based on knowledge of the kind of equipment involved, and the ”facts” as reported in the AJC : ”The offensive broadcast occurred as the show’s hosts were trying to mock the current government campaign against indecency.”

You see, their employer is Clear Channel, who recently passed stone tablets down from the mountaintop to their staff that said ”Thou Shalt Not Smut.” The Regular Guys decided to find a ”safe” way to poke fun at the whole issue. ”They had planned a segment called ’backward smut,’ in which they would bring in porn star Devinn Lane, talk to her on tape, then play the tape backward on air. ’It’s not actionable because nobody can understand it,’ Wachs said earlier this week.”

Very clever. Here’s the speculation part. The channels on a control board, like the one used to control a microphone, have three output options; ”Program” (sent over the air), ”Off,” and ”Audition.” The ”Audition” channel can be routed off-air to a tape deck, so the mike can be used to record something for later broadcast.

So, to talk on the air, switch the mike to ”P.” To record off air, switch it to ”A.” You can probably see where this is going. It appears to me that the crew tried to record Ms. Lane saying things they knew she never could get away with on the radio, and tried to do this during a commercial break so that they could play the tape backwards afterwards. However, I think somebody flipped her mike to ”P” instead of ”A,” because that morning, ”over the sound of a Honda truck ad, Lane could be heard describing sexual acts in graphic terms.” According to a recording from a radio news site now likely making its way around the web, this went on for a minute and seven seconds.

”Moments later, Wachs said on the air, ’Our bold experiment will not go forward,’ blaming ”technical difficulties.’”

Yeah, that’s the other problem with flipping that mike to ”P” instead of ”A.” Not only does it go out over the air, it doesn’t go to the tape deck. Thus, no ”backwards smut.”

”Lane said Friday night during an appearance at an adult-oriented store that someone at 96rock ran into the studio and said her explicit talk was on the air, live.”

I haven’t heard the tape, but I would bet that resulted in additional cuss words going out over the air.

I feel for the Regular Guys, since their Clear Channel bosses had just passed down a ”zero tolerance” policy, and they were truly trying to mock the situation, not aggravate it. But that ”P” instead of ”A” thing … it’s Radio 101. And when you are preparing to publicly tweak your bosses, you better watch your P’s and A’s.