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It’s a musical phenomenon, one that was going strong when I left the radio business two decades ago, and that continues today across the musical spectrum…

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Welcome to visitor’s from Chattanooga’s WGOW-FM, where this site was named “The Talk Radio Website du Jour.” Why, you might ask? It’s because I own Jeff Styles, your morning host at Talk Radio 102.3. I have so much dirt on him, I could sell it as landfill.

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I read these things, and can’t help but giggle. I know I shouldn’t. It’s only because I escaped this kind of career torture. This is how the radio business works, when a station decides to change format…

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Happy Birthday to the Daily Stern! – Tomorrow, it will have been a full four weeks of The Daily Stern: ”PREVIOUS DAILY STERN POSTS: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.”

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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.”

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King Of All Fines – The Center for Pulbic Integrity has an excellent piece of research with the title, ”Indecency on the Air; Shock-radio jock Howard Stern remains ’King of All Fines’” It calmly inserts a series of facts and some perpective into the recent hub-bub over Howard. Most of which his proponents are sure to ignore.

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Dead Man Talking, And Talking, And Talking – Allegedly coming this week: ”Regulators are proposing fines against major radio companies for carrying well-known ’shock jocks’ in a widening effort to clean up U.S. airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission says about a dozen cases are being completed and one major target is Howard Stern, the popular and controversial radio show host.”

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Stern Words – Twenty years ago, I did the morning radio show at a rock station in Macon, Georgia. Since I was also the station’s Program Director, I was able to ”take liberties” with what I played during my show, and I would occasionally lead into a song by playing a comedy bit from National Lampoon or Monty Python.

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James Lileks Gets Dropped On His Head – When I was very young, I once chased some pigeons on the grounds of the Capitol in Raleigh, NC. During the chase, I tripped over a 1/16 inch deep crack in the sidewalk, as those who are two-ish are wont to do, and landed full square on my forehead. It was the classic “he wuz dropped on his head as a child,” except I’d done it to myself.

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Terminator 4: Special Dispensation – Jeff Jarvis is rather upset, and organizing a campaign: “Thanks to the innane FCC equal-time rule—and to his company’s spineless lawyers and bosses—Howard Stern was forced to cancel an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger this morning [...] But the voters won’t get to hear what Schwarzenegger has to say under questioning because of the equal time rule.”

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20 Years of Radio Deregulation – How deep do you have to strip something before you consider it naked? Like me, Doc Searls worked in radio in the 70’s, and we are both appalled at the manner in which “The Public Interest” has been completely sold out over the past two decades.

Doc, on Broadcast Drekulation: “When I was coming up in radio, back in the Seventies, there were limits on broadcast property ownership. Back then, you could own seven AM , seven FM and seven TV stations: the ’7-7-7 rule.’ And in any one metropolitan area, you could own at most one AM, one FM and one TV station.”

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Radio Deregulation No Hit for Listeners – There’s been a study done to tell you what you probably already know; radio has become a homogenized mediocre muddle, largely due to government deregulation. Not once, but twice. “Six years after a landmark deregulation law lifted ownership limits on radio stations, airwaves in many cities are dominated by a few media behemoths that offer little in the way of variety or local content, the Future of Music Coalition found.”

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Mass Produced Mornings – I was quite struck by something tangential within this story about an unfortunate programming coincidence: "Immediately after reporting the latest sniper attack Tuesday, the ’John Boy & Billy’ radio show played the song ’Another One Bites the Dust,’ spurring complaints to WRFX- FM’s signature program [...] Brazell said the song was inserted weeks ago into the show’s computerized log for play at 6:40 a.m. Tuesday, the first music track coming out of the newscast. News of the shooting broke about 6:30 a.m."

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Web Logs, Broadcasting, and Radio Stories – Doc Searls talks about something that makes a lot of sense to me, given my background: a web log has many similarities to doing a radio show. It’s a broadcast.

"Sitting down at the keyboard in the morning, like I just did at 5:30am, feels to me very much like it once felt sitting down at a microphone in a broadcast studio. My setup here in my office, surrounded by keyboards (two), screens (three) printers (two) and speakers (three) feels very much like an old-fashioned broadcast studio, with turntables at each elbow, control board, cart machines, clipboard, box of index cards, microphone on a boom and a big clock on the wall."

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Sex, Church, and Radio Don’t Mix – You may recall the story of the two DJ’s soliciting couples to commit sex acts in risky places. Like St. Patrick’s Cathedral. At the time, I said, "One can’t legislate against professional idiocy, or the brain damage caused by either excessive drug usage or a parental drop-on-the-head that must surely be the root cause of this ’idea’ [...] In business, wherever possible, stupidity should have a high price."

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Radio Station Solicits Criminal Acts – Gosh, this story makes the folks who fired the Country morning jock because he sounded ”too southern” seem like Radio Einsteins. Three people were arrested because of a sex act in a vestibule at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Yes, three.

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Too Southern For Country Music – It’s just another reminder for me that leaving radio was A Good Thing. "You can’t be too rich or too thin, but on Atlanta radio these days, you can be too Southern. Last Friday, country radio station Kicks 101.5 (WKHX-FM) jettisoned James Carney, who hosted the morning drive slot for 11 years under the name Moby. This week, the station said it was seeking a personality with less Southern drawl in his or her voice."

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Radio Absentia – (via Daniel Taylor) This look at ”voice tracking” at Atlanta radio stations notes that at one station, "the DJ is absent 70 percent of the time."

Ah, sweet memories. This was also true back in the old days, when music was played from 12 inch round petroleum byproducts, and dinosaurs still walked the earth. Due to ”bathroom breaks” (DJ’s love long songs), chatting on the request line, mental meanderings (substance enhanced or not), and general goofing, the DJ was absent, in some sense, about 70% of the time. Even when he was in the studio.

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Radio’s Big Bully – OK, I promise not to blow a gasket like I did last time, this article does a pretty good job for me. ” ’It pains me to say it, but radio sucks and it has sucked for the better part of consolidation,’ says Del Calliano at Inside Radio. ’And anybody who loves radio knows that.’ ”

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Another Radio Story – One that’s chuckle-licious. I would link the radio station involved, but their site is just too ugly for words. The above link tells the whole tale, but here’s the short version.

A radio station morning crew promotes for weeks that they will be broadcasting from Mexico, and taking some lucky winning listeners with them. Then the DJ gets a call from ”the Boss” informing him to stop talking about Mexico, as he is using the trip himself, to take some clients. Heated phone conversation ensues, in which ”the Boss” says, ”Listeners are just a byproduct of advertisers. Listeners don’t pay you your salary. Advertisers do. It’s about the money, Mike.”

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