Estoy Nueces

I really spent a day producing some pretty crappy radio. If I had a radio station of my own, I'm not sure what I would do with it but I can guarantee it would be a lot better than any station I am a part of right now. I won't name any names (you can't hear them in Austin anyway) but they are as small town and as low rent as they come. I just have to vent a little.

Program directors are the people that are mostly responsible for the sound of a radio station. They probably don't control what style of music is going to be played and they probably couldn't haul off and add a Lyle Lovett record just because they wanted to. If I had a station I would do that. But the PDs at the stations I'm doing work for, for the most part, are young and inexperienced and doing a dreadful job.

For the most part, their music is predictable, which is tolerable. There are certain artists I expect and want to hear when I turn on certain radio stations so I can live with the wall-to-wall programming of Tim McGraw (gag), Garth Brooks (wretch) and Reba McEntire (excuse me while I hurl). What kills me is all of the unnecessary talking they make me do.

Brevity is the key to being a good disc jockey, speaker, conversationalist. Saying the best thing in the shortest most succinct way possible (something I don't seem to be achieving in this journal!). One station I worked on tonight has me say, twice an hour:

(BIG JINGLE-- "official K----x Weather")

(Music bed as I say:)

Here's your official K---x weather from the super 90/48 doppler forecast center........

I assume the 90/48 are TV station numbers or something, but since I'm reading a forecast for five days from now off of any weather related site I find on the internet, isn't that lying? If there is such a thing as the "official, super 90/48 doppler forecast center," why don't they give me the weather?

So I'm saying that crap twice an hour, plus they have public service announcements smack dab in the middle of a "40 minute music marathon". How do they figure that? Do runners in the Boston Marathon stop and take a nap halfway through? And the PSAs on this station run the length on newspaper articles, include names and several phone numbers, cities, dates, times, alternate locations in case of rain and even instructions on what to do if you are disabled and want to attend this public event. They might as well just have a thirty minute public service show. In some cases it would be shorter!

Tonight I am as sick of country music as I can be. Believe me, I love country music as a genre. There are plenty of good songs that would make a good radio station but people like Reba and even Shania Twain should be sacrificed on the altar of bad music.

One saving grace of this job is I don't have to take requests and hear the continual begging and pleading for me to play that wonderful new Brooks and Dunn song "Beer Thirty." Can you get any more white trash than that? Yes, I think "Queen of My Double-Wide" had it topped, but it's close.

People who are not in radio think that disc jockies want to work at a station where they love the music. That is not really the case. We want to work where there is good money involved and I'd play Def Leppard and Snoop Dog back to back if someone paid me 50K a year to do it. It's almost better to play music that is only "okay" because you are going to get sick of it. I grew up loving Billy Joel and Elton John but once I started playing them every hour at a radio station (and, of course, I never got to play "Italian Restaurant" or "Danny Bailey," it was always "We Didn't Start the Fire" or "Can You Fell the *^&$% Love Tonight") it got sick of them both quickly.

For the last five years I worked on an "adult contemporary" format. I'll be a better woman if I never hear another Celine Dion song in my life. I made it a policy to never listen to a song on my radio (outside of the station) that I played ON the radio. It got to be quite tricky. I never listened to the AC stations in Dallas but I'd hear Shania Twain anywhere I turned and Steve Winwood on the classic rock stations and the Luther VanDross when I'd try to go to the R&B station. I would give up and come home and listen to my Van Morrison CDs---that is until Brown Eyed Girl came on and I'd have to switch to something more obscure. Danny Gatton, Fairfield Four, Roomful of Blues, Southern Culture on the Skids, Bob Wills. If it isn't being played on the radio today, it is my favorite music.

This rant was just for myself. Radio is crappy today because people want radio to be crappy. They all insist they don't, but they are the first to switch the station when something unfamiliar comes on the radio. Tomorrow I will put my smile back on my face and say "Here's my favorite Tim McGraw song..." and take my 30 pieces of silver....okay, it's not QUITE that bad...but just always be aware when that disc jockey says they are "happy to be there," most likely they are checking their watch like anybody else on the job.