Hey Morning
Radio, Knock Off The Games!
This past week I was reminded of why I hate listening to morning radio.
I have to listen to the radio for two reasons: the weather and
traffic. My early-morning commute to my
bill-paying job is hell, and I need all the help I can get to make it there and
eventually home.
The afternoon drive isn’t as bad, because I’m going away from the city
and I’m not under a clock like I am in the morning. Plus I have plenty of music choices in the
afternoon.
It’s the morning radio that gives me nothing but grief.
My most obvious choice is the local news station. Or at least one that isn’t regurgitating the
crap from their overpaid talk radio whores.
Unfortunately they seem to operate on this fixation that the universe
ends just outside of Atlanta’s 285 Perimeter.
You have to have something burning or blown up before they even consider
that life exists in the northeast area of the city. And, of course, they have their own overpaid
talk show whores that they need to hype up with snarky thirty-second sound
bites. And let’s not forget their sponsors
either. The same half-dozen commercials that
are repeated every hour on the hour and don’t change except maybe every six
months.
So I jump on over to one of several music stations… except that in the
morning they all have their overpaid morning radio personalities that want to
bore us to death with their pop-culture diatribes and their relationships.
Music? What music? Oh, you wanted to listen to music? Sorry; you must mistake us with a
corporate-owned radio station that actually gives a care about what you want!
But every, so often, they do screw up and do play some music on a few
stations, so I jump to those when I’m sick of hearing the same regurgitated
“news radio” garbage.
So this past week, I’m jumping around and I hear that one of the female
morning radio personalities will be posing nude for an art class.
Okay, you now have my attention.
I listen more into this, and apparently the morning personalities had
this college football bet going where the loser would be posing nude for an art
class. The male host of the show was
sure that he was going to be the loser, but it turned out that the female
co-host was the one that ended up losing.
So they use the subject of Kim
Kardashian (and her media) as a way for her to
explain that she’s looking forward to posing nude herself for a bunch of art
students and treat this as a way to empower herself. And, of course, the guys tease her about the whole
thing, saying that it’ll probably be a room full of old guys.
So this goes on for a day or two.
Every so often, I’d catch their little discussions about it in-between
talk about music or movies. A mention here
and there that it’s going to happen. And
I’m wondering who this female co-host is and if she’s attractive, and if they
will go through with it.
Then… this past Friday… the shoe drops.
Apparently her boyfriend, whom she’s in a long-term relationship with,
didn’t know this was going to happen and he’s supposedly not happy about her
posing nude for an art class. And now
everyone is apologetic because this could be a relationship-killer, and nobody
wants that to happen (even though they’re not
married).
Even worse, callers call in to defend her and now I’m made to feel
guilty that she even lost the bet!
You know what, guys? This has
all of the signs of a hoax, and it’s one of the reasons why I hate morning
radio in the first place!
First of all, I don’t buy the idea that the co-host simply didn’t tell
her boyfriend that this could happen.
Especially someone supposedly in a long-term relationship! Even if she didn’t lose the bet, I can’t see
anyone staying silent about that kind of a wager.
Seriously. You mean to tell me
that all during the set-up beforehand she didn’t turn to her long-term
significant other and say “Hey, honey, you’ll never guess what we came up with
for the show!” Right!
And then we have the whole matter of being made to feel guilty about
her losing the bet. I have to call B.S.
on that! Funny how the idea never comes
up that the only woman in the group could possibly end up losing the bet. Funny how nobody wondered if the guys had a
significant other that might object to it.
Besides, the idea was yours, radio people! It wasn’t mine. So why the hell are you trying to get us to
feel guilty when it was your wager and your stakes to begin with?
The answer to that, of course, is that it’s just a diversion. A way to call off the whole game without
feeling like the listeners are getting screwed, which I strongly suspect they
are.
You know, a good friend of mine who is also a Playboy Playmate once
told me about a wall challenge that she was invited to take part in for a local
radio station during Spring Break. The
loser would have to run around the “party area” topless. Of course the Playmates won, but not because
they were faster at wall-climbing than the male deejays. It was because nobody would have to be afraid
of going to jail if the guys ran around without tops. In other words, they knew going into it that
it would be just a tease.
Let’s get brutally honest here… there is nothing more infuriating with
morning radio than when they play continual games and scams on their
listeners. And I strongly suspect that
I’m not the only one that thinks this way.
A few years back, another morning radio show crew played an “April
Fool’s Day” prank on their listeners.
Their host was supposedly unceremoniously fired. The announcement was made in the middle of
the Friday show, and some people thought it was simply a weekend stunt and he
would be back on Monday morning. Except
he wasn’t. And people started talking about
it. It even made the station’s news
segment, which led people to believe that it wasn’t a hoax. All week, people talked about it and wondered
what the host did that warranted his termination. The co-hosts continued without him, and every
so often they would call their broadcast colleague up to get a comment, only to
say that he wouldn’t be able to talk about it yet “on advice of his attorney”.
A whole week of this went by, and then finally he is “allowed” to make
his “statement” about the subject. He
calls in, apologizes to everyone, then steps away from the phone and says to
the in-studio microphone “April Fool!”
It was a hoax. The whole thing,
the firing, the news reports, the “controversy”, were all an orchestrated hoax
on the listeners.
And while it would be “funny” if it really was an “April Fool’s Day”
hoax, this happened in mid-May. It was a
time when people did not expect to be taken for the fools that they were for
trusting that radio station.
Guess what? That morning show
and their hosts did not last long, because listeners stopped listening to
them. No boycotts. No petitions.
No protests. Just enough people
turning off their radios for their corporate masters to say “okay, they’re done.”
And that is probably the best revenge for these morning radio people
that think they feel entitled to take their listeners for granted with cheap
stunts and emotional frauds. That people
stop listening to them. Don’t call
in. Don’t complain. Just stop tuning in when their morning show
is on. Big Corporate will do the rest.
This is something that the morning radio people need to
comprehend. They need us. We do not need them. Fool us long enough, mess with us too much,
and we will stop listening to them. And
there is nothing “cool” about messing with our minds or our emotions.
The truth is that we do have choices when it comes to what we listen to
in our own vehicles. Big Corporate may
own and control the radio stations, but they don’t own or control our
dials. If we don’t like what they give us,
we can turn it off and put on something we do like.
New ventures in digital radio and the Internet helped end the “shock
jock”. It’s high time that the “morning
zoo” personalities follow suit.
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