Weird things I have heard on the radio: Vol. 1

1)  Columbia, MO, 1980s:  Tail end of a commercial that ended with a jingle that went “They’ve got big green numbers…and little rubber feet!”  Never found out what it was advertising.

2)  Stuck listening to Adult Contemporary station, St. Louis, mid-’90s:  During a Michael Bolton song, I suddenly heard the voice of the female announcer answering the telephone:

Announcer: “[call letters]!”

Caller: “Um, yes!  Do you think you could play something by Jewel?”

Announcer:  “I’ll see what we can do!”

Caller:  “Okay, thanks!”

A minute or two later, another call went out over the air.

Announcer:  “[call letters]!”

Caller:  “Did you know that you just had a phone call go out over the air?”

Announcer:  “Excuse me?”

Caller:  “I just heard it over the music.  Someone called and requested Jewel, and the call was audible over the radio.  In fact, I think my voice is on the radio right now.”

Announcer:  “Oh my goodness.  Thank you!  We’ll have to fix that.”

The amazing thing was that both of the on-air calls occurred during instrumental breaks in the song, timed perfectly as if it was intentional.

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Posted by Darren Snow | December 22, 2008 | Culture | 6 Comments 

Comments

6 Responses to “Weird things I have heard on the radio: Vol. 1”

  1. John Wendland on December 23rd, 2008 12:23 am

    Weird Thing I Have Heard On KDHX:

    Host: And that was a song recorded by George Harrison when he was still alive.

  2. Joshua Weinstein on December 23rd, 2008 2:47 pm

    A few years ago Gabriel was talking about an Aretha special he had seen on tv. He thought it was well done EXCEPT for the sound quality. He went on and on about how you could hardly hear anything. Tha the sound guy must be hard-of-hearing and should have been fired. He made a big deal out of it.

    When he was finished ranting he said, “give me a call if you know the name of the next PERFORMER. Now, I don’t want the name of the song but who is singing the song.” Then the music comes on and it is on an old, warbly tape that is going sharp and flat almost with the beat of the song.

    Charming.

  3. Marjie Kennedy on December 23rd, 2008 4:30 pm

    The weirdest thing I ever heard on the radio was years ago when KWMU used to have a jazz show all night long. Evidently the regular host was not there and a sub was supposed to play music interspersed with some recorded commentary, back announcing, etc., by the regular host so that it would sound like the usual host was there in the studio. Instead, the person played all the commentary with no music at all. So you’d hear the announcer’s voice saying what he was going to play, and then immediately following, he would back announce that track and say what the next track would be, all with none of the music ever being played. This went on for several minutes that I know of. I finally had to just turn it off. I don’t know what happened when the sub ran out of commentary to play, I fell asleep, but did check later and there was still talking and no music.

  4. Darren Snow on January 4th, 2009 1:43 am

    That reminds me of a fairly surreal hour of commercial radio, when “looping”–that is, the announcer pre-recording his or her parts in advance and letting a computer drop them into the broadcast later–was still a very new process. The announcer somehow got one set ahead of the music, saying “That was so-and-so, along with such-and such, and before that, blah blah blah,” when the artists named were actually coming up after the next commercial break.

  5. bob reuter on February 10th, 2009 9:03 pm

    that first comment, the one about george harrison when he was still alive – i think that was me – really? you think that’s weird huh? – your easy.

  6. Jody Zscheck on April 16th, 2009 9:40 pm

    As to the jingle “They’ve got big green numbers…and little rubber feet!” cited in Weird things I have heard on the radio: Vol. 1, that would be the jingle for Rockwell calculators. It was an ad to challenge the calculator industry giant, Texas Instruments, whose calculators had very small red numbers at the time. Not sure of the year, but I had a Rockwell, which were also much cheaper than TI.

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