Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PassiveTheory]

Just curious.

Currently I DJ at KZSC, UC Santa Cruz's college radio station, and my show is from 8:30 to 10:30pm on Friday nights. It streams online at kzsc.org. And last summer I worked with KBZT San Diego (FM 94/9)'s promotional department, and that was kinda fun.

But yeah, who here does or has done anything involving either commercial or non-commercial radio? Got any good stories to tell?

My old boss at KBZT pretty much told me that he fucking hates Death Cab for Cutie because, of the three times their management organized something involving the band and the radio station, they acted like total dicks every time, ranging from asking why there's not a private elevator for the band to putting on an intimate acoustic in-studio performance but having the gall to avoid talking to any of the people that won tickets to the event, much less acknowledging their presence. Weird.

[Jackie Blue]

I used to DJ a total of 4 hours a week at a pirate radio station for a couple years.  It was fun, because I just played whatever I wanted to.

Unfortunately, I can't use that experience to get a "real" radio job because admitting you have ever participated in a pirate station automatically excludes you from any FCC-approved job.

[ImRonBurgundy?]

I've done a bit of sketch comedy on the campus radio station here, KAOS.

[KvP]

Ephemere had (has?) a radio show up in ol' Canada. Tommydski co-hosted a few of them. I'd dig up the thread were I not a lazy yank.

[pwhodges]

I worked in BBC Radio as a Studio Manager for a while around 1970; but I guess the stories I have to tell wouldn't be of much interest here.  Like what it feels like to sit at a desk, and switch on the microphone between programs to say "This is the BBC European Service; the program that follows will be in Polish"; or what you do if a cleaner walks into the studio showing a red "on-air" light with a vacuum cleaner; or when the microphone fader knob comes off in your hand when the man in the studio expects it to be faded down so that he can hear the insert tape; or multi-tracking pop groups by repeatedly over-recording on mono 1/4" tape at 15ips; or wearing a dinner jacket to go on stage during a concert at the Albert Hall to move a microphone between items; or playing 17" diameter disks of Arabic music in the middle of the night; or the game presenters would play of giving a false end to a sentence and then adding just a couple of words as you released the disk you were cueing in...

[Christophe]

I used to be part of the radio club at UC Merced, but they're still waiting on the FCC license and fun stuff like that.

[TheFuriousWombat]

I have a radio show at my school, Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. My show is called "Lost and Safe" and I play mostly "post-rock", noise, drone, ambient ect. Sometimes I throw some other stuff in for good measure. The show is on Sunday from 4pm-6pm and can be listened to online at wxbc.bard.edu along with a whole host of pretty excellent other shows. I'm also on the staff of the station and have worked in publicity and booking in the past. It's rather fun and has its benefits (I get to go to CMJ in NY for free this year for example).

[KickThatBathProf]

Man, you have just done everything pwhodges

[heartwork]

I ran a community based net radio station for about a year just after I started college.  It was pretty good fun, until we decided to look into making it into a proper (ie legal) net radio station, and discovered the fees for royalties etc were absolutely ridiculous.  It eventually fizzled out sadly, we had DJs who were just random communtiy members on it and after a while they'd start not turning up or whatever.  Shame really, it was a lot of fun while it lasted.  I'd love to get into it again at some point.

[valley_parade]

october1983 played one of my tracks on his radio show once.

webcest: coming soon to your radio.

[Hljómalind]

I did a jazz show at midnight on my student radio station for a year, with a listenership that varied between 1 and 3 (to be fair, the station average wasn't much higher).

[Kyros]

I've DJ'ed at my campus Radio Station in Oneonta, NY going on 2 years now.  It's a lot of fun and it went from something I just like to do for fun to something I'd love to do for a living post-graduation in a couple years.

[Catacombs]

I've DJ'ed at my campus Radio Station in Oneonta, NY going on 2 years now.  It's a lot of fun and it went from something I just like to do for fun to something I'd love to do for a living post-graduation in a couple years.

A friend of mine goes there!

Sorry for the pointless post 

[Albatron]

i used to do a college radio show, mostly metal, but the station is run by students who only care about their grade, not about music, so it started to suck.

I also worked at a real local radio station, but I didn't make out of training before they did the whole, not gonna put you on the schedule ever again to passively fire you thing. They had no labels on their old ass boards and expected me to remember everything the first or second time through. plus they were bible thumpers, bleh.

[Puki]

I do a radio show two times a month about conspiracy theories, aliens, misteries and so on. It's fun. And they sometimes let me do playlists.

[casull]

I've done various shows over the last couple of years on WVKC, the student station at my school. Sometimes it's me sitting in the studio playing post-rock and doing homework, and sometimes it's a bit more interesting. One time I had a power metal show. We did a live radio drama that involved an in-studio interview with a dragon.  It culminated with him eating most of the studio audience before being placated by Rhapsody's "Power of the Dragonflame". I was really weird as a freshman, I think.

Next term I'm doing a show where a friend and I pick a genre or mood, and she makes up a story while I improvise music. The first week's theme will be hard-boiled cop noir, and we'll figure it out from there.

Also, some friends of mine have a show where they get really high in the studio and play experimental tracks. Sometimes if the mood strikes they do a stream-of-consciousness narrative over the top of the record and inevitably break some FCC rules.

[MrBlu]

I want a Pirate Radio station. In fact, I'm already looking into Buying the parts to build a transmitter (cheaper to build than to buy).
I doubt that any of the real radio stations down here actually pay Royalty fees, so I won't have too much trouble. Anyone went to Culinary school (specifically Culinary Institute of America) and know if they did radio?

[StaedlerMars]

I do a weekly show on freshair.org.uk

Play whatever I want to in general. Sometimes I do a theme.

However, cause of pretty expensive licencing and such in the UK, and since it's a student radio station, we don't broadcast FM, just streaming.

[Lolocaust]

My old boss at KBZT pretty much told me that he fucking hates Death Cab for Cutie because, of the three times their management organized something involving the band and the radio station, they acted like total dicks every time, ranging from asking why there's not a private elevator for the band to putting on an intimate acoustic in-studio performance but having the gall to avoid talking to any of the people that won tickets to the event, much less acknowledging their presence. Weird.

thats sad to hear.

[glyphic]

I just got a job as a sports producer at WJBM in Jerseyville, Il. I get to announce a list of sponsors and cue up commercials that air between quarters of high school basketball games.

It's everything I imagined it could be!

In all fairness, I'm actually excited to do the job. I'm also excited by the prospect of using it to get a better job in a bigger station some day. Gotta get into the music industry somehow, you know?

[spoon_of_grimbo]

me and a friend did three two-hour punk/rock/metal shows on a local student-run radio station in boston, UK.  the station itself did really well considering it only broadcast for 20miles, and apparently we actually got quite a lot of listeners for our show, despite it being from 10 til midnite.  they did stream it online too.  might be doing a few shows again this xmas, i'll post the new website when they finish it!

i tell thee what though, it's a pain in the arse having to carefully re-listen to every playlist i put together to check for swearing (community license forbids profanity, and i found internet-lyrics to not always be too reliable...).

[DanteShepherd]

We used to be part of a college radio show on WJRH called Bulgarian Hoo-hah, where there were two very different perspectives - one, a guy from Bulgaria who liked to play nothing but techno, and me, a guy from the U.S. who liked to play nothing but alternative rock.  Needless to say, we ended up yelling at each other more during the breaks about how awful we thought each other's music was, but people did enjoy listening to us if they could pick us up - considering the broadcasting power amounted to a local listener radius of about a can of soup, there really wasn't a lot we could do.

The best part of the show were the PSAs.  Now, we were required to play two full minutes of PSAs per hour.  We never did.  At most, playing two minutes per hour, usually half that.  But we never chose PSAs that were all that useful.  Instead, we found a reggae version of a song about making lemonade out of lemons that life might hand to you, and an announcement about housing discrimination against Chinese immigrants that was completely dubbed in Chinese.  These were provided in the PSA stack the station gave to us, so we were completely fulfilling our committment by playing them.  Still though . . . hilarious.

[BrittanyMarie]

I had a show for like three years on KNDS, which is both a community and college radio station. We split it.

So first I had the Doug and Brittany Show then Doug studied in Africa so it was the Brittany (Not Doug) Show, then it was All Roads Lead to Awesome. Though from the playlist it was really more "all roads lead to twee pop and folk". I'm still pretty proud of that Halloween show though... all those covers are really good.

I got into a bunch of shows for free and interviewed a couple, though I totally and completely fucked up Akron/Family. It wasn't my fault really, the phone to on air was working fine but he couldn't hear us on our side. I just didn't know how to fix it.

I would HATE a job in radio though. While I loved doing my own show-- it was like creating a weekly mixtape that I shared with a couple hundred people-- in basically any job you'd get as a radio personality or dj or programmer, you wouldn't have any control over any of the music or even most of the content of what you even say. I wouldn't have been able to get away with half the shit I said on my show on a regular station even though I didn't swear.

[sherrou]

i had a radio show from september of second year til october of third year when i was in college in the west of ireland, it was good craic - i liked it muchly!

my show was all about new irish music, 'next big thing' etc. found out today that the lead singer of a band that i had to interview stole somethign like €14,000 from her day job. i don't feel the least bit sorry for her, she was so awful any time i ever dealt with that band. She didn't bother doing the interview, seemed to think she was above interviews for college radio stations. pfft.

[tania]

Ephemere had (has?) a radio show up in ol' Canada.

still do! it is from 6-8pm on sunday nights at my university's community radio station. tommy only links it when he cohosts it but i have been doing it every week for almost 2 years now.
it is a lousy time slot and all i really do is play punk and talk about it. a couple of days ago though, someone emailed me saying they loved my show and it was their favourite one at the station so it's good to know someone's still listening.