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It's National Radio Day! · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's National Radio Day, and we've never been so proud.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's one more thing.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I'm strong and geddy.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: One more thing.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: There's name of the radio today. I heard a radio
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: contest here in LA. But it doesn't matter where you are.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: All radio contests sound exactly the same. You're lucky color
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: number seven, hoop, We're going. Who can't believe it? Are
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: you serious?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm serious? You just want one thousand dollars?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: What's your favorite radio station? There's one?
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: Don't do whatever the hell it is.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Most people have no shame or humility. There's no rule
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: that says you have to love the station you want. Huh,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I want a contest, I'd be completely honest. You just
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: want a thousand dollars?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite radio station?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Well? I jump around a lot. I like the Spanish
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: one and this one's pretty good. What station is this anyway?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I just had it on Seek.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: I just pressed Seek. You have to be old enough
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: to remember when people did that with radios, and they
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: even existed in your car. I don't know how to
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: make the Seek work on several of my vehicles.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Good times.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: So it is National Radio Da Katie?
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Have you been always you were in a big market
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: your whole life, so you know that small market.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Radio, yeah eighteen years. Did you ever work at any
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: yanky radio stations?
• 1:41
  Speaker 5: Or I did, like college radio, Oh okay a little bit,
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: and that radio station was yanky.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then and you probably had the realization as
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Joe and I have had on some small stations starting out,
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: where there's a possibility at this.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Moment that no one is listening.
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, frequently there for my own enjoyment only
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: at that point.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's not impossible that there is literally not
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: a human being listening right now, or.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Apparently not a single human being who wants a free
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: taco or whatever the prize of whatever contest might be.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: As we've both had the experience of you know, announcing
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: a contest caller number of whatever nine.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And you don't get a single call.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: What's the smallest thing you ever gave away?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, because I gave away.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Like at taco or an ice cream cone, I mean
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: a value of like a dollar and a half, and
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: you're gonna have to drive to the radio station.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: And get it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, and nobody.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: You don't get a single call, and then so you
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: got to make it up or you know you you
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: say caller ten, but you get two calls. See, you
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: pick one of them, and it's the same person that
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: calls every time.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh hey call you tell caller number two. Hey you're
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: number ten.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: They're like, oh yeah.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Hey Jim, Oh yeah it's you again. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: we'll just send it with the other prizes. Yeah, we
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: have your address already.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Nice talking.
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: I was a phone screener. When they ended up putting
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: in the system to stop people like that, there was
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: like a niceiractionately, that's right.
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I think a lot of the stuff
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: that existed in radio back in the old days, like
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: a lot of things in a lot of industries, probably
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: wasn't everybody was doing it because somebody did it once
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: or thought it worked, but it just I don't know
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: if it was helping anything. Really, you're you're there are
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: like four people that were going to change their listening
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: habits because you're giving away an ice cream, corn on
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: or oil change or whatever it was. It didn't have
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: any effect on most people.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: We're not going to participate, right, and we're not allowed
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: to talk about the rating system like at all on
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: the air, And frankly I'm not sure how bold I
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: want to be on the podcast, because I just don't want.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: To create problems for people who don't deserve them.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: But in a bigger market, those four people become forty
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: or maybe four hundred, and if one of them has
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: whatever diary or device or whatever is used to measure
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: the ratings, then that, you know, Hamburger platter or whatever
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the hell you just gave away, that that could change
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: your life, could change the station's fortunes, at least for
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: a month or a quarter or whatever.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Here's where I can get hurtful to some of our listeners.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I was a prize pig. By the way, Katie,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: If you were. Are you serious? I was a serious
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: college prize pig.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you why I'm judging you right now.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Go ahead, Yeah, that's fine. I was.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I had no money, you know, any money I wanted
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I had to work for and I didn't have much
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: of it.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And I was and.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess I am accidentally now, but was a
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: music trivia freak. I will would read and memorize every
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: word on every album cover I came in contact with,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: and and just I just voraciously I don't know why
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: I was obsessed with him. I knew who produced and
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: mixed an album ten years before I knew what it
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: meant to produce or mix an album. I knew the
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: names of bands, roadies. I knew who played guest you know,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: steal guitar on one track of an album for I
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: don't I'm just so interested in it. And uh oh,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: what was the uh what was the nay of the
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: call letters the student radio station at the University of
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: Illinois that I was never on. I never I showed
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: up to one meeting and it was there was like
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: a million people when I was out in the hallway listening,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: and I thought, ef this And I didn't get involved
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: in college radio at all. But whatever the station is,
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: and it'll pop into my head. But they would do
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: every noon rock Quiz and they would it was like
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: a syndicated thing with a sponsor, and they'd ask you
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: a question about what rooster haired rocker who was originally
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: a star soccer player found fame with blanketing blank And
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: I'd be like Rot Stewart and I would call and
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I had to I had to pretend to be friends
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: of mine because they had rules. You could only win
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: like once every week or something like that, and I
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: would win like three days a week.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's cool.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, But I was so into it and it wasn't
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: like I mean, because some of the prizes were pretty cool.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: I actually won some tickets and video concert videos and stuff.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: But it was just it was competitiveness. Yeah, it was like,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I'm better than anybody.
• 6:40
  Speaker 6: Bring it on, I'm the best prize pig there ever
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: has been.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Right right, I did.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Once.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: I did a semester of college radio, and then I
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: got hired onto a real commercial radio station, and so
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: then I was off and running and doing that. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: then I got hired to a bigger station in a
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: bigger town. So I actually left my community college early
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: before I was finished with it and moved to the
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: other town for the job. But when I got to
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: that big town, it was the big town. Everybody wanted
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: to work there. And I got there and I had
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: a job, and it was in the first week. It
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: might even have been the first night I'm on the
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: air and I pick up the phone and somebody said
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: you suck and hung up, and I will I will
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: always remember it because I was devastated. I mean, I
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: was just devastated. I sat there thinking, oh my god,
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: I went to college for this, this is the only
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: plan I've got.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to do anything else.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And I suck?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: What am I gonna do?
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, I just I I can't believe I reacted
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: that way, like that person was the arbiter of whether
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: or not I could be in this career.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Surely they wouldn't call and I'd a pure cruelty or meanness,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: say something definitive or be wrong. How many you suck
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: calls did it take before you reacted whatever? I don't know.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it was for me. Y oh yeah,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: It rattles your confidence, even if you have.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Confidence, yeah yeah yeah.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: I don't know when, but eventually you get thick skin
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: to it. Actually, I don't know if that's what happened,
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: even like with with Joe and I still getting emails
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: and texts today where their people are so cruel at
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: a certain point. I mean even when I was twenty
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: years old. I was a program director radio station when
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: I was twenty and I was making my rent and
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: my car payment. I'm making a living at this, So
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: you thinking I suck is fine. I'm making I'm supporting
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: myself on this job.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: The free market begs to differ, right.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: So enough people think I don't suck, that I'm gonna
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: go with that is. I think that's what got me
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: over the home, right, although the living I was making
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: was quite meager.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: All right now, and now you'd reply, yes, I do suck,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: but I work cheap.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Oh god.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: I remember when I was about nineteen, we had the
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: text lineup and thank you so much, and I saw
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: a five to one zero number which was the same
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: area code as mine, and so uh and and the
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: message that came through the text line was Katie, you're
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: the worst, Get off the radio, or something along those lines.
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: So I thought, you know, my town is small. I
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: wonder if I know this person. And I plugged the
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: number into my cell phone and it was my senior
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: prom date.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, Oh that's a good story.
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: So I texted him back from the station and said thanks,
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: call him Dan.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Prom was fun, And he.
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: Wrote back, Oh, I was just kidding you because things
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: I could see he was, yeah, total dick.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Your was a dick, total dick. Yeah that is so
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that is so freaking weak.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: So you're you're to prom date from high school, has
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: a cool job, and.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: You need to try to take her down a peg.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: Well, I hope his life sucks. It probably does. If
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: he's doing that, his life almost certainly.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Sucks, or it will soon. Yeah, if that big a dick.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: So, Joe and I are both in our mid eighties,
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: so when we were doing this getting phone calls, there
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: was no mid eighties. There was no like color id
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: or anything like that. God, that would have been great
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: if I could have called these people back or figured
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: out who they were instead of just the random you
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: suck calls. Oh, and I should so since it's National
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: Radio Day, the one time.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Ever in my entire radio career.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: I've ever gone out with a listener, and I sworred
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: off ever since then at age twenty, So this uh,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: and I had been warned. I had been warned about,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: you know, being misled by a velvety sounding voice over
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: the phone. But I was twenty, and I was new
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: in town, and I was lonely, and I was a
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: male and all the things that go with that. But
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: this this chick kept calling me, calling me, call me,
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: and then she wanted to uh, she wanted to go
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: out sometime. God, I can't believe I did this. This
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: is how naive and stupid I was. I gave her
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: my freaking address.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: What oh yeah, yeah, wow. Didn't meet her somewhere neutral
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: or anything like that.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: No, well, I'm in a town of twelve thousand people
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: for one thing, so I mean it's yeah. But she
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: comes to my house. And it wasn't that she was
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: bad looking. She was actually fairly attractive, but she was
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: dressing dressed very freaky, like by today's standards, she's the
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: barista at every coffee shop you go to. But by
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: those standards, it was like really freak show stuff. She
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: had some piercings and tattoos and colored hair, and I
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: mean just craziness. And I, oh, my god, this is
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: not small town midwestern eighties girl, I was hoping. And
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: then she opens up her purse, which was full of pills.
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: Not liking bottles or anything like that. It was just
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: like a bag of pills. And she said, which color
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: do you want? I said, I'm good, And uh, who
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: knows what they were? I have not got the I
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: didn't know anything about drugs, for one thing, so I have.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Dissolving right.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: So I wanted to get her out of my my
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: my house. So I said, let's go over to the
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: pool hall, which is what we had to discuss doing.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: So we go over to the pool hall. We start
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: playing pool. I say I need to go to the bathroom.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: I I go to the bathroom, I walk out the
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: back door, I get my car and I leave and
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: I never saw her again. I was afraid she'd come
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: to my house. I think I slept with like a
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: bat near my bed or something like that.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: She didn't free showing shove pills down your throats.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I asked you what you wanted. Oh my god, I
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: don't know what I would. Yeah, the naive the being,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the naive child. I could have ended up dead. Yeah,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Oregon's harvested tuba ice.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Call the police.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Your kidneys have been harvested.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It happens a lot. I heard about that.
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: Okay, this is my radio story. I was seven years old.
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: I had a Fisher Price record player and I would
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: play Disney songs, you know, to amuse myself. But on
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: the weekends I would I'd have paid programming, I believe
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: it or not. And then I finally sold my station
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: to the kid down the street that spoke Spanish, and
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: he's changed format to the Spanish and I got his bike. Well,
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: I guess that's it.