radioinfo’s item “You know you are an ageing DJ when” has sparked further lists from ageing (we mean that in the nicest possible way) radio people who can still remember the good and bad old days. Here are their contributions:

From Leigh Harrison, former GM of Star FM in Wanganui, NZ –

You are an aging jock if you can remember:

· You’ve ever met any of the present or past company directors.

· When there wasn’t a computer on the premises.

· When all of every news bulletin was generated on station.

· Running a 24-hour operation required real people on deck at all times.

· The term “panel operator” conjures up any meaningful image at all.

· You remember a face that once went with the role of “shopping reporter”.

· You rotated playlists by picking from the front of the box, and filing at the back.

From Alan Wheatley, Wellington NZ –

You are an aging jock if you can remember (when) :

· Jocks played their own music!! (And the PD actually compiled the playlist based on audience feedback and real local record sales!!)

· Jocks created and actually handled the station promotions.

· Jocks had to file their own records!!

· Jocks “pulled” their own programmes.

· Sticking to the ad logs was critical when running 22 minutes an hour of commercial content!

· Sticking to the format was simply the professional thing to do.

· Timing out with the exact end of the record to news was simply expected.

· Never having to use the dreaded “fill” music – government style!

· Ripping music off Casey Kasem’s AT40 songs onto cart and thinking it was very cool even with the front and back cut off where he talked!!

· Talking up to the vocals was an art form – and never stomping on the lyrics.

· The original AT40 on vinyl “play once only” discs

· Thinking a totally carted music library was as good as technology would ever get and was just sooo cool.

· Making a top 40 hit happen because your station was brave enough to play it and really promote it.

· Playing album tracks. And “B” Sides

· Day-parting meant the records with the black strip could only air after dark!!

· Doing your own production!

· No copy-writer and the jocks wrote the ads.

· Regular airchecks taken by the PD without you knowing, and analysed with you later in their office. Every week at least.

· Listening to your own airchecks alone and disappearing up your own orifice in a welter of self-loathing.

· Listening to your own airchecks alone and secretly thinking you weren’t actually too bad!!

· The buzz hearing your own ads when walking through the local mall!!

· Trying to imagine early automation with the carts and the rotary carousels

· Living to hear American airchecks. Any American airchecks.

· The unstable cart carousels in the studio that could become dangerously lopsided and collapse all over the panel!!

· Station cleaners barging in on the red light and feather dustering the turntables while you’re on air.

· Managers barging in on red lights with touring VIPS and barely acknowledging you.

· Director’s phone calls complaining about the music.

· Staying onside with the station techs so you could get your toaster/VCR (Beta) or stereo fixed.

· Ripping off promotional ideas from other stations whilst on holiday.

· Ripping off other jocks style whilst on holiday.

· Screwing up monumentally at 0300 and waiting for the studio “hotline” to ring – which it did!

· Contra!!

· Freebies worth having!!

· Getting classy national ads scheduled on a rural radio station !!

· Recording music for home from the station’s library before it was in the stores.

· Having your own cans and record box.

· Hearing “Stairway to Heaven” start to stick on the speaker in the toilet just as you settle down after waiting for several hours and you are at least a hundred metres from the studio.

· Falling asleep on the panel during mid-dawns.

· Starting up (or closing down) the transmitter when stations actually closed down for the day. (and the dreaded national anthem!!)

· Copping the audience flak when you had to air the really crappy God shows because they paid the station so much money.

· Coordinating an inter-state Saturday afternoon racing shift! And all the races ran late, or two or more jumped simultaneously.

· Listening to results and totes in one ear, the race underway in the other and announcing the delay of the start of the 5th at Rosehill at the same time.

· Coordinating the reel-to-reels on a race shift

· Never being able to pee during a race shift.

· Getting totes and dividends wrong because you had no idea what the hell it was about anyway and watching the phones light up!!

· Rotary faders.

· Multiple function fader switches

· OB’s where the station set up fully in a shop window.

· You know what “wowing an intro” means.

· Doing APRA by hand on air with carbon copies. Aaaaaagghhh!!!! (Or saying “I’ll do it when I come off air” and still being there at midnight.)

· Getting $100 (or a lot less in the author’s case) a week to start and thinking you’d died and gone to heaven.

· Spending about 20 hours a day at the station because you wanted to.

From Bevvo –

You know you are an ageing Jock when:

· 80% of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.

· You call a weekend off a “Vacation.”

· You measure your amount of production in “shitloads.”

· You consider wearing a shirt you have to iron, “dressing up.”

· When listening to music at your home, you only listen to the first 30 seconds of the song, then you switch to something else.

· Going to a club and not getting paid seems like a useless waste of time.

· Everyone you know calls you to play their wedding or birthday party.

· You turn the radio up excitedly at the sound of “dead-air” on the competitor’s station.

· You have at least three un-opened CD’s, two T-shirts, 22 stickers, and five cups in your car.

· Cueing, segueing, loose, back-announce, and dumb-arse program director are every day parts of your vocabulary.

· You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people that you haven’t seen since.

· You know the names and artist to every song your boyfriend or girlfriend can think of.

· You’ve slept quite comfortably on the promotion director’s easy chair.

· You’ve had five #8 callers in a row.

· Your favorite past-time is conferencing three un-knowing listeners on the same line.

And

YOU KNOW YOURE A RADIO GROUPIE WHEN…

You listen to a station until it is well out of reach, but still somewhat audible

You’re in the dentist’s office, they have the local AC station on, you not only know, who owns the stations, you know where the studios, towers are located, when it was sold, and what format it was before AC

You change the station every time the DJ stops talking and the music starts.

You know the EXACT time and date a radio station went off the air because of lightning and sat through 3 hours of dead air to listen for it to sign back on!

You judge the quality of your vacations on how good the radio was in the city you visited.

The tuning arrows on your car stereo are worn off.

You know just the right spot to park your car to pull in that distant station.

You flip between stations that are simulcasting just to hear the different commercials.

You have a radio station “sticker” collection – which you’re proud of.

You visit radio stations to get some bumper stickers, and take a whole handful.

You are at a red light and the car next to you is blasting out some music and you tune around to find what station they are listening to

You have recordings of all the live calls you’ve made to radio stations.

You got mad when your mother threw out an original 1983 MMM t-shirt because it “got too small”.

When you drive dangerously close to the car ahead just to look at the stickers in his rear window.

You go to a radio station website that has a studio webcam, and save the pics so that you can stare at them offline.