Thursday, May 4, 2000

Do DJs get along? Are they really that funny? What are your real chances of winning?

Those happy, sexy voices you hear trading punchlines on local morning drive-time radio? Some secretly hate each other when the mike’s turned off.
  The news items at the top of the hour? Whoever’s reading them most likely didn’t research or write them.
  The jokes and ad-libs? Usually lifted from the Internet or faxed in by a radio joke-writing service.
  And are those DJs as cute as they sound? Ever heard the phrase "a face for radio"?
  So much for truth in broadcasting.
  These days, radio is getting good at faking it. Station managers, forced by corporate consolidations to cut costs and increase profits, now try to fool listeners in a number of ways.
  They air shows that sound local but originate from far away.
  To get ratings, they run call-in contests without telling listeners that their chances of winning are slim because they’re competing with phone-ins from all over the map.
  They save budget dollars by eliminating local radio newsgathering. Other than the brief national and the newspaper updates beamed in from elsewhere, the little bit of news aired on local radio is derived mostly from USA Today or other newspapers.
  More isn’t always better
  For its size, Corpus Christi’s radio market is overcrowded with stations - 30 and counting, when all of them are on the air at the same time. (By comparison, much larger Austin has 22 stations.)
  The competition should make radio here better. Instead it’s diluted the small pool of on-air talent and allowed stations to operate haphazardly, switching formats, DJs and program directors so often that listeners get lost in the lurch.
  DJs used to be radio stars, even in the smallish markets. Now at many stations in Corpus Christi, on-air personalities are asked to do double-duty, putting in extra hours in promotions or ad sales, a situation that recently had one morning drive-time host dozing on the air from lack of sleep.
  Many stations have eliminated in-studio talent on midday, evening and overnight shifts, switching to pre-recorded or satellite-programmed shows (being careful not to let listeners know that what they’re hearing isn’t locally originated).
  And they’ve gotten sloppy about ethics, allowing station personnel to accept loads of freebies from promoters and advertisers to offset their relatively low salaries.
  The worst part of all this is that many listeners have no idea what’s going on as they’re flipping around the dial. Radio’s dirty little secrets aren’t supposed to go public.
  But we found a few intrepid radio pros willing to spill. Rex Gabriel, morning DJ at KNCN-FM/101.3 (C101), KEYS-AM/1440 newswoman Suzi Camacho. KKBA-FM/92.7 (KBAY) morning DJ Molly Cox and KBAY DJ/program director Jason Reid were game to go on the record about radio’s tricks of the trade.
  What radio stations don’t want you to know:
  

• Many morning teams hate each other - Rex Gabriel, who’s been through several on-air partnerships in his nine years on C101, said he’s known morning teams "who secretly tried to have each other replaced." His co-hosts have included Tim Parker, Matt the Cat, Erik Slater and Big Al. "They keep getting hired away to better jobs. All my morning partners have left for pennies more, so I must be the devil to work with," Gabriel said.
    KBAY’s Molly Cox said she and co-host Ram Rodriguez "took a while to start getting along because I’m not used to radio and he’s schooled in it." Cox said she and Rodriguez sometimes clash because "we’re very much alike."
    Camacho formerly shared the a.m. mike on KZFM/95.5 with DJ Bart Allison, "We had a love-hate relationship. We loved to hate each other," she said.
    Now Camacho prepares the newscasts and kibitzes at length on Jim Lago’s morning talk show on KEYS. "Sometimes the egos of others on the air can make life miserable for the rest of us," said Camacho. She’s learned to cope by sometimes tuning out her blustering co-host "with a smile. You pretend you’re listening to what they’re saying, but you’re really not."
    
• It’s live, but not local - Blame consolidation. To cut operating costs, groups of stations have ditched whole shifts of local DJs and replaced them with live satellite-fed programs from elsewhere.
    On the new "Groovin’ Oldies" station, KCCG-FM/107.3, part of the Pacific Broadcasting group, not a single shift is manned by a local DJ. All 24 hours of programming are voice-tracked by Westwood One jocks on the West Coast. The tip-off to listeners: These virtual DJs never mention weather, traffic or local political figures.
    "That is just the nature of radio these days. It’s a frightening thing," said C101’s Rex Gabriel. "Someday we’re all going to lose our jobs to one superior super-jock. I think it’s sleazy when it comes down to it."
    Said KBAY’s Molly Cox: "I think it’s cheaper to have the virtual DJ. They’re not really here but they sound it. They take requests but it’s from another area code."
    Listeners have to pay close attention to detect exactly where some shows are coming from. The homespun "Bob and Sherri Show" airing mornings on KKPN-FM/104.5 (The Planet) is done in North Carolina, but might sound to the casual dial-scanner as if it’s from around the corner.
    Delilah’s weeknight show on KBAY is from Seattle.
    Michelle Lee, the midday jock on K-99, is actually broadcasting from Austin.
    C101 uses local DJs during the day, but goes with virtual jocks at night.
    
• It’s local, but not live - Using a technological innovation called "compression," stations can eliminate time-consuming pauses and stammered words, thus freeing up more airtime for advertising. Rush Limbaugh caught stations doing it with his three-hour show when listeners noticed his dramatic pauses disappearing and his speech patterns speeding up.
    Locally, promotional spots, commercials and public service announcements undergo the compression process before they’re aired. "The computer takes out the pauses. I can sound articulate and intelligent once I edit it down," said Molly Cox.
    And those "live" call-in requests and contest calls are commonly compressed off the air to sound like smooth live calls on the air. "Most of the time the calls you hear have been taken and edited before they’re aired," Cox said. "Sometimes winners will answer the question and then talk for 22 minutes. You edit all of that out."
    
• DJs just aren’t that funny - Jim Lago on KEYS has sometimes recycled material from Spy magazine without crediting the source. Eric Von Wade has raided material from E! Online and The Drudge Report without mentioning where he got it. Many stations pay monthly fees to joke-writing services that fax fresh, topical material to the chatty DJs throughout the day.
    No DJ or talk show host likes to admit that those clever bon mots they’re mouthing came from someone else. Gabriel admits he’s used faxed jokes, but said he tries to put his own twist on the stories. And he doesn’t rely on them to fill up his airtime. "I know people who get frantic about it if the comedy faxes don’t come in. I plan shows using the (fax) stories I find entertaining, but I choose not to rip them off line-for-line," said Gabriel.
    "If a jock tells you he doesn’t use anything from a comedy service, he’s lying," said Camacho, who also DJ’d at K-99. "Every jock I know has used a joke source from time to time. We’re not always as witty as we need to be, so we have to steal other people’s work."
    
• Your chances of winning the big prizes are slim - That’s true even for local stations’ call-in contests, said Rex Gabriel, "because you have so many people all hitting the phone at the same time. You take a market this size and figure how many people are speed-dialing the phone simultaneously."
    Cox said chances are "pretty good" for participants of KBAY’s contests. But she warns that many stations don’t disclose that the bigger pay-off contests offering vacations, cars or cash aren’t limited to local listeners. "If you actually listen to their promos, they cut off the names and hometowns of the winners because they’re not from here. I always assumed that everyone won locally. Then you start learning the tricks of the trade," said Cox.
    Tip-off: The contest call-in number has an 800 or 888 area code, meaning listeners from all over the country are playing the same game on lots of other stations.
    
• Those yee-ha testimonials aren’t what they seem - Enthusiastic comments from "loyal listeners" swearing their devotion to station X-Y-Z in promos are sometimes provided by station employees.
    "Stations use the professionals because they can sound more enthusiastic on the air," said Molly Cox. "Regular listeners never sound that excited."
    Same goes for radio ads. KEYS-AM talk show host Eric Von Wade does a commercial for a local car dealership and chats on-air with "a satisfied customer" without clueing the listeners that the "customer" is paid spokeswoman Deidre Gillis, who also does the dealership’s TV ads.
    
• Everybody’s No. 1 somewhere - "Your No. 1 station!" crows the DJ, cueing up another cut from Britney Spears or ‘N Sync. Number one, perhaps. But what they don’t tell you is that their station can legitimately claim the top spot only among one specific demographic group: women age 35-up, or men 11-18, or maybe just clever parrots who’ve taught themselves to peck the clock radio on with their beaks.
    Every station claims to be numero uno with somebody. Only those who actually pay the thousands it takes to subscribe to the Arbitron Ratings Survey are allowed bragging rights with those numbers.
    
• Those aren’t their real names - Lots of DJs use pseudonyms to avoid being stalked. "But it’s very ’70s to do that," said Rex Gabriel, who’s always used his real moniker (minus first name Steven) on the air.
    Chances are if the on-air names are cutesy, like Summer Cruz, Randy Fox, Wendy Blades or Hawkeye (names used by DJs elsewhere), they’re made-up. Many DJs around here just shorten their real names to a first name and initial, like Johnny O. (ex-Club-98) or Danny B. (Z-95).
    Suzi Camacho, by the way, isn’t her real name.
    
• It’s not payola, it’s just free stuff - The old payola scandals are a thing of the past, but even if it’s not technically "pay-for-play" (promoters slipping cash to DJs to get their songs on the air), today’s DJs and other radio station personnel still snag loads of free stuff on the job. Besides the endless supplies of advertiser-donated bagels, doughnuts, pizzas and subs, many radio employees can also take free trips to record and radio industry parties (paid for by the record companies) in such places as Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta. They frequently are handed free tickets (by record promoters and advertisers) to movies, concerts, sporting events and theme parks. They get trade-outs for free restaurant meals and even cars to drive on their own time. Then there are all those CDs, T-shirts, gimme caps, mugs and other swag items that DJs go home with.
    Does it influence what they do on the air?
    "Sometimes, sure," said KBAY’s Molly Cox. "We’ll talk about your restaurant even more if you give us dinner for free. The food may suck, but if it’s free, we’ll eat there all year long. We joke that we don’t get enough stuff for free. You’re going, hey, where’s mine?"
    It’s common practice on many stations for DJs not to mention favorably any restaurants that aren’t paid advertisers. Cox said she and another DJ conversed on the air one morning about bad restaurant service, but didn’t mention restaurants by name "because it hurts advertising."
     Conversely, they make it a point to talk up restaurants, car repair companies, health clubs or other local businesses who are advertisers, without disclosing that the mentions are paid testimonials passed off as casual banter.
    Sometimes the freebies amount to substantial gifts. Eric Von Wade of KEYS-AM, Jason Reid, DJ/program director at KBAY, and Danny B. of Z-95 have done ads for a Corpus Christi LASIK eye surgery center. All three got their vision correction surgeries (worth between $3,000 and $5,000) for free in return for appearing in the center’s print ads and radio commercials. Nowhere in the ads is it disclosed that these surgeries were trade-outs for positive endorsements.
    Reid sees nothing wrong with the barter system. "My surgery was perfect. If I wasn’t satisfied and it wasn’t true, I wouldn’t do the live spots," he said.
    
• Without the local newspaper and USA Today, most DJs would have nothing to talk about - Listen carefully to newsreaders on local radio. In most cases, they’re simply ripping and reading the stories right off the Internet or from the local paper. Phrases like "our sources tell us," when voiced by a local radio newsperson, often are euphemisms for "we read it in the paper" or "heard it on TV last night." A rare exception is Victor Lara-Ortegon on KUNO-AM/1400. This veteran radio newsman still attends city council and school board meetings, and does his own interviews before airing the Spanish-language news on his weekday "Commentarios."
    
• Most DJs want to run off to a bigger market for more money - In this market, the morning drive-time DJs make the biggest paychecks, on average between $300 and $500 a week, with extra money coming in from live commercial spots and promo appearances on weekends. But in the media world, these are low-end salaries. After nine years at C101, Gabriel, one of the few name stars on Corpus Christi radio, still earns only around $30,000 a year.
    
• DJs get fired for very stupid reasons - K-99 let popular morning team Dean Jaxon and Rusty Aldridge go after a telephone survey of a few hundred of the station’s "Country Club Card" holders concluded that some listeners thought their material was too "controversial" and "cutting edge." The DJs weren’t told how many listeners disliked them or exactly what made their show controversial, only that the program director wanted to "go in another direction." The on-air pair quickly found jobs on the West Coast, where controversy was no obstacle.
    Another local DJ was fired a few years ago for not being able to drive (though her job didn’t require it).
    A husband-wife team was bounced when they didn’t show up on time for a radio event at a local restaurant. Talk show host Berney Seal, now on KCCT-AM/1150, lost his "Breakfast with Berney" gig on KEYS when the station manager didn’t like his joking about Marilyn Quayle’s looks: "She could eat corn through a picket fence."
    Molly Cox knows of a DJ who was axed for chewing gum on the air. Another was bounced when he dissed Coca-Cola (an advertiser). A jock in San Angelo was yanked after uttering the phrase "piss you off" on his show.
    DJs usually are fired on a Friday, immediately after their air-shift ends, allowing no time for a good-bye to listeners even if they’ve been on the station for years.
    "You never get a going-away show," said Cox. "The next day somebody else is doing your shift and the station never mentions you again."
    
• Radio folk can be downright strange - To rid the building and the sales force of negative vibes, AMFM, Inc., hired a "spiritual counselor" named Susan Grayson to give its stations, KMXR-FM/93.9, K-99, C101 and three others a "cleansing." Grayson said she performed the ritual in the building at 501 Tupper Lane, using seasalt, "blessing oil," a sage smudgestick and candles.
    "I got all the negative energy out and put in positive loving energy, working with my angels and guides. Some offices had more negative energy than others. People were very stressed out," said Grayson. "By removing the negativity, it makes the environment more positive and helps people communicate better."
    In radio they can use all the help they can get.

 
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