WMOP - The First Underwater Broadcast

It's harder to do pretty much everything underwater. I read once that the first under water photograph was taken in 1899 by pioneer Louis Marie Auguste Boutan. It seems very early but light passes through water more easily than people or electronics. But that obstacle didn't dissuade WMOP, they liked a challenge.

In 1956 radio station 900 WMOP-AM set up a studio underwater, 15 feet below the surface of Florida's Silver Springs and broadcast for 13 hours and 15 minutes.  The tiny studio was only 8 x 8 feet and contained two microphones, a record player, and a telephone line. According to the coverage the hardest part of the process was getting the equipment into the studio without damaging it. Each item had to be plastic bagged separately to get moved.

 

On Thursday August 30th, 1956 somehow Station Manager Jim Kirk, and Program Manager E. Vernon Arnette shimmed into the tank at 6:00 AM and stayed in there until sign off at 7:15 PM. Other members of the staff did their specialty programs from inside the tank including: News Director Ed Sherer, Program Director Gene Turner, and country DJ Nervous Ned Needham. Station owner Ben Letson wisely stayed outside the tank. 

You might know the DJ name Nervous Ned Needham. He was one of the prescient DJs who in 1955 foresaw the future career of Elvis Presley. He's quoted in multiple books on the King. Needham was with WMOP for 4 years and went to Nashville to DJ at WENO for 3 months and missed home. He came back to WHYS in Ocala in January of 1958. He told Cashbox that he missed the weekend midget auto racing and the Florida sunshine. The 1959 radio yearbook notes that they had 7½ hours of "negro" programming at that time.I do suspect Needham was connected to that nascent rock n' roll programming.

 900 WMOP-AM was based on Ocala, FL; founded in 1953  operating at 1,000 watts. The owner was A.B. (Ben) Letson and it was located at 311 Robertson Bldg in Ocala, FL.  The building no longer stands but it was at the intersection of Main Street and Silver Springs Boulevard. Main street no longer exists under that name, I think it became 301. 

Back in 1953, the only other local station at the time was WTMC on 1290.  The engineer at the time was Lloyd H. Lutz.  It's worth noting that Vernon Arnette later was owned WTMC from 1974 through 1980. That station retired the WTMC call letters in 1999 and became WCFI, but ultimately signed off in 2004.  Similarly Station Manager Jim Kirk, aka "Country Jim" owned WMOP from 1953 till 1993 and WFUZ for a bit. He had previously been an announcer at WCNH-AM in Quincy, FL. Jim was Mayor of Ocala for three terms in the 1960s and 1970s. News Director Ed Sherer, was also an announcer on WTMC but he was more of a newspaper man. In 1965 he moved to Ohio to become a staff writer at the Star Banner.

 

As stunts go broadcasting underwater was wildly successful. Nobody drowned and they got a lot of press. WMOP advertised the stunt in advance in the August issue of Billboard. And when nobody drowned, the stunt was reported by Telephony magazine, Broadcast, Florida Newspaper News, SESAC magazine, Life magazine, and Radio Electronics among others.  It got them more press than their mobile broadcasting studio, though there seem to be a lot of postcards of it.

STUPID DJ TRICKS: Part 29

Plastic is flammable, which makes sense since it's made from petroleum—oil. Foam rubber is generally made of polyurethane, is still plastic and also made from oil. They were first invented by Otto Bayer  in 1937. So if you are working with open flame... do not try to protect yourself with a barrier that is itself flammable. There is an obvious problem there. Teapot Tim aka Tim Coburn, apparently knew none of these things.

On July 2nd in 2004 Teapot Tim from 99.5 WIHT-FM was the home of his station manager Jeff Wyatt in North Potomac, MD. Tim was known as a "stuntman" for their morning Zoo program "Hot Morning Mess."  TAs a stunt Tim had covered himself in foam padding and was encouraging listeners to set off fireworks off on him at around 8:30 PM. Inexplicably Tim was not injured, though that would have been very much deserved.

However another person suffered minors burns.  A good-Samaritan neighbor called 911.  Then the cops showed up. Fireworks are illegal in Montgomery County.  Three people were given citations for illegal possession and discharge of fireworks, as well as reckless endangerment. DCRTV reported that Tim was previously arrested in Manassas, VA for mooning motorists in an unrelated radio stunt. Tim quit the show in October of 2006 [LINK] The program was cancelled later that year.

STUPID DJ TRICKS: Part 28

In 2014 the radio station CKMP burned $5,000 CAD.  Responses ranged from outrage to disbelief. They were not the first to get a bit of press attention for burning money. In 1994 the band KLF burned one million British pounds. [LINK] Responses ranged from outrage to disbelief. In 1984, Serge Gainsbourg burned a 500 French franc note on national television (in France.) Responses ranged from outrage to disbelief.  There are other examples, but the reaction always ranges from outrage to disbelief. So there is some cultural context out there if you need it.

CKMP uniquely were only burning money as a part of an on-air publicity stunt. The contest was called “Bank It or Burn It.” Co-hosts Katie Summers and Ryan Lindsay asked listeners to weigh in through social media on whether the stacks of bills should go to a lucky listener or be immolated. The internet did exactly what you'd expect it to do. 54 percent of respondents answered with the hashtag “#BURN” via text. The CBC even reported on it here. More here.

Just to make sure they got the job done the duo used an actual crematory for the burn. The Pet Heaven Crematorium & Funeral Chapel of Calgary did the honors. Perhaps they were surprised, but they followed through on their promise.  Technically they were not breaking the law. Canadian law only protects coins from defacement, not paper notes. Regardless, responses predictably ranged from outrage to disbelief.

CKMP immediately began promoting their next round of Bank It or Burn It, with a 10k pile of Canadian banknotes. This time voted to give away $10,000 rather than torch it. But this time the voting was a bit more secretive. It seems probably the outcome was fixed this time and the trolls overruled. A $10,000 check was written to The Children’s Wish Foundation. Their Facebook and twitter posts were all taken down. The contest was never run again. More here.

Steamrolling Cat Stevens

 

Vinyl records have a reputation of being "unbreakable." When they were first manufactured this was actually advertised on several brands. In reality they're not impervious to damage, they scratch easily, and scuff but they don't crack or shatter without significant effort. Compared to shellac they're quite durable. It's no surprise then that destroying records has long been a radio stunt. The greatest of these was the infamous Disco Demolition Derby of 1979. But there have been some much more recent LP-destroying radio events. My favorite of these was Steamrolling Cat Stevens LPs at KFI-AM.Images of the event are hard to find. Here is one.

In 1989 radio show host, Tom Leykis drove a steamroller over a pile of about 200 records, tapes and CD by the recording artist known as Cat Stevens. Born Steven Demetre Georgiou, he began using the stage name Cat Stevens in 1966, at age 18. After his conversion to Islam in 1977 he adopted the name Yusuf Islam. Stevens attracted a bit of attention for himself  for made remarks that were deemed to be supporting the fatwa (death penalty) imposed on the author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses, first published in 1988.

If you don't remember, Stevens wasn't alone in condemning the book or the author... there were large-scale riots in several countries. On February 21st 1989,  in an address to students at Kingston University in London he said about Rushdie "He must be killed. The Koran makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." In America this went over like a lead brick and Stevens became a target of criticism. He tried to walk it back a bit but he was on the hook. More here.

Radio stations removed Cat Stevens records from their playlists some even announcing a "ban." But Tom Leykis, at KFI-AM went a step further. He put on a hardhat, and drove a steam roller over a pile of a couple hundred Cat Stevens albums. But Leykis isn't stupid, he was afraid of repercussions. He wore a bullet-proof vest and instead of staging a public event, he staged his record destruction privately at an "undisclosed site" in Compton, CA.  More here.

The event was presaged by  the departure of another KFI morning talk show host, Geoff Edwards who quit over the event which he said smacked of fascism. In the fall out Leykis admitted that it was just for attention, just another stupid DJ trick. He defended himself  with the explanation: "It's not the same as censorship at all. We don't say they should take the records off the shelves..." In 1992 The Los Angeles Times gave him a Hypocrite-of-the-Month award for his umbrage at censorship of the recording artist Ice T.

Long Story Short

Chuck Blore is a legend in radio. He spent time on KTKT-AM in Tucson, KELP-AM in El Paso, KTSA-AM in San Antonio, KFWB-AM in Los Angles  and notably on 630 KDWB-AM in Minneapolis. This video is Chuck Himself relaying the story of a prank advertising campaign he played on every other station on the Minneapolis radio dial in 1959. It has been called the grandest radio stunt ever perpetrated. Gavin named him Radio Man of the Year in 1961 and he struck out on his own and started an ad agency in 1963.

The Christmas Flip

 I've written a bit about Christmas seasonal programming in the past. but today I intend to reveal statistics about this evil scourge of radio.  the most recent count indicates that over 400 radio station sin the U.S. are running Christmas programming today.  That's a little under three percent. It doesn't sound like a lot, but there are under 300 Arbitron radio metros, meaning that many cities have two or more 24/7 Christmas formatted radio stations. that's a bit repulsive.  The debate has never been to flip or not to flip. The question is always when.We call the phenomena "Christmas creep."

Not all formats flip per se. Many formats ad a little mistletoe to the playlist as the holiday approaches, but there is a certain stable subset that goes all the way. This comes as a series of waves, each seemingly in response to the last. Adult Contemporary of all flavors stations make up the bulk of the ho-ho-ho.  A few Classic Hits, Adult Standards and Oldies stations follow, then at the end of November the Christian AC and Christian Contemporary stations go with the flow. The complaint for years is that it's happening earlier and earlier every year. Let's see if the math bears that out.
FORMAT  vs. QUANTITY

• AC                 25
• Adult Hits       1
• Christian        7
• Classic Hits    1
• News/Talk      1
• Oldies            5
• Smooth Jazz   1
• Soft AC          2
• Urban Oldies  1 

 I am taking the top 25 markets as a sample because sorting all 400+ Xmas stations is absurd. Below are all the Xmas stations in the top 25 metros. I know that requires the assumption that the top 25 metros are representative of the nation as a whole. I am willing to do that to avoid more math. I am also limiting my sample to stations that flip to 100% Kris Kringle. These stations more reliably make the flip giving me a better data set separate from all other variables. I have also merged Christian Con and Christian AC because I din't think the trades reliably distinguish between the formats, News and Talk get the same treatment as well. I'll follow the raw numbers with some pretty graphs I promise. This is only about 45 radio stations and more manageable. I have eliminated a few for not flipping consistently as they do not contribute data to trending in any direction. Because formats are not static, this is an expected anomaly in the data (see above).

I'm comparing 2003 through 2001 for no reason except those are the years that I have in my data set. And yes, I know that there are probably some errors in my data set. I am assuming further that we can discard outliers and press onward. In the final set I have 34 stations, and out of a churning 400 or so that's about a 8.5% sample... much better odds than they give medical research.(totals below)

I sumed the movement by year, then divided by the number of samples. In effect that averages annual change since 2003. Admittedly I have a much larger sample in the present than I have in the past, complicating matters, it sounds dubious but the trend line shows a pretty tepid trend that's believable.

Basically even the years with the largest samples still show negative motion, as in the flip occurring earlier than it did in prior years.The diminishing returns could be the earlier small sample set or that we have reached a point as which flipping earlier has an adverse effect on ratings. Ratings and profit ultimately drive these decisions. I'd like to discern the median flip date from each year and rerun this set of numbers as a double check... but I really don't expect a varying result. If you want to challenge me please feel free to use my raw data set. You can download it here.

KPWT FLIPS!

Stations flip format every day. Many of them stunt right before that format change. Stunts can be silly, inexplicable, esoteric, or even deceitful. 106.7 KPWT did a very traditional stunt: The count down clock. But as an added twist they did it on April first, the traditional day for fake format flips. This was no prank. This went on for almost a week. Here I edit together multiple clips from multiple days and cram it into 5 minutes of clicking and strange mechanized semi-ominous warnings.

Traditionally the count down clock runs for a whole 24-hour day. They ran it for 5 days, from April 1st to the 5th. Each day the message changed slightly. The whole shindig culminated in a impossible to ignore change of format for 106.7 in San Antonio. They dropped

This is not their first flip of course. Just last May, in 2009 KPWT began stunted Christmas music in their flip from News/Talk to Triple A. On the 20th they followed the flip up with a filed change of call letters from KPWT to KTKX.

Senator and DJ

I wrote a post about disgraced politicians moving into broadcasting. There have also been those who have made that transition in the other direction. There a good number that have tried and failed. Syndicated host Jerry Doyle lost a run for the House of representatives, and more notably in 1994 when Howard Stern ran for Governor of New York. Of course with any on-air talent the question remains if it's a run for office or a publicity stunt. Just to prove it's possible. Here are three radio people that became senators with success and without disgrace.

1. Senator Nancy Kassebaum [R] Kansas was VP of KFH Co in Wichita. In 1978 she beat out 8 candidates and took the Republican senatorial nomination and won the election over Bill Roy [D]. Her husband J. Phillip Kassebaum owns KFH-AM and KBRA-FM. Her father Alf Landon owned at the time KEDD-AM, KSCB-AM, amd KIIX-AM, KTCL-FM, and WREN-AM. After serving 19 years in the Senate she opted not to seek reelection in 1996.

2. Senator Walter D. Huddleston [D] was once the manager of WIEL-AM in Elizabethtown KY, and co-owner of WLBN-AM. In 1964 he ran for a seat on the Kentucky State senate and won. In 1972 he made a move for a vacated seat in the U.S. Senate defeating Republican Louie B. Nunn. He lost the seat in 1984 by less then 1 percentage point.

3. Senator Al Franken [D] In 2004 Al Franken because a genuine radio show host. His program on Air America ran 3 hours a day, Monday thru Friday for 3 years. When he left the network in 2007, he anounced his intent to run for Senate on his final show. He won that election by a small margin of about 215 votes but has yet to be seated due to Republican stalling tactics. I wont let that exclude him here.

*Senator Jesse Helms [R] was formerly executive VP of WRAL-TV but that's TV. That doesn't count on this blog.
* Image from Scecon

200 hours of Peter Tripp

On January 20th of 1959 DJ Peter Tripp host of "Your Hits of the Week" launched a wake-a-thon for the American March of Dimes. Not a walk-a-thon, a wake-a-thon. He stayed awake and on air for 200 hours. Trip was at 1050 WMGM from 1955 to 1959 and was a nationally known top-40 DJ. He had worked at KUDL, WHB and spent more than a few years at WEXL More here, and here.

To keep the attempt honest, and to get attention to the cause WMGM erected a transparent broadcastbooth in Times Square. There, any New Yorker could watch. At the time it was the longest period without sleep on record. There was both a morbid and a genuine medical interest in the attempt. For Tripp the stunt was partly for charity and partly to help his career. He was entangled in the same payola scandal that was killing Alan Freed. Peretz Lavie described the event in his book The Enchanted World of Sleep.

"Only toward the end did he begin to show signs of behavioral deterioration when, during the night clear signs of psychosis accompanied by hallucinations appeared. Trip began to suspect people were drugging his food in order to make him fall asleep."

The experiment got ugly. WMGM hired Psychologists to monitor him. The took daily poloroid pictures of him. They examined him, weighed him, took his temperature and watched him even in the bathroom. WMGM staff hounded him all the way to the toilet to make sure he stayed awake. His body temp began to drop and he was clearly getting paranoid. He ran into the street on the 4th day and was chased by staff, tackled and dragged back into the studio. He still had 4 days to go. This descent is detailed in the documentary Secrets of Sleep.




He heard voices, he hallucinated and on the last day they attached electrodes to his head and monitored his brain waves. They detected REM-like phases in his wakeful brain. He was essentially insane at this point. Despite actual diagnosed psychosis, he was still able to to his show, which amazed pretty much everyone. The problem was that by now, he actually thought he was not Peter Tripp, just an imposter. Life Magazine showed up to photograph the now psychotic DJ.

He stayed awake a total of 201 hours and slept for 24 hours afterwards. He had permanent personality changes that led to his eventual divorce. Tripp was still indicted by the DOJ only weeks after his stunt and accused of taking $36,050 in payola. He was found guilty and fined $500 and given a six-month suspended sentence. He fought with his PD at WMGM and was fired in 1960. He tried again at KYA in San Francisco, and again at KGJF in L.A. but it was over. His third attempt at WOHO in Toledo was just sad. He marketed exercise products and retired to palm Springs. He died in 2000 of a stroke at the age of 73.

***************UPDATE***************

I've compiled a list of all known DJ "stay-awake" marathons. 
Mr. Tripp is not the present champion. 
I've posted the list HERE!

KBDS goes dark

"Go dark" is the terminology that we use in radio to describe when a station shuts down. It's not for electrical problems, or a flip, stunt or move, it's strictly for stations that have wither run out of cash to operate, or have had their license canceled. A number of stations have gone dark this year. Times are tough. But November 14th KBDS went dark. Below is audio the sign off.


Under the brand "Play 103.9" the Radio Campensina company brought a CHR/Rhythmic to Bakersfield, California. Strangely the sign off was entered into their Wikipedia profile the day prior.
Normally I'd be more sympathetic, but this is the same station that in 2005 was sued for a bait-and-switch contest. Contest winner, Shannon Castillo, was told she had won a new Hummer H2. When she arrived to claim her prize, she was instead given a remote-controlled model. KBDS DJs followed this up by repeatedly mocking her on air. They've also received a number of FCC fines for EAS violations.

Branding for sale

Fybush tipped us off to what might be a horrific new trend in radio branding. The idea is revolting, truly heinous even by the standards of the biz. In addition to selling product placement, endorsements, sporsorships, ads, mentions, flickers, blips, spots, live reads and placements we can now sell the brand itself. Somone please stop us.


Clear Channel like many obese radio chains has been in hot pursuit of Non-traditional revenue sources. As a matter of fact, Google that Phrase and see how many radio services pop up. It's a sign of the epidemic.


So CC's Rochester cluster has been trying some very new non-traditional revenue sources on 107.3 WCRR a tiny class A in South Bristol Township. the station is to the distant south of Rochester, almost audible in Corning, NY. It's spent most of this summer as "Labatt Blue Country 107.3," having co-opted it's own branding in the name of a beer sponsor. I cant decide if this is a money maker or just sad. I 'm leaning toward sad. http://www.mycountryfm.com/


Their low standards became evident last year when they stunted with the "Wheel Of Formats." Durring the stunt they used the brand "Huge 107.3" co-branding with a local automobile dealership. After six days of thsi horror the wheel stopped on CHR/Pop. Gag.

Way back in the 1950s WCRR (as WVBT) they were a part of the Rural Radio Network. It was the first all radio, no wireline radio network in the world. It was meant to serve the agricultural areas of upstate New York. It was broken up and sold off in the early 1980s. More on that tomorrow.

For the record, WCRR-FM has relation to college radio 1600 WCRR-AM http://wcrr.fit.edu/

Radio Station Drops Car From Helicopter

As I keep up on my radio news I begin to think that my week of "Stupid DJ tricks" posts could have been a blog in its own right. He's somthign a little more recent. The Chicago radio station WLUP staged an innovative stunt. After a century of ADD at the mic it's hard to innovate.

DJ Jonathon Brandmeier has always been a ham. Superman costumes, crashing thru video screens, mooning audiences... He's a peopel person. But he set up a great stunt a coupel months back/ At Tinley Park he wanted to do a car drop.

Here's how it works. A vehicle is suspended from a helicopter, about 500 feet up. Then dropped onto a numbered grid in a parking lot. The contestant whose number was hit by the falling Volvo is in line to win a new Hummer H3, according to the contest rules. The game was kind of like cow-chip bingo without the suspense or the stool softener.

We interrupt this demodulation

First of all I want to point out that I predicted this format wouldn't last in Philly given the demographics. But this isn't about bragging. I wanted to point out how artful their very breif transition was. They faded out a tropical latin song and then dropped about 10 seconds fo silence. Then the breaker. Divshare is fucking up today. Trying Zshare... http://www.zshare.net/audio/wuba2-mp3.html

Notice how it emulates Am interference, advertisements from 20 years ago, the song selection for the first track... I've seen statiosn stunt for weeks on an impending format -total overkill. This was graceful, sleek and simple. Good job boys.

Of course this is a hot topic today:
http://carnyfeet.blogspot.com/2007/05/1045-flips-to-alt-rock.html

http://www.thirteen.org/blogs/index.php?itemid=152

http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=407887

KHAT on a flag pole

Flag pole sitting is an American tradition. For the most part Flag pole sitting died out in popularity in the late 1930s. It had peaked with the extreme stunts of Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly. In 1924, Alvin went to Atlantic City and sat atop a flagpole for a record 49 days. 20,000 easily entertained people watched.

Radio of course has always had trouble letting a joke die. We drag that crap out forever squeezing out every possible guffaw until it's desperate and painful to listen. So it came to pass that 20 years after the joke was a dead horse, KHAT radio personality Roller rehashed it. the year was 1958 and he spent 211 days and 23 hours sitting on a flagpole at a Ford car dealership in downtown Phoenix. His twist on the crank move? It was in a Ford Fairlane mounted atop the pole.

It was dumb enough that area rockabilly artist Al Casey cut a song about it. Casey never became a big name, I think his career peak were his few TV seasons playing in the studio band on Dean Martin's NBC variety show. His local fame really comes from his time in The Sunset Riders, the then house band for KRUX disc jockey Ray Odom on his Arizona Hayride shows.




KHAT was a relatively new station at the time having only signed on in the late 1950s as a daytimer. They played country music well into the1970s when they killed it for news/talk as KPHX. N?T didn't stick for them (like many daytimers) So about a year later they went Regional Mexican. In 1982 they got a repreive from the FCC and were allowed to begin night-time operation at a reduced wattage, directional. they run Air America these day harkening back to their breif mid 70's News stint. http://www.1480kphx.com/

Mope-itty mope mope de mope mope

It was utterly senseless. Stunts are absurd at times, some completely obtuse. But this is one for the annals of the great book of radio strangeness.

For three days XETRA-AM the Mighty 690 of Tijuana (but serving greater San Diego and far far beyond) played a 3-second sample of the chorus of a single song non-stop. The lyric was "Mope-itty Mope de mope mope mope" Yes, it was utter gibberish.



The song was by the Boss-Tones a Philadelphia-baseed Doo-wop troupe. The song was released on the Boss label in two years prior to the stunt.

The year was 1961. The Mighty 690, being licensed in Mexico was running at a truly tremendous wattage for it's day: 100,000 watts ERP. They covered the Western half of the United States and ran a popular rock format. In those days before the dominance of FM they were a big deal. They maintained a downtown LA studio,and ruled the waves in a way in which no US transmitter could hope to compete.

They run News/Talk these days and bore me to tears: http://www.wradiousa.com/

KDND Radio Kills!

On one side I hate posting about current events in radio. on the other side I enjoy seeing new relevance in old posts. By now you've all heard about the woman who competed the KDND contest and died. Ironicly their brand name is "the End"

The goal of the contest was to see how much water a contestant could drink without going to the bathroom. As any kid who passed biology could tell you: water can kill you. So in fact a young lady, Jennifer Strange died of water intoxication.

If you've not read about it, I know you can purchase audio from the event from http://www.mediaguide.com

In remembering the base stupidity of the average morning DJ please revisit my STUPID DJ TRICKS series at the links below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The Mystery Announcer

Frank Knight was a producer at KCBS, and his name back in the day was usually attached to Jack Benny. He was the voice of the the CBS network, But initially he was brought in as a MYSTERY ANNOUNCER... http://members.aol.com/jeff560/cbs.html

It was a clever stunt, one that worked when there were still only half a dozen staitons to listen to. The gig was like this "A new personality will make its debut before the millions of Radio's audience with the opening program in the person of a man whose identity will be concealed behind a black mask and who will be known only as The Voice of Columbia."

The Voice of Columbia was a discovery of Major White's. White was fooling around with a studio mic one night and notice that produce Frank Knight had the pipes for radio. The Major decided that the witty and affable Frankie needed to be moved to the other side of the mic. In the end, the mystery-man gimmick was dropped quickly to little fanfare. The "Voice of Columbia" became simply Frank Knight.

Frank became an archetype of hosting. his ch mature, grave, slow-spoken style and professional look like a doctors, lawyer or bankers was just a part of the golden age of radio. It is emulated to this day.

His voice is on almost every WWII era music collection. If you own a music or radio program collection from WWI or D-Day themed or the semi-famous program Chronoscope, Remember the Golden Days of Radio, Vol. 1 -7 , The Victory Collection or pretty much any live radio revival programs... (Like this one.) You've heard Frank Knight.

KFYE makes a big change

This was just silly. Even Howard Stern couldn't have porn radio. But KFYE stunted it for a coupel weeks for a specific purpose. To offend and eliminate their current audience, and try to find a new one.

In Kingsburg California on 7/18/06 KFYE dropped it's Christian music format: the Christian music, the sermons and the Bible recitations were all gone. Then the porn format started. The brand name is actually "Porn Radio" the slogan: "all sex radio, all the time"

The playlist stick to that as much as possible using suggestive titles and lyrics including "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" by The Beatles, "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye and "Nasty" by Janet Jackson. Tamer songs are heated up by adding recorded moans and groans!

But it's a stunt, never intended to be a long-runnign format. KFYE was only playing songs in a continuous one-hour loop without advertisements. At the time PD Clifton wouldn't admit that it was a stunt, but it was pretty obvious. They dropped it about five weeks later for a very reserved Hot AC format.

Stunting Part 2

I've discussed stunting before. But in my research I found an outrageous example of a station that perhaps doth stunt too much...

WPUR - 107.3 FM, Atlantic City107.3 was granted the WZZP calls on March 17, 1997 and went on the air in February 1998, with what has to be one of the strangest sign-ons in history:

WZZP signed on with a test broadcast featuring 20 songs, a mix of classic rock, oldies and newer songs.This test broadcast was erratic, mostly heard on weekends, through March 17, 1998.Then on April 9 and 10, 1998, WZZP broadcast a mix of country songs.

And then later on April 10 and going into April 11, we were inundated with hearing the song "Tubthumping" by the group Chumbawumpa over and over.

April 12 to April 14 brought another stunt, this time all classic rock songs, as "ZZ-107."

April 14 to April 17, CHR was featured, with ID's only saying "107.3."
April 17 to April 25, when more CHR songs were added to the playlist and ID's were now "ZZ-107 The Zipper."
April 25, -June 29.. (a two month stunt!) 1998, "Fun 107" and a Rhythmic CHR format,
June 29, 1998, the real format finally debuted: "Cat Country 107.3".

The calls officially changed to WPUR on July 20, 1998.Interestingly enough, during the time the "Fun 107" stunt was on the air, it garnered a 2.0 in the Spring 1998 Arbitrons!

Stupid DJ Tricks Part 5

Naked DJs on the highway, DJs parachuting, Djs leveling death threats.. where does it all end? It never does end, DJs are continually crying out for more attention. Installment five is not the topper; it just has the best nicknames.

It was in Jacksonville, North Carolina on the Northern edge of the Wilmington market. On August 1, 2003 this Dj went door to door... naked. (I dont know about you, but I'd call the cops)

Shock Jock "Fat Boy" from WXQR 105.5 sent his sidekick, a show member known as "Waffleman" covered in mud to ring doorsbells at the homes of rich folks, requesting permission to use their shower. as you might expect, the cops were called numerous times and residents complained a lot.

WXQR did make the gesture of offering to suspend Fat Boy and Waffleman, but Fat Boy opted to resign. The fate of Waffleman is currently unknown.