Number Ones at One

John Gallagher

Hey my fellow radiophiles, and you KNOW who you are ..here's a bit I did recently on AM740 that I got alot of feedback on. It begs repeating. You Know You've Been in Radio Too Long If... and since I started radio in my mid-teens in 1977 ..well.. enjoy ! You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of "dead air" on the competitor's station. Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor. You were playing Elvis' number-one hits when he was alive. Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the manufacturer. You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it. You remember when normal people listened to AM radio, and only "hippies" listened to FM. Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball team every summer. You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared. You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape. You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer - - just in case. You know people who actually listened to baseball games on the radio. You spent most of the time on Friday nights giving out the high school football scores. And when they weren't phoned-in, you got really pissed off. I've DONE that ...really ! You never thought twice about drinking from the same bottle with another DJ. Somebody would say, "You have a face for radio", and it was still funny. Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it. The only interaction between you and someone else prior to bedtime is, "Thank you. Please pull ahead to the second window." Your family thinks you're successful, but you know better. You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits. You've been married at least 3 times, or, never married at all. You answer your home phone with the station call letters. You used to fight with the news guy over air-time. After all, what was more important: your joke about your ex-wife, or that tornado warning? You know at least 3 people in sales who take credit for you keeping your job. You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your closet that you wouldn't dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you'll never throw them out or tape over them. Never! You still have nightmares of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. You run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin. Huh ? All this is so true. best JFK Gallagher