MOVING IN STEREO

WICKED GAME

"The world was on fire, and no one could save me but you. It's strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you. No, I don't wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I don't wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
With you
With you"

Wicked Game

Chris Isaak

It was the week of Christmas. I was still working at WCTZ but on the morning drive shift from five am until Noon. Better money, much busier routine. Overnight I was often the only person at the station. Even when the station had live traffic, weather, and news reports, other people were usually in another studio, sometimes on another floor. In my cans (head-phones), I rarely had more than one voice in my head. Each earpiece on my cans was capable of taking four different channels. I would come in for my shift in the evening, plug into the board, and control the station. It sounds so much more critical than it truly is. I will explain.

Jacor was the company that owned the station. They were a reasonably large but independent communications company that remained unaffiliated with any major network. Their stations were mainly AM and carried independent shows, used local talent, and bought feed from nationally syndicated shows only to fill popular or low volume time slots. It was a business model that worked very well. In Atlanta, if you tuned in, you would hear a local news talk jockey in the morning drive slot. He or she would pass the next time slot, pre-lunch, to another local host to do topical discussions, politics, current events, whatever. It changed market to market. The lunch slot was twelve to three and, for the most part, was produced by a syndicated feed from a private network; think Rush Limbaugh as he was the heavy hitter for years, like him or not. At any given moment during his three-hour broadcast, his show could boast a minimum of over a million listeners.  No one else could come near that.  The afternoon drive was usually a local host, followed by the news for an hour. Then the evening shows came on from seven to ten and ten to one in the morning. Those shows would be a toss-up between local talent and live feeds. The overnight slot was owned by one show, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell et al. He was to overnight radio what Rush Limbaugh was to daytime talk. Coast was all paranormal, aliens, conspiracies, and such.  I loved running the overnight board mainly because of that show.  Wash, rinse, and repeat.  

So overnight, I had a live feed to contend with and the occasional talent to patch in and out to do their live spots as the clock dictated. I called most news and weather reports myself, potting up my mic as needed. I could call the breaks, even squeeze in an extra commercial because I could hear the live feed in one ear and knew precisely when I had to return to live air. The upper management loved it when I spotted extra commercials. During the morning drive, my ears were filled with a cacophony. There were often three to five voices speaking in my cans, sometimes to me, sometimes not.  I had to bring each segment (news, traffic helicopter, weather, and sports)  to the station's live feed and be Johnny-on-the-spot about it.  It took some getting used to patch it all together correctly. I had it, though, and I enjoyed the work more and more. I worked with two fantastic on-air talents, the morning drive newsman, King Hughes, and the pre-lunch host Zach Wylder.

Those two men were standing right beside me when I discovered the doors to our live studio were locked.   A handwritten sign greeted us that the station was now owned and operated by Air Channel, and all non-authorized personnel was prohibited from admission.  Air Channel was a vast nationwide network intent on syndicating nearly every show before the listener's ears. No more local hosting.  Listeners were fed a steady stream of pablum from their syndicated overlords.  The network's reach was far and wide and would not include us as of that morning. Unfortunately, that sort of change over in the broadcasting business is not unusual.