(Courtesy of the FEN news group: One of those nostalgic things going around. I do, in fact, have scars on my fingers from miscalculated cuts, while editing audio tape with a razor blade. Just call me Miss Butterfingers)
– You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before becoming GM.
– Radio stations were no place for kids.
– 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.
– 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.
– 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.
– Engineers always had the worst body odor, not because they worked too hard, but because they just didn’t shower that often.
– You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape.
– Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given time, and still made money.
– You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer – – just in case.
– You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be back in 2:50 for the segue.
– You knew exactly where to put the tone on the end of a carted song.
– You only did “make- goods” if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?
– You can remember the name of the very first “girl” that was hired in your market as a 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.
– You always had a screwdriver in the studio so you could take a fouled-up cart apart at a moment’s notice.
– You always had a solution for an LP that ‘skipped’. (usually a paper clip or a dime on the tone-arm, somewhere)
– You would spend hours splicing and editing a parody tape until it was “just right”, but didn’t care how bad that commercial was you recorded.
– You still refer to CDs as “records”. (really old hands refer to them as ET, or electrical transcriptions)
– You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits.
– 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, or that tornado warning?
– You knew how to change the ribbon on the Teletype machine, but you hated to do it because “…that’s the news guy’s job.”
– You know at least 2 people in sales that take credit for you keeping your job.
– You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your basement that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you’ll never throw them out or tape over them. Never!
– You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using a razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra long cotton swab on a wooden stick.
– You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. (I have nightmares about the various players not working, or the control board has magically reconfigured itself)
– You’ve ever told a listener “Yeah.I’ll get that right on for you.”
– You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with corroded batteries inside them.
– People who ride in your car exclaim, “Why is your radio so loud?”
– You remember when promotion men brought new LPs to the station – and you played them the same day.
– You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people whom you haven’t seen since, and wouldn’t know you today if you bit ’em on the ass.
– You wish you could have been on “Name That Tune” because you would have won a million bucks.
– You even REMEMBER “Name That Tune”.
– You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the directions you received from the sales person.
– You’ve run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin.
– You remember when people actually thought radio was important.
