got a few calls while at the station on saturday
[another of yesterday's emails to the Russian. my show's been on friday evenings this summer. i was at the station on saturday for staffing hours, engineering a sports broadcast. we were supposed to air both a home volleyball game and an away football game, but there were some shenanigans with media access at the foreign football field, so instead of broadcasting the game, we instead played a 'this is why we're not airing the game and here's who you should call to complain' PSA about once per hour. and i ended up staying way later than i'd intended because, though there was supposed to be a music show directly after the sports game, those deejays did not show up, so i kept things running until the midnight crew arrived.]
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one call was from a fellow looking for the blues guy. (he actually called twice. i told him to try again on monday.) one was from a fellow who commented that i was playing very chill music. (that was after the game, when i was trying to fill the gap left by the two guys who hadn't shown up, who were supposed to play an electronic music show--techno, trance, whatever.) two were from guys wondering where they could tune in to hear the football game. the second of these fellows was very polite. unfortunately, i was in the middle of trying to run the music show when he called (t'was a very seat-of-the-pants affair, partly because i know next to nothing about techno music and its offshoots) and so i gave him what info i remembered--that the broadcast was on AM--and suggested he google it if he had access to a computer.
the first guy called during the volleyball broadcast. he started off "I am a three-time graduate of [this university] and I've called [the other university] to complain about the media thing and blahbhlahblah something I don't know why you can't take it upon yourselves as a radio station--"
and there i had to interrupt him because the other line was ringing (t'was the fellow who was trying to get hold of the blues guy). i meant to put the three-time university grad on hold, but i think i accidentally hung up on him instead. he called back, started his speech over again, then complained that he was in his car and didn't have access to a computer and wouldn't for a while and offered his opinion that we hadn't told our listeners where they could hear the game because we were selfish liberals. i responded that i wasn't a member of the sports department and it wasn't my job to have sports broadcast information [for other stations!] at hand, but then the customer service gene kicked in and i googled it for him.
he then went on to complain about the electronic music show that had been on before the volleyball game, commenting that he didn't know why we insisted on playing this "thump music" all the time, then proceeded to demonstrate how annoying it was to listen to by saying "thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump" over and over again. it occurred to me then that this might be the same guy who called in last year or a couple of years ago, during an electronic music show, to complain about the dj playing all that "negro thump music".
i [politely] mentioned that i had other things to do and he hung up with surprisingly little protest. and, thankfully, didn't call back when i started playing the thump music myownself. perhaps he'd found the football broadcast by then.
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