{"id":13663,"date":"2012-12-18T00:01:47","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T08:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/?p=13663"},"modified":"2012-12-18T00:03:16","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T08:03:16","slug":"my-first-day-as-a-radio-dj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/my-first-day-as-a-radio-dj\/","title":{"rendered":"MY FIRST DAY AS A RADIO DJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some things they don\u2019t prepare you for in radio school.<\/span><\/p>\n

I traveled from Los Angeles to a tiny town in Virginia for my first radio job as a disc jockey.<\/span><\/p>\n

My first day on the air was a Saturday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The jock before me split as soon as I cracked the mic, and I was alone in the building.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first hour went pretty well. I didn\u2019t \u201cwow\u201d any records. There was no noticeable dead air.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, from inside the studio, I began to hear a competing radio station.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not talking about some annoying RF interference. I mean another radio station was blaring from a speaker in the on-air studio.<\/span><\/p>\n

You see, in the United States we had something called the Emergency Broadcast System<\/a> (EBS). Within each county, one station was designated the EBS station. In case of emergency, everyone was supposed to tune to that one station while the others suspended their regular programming.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, it was kind of cool. We had a sealed envelope with the secret authorization password and everything. (Just like in FAIL-SAFE.)<\/em> It was begun during the Cold War, and fortunately it never needed to be employed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our studio (and I guess all stations\u2019 studios) was equipped with an EBS monitor. I was hearing our local EBS station through the monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Four things you need to know about that EBS monitor:<\/span><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> It had no \u201coff\u201d switch.<\/span><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> It had no volume control.<\/span><\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> It was hard-wired into the circuitry.<\/span><\/p>\n

And most importantly:<\/span><\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> It did not mute when I opened the studio microphone.<\/span><\/p>\n

So for the rest of my show, every time I cracked the mic to read a live radio commercial<\/a>, spot tag, public service announcement, news, etc\u2026.My audience heard a tinny version of the \u201cbig\u201d station 15 miles away, through the EBS speaker and into my microphone.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a less than glorious start to my career.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I write this, suddenly I\u2019m visited by the long-buried memory of returning to my new apartment in that tiny town, filled with despair and thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve made a terrible mistake. I\u2019ll never be able to do this.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But tomorrow was going to be another working day, so I tried to get some rest.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things they don\u2019t prepare you for in radio school. I traveled from Los Angeles to a tiny town in Virginia for my first radio job as a disc jockey. My first day on the air was a Saturday. The jock before me split as soon as I cracked the mic, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"yoast_head":"\nMY FIRST DAY AS A RADIO DJ - DAN O\u2019DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/my-first-day-as-a-radio-dj\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MY FIRST DAY AS A RADIO DJ - DAN O\u2019DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are some things they don\u2019t prepare you for in radio school. 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