The Dream, Revisited

I’ve written before about a phenomenon that has been experienced by most of us who have done radio gigs; “the song is running out and I have nothing ready to go on the air” dream. It usually happens about a year or so after doing your last live show.

I first experienced that dream back in the 80s while working at South Carolina Educational Television having done my last live show while I was at WIS Radio in the late 70s. I was the “Chief Engineer” they call them “Broadcast Technicians” now, for the station and would fill in on the air whenever the program director ran into a staffing problem and needed a warm body to sit in the air chair.

My “dream” back then was pretty much a standard version of the recurring DJ nightmare of having to ad-lib while frantically searching for the next cart or cueing up the next record. In my dream, the record was always an album and the track I needed was never the first one on the side. This meant having to turn my head away from the microphone in order to land the needle on the groove between two songs. This meant either having what we called dead air, that is nothing on the air for the few moments while the needle was dropped onto the spinning 33 1/3 RPM vinyl disk. Or talking way “off mike” while accomplishing the needle drop. Babbling was more like what happened because it was difficult to be urbane and witty while sighting down the groove. Either way it was embarrassing. To make matters worse, in my dream, my boss, the program director was always sitting in the production studio looking at me through the glass as if to say; “Just what in the heck are you doing!” Those are not the words that he utters in my dream but you get the idea.

After about a dozen years, the dream disappeared completely. I thought I was out of the woods. Nothing could have been farther from the truth! That nightmare would come back, or at least its spawn would bring the night sweats.

It was technology that changed the dream. We no longer queued records up on turn tables. Jingles and commercials and in some cases even the songs were served up to us from the automation in DJ assist mode. Sometimes we didn’t even have to push a button to start the next event. Easy peasy! My case was a little more complicated in that I bring my oldies into the studio on a laptop that I open up on the copy stand that sits over the console. Like the sheriff wearing a white hat and slinging two six guns; I have my Sennheizer headphones and handle two computer mice, one on either side of the board, to blast away my 45’s. To be completely honest, there are three computers and three mice; the third is a Mini-Mac that I use to get the weather and to look up details that I can’t quite remember about artists and songs. So getting things ready for the next break in the tunes would take much less time than it did back in the day. I say would because there is a new task. The artists and the names of their songs have to be keyed into a program called Tre-Cast. Tre-Cast sends this information to three places; 1) the music log so we can pay the royalties on the song, 2) Radio Data Service (RDS) so that those of you with compatible radios can see the song information on the face of your receivers and 3) to the list of recently played songs on the station’s Web page.

So during a show, there is a lot to be done while the record is playing. Adding to that is answering the studio telephone line and checking Facebook for requests. Busy time – but with different technology. This gives rise to the “new and improved” DJ recurring nightmare that I’ve been experiencing the past couple of years.

I’m walking into the control room to do my first show at the station. I sit down in the air chair and look at the audio board for the first time. OMG, it’s the size of a pack of cigarettes, with buttons way to small for my fingers to operate. The DJ in front of me runs through the operation of the board in less than a minute pointing out the different controls calling them who knows what in some kind of foreign language. Then “poof” he’s out the door.

There I am, watching in horror as the song is fading out. Nothing queued up. I can’t even find the media player or automation where the next song, jingle or commercial is and I’m about to make my debut on air on this new station sounding like a complete buffoon.

Oh yeah, one more thing, my new boss, the program director, they call them operation managers these days is sitting in the production studio listening and looking at me like “Oh MAN! Did I make a mistake hiring this guy!” as she slowly shakes her head in disbelief.

I’ve been told that this dream is a variation of the “frustration dream” that we all experience. You know like you are searching all over campus for the location of that final exam that you have not studied for as the time for that exam approaches.

Last month I began my 30th consecutive semester doing weekly shows at WUSC-FM. It’s hard to believe that all started ten years ago this coming January. Actually that’s ten years on every Monday morning, since 2007 I’ve been filling in during holidays and semester breaks. It feels good to give back to the place where I got my radio and television career started. Radio is in my blood and it’s worth an occasional nightmare. I wonder what the next twist to “The DJ Dream” will be. Oh MY!