Papa’s Basement 10-31-09 – The Halloween Show
The gang talks about its worst Halloween experiences and John remembers long-repressed memories. Later, Rich plays a mix CD made for him by a man that was sexually attracted to […]
For those that know me, I bitch a lot about my various jobs in radio. Which is fair, given the industry is dying, I’m barely on the air and my salary stands somewhere in between getting paid in Chuck E. Cheese tokens and IOU notes for 40 acres and a mule. But there is one thing that you would never hear me complain about: all the free crap that sponsors give to a radio station that trickles down to even the lowliest of peons that work there. That is, until now.
Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, I’m not talking about any of the stations I work for receiving payola (for those of you not familiar with the concept of payola, it was the illegal practice of record execs paying DJs in concert tickets, cash or piles of cocaine the size of a whale fetus to put shit like “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” on the air 14 times a day. Oh, to have been a DJ back in those halcyon days. But I digress). Usually, when a sponsor signs on with a station, they like to give a few freebies to the entire station staff as a thank you. Which is perfectly legal and brutally effective given that everyone else in radio is also semi-broke. Every time any free food is dropped into the middle of a station, watch out: People come running faster than the zombies in 28 Days Later. A UN aid package could be air-dropped into the middle of downtown Mogadishu and the Somalis would show more restraint than DJs greeted with a free bucket of day-old KFC.
A perfect example is the time Frank’s Redhot shipped a pallet of mini-bottles over to WTOP. There must have been 100 mini-bottles of Redhot in the case, but they were all gone within an hour, squirreled away by every employee that was lucky enough to be working that midday shift (mind you there were 30 people, max, in the station at the time). Sure, people love Redhot, but the fact it was free was the deal-sealer. For the next two weeks, people were seen dumping Redhot on every meal they ate within the confines of the station and loving every minute of it. If I’d caught someone sticking a straw in the top of a bottle of Redhot and drinking it like a goddamn V-8, I wouldn’t have flinched. Even now, a year later, I will stumble upon a hidden stash of Redhot bottles while hunting for utensils in the kitchen now and again and get reminded that, at his core, man is a feral beast. A feral beast that loves diarrhea-inducing spice-water.
A fully functional George Lopez mini-water cooler. What the hell can a radio station do with that? TBS could have better spent their money shipping life-sized chocolate statues of George Lopez forcing himself upon the Virgin Mother. Trust me, broadcasters would have found it far less offensive than an inedible gift. Rather than junk the thing after taking it home to write about it, I decided to use it as a water dispenser for my cat’s water dish. She seems to have gotten used to it next to her food area, so I guess the story has a happy ending, after all. But remember, if you ever want to get in good with a radio station, GIVE THEM SOMETHING THEY CAN EAT!
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