telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/09/89)
Reaching your favorite deejay in Chicago is now more graphic, and even a bit obscene, according to Katherine Seigenthaler, writing in the [Chicago Tribune] on June 20, 1989. Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, disk-jockey hosts of a popular afternoon radio show on WLUP-AM (1000 kc) in Chicago now have a fax machine in their studio to accept comments and other items from listeners. In the past, the only way to get through to them was by managing to break through WLUP's jammed phone lines. But technology, like time, marches on, and radio audiences can now use fax machines to communicate with these two fellows and other radio personalities. The fax machine in their studio operates almost continually all day. Every few minutes, something new comes through. While some of it is usable on the air, much of it is unsavory, and best used for a private laugh in the studio, with only a brief (and cleaned up) mention on the air. One WLUP disk jockey is Rob Lowe. Someone sends a fax which has altered the spelling of his name with unwholesome results. The very next item to arrive is a lewd cartoon featuring a pig and a chicken. Rick Kaempfer, producer of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier's afternoon radio show said, "We get a lot of things that people are afraid to say themselves, but they fax it hoping that Steve or Gary will talk about it on their show. Frankly, much of it is so lewd there is no way we can clean it up well enough to use over the air. It is funny though." Kaempfer claims Dahl and Meier were the first to incorporate a fax machine into their on-air schtick, and they have been giving the fax number to listeners for at least a year. But according to Brian Kelly, program director at station WLS (890 kc), his station was the first to have an *in-studio* fax machine. WLS, like competitor WLUP, welcomes the frivilous, and the more-so the better. Both stations invite people to 'Fax your face' to the station, so the deejay's can describe you to the listeners. People are to make a copy of their face on the office copy machine, then fax the copy to the station. Kelly noted that "...faces are not the only body parts they fax to us. They actually put the naked part of the body on the copy machine, and then fax the results to us. We've gotten enough body parts to make a complete person, although we have a big overstock of certain parts. I guess they think it will shock us." WLS' midday deejay, Doug Blair, is by far the most fax-infested at that station because the vast majority of fax-ers work 9 AM to 5 PM, in offices where fax machines are available and the employees obviously are not kept busy enough and have idle time to create mischief. Indeed, the dawning of radio's fax era has updated, but hardly altered, the time-honored practice of goofing off at the office when your supervisor is not watching. In a less state-of-the-art era, the average employee pretended frantically to be calling a client when, in truth, he was hoping to be the lucky 'caller number ten' in the radio station's cash giveaway contest. Today, that same employee stands at the office fax machine, ostensibly sending a copy of that important report off to the client. After looking around furtively to make sure the supervisor is elsewhere, he in fact sends an obscene joke to Dahl and Meier, hoping they will read it over the radio, or else a copy of that picture he made on the copy machine the night before, after everyone had left the office but he '..stayed late to finish that urgent report...'
dkrause@orion.cf.uci.edu (Doug Krause) (07/10/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0228m02@vector.dallas.tx.us> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, disk-jockey hosts of a popular afternoon radio >show on WLUP-AM (1000 kc) in Chicago now have a fax machine in their studio >to accept comments and other items from listeners. Ken Minyard and Bob Arthur of the Ken and Bob Company (KABC, Los Angeles) have a fax club. Companies send in a fax application and then every day Ken and Bob pull a name and somebody at the company has 30 minutes to fax in a response. If they make it they get 6 EGBOK (everything's gonna be ok) mugs and put in a drawing. On Friday one name is drawn from the week's winners and the employees of the company get a catered lunch. Douglas Krause CA Prop i: Ban Gummie Bears(tm)! -------------------------------------------------------------------- University of California, Irvine ARPANET: dkrause@orion.cf.uci.edu Welcome to Irvine, Yuppieland USA BITNET: DJKrause@ucivmsa