You Don't Say

What's in a word? Well, plenty if it's uttered over the public airwaves.

I continue to work in broadcasting and though no longer on the air, most of my career has been spent behind the microphone. At times, I was pretty good too. And while in real life I don't always know when to shut up, on the air I was usually able to stick to the 30 second/one thought rule: one topic per break and keep it half a minute or less. But there are two things even the dumbest of announcers should know: at all times in a control room, watch what you say when the mic is off, and watch what you say when its on.

Surprisingly, these are not always easy lessons learned.

During the summer of 1983, I was working at KKPL, Apple-FM, in Spokane. Apple-FM played a broad mix of Top 40 type music and one of the popular songs at the time was the theme from the movie, "Flashdance"'. "What a Feeling", by Irene Cara was one of those songs in Apple's heavy rotation that seemed to come up every stinkin' hour, though it was more like every three and a half. But I'd heard it enough to be more than mildly fatigued of it.

It was about 8:30 in the evening, and for about the gazillionth time was about to back announce "What a Feeling" again before going into a spot break. But instead of just doing a straight read, I decided to be glib. "Stereo 96, Apple FM with that singing wench Irene Cara and the theme from 'Flashdance', blah,  blah, blah.." Having discovered the word "wench" in college and, for some reason finding it an amusing little word, I had to stifle a smile at my cleverness. Of course I'd used the word before, though never on the radio. But I understood its meaning-

"Wenches are, generally speaking, peasant women of a special variety. They're known to often lure men into their beds through the use of ale and other alcoholic beverages. Wenches usually mean no harm to the men that they have enthralled, and are just after a good time like everyone else. In rare instances, wenches may actually be male, however this is often difficult to ascertain due to copious intakes of ale."

Harmless but fun was what I was shooting for. Besides, I'd said it only in jest and mainly for my own amusement. During an otherwise ordinary air shift on an otherwise ordinary summer night, I was bored and decided to be creative. All alone in the Apple FM studios with a 'Flashdance' poster staring at me from across the room, I couldn't help notice that the actress in the movie, Jennifer Beals, was kind of wenchy, So the comparison wasn't exactly inaccurate.
But apparently a lady listener failed to find any glibness in my remark and called to let me know it. As she spewed venom at me from the other end of the line, it was clear she'd missed the humor, clearly missed the movie and the video, and was clearly offended by my choice of words. She found the term demeaning and insulting, and showered me with demeaning and insulting words of her own, for not knowing any better.

When she got tired of cussing me out, she calmly threatened to call the next day and speak to somebody in charge. This is where I could've been a horse's rear end and thrown it back in her face- free speech, don't listen if you don't like it, etc, etc. But instead, back peddling like a confused sprinter, I quickly apologized, asked for a mulligan and lied. “I wasn't aware what that word meant and promise you'll never hear it out of me again.”

"Well see that you don't", she snorted. However, she seemed satisfied she'd got the last word in and before the call ended actually wished me a "pleasant rest of the evening". Okay. I wasn't going to win the argument with this particular female caller no matter what I did or said. So I was okay with taking the high road, taking the loss and conceding the discussion. The woman sounded less annoyed than when she first called, so I mentally chalked her up as another "satisfied customer". But just for the record, after she hung up I looked into the receiver and shouted.  “WENNNCH!” and felt so much better.

A few years before that, though, I was doing a Sunday morning shift on KDRK-FM. KDRK shared the same building with sister station KGA, the big 50,000 watt AM country station I cut my teeth on as a young broadcaster.  After finishing a 6 p.m. to midnight show the night before on KGA. I went home, got a couple hours of sleep and dragged my bones back in to do the 6 a.m. to noon shift on KGA’s sister station, KDRK-FM. By 6:00, I'd already swallowed half a pot of coffee and was as ready as I was going to be to start working again.

The first half of KDRK's Sunday morning programming was a line-up of back-to-back half hour public service type tapes, with a couple of religious shows thrown in as well. Between the first and second of these taped segments, I played a spot and read the weather again, and at 6:30 started the next program. Then I stopped paying attention because there wasn't anything else to do till 7. So I had a half hour to goof off, read the Sunday paper and drink more coffee.

KDRK's weekend overnight guy, Dave Dryden, hadn’t left yet so we made ourselves at home, buzzing around the studios and shooting the shit. Both of us were still quite hyper, probably from drinking too much coffee, and being at an age when it was still possible to survive and thrive on little sleep. Dave was leaning against the window, blocking the morning sun, and I was sitting in the "captain's chair" (the stool at the FM console) in the KDRK control room. By then the conversation had degenerated into telling tawdry jokes, each trying to out-tawdry the other. Frankly, for two guys in their early twenties running on caffeine, there's little else to do in a deserted radio station on a Sunday morning.

“Hooked On Books with Henry Morgan”, was the show playing on the air. It was bone dry boring and surely nobody was actually listening to it; Dave and I certainly weren't. But Henry Morgan's voice should at least have been coming out of the studio monitors, and ten minutes into the program- ten minutes too late- it dawned on me it wasn’t. Henry wasn’t droning on. The room was way too quiet, and- duh- it suddenly occurred to me something might be amiss.

I gave Dryden a puzzled look. ”Do you hear anything? Why aren’t we hearing anything?”

Alarmed, I turned to look at the board and saw the needles were registering. Well, that was right. And then it hit me, like a right cross to the head: the mic's open!  After reading the weather forecast, I'd inadvertently- carelessly would be a better choice of words- left it on. The simple solution would be to quickly close the mic and move on. No harm, no foul. But no, I didn't do that. Nope, since I was already right there at eye level and hovering over the darn thing, I chose that moment to compound the problem and bellow directly into it:

“Oh, (F-bomb), the mic’s open!!”

Not, “Oh darn the mic’s open”; not, “Oh look, the mic’s open”. Nope. I used the granddaddy of curse words to express my momentary agitation. I held back nothing and just let it fly.

Oh, (F-bomb), the mic’s open!!”

So surely, my career was over. I knew I’d be immediately axed, the FCC would pull my license and I’d have to go back to selling hockey gear full time again. The whole freaking world had just heard me shout the "F word" in the heart of a Sunday morning over a booming Spokane FM radio station. Every old lady within 300 miles would soon be calling to complain and asking for the name of my boss so they could all call on Monday to demand that “filthy talking announcer be fired immediately!”

Dryden was just howling. But I didn’t think it was so funny--I was terrified. Any second, I envisioned the hot line lighting up. (The ‘hot line’ is a private line, usually colored red, that’s used only by staffers, and especially program directors, to reach the studio. Naturally, anytime it lit up the mandate was, "Pick it up or DIE" because we knew it was either Tom Newman (the KGA p.d.), Dennis Bookey (the FM p.d), or Del Cody (the freaking station owner). But no matter who'd be on the other end of the hot line, I knew I was about to professionally die. There was nothing I could do but wait so I remained glued to the console in the FM studio and did just that- waited quietly for the executioner to call.

But he never did. Nobody did.

When Dave stopped wetting his pants with laughter, he reminded me of the time Newman had left the mic opened and cursed while Paul Harvey was on. And the time Bookey blew it by accidentally leaving a private heated phone conversation with his wife to get on the air. He said if it could happen to those guys- guys that'd been around longer than me, guys that were bosees- then I shouldn't feel so bad. "Just live and learn, and then don't do it again" was Dryden's parting advice before departing the premises.

So I caught a break.

And not a word or mention was ever made of the incident because, fortunately, it happened during the black hole of the broadcast week, the place where ratings and listenership goes to die- Sunday morning. The reason nobody called to complain was because nobody was listening. But just to be safe, for the next few months whenever I worked, I taped a little sign over the microphone. The sign said, "Off", to remind me to disengage it when I was through talking. And I never again accidentally peppered the airwaves with profanity again. Or the word 'wench'.

But there may have been this one time when I was really tired and may have let something slip about Ronald Reagan and goats; or maybe it was aliens. Or maybe....oh, never mind...