Radio Survivor

Did you get fooled today?

Radio stations are often one of the last remaining outlets to celebrate April Fool’s with gusto. Morning show DJs read fake news reports, radio shows are replaced, and some stations switch their formats for 24 hours. Howard Stern once pretended that he’d been fired on April 1st over his crude content.

College radio station KXUA (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville) actually launched their FM broadcast on April 1, 2000 and in honor of their struggles to get on the air they started off with 24 hours of political speeches.

Back in 1998 several San Francisco Bay Area radio stations had April Fool’s-themed programming, including commercial station KITS (aka Live 105), which changed to KGAY for a day, airing gay-themed music. That same year college station KUSF read an announcement over the air stating that the university was selling off the station and commercial rock station KFOG devoted their “10 at 10″ segment to big band music. Another year KFOG spent part of their program day playing the best 15 seconds of songs as their new format.

Brown University station WBRU pretended to have been sold to a corporate entity and changed its format from alternative rock to the more mainstream “Buddy FM” in 2006. Audio from that prank can be heard here.

Chicago commercial rock station WXRT also has a tradition of doing April Fool’s hoaxes. One year they pretended that the station had gone “adult,” with their purchase by Playboy. In 1992 they told listeners that they had become a digital “pay-per-hear” station with several specialized streams of music. Non-subscribers would be treated to a jumbled up broadcast of scrambled sounds.

I think it’s fun to hear stations getting creative on April 1st, but often listeners become outraged (even after they’ve caught on to the joke). Are you willing to let your favorite station mess around for a day or do you think April Fool’s is a tradition past its prime?

Did any stations in your community do something special for April Fool’s this year?

WLS Radio Tower Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Fandom is an amazing thing and thanks to the Internet it’s easier and easier to find like-minded obsessives who share one’s passion for the most obscure objects, idols, and idiosyncrasies. Radio is no exception. Loads of websites document radio history, with nostalgic archivists collecting ephemera, airchecks, and reminiscences from San Francisco to Boston. Various forums also exist, like those on Radio-Info.com, allowing listeners and industry types to talk shop and share current radio gossip.

And then there’s Garrett Wollman. I recently ran across some of his photographs of radio towers and was fascinated. As part of his work with The Archives @ BostonRadio.org, he’s been traveling around the country meticulously photographing every radio tower that he can find. Sometimes he even ventures into radio and television stations; but for the most part it’s the outside architecture and landscapes that he finds so compelling.

In order to learn more about this project, I contacted Garrett to get the scoop about his love for radio towers and his work to help document the history of radio and television. I was surprised to find out a couple of things: 1) Garrett’s a young guy—a rarity in radio history circles and 2) He’s not a big fan of current radio offerings. After chatting with Garrett, I also was made aware of pursuits like DXing and county counting, making me realize that there’s so much more to the radio scene than I ever realized. On to the interview: (more…)