This morning I was driving in LA and searching the radio for something to listen to. I was therefore subjected to the horror that is the Morning Drive Time Radio Show.
Every one of these things is identical. They used to involve one or two people but are now almost always three retards, two male and one female, babbling endlessly about nothing and laughing as hard as they can physically manage at every single comment. All the alleged “jokes” are about the basest and least funny things possible, and every once in awhile they’ll throw in an imitation of a celebrity that really sounds nothing like a celebrity.
But what really gets me is how they laugh at every single statement. These college dropouts are so conditioned to the rule that they have to laugh at their own jokes to make the listener think something funny has happened that they reflexively laugh any time there’s a pause in conversation, even if the preceding comment was not funny - in fact, even if the preceding comment wasn’t MEANT to be funny. So this morning I actually heard this, which I’m transcribing as accurately as I can:
Guest: So then I asked my wife to go to Subway, and she said she’d be back by 7:30. Three Retards: AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Guest: Um, but then she wasn’t back until 8. Tri-Speds: AH HA HA HA!! OH, HO HO HO! SNORT, GIGGLE! HA HA HA! Guest: Anyway, she also got me some chips. Tres Idiotas: HA HA HAAAAAAAAAA! Guest: Then we watched some TV. A Trio of Numpties: HA HA HA HA LOL!!!111
Oh, and somewhere in there some jokes were then told at the expense of the allegedly loose morals of the female radio host, which is part of the script on every one of these shows.
This mundane and completely unfunny story was followed by a “press conference” by “George Bush.” The person imitating Bush sounded nothing whatsoever like him; he kind of sounded like Seth Green. No funny jokes were told. This “imitation” staggered on for six or seven minutes, a truly excruciating period of time when nothing being said is the least bit funny. Every sentence was punctuacted by the drei idioten: “BWAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAHAHA!!!”
I travel on business a lot and have had the misfortune to hear a lot of these morning teams before I finally manage to find either NPR or a Robo-80s station like “Jack FM” or “Bob FM” or whatever they call it in the market I’m in. Morning show hosts are all exactly the same, and none of them are funny. They suck donkey cocks. Fuck morning radio show hosts.
You know, as my mother and I were driving home tonight I asked her if any of the radio stations played music in the AM anymore. She said that she could go an entire commute (15 minutes) without hearing a song on any of her three favorite stations. I told her that I needed to buy her something that would allow her to use her iPod in her car.
I agree with you–the shows are almost always unbearable. They can be well-done (I enjoyed the heyday of Randy and Spiff on Fox97 in Atlanta), but the format is not conducive to mass reproduction.
Thank heavens for the Mother Corp. CBC’s morning program involves: news (actual news, thank you), weather, traffic, and the occasional foray into human interest or sports.
Yeah, morning shows pretty much suck. The show for our major local hip-hop station, JAMN 94.5 (probably Clear Channel owned) blows chunks, but it blows fewer chunks than the other stations merely by virtue of the fact that the DJs aren’t simpering idiots and are somewhat wry, at least compared to their Neanderthal-like counterparts on every other station, so that’s the one I listen to when forced to choose one. But yeah, they all blow.
My favorite radio station for music is my least favorite station to listen to on the way to work. It’s always been crude 13-year-old boy humor and I rarely listen to it in the morning. Now, though, they’ve reached a new low with their Special Guest- Leland The Retard. Yes, they bring a guy (I think he has Down’s Syndrome) on and prod him with embarassing questions for their amusement. The questions aren’t embarassing to Leland because he just doesn’t understand it to that extent, but they’re embarassing to me as a listener and they should be embarassing to the hosts, the writers, and the radio station in general.
We do have one station here with listenable music that doesn’t have a morning show, and I mostly listen to it in the a.m. Morning shows in general just suck, IMHO.
Yeah, LA doesn’t seem to have any decent radio stations, or I didn’t find any when I was last there about a year ago.
[gloat]We have some great radio stations here in the Twin Cities area.[/gloat]
I refuse to listen to morning radio for the very reasons so ably described in the OP (well, that and each station repeating its name or nickname 500 times per hour), so I carry a lot of CDs in my car and now morning radio is just a bad memory.
They get grating at times, but I do enjoy Sarah and No Name on Alice 97.3 in San Francisco.
Closer to home, but infinitely and spectacularly stupid, is the Bill & Marla show on Mix 106.5. The radio by my bed is broken and can only play this one FM station. It’s not tht they aren’t funny, they just have to be among the least intelligent DJ’s on the planet.
My heart broke last year when Howard Stern left, not because I listened to him, but because I loved the radio show loveline. Then Infinity offered Adam Carolla his own show to fill the slot stealing him from Loveline.
Adam Carolla is seriously one of my favorite comics. And although I hear his ‘morning drive show’ isn’t nearly as good as his appearances on LL, I still miss him very much.
I agree with the O & A comment. These guys, at certain times in their show, have me rolling with laughter. Their best bits are simply when they start telling a story. They are not always on the mark, but most of the time they have you rolling. They make fun of everything, so they are not for the sensitive, PC listener.
OTOH, here, they are re-broadcasted in the afternoon drive time slot, not in the morning.
I’ve heard one or two episodes of Adam Carolla’s new show, and it’s not as good as Loveline, but it does have some great moments when his little zoo crew shuts their damn mouths and lets Adam rant for a few minutes on end, or the phone game where callers challenge him with things he can’t possibly complain about (but does), or where they have to keep sucking up and agreeing with his constant stream of changing opinions.
So, Adam Carolla definitely fits the bill.
Also, if you like liberal political humor, I think Stephanie Miller’s show is live in the mornings. (I listen to it in the evenings on Sirius.) She’s pretty funny and so is her master impressionist co-host.
WXRT in Chicago, baby. Music is the primary focus. Then news and some very light banter. And no urge to bang heads together. It’s a little sound oasis in your ears every morning.
I believe that the radio talk show is the hardest form of entertainment to get to like.
I’ve pondered this somewhat.
There’s no show so good that someone can just plunk down, turn it on, and “get it”. It takes time to know the characters, get the rhythm, know when they’re trying to be funny.
I think that one problem is that all of the “quirks” (maybe constant laughter, or a commonly used sound effect) of a particular show tend to fade into the background for a loyal listener, while those are the things that a new listener can’t tune out.
Another problem is that some things aren’t actually funny without knowing the personalities and the history between the jocks.
But, yes, some shows are just completely annoying and unfunny no matter how much time you give them.
One of my guilty pleasures is Loren and Wally (and Sue Cope and Tom Doyle and the rest) on WROR out of Boston. What really makes it, for me, are the ludicrously bad puns used to introduce it at the start, and “Tom’s Townie Tunes”, sort of a local Al Yankovic-style send-up of local cities and institutions.
Typical intro:“He was a Big-City Cop, but he was afraid of the dark. So he instaled night lights all over huis house, and every night he’d turn them on. Who ever thought Joe Friday would be a wuss?”
“Friday Nightlights will not be seen tonight, so we can bring you The Loren and Wally Morning Show”
Or_
(eerie music in background)
“He was a dog like any other, but when he became a teenager he started woodworking. He would build windows. Nobody ever discovered how, or why.”
“Canine Teen: The Windowmaker will not be seen this morning, so we can…”
…
I also listen to Men from Maine. But you never heard me say that. http://www.wror.com/
The “talk” radio station line up in our little market seems to consist mostly of various conservative call-in shows, regional sports call-in shows, and Coast to Coast (probably the most intelligent of the three). Man, NPR has truly saved my sanity.