Because I work the night shift, I get to listen to a lot of night-time jocks (used to be one myself, in my younger days), and I’ve noticed something about one of them here in Atlanta. He goes by the name of “Night-Train” Lane, and all he ever does is announce the songs which have just played, the weather forecast, the occasional station promo and, right after that maybe his name.
He doesn’t crack jokes, make any comments on the news or otherwise try to ad-lib anything. As a result, he comes across as kind of a “robot”, never tripping up on his words (well, he’s had plenty of practice saying the same stuff over and over, hasn’t he?), and generally sounding “wooden”.
So that leads me to my question: Perhaps this particular station doesn’t want him to have a personality so as not to detract from the morning crew?
When I did nights in my medium market station, I stayed in constant trouble with my double entendres, and generally raising hell with the music or the phones. In other words, I had fun with the folks who stayed up with me at work or at home and listened to my show. Oh, yeah, that was like 25 years ago,m okay?
What happened?
BTW, the station I am referring to (for Atlanta area dopers) is WSB-FM, 98.5.
I wish more DJs were like that. Most of them won’t shut up even when it feels like my ears are about to start bleeding. I listen to the classical station at night and I find their rather monotonous, deep-voiced whispery DJs to be quite calming before bedtime.
Most of the stations I listen to around here don’t even seem to have an overnight DJ anymore (not that I really care to listen to their banter anyway). It seems as if they put the whole operation on auto-pilot until the morning guys show up. You hear a couple songs, then some commercials, then the station ID, and then more songs again.
Back in the days when most radio stations were independent operations (which was also when I came home late nights from working at my crappy-ass fast food job and listened to nighttime radio more) there were more nighttime DJ’s, but most of them didn’t seem to have much personality or even experience for that matter. I swear there were nights when they must have asked the janitor to fill in for somebody.
The “Morning Zoo Doo Crews” are the ones without personalities. All I want is the song intro, the occassional time/temp/whatever and the rest of the time just shut the bleep up.
“Personality” in radio business-speak is a negative to me.
If you like DJs talking over the songs and generally want to reminisce about the 80’s, the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City radio stations do an excellent job of recreating that atmosphere.
