I tried searching the SDMB for this, but it ain’t so easy since “DJ”, “disc” “song” “talk” etc are all excluded.
Why, OH WHY, do DJs blab over the beginning of every song until the vocals start? You know what I mean: Another One Bites the Dust starts up, and rather than listening to the cool opening, we get:
"WHOOOAAA HA HA HA HA!!! CuuuuhhhhhhLASSIC ROCK KHIX 105 IWANNABITESOMEDUSTHAHAHATUNEINFORLIVETRAFFIC
ATFIVEI’MHEPTOYOURJIVEBABYHERE’SQUEENWITHANOTHERONEBITESTHEDUS-…Steve walks warily down the street…
They’re obviously required to do this - you can easily tell that they have to keep talking until the vocals begin. Why? They almost never use that time to promote the station or an upcoming concert or a sponsor or anything like that, it’s usually just them talking and trying to be funny. What is the financial motivation for making them do that? Even if it is solely for promoting / selling things, why not just say what they have to say, THEN start the song? Do station managers all over the world think people like it? Is there anyone out there that does like this?
Mods - I am truly hoping for a factual answer, hence GQ.
Obviously, they (DJ’s and stations) are of the opinion that the instrumental part is not important to the audience. Also they know we are paying attention waiting for the vocal part to begin. I agree with you and sometimes the beginning is the best part.
I can’t say I actually like it, but I would have to say that I’m impressed by the way they time it so that they just finish their piece in time for the vocals.
I’m a DJ at a major Canadian radio station. You’ll notice that talking over intros usually happens on Top 40/CHR stations. We do this, because it really tightens up the sound of the station, and ties everything together. You hear it a lot less in rock where there’s less of a focus on keeping it sounding like a dance mix. I also find that talking over intros really keeps a constant energy going on my show.
The local FM Rock station in Seattle has taken to popping station promos into the middle of songs. Just today while working on a 737 business jet (imagine a 737 with no interior, just a tube with insulation blankets) and I had a radio turned up listening to One of These Days by Pink Floyd. During a brief lull in the middle of the song, “KISW, the rock of Seattle” pops up almost like it was part of the song. Two songs later during Man in a Box by Alice in Chains, the same thing. In the early 80’s, the same station caught some grief from the FCC for playing 10 song music sets that will ‘fill up a cassette tape rather nicely’ as they would remind listeners regularly. For about 3 months, the first and last 15 seconds of every song was cut off and you never heard 2 songs back to back. Some songs just aren’t right without the first 15 seconds.
I don’t care either way about DJs talking over the start of a song. No, wait, it’s good if it keeps Jim Dear from asking me questions about a song (Do you like this song? Have you heard the version by Band X? Do you know who wrote this?) before I have any idea which song it is. With a few exceptions, I almost never recognize a song until the chorus.
i think it’s called “hitting the post” or “making the post”. when i used to do radio, we had two times printed on the cart label–(i don’t think they use carts anymore, but, oh well) one was the TRT or total running time of the song, the other, shorter time was the number of seconds until the vocals started so you could tell exactly how long you had to blab.
I was a DJ at my college radio station (and “classical music director” by virtue of being the only one on the staff who knew Bach from Beethoven) and this was one of my pet peeves. I once complained about it to one of the other DJs who was always doing it and was told in a very condescending tone that “all professional DJs do it.”
I still refused to do it during my weekly (non-classical music) spot. Of course, I tended to do a “more music, less talk” format anyway; my playlist always had about 10% more time devoted to music played than that of “Mr. Professional DJ”.
It depends on the Program Director and station policy.
The TUT (talkup time) is ingrained in radio habit.
It a method to keep the music up front and constant. No dead air. No pauses. The station needs constant forward progression. It’s slick and it’s streamlined. This is the way to get it!
Sorry. I just flashed on a PD pep talk.
Who do we blame for this method of announcing? We could start with Gordon McLendon introducing it on his Top-40 stations in the 50’s. We might nail Bill Drake with tweaking it to what it pretty much sounds like today around 1965 when he officially introduced it on Boss Radio KHJ (even though he’d been working on the formatics at other stations a year earlier–Fresno comes to mind).
Gone are the 45’s with the TT and TUT pasted over the label. In the dust heap are those old carts.
These days a DJ stares at a computer screen that lays out his playlist. Every song has been researched (all 50 of 'em). As each song starts, a portion of the computer screen starts to count down the talkup time.
Here we are with 21st century state of the art equipment and it’s carrying on a style that was developed 50 years ago.
Some habits die hard.
So I guess the answer is "because it’s cool and it avoids dead air.
I’m sorry, but I would MUCH rather listen to the entire song. I don’t think “dead air” would force me to change the station - I think everyone would rather hear the song. Sigh. Oh well, thanks for the replies everyone!
I’m sure musicians are happy to know that the beginnings of songs that they probably work on more than the verses/chorus is considered ‘dead air’ by radio programmers.
When I was on a public radio station here, I was taught that there were different rules for different genres, for example, in soul (ie 50’s doo wop, etc), there is no such thing as a cross fade - if you started one song a second before the previous song finished, you would get calls complaining, whereas for dance music, long fade outs and talking over tracks was expected. Rock was somewhere between those, although talking over more than a couple of seconds of an intro or outro was frowned upon.
