Radio stations are even more cynical and two-faced than I had previously thought.
Some people drink Pepsi
Some people drink Coke
the wacky morning DJ says democracy’s a joke
…Cake
Auratio?
Harvey, the old morning show guy from 102.9 in Philly (and announcer on Double Dare!) used to announce the contest, and then clear the boards first before taking any calls. I think the explanation he gave was that it got rid of people who tried to anticipate the contest and called before he announced it. Or, like was already said, got rid of people who were already calling for some other reason.
Give’s a whole new meaning to Hornblower, too.
About 5 or 6 years ago a radio staion in my town 102.1 was giving away U2 tickets, naturally you had to be caller 102. So everytime U2 came on you keep trying and trying and trying to call. I remember one day I was I was driving somewhere while this was in progress…On the air you heard the DJ pretending that caller number 99 won, then he told them just kidding, same idea for 100, 101. When he answered the next one and said Hi you’re caller number 102 etc… All that was said was “Sorry wrong number…Click” Not that this is all that relevent to the OP, but I just remembered it.
Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well…
Wait a minute; I’ve heard a lot of "we’ll award the first caller " (or next caller) contests on the radio. There may be reasons for picking others (besides for the hell of it), but they’re hardly universal.
Think of it this way - If a DJ says “The first caller wins ____,” my chance of being the first caller is next to nil unless I dial the nanosecond the announcement is made. However, if the DJ say, “The tenth caller wins ____,” then I have a better shot, even if I’m a slow dialer.
Remember these are PR schemes. Radio stations benefiThe key is to get people interested in the event/giveaway, make them think they have a shot, and get them actively involved somehow - in this case, dial in. Even if most caller don’t win, they have actively participated in the station’s PR event, which reinforces the station’s name/reputation/image in the listeners’/callers’ minds. The more you can get someone actively involved with any organization, the more connected they feel with the organization. For radio, this sustains/increases listenership, drives up as rates, etc.
Think of it this way - If a DJ says “The first caller wins ____,” my chance of being the first caller is next to nil unless I dial the nanosecond the announcement is made. However, if the DJ say, “The tenth caller wins ____,” then I have a better shot, even if I’m a slow dialer.
Remember these are PR events. The key for radio stations is to get people interested in the event/giveaway, make the callers think they have a shot, and get them actively involved somehow - in this case, dial in. Even if most callers don’t win, they have actively participated in the station’s PR event, which reinforces the station’s name/reputation/image in the listeners’/callers’ minds.
The more you can get someone actively involved with any organization, the more connected they feel with the organization. For radio, this sustains/increases listenership, drives up ad rates, etc.
Oh how true…I worked at a small FM station in my younger years, had the midnight to 4:00AM shift and had to play (for me) crappy middle-of-the-road music for people to sleep/have sex by. Once, out of boredom, I offered two albums (I told you it was a long time ago) to the third person who called.
Not ONE person called.
Do you have any idea how depressing it is to think you are sitting in the middle of a stupid cornfield, playing crappy music and talking on air and NO ONE IS LISTENING.
As long as I have hijacked this, the final story:
So I started occasionally slipping in Beatles songs and other groups who were popular at the time. I’ll be damned if the owner of the station (who owned a chain of them throughout the midwest) tuned in and heard my version of middle-of-the-road and decided to fire me. So - two days later, I show up at midnight and there is an evelope taped to the door. Basically it was my final check and final notice.
So, at 12:05 AM, I put on the longest song we had, closed the door, locked the station, got in my car and tuned in and heard the song on my drive home…and then I heard the end of the song and the turntable going tha-wump, tha-wump, tha-wump for what I imagined would be until 4:00 AM when the next DJ arrived.
I slept well that night.
(Sorry for the hijack, but everyone had already given you the reason caller number one isn’t chosen.)
I used to work at Power 96fm in Miami… They did pretty much what everyone else has said. Screen the calls to listen for the most excited caller. There are no legal contest rules to follow… This isn’t some gov’t sanctioned sweepstakes, it’s a promotional giveaway. The 1st caller may win, even if they say “96th caller.” It all depends if they forsee more calls coming in, or if the person seems particularly radio-friendly. The calls are almost always recorded, quickly edited, and played within the next break or 2.
Radio is 100% advertising. The music keeps you listening, the ADS are all the station cares about. If people aren’t listening enough, they’ll switch to some other format that might attract more listeners. The station “names” are probably like franchises. Stations can buy an identity that suits their format, and get all the underbed music and station IDs done to sound “right.”
Also of interest: the station promo sounds/sweepers, etc. are almost always done by some other company. The station itself may have very limited voice talent / sound effects… so they farm these things out to the pros. (http://www.omegaproductions.com)
Conversely, when I was a DJ we were told to use a later caller to provide the illusion that, well, we had more than one caller. Of course, this illusion can be maintained by saying, “Caller #5 wins!” and then declaring the first (and maybe only) caller to be the winning caller #5.
This hypothetical station must have a hard time “rawking” – since frequencies between 88 and 92 are reserved for non-commercial or religious purposes. It could be a college station, which means the prizes probably suck.
[hijack, but funny story]
there’s a college radio station in Orlando, 91.5, WPRK (Rollins College.) A varietal/hour based driven indie/rasta/world/classical/etc. channel.
PRK ostensibly stands for the community of Winter Park in which Rollins is located. But one of my friends thinks it would be cool if they called themselves
91.5, WPRK… the PORK! and changed to classic rock
or is that classic “rawk”? 
Hypothetically if me and a friend call at the same time just after a conetst (winner 10th caller) is announced and both record the DJ saying
“You are caller 9. Sorry.”
should we call the cops or anything?
The alternative rock station in the Detroit area is 89X (88.7, I think), out of Canada.
It sounds like you guys are just begging to get sued.
You gonna sue a radio station over a c.d. ? Seriously ?
I will say that when the prize is very valuable we follow the rules a lot more closely. As far as c.d.s and movie passes and the like, the attitude we have is that it is our stuff to give away as we please.
Me? No.
A lawyer looking for a class-action suit? Might be worth his time. Some of these multiple-station-owning conglomerates have deep pockets.
Be sure to bring up this defense if you ever do get sued.
I do not happen to work for a “conglomerate” so perhaps that is why we have more freedom when it comes to picking winners.
I do see your point though. A safer way to give away a prize on the air may be to say “I’m taking a random caller at 555-RAWK”.
It just doesn’t sound as sexy.
Yep, as noted above. And thanks for sharing the story of your low-class way you were dismissed. In return, let me share how I originially got hired. It starts slow, but gets better.
At the start of my senior year in high school, I was approached by the principal, who asked me if I would be interested in learning radio. My reaction – “Geez, who do I have to kill?” must have been heartfelt enough that gave my name to the station owner, who had asked him for a recommendation of a highschooler to be trained for fill-in and vacation coverage. It was long enough ago that the station owner, a courtly gentleman, approached my father as well, wanting to reassure him that it would not be allowed to interfere with my studying.
I would go to the station on Monday nights and was trained by the program director, who worked that shift. He’d show me how to put the pot in cue, cue up a record, thread the Magnecorder and work the brand new Spotmaster cart machines, work the mike, etc.
Fastforward to Spring Break. I get a hushed call from a strangely subdued secretary asking if I could come in right away, it’s very important. When I got there, I learned that the night jock had committed one of the ultimate sins of the time - he had gotten drunk while on the air. What’s more, nobody who worked at the station happened to be listening that night, including the owner, who lived in a trailer behind the station with an ill wife. The few people who were listening, later said they were amused, rather than upset. Apparently, he didn’t rant, just got a bit more mushmouthed as the previous evening wore on.
That night, I became the new night jock at the radio station. I would get home from school, study a bit, and show up at the station at 5 p.m. and work until signoff, which was 11 p.m., sometimes studying while records were playing. Up again the next morning at seven and back to school. Sundays I got a comfy 8-hour shift, and Monday nights i had off. Worked straight through the summer before going off to college and every summer until graduation and have worked off and on in the business ever since.
Thanks for listening; tune in again tomorrow.