Story #6: Carts in the Air

A lot of radio stations now are automated at least part of the day -- that is, everything is played from a computer. (Nice technology, but it's cost us a lot of jobs in the industry.) Some still play cd's live. Back in the day, though, we used carts and vinyl.

What's a cart? It's short for cartridge, and it's an 8-track shaped thing, with 3 tracks--the song is on 2 tracks, and an inaudible tone is on the other track, so it'll cue back to the beginning of the song when it's done playing. (It was never fun when someone played the cart, stopped it before the song had cued, and put it back in the rack -- when the next person tried to play it on the air, the song didn't play! We had dead air, which is silence on the air, something you should never have in radio.)

I was hired to do mornings at an AM Christian station. A guy was hired after me, and he wanted my air shift, but I was already hired, and the boss liked me on the air. So they hired him to do PR work. He grew angry with me, and one day when the boss was out of town, he came across the hall to express his anger.

I asked him to leave the studio, that I was working, but he didn't leave, and he got louder. He was telling me how much better he was on-air than I was (I questioned that!), and that he should have that air shift. I told him to leave, that I was working, and he started throwing carts at me! He threw 3, and the fourth hit me in the head! Then he ran out of the room.

I put on a 6-minute worship song, walked across the hall (he had already way crossed the line and left me no choice) -- I literally got in his face, and yelled in a very menacing way that if he ever did anything like that again, I'd "stomp" him all over the studio. I stood there staring at him, and I had caught him off guard, and he didn't answer me -- until I walked toward the door. Then he said, "Some Christian you are -- come in here threatening people." I answered, "No, some Christian you are -- God gave you a good job here and you want to be all jealous and bitter, and throw stuff at me while I'm trying to work. Grow up, man," I retorted, and went back to the studio.

No, I'm not proud of that, and I wouldn't have threatened him like that if it was today--not with anything physical, but probably with a meeting with the boss.

Even Christian radio can be like any other radio station in the world -- sometimes worse.


Fr. Francis