Unnecessary Chatter

In our digital age, I am happy that we have maintained the medium of radio.

Of course, there are those on the radio waves that incite hate and make up a lot of nonsense that we can do without, but if you leave the knob at your local NPR station, you are doing it right.

However, I do not have it in me to lay into the talk radio folks, I believe what they do is synonymous with shouting 'Fire' in a theater and, in some cases, tried for treason.  But that is a rant for another day.

I want to talk about the deejays that still insist on talking over music.  They go on and on about some nonsense or plug some event well into the introduction of a song and cut out before the lyrics start.  Honestly, in our digital age of YouTube, Rhapsody, Slacker, Napster, etc.. we are still accustomed to commercials between songs, but not over the songs.  The bottom line here, is that it is disrespectful.

Back in our heyday, I could understand the chattering over the music, as we were all either holding up tape recorders next to the radio or had a built in cassette player to capture music.  The radio stations and artists were making it more difficult for us to share music by copying it from the radio because some deejay was blathering over the beginning of the song, and sometimes the end of it.  Given the time, I can find it within me to forgive them at that time.  Now, the cutting of songs - that is also a rant for another day.

Why do they still do it?  We have one very annoying deejay in Tampa.  I will not name him, but he is on a popular 'classic format' station in the mornings.  He has all the kind of jokes that appeal to preteen boys and was one to make disparaging remarks about our last President - and again, with a kind of humor found on a Spongebob Squarepants show (and Spongebob is actually funnier, but I am trying to give a better example of the intended demographic).

He's an old school deejay, I get it.  But it is time to stop.  Put the ego aside and shut the hell up.

I will say one thing about this station, they have this tag line that says "the weather tight window studios" or some nonsense like that.  This is Florida, and it is blistering hot outside and it rains often, so maybe having a sealed studio from the elements with all of the gear it takes to run a radio is implied.  Every time I hear this phrase, I roll my eyes.

As I said, the bottom line here is simple - shut up already.  It's annoying and disrespectful to the artists.  We will eventually move away from radio, and one of the driving forces will be the annoyance of deejays.  Oh, and another annoyance is the KIA spokesperson here in the Tampa Bay area.  I will refuse to purchase a KIA just because of him.

Before I go, I will say that there are many deejays out there with insightful information about the music and the artists.  They bring value to the music and will play the songs in their totality whilst respectfully not talking over any of it.  That is what they are supposed to do and not have their egos step on the opening riffs or intros to any piece of music.

Furthermore, future deejays of America, if you really want to talk, there are plenty of talk radio stations out there and I hear that there is thing called podcasting.