Off The Handle
By Mitch Berg
We’re shocked, shocked to see the leftymedia screeching like weasels during procto exams over the now-infamous O’Reilly meltdown tape.
Of course, it’s an all-too-common thing in broadcasting across partisan lines (the linked clip includes Chris “Tinglylegs” Matthews, Sam Donaldson, and a bipartisan slew of other talking heads – especially, I think, in TV, with its staffs of executives and swarms of people and everybody making decisions but nobody really in charge…
…so I’m usually pretty sanguine about these things.
Of course there’s a story behind it.
In the summer of 1982, I was working at a little country station in Carrington,ND (pop 2,000). It was a Sunday afternoon. I was playing “The Lutheran Hour”, a recorded church service, around noon. There was a break in the show where I played a couple of commercials while I cued up the next disk (that’s right – vinyl disk) on the air.
Commercials back then were on “carts” – plastic tape cartridges that looked and worked like 8-track tapes. The cool thing about ’em, compared to reel-to-reel or cassette, was that they were “fire and forget”; the tape, like an 8-track, was an infinite loop; a silent electronic cue recorded on the tape would stop the tape at the end of the spot (or sound bite or hockey goal or whatever was on it).
If it worked right. Which it almost always did.
But on that Sunday afternoon, something – a dirty play head, a bad cue signal, something – caused the cue to slip. So about ten seconds after I hit the next spot, the first spot started playing again. Perversely, I couldn’t stop the cart deck; one of the features of the cue tone, as I recall, was that it disabled the “Stop” button until there was another”Start”.
“WHAT THE F*** IS GOING ON HERE?” I bellowed.
And looked, and noticed that I’d left the mike on.
I sat back in the chair and waited for doom.
But that Sunday, it never came. Not a single phone call. Best of all, my boss – the station’s owner, who listened to the station from sunup to sundown every day – was taking his only vacation day of the summer that weekend.
But since then, I’ve tried to never swear around a microphone.
Just saying, Chris and Bill and the rest of you…
May 14th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Playing church services on vinyl? Reminds me of the main character who wants to be a reggae star in The Harder they Come.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Yep. In those days before every station had a satellite, a lot of syndicated stuff was on vinyl.
Actually, I think American Top Forty came out on vinyl at the first station I worked at…
May 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Mitch, have you ever visited the Museum of…..something like Museum of Broadcasting in St Louis Park?
May 14th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Panic sets in and you simply don’t think of potting down, right? I’d like to say I only made that mistake once. 😉
There are few things in the world that actually turn up the temperature like realizing that the mic is on and potted up.
Times like that, I would simply grab my stand-by cart of Homer Simpson moaning, “Ooooh, I’m going to lose my job just because I’m dangerously unqualified.”
Either that or Kevin Klein saying, “You’ve got a beautiful speaking voice… when it works.”
May 14th, 2008 at 9:52 am
That museum is sweet… haven’t been there in fifteen years. I bet Mitch has made one or two visits.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Pavek, that’s what it is called WWW dot Pavekmuseum dot org
Yes, went there on an impulse one weekday afternoon. Very quiet that day so I got a personal tour. What reminded me about it is that they have large LPs that were distributed to radio stations.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Did you hit the N-B-C chimes?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I take it that the Patriot still uses this set up today.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
So Mitch works blue on the radio. And on a Sunday no less. Sad. Looking forward to seeing how this post relates to Iraq. And bridges.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Luckily, Mitch didn’t say ‘booger’.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Mitch, I can’t say that we’ve not seen the Right screeching like weasels during procto exams about a myriad of things, but why is it you need to always bring up anuses? Fixation or something? Past that, why is it you need to consistently associate Democrats with anal exams and rodents, are you doing a crypto-gay bashing thing?
Seriously, of the ‘melt-downs’ in that tape, only Berman’s and the argument between the local and on-air reporter come close to O’Reilly. He’s a nut, and generally has shown it day in and day out.
But.. Casey Casem still tops em’ all.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
why is it you need to always bring up anuses?
Name one single time I ever have.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
No one mentioned you, Peev.
Kasem actually had a fairly legit reason for his blow-up… but it’s golden audio. Just like Shatner’s audio.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Did someone say “anuses?”
Stop stealing my best material.