{"id":86540,"date":"2023-11-27T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86540"},"modified":"2024-05-09T14:24:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:24:21","slug":"mark-from-saint-louis-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86540","title":{"rendered":"Mark from Saint Louis Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the great lessons <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=85778\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"85778\">Don Vogel<\/a> taught me when I was working as his call screener was that there are four types of callers on radio talk shows;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Boring callers<\/strong>:  People whose calls, mostly agreeing with you, didn&#8217;t help the show go anywhere.  Inexperienced hosts figured having <em>someone <\/em>on the air was better than nothing &#8211; but an experienced host doesn&#8217;t <em>need <\/em>callers &#8211; and can do better than the boring ones.  Don wanted me to politely turn them down. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li> <strong>Average callers<\/strong>:  Regular people making regular points.  Put them on as time permits.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Crazy callers<\/strong>:  They&#8217;re a crapshoot.  Sometimes crazies kill the mood.  Sometimes, they accelerate it.  They&#8217;re a judgment call &#8211; one of the things that separates a good call screener from someone who just takes calls and types names into a computer.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Great callers:  <\/strong>The ones who had great points, and made them in a way that didn&#8217;t just help the flow of the show, but improved it. &#8220;Get them on all the time, every one&#8221;, Don said. It&#8217;s harder than it sounds. Was I any good? Well, I learned to pick out Tommy Mischke&#8217;s voice when he was still &#8220;The Phantom Caller&#8221;, and got him to the front of the queue every time he called &#8211; which played a solid role in launching his career. So yeah. I was good. Sometimes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Mark from Saint Louis Park&#8221; was one of the great callers over the past decade or so at AM1280.  How great?  He&#8217;s the only regular caller I&#8217;ve ever written an obit for [1]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We got word on Saturday that Mark &#8211; real name <a href=\"https:\/\/www.startribune.com\/obituaries\/detail\/0000473854\/?fbclid=IwAR18qTnxrgaG7mmH40ztLOjp_p6-zr3HqIEdR7FZFjHtlJNZE89YwqlgTX0\"> Mark Rice<\/a> &#8211; had passed away. I met only met Mar in person once, but even face to face I recognized his voice instantly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark&#8217;s incisive intelligence and keen understanding of whatever the conversation was about made him a standout caller, even when he occasionally disagreed with us. &#8220;When Mark from SLP calls, just put him on the call board&#8221;, we told our producers.&nbsp; No need to screen him, having him on the air always made the show better.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark was one of the few regular callers that was a subject of conversation off the air himself.&nbsp; That may not sound like a big deal; trust me, it is.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My condolences and prayers for all his friends and family, from all his radio fans.&nbsp; &nbsp;He is missed.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[1] I&#8217;ve long since lost track of &#8220;Steve from Roseville&#8221; of my KSTP days, who popped up as &#8220;Steve from Plymouth&#8221; once on the NARN in probably 2006.   He&#8217;d be the other one to rate a full blown memorial.  <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the great lessons Don Vogel taught me when I was working as his call screener was that there are four types of callers on radio talk shows; &#8220;Mark from Saint Louis Park&#8221; was one of the great callers over the past decade or so at AM1280. How great? He&#8217;s the only regular caller [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoriam","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86540"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87519,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86540\/revisions\/87519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}