BAIT

posted by James Reel

    Back in 1976, when I started working at KUAT-FM the first time around, exactly twice a day the announcers would be given two full minutes, just before the news, to talk about everything that would be happening on the station for the rest of the day. A couple of problems there: Two minutes is an awfully long time in the radio world to blather on, and how many people would really be glued to their radios all day?
    Eventually this was reduced to what was logged as a “next hour highlight.” We’d take anything from 15 seconds to a minute or more to tell you all about what was planned for the coming 60 minutes plus. Often this meant merely listing everthing on the next page of the music schedule, the assumption being that just telling you that the music was happening would be enough to keep you tuned in.
    This week, management has issued a new directive, and I think it’s the most sensible of all. Every once in a while we’re supposed to spend maybe 15 seconds alerting you to one interesting piece we’ll be playing within the next 60 minutes, and not beyond that. This takes care of the laundry-list syndrome, and it gets around the fact that we sometimes fall into patterns of playing perfectly nice compositions about which there’s nothing interesting to say. Most importantly, it recognizes that just because you’re listening now you won’t necessarily be tuned in two hours from now, unless you’re hearing the station in a doctor’s office. I know there are a few folks out there who leave the radio on all day, but they don’t need to be sweet-talked into staying tuned, because they’ll be listening, or half-listening, no matter what. Most other people have better things to do than build their days around the knowledge that we’ll be playing a Rheinberger string quartet at 11:22 and a Scharwenka piano concerto at 12:18. If we can persuade you to keep listening for just a few minutes more, that’s accomplishment enough.