h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My theory is that DJs actually work from about 5am until 10pm. They get up early, fill themselves full of caffeine, and then proceed to chirp merrily into their microphones, happy in the knowledge that they are wide awake and you aren't. Gradually during the course of the day their batteries wind down. To combat this fatigue, they actually change their voice, pretending to be someone else. By late evening they don't care anymore and proceed to bore the pants of you. Or play the Spice Girls.

Between the hours of 10pm and 5pm all radio stations are manned by robots, or non-chirpy DJs who have to work in the graveyard shift until they learn to be irritatingly happy.

my theory is that they plan it so they will be in the middle of a sentence every hour on the hour. So no matter how exact your clock is, every morning you will hear only the end of a joke, and all day you will be wishing someone would let you in on what was so funny.

I'm a happy morning DJ - or infact I have been!! It was terrible - The boss used to come in with a big piece of cardboard with the words 'SMILE' printed in black. I tried to smile but eventually I just gave up... The morning Coffie from the dispensing machine tasted awfull and I said so... to 65000 people. The boss wasn't too pleased and I got the lecture You don't mention what you did last night, you don't metion what the coffie tastes like, do this and don't do that.

I'd had enough of that Phsuodo Friendly stuff... I now do something completeley different.. We shall say it's more of a hands on approach.

I really reckon a miserable early morning DJ would catch on. Okay, so long as he/she didn't winge
about their miserable life all the time (which would be even worse than overly cheerful). Or a cynical
DJ. "Good Morning to all you lovely listeners. Except it's not that good, because it's pissing it down
with rain, and quite frankly, I'd rather be in bed, but they're paying me good money to be here. And I don't know that you're lovely; I can't back that up. Here's a song by Massive Attack/Portishead to make you feel even worse."

/That/ I could deal with.

R1 need to employ someone normal. I wish I'd seen the episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks when lamarr referred to moyles the irritating low-life as "pig-face". Lamacq sniffs every three seconds and doesn't like Gomez, Ball describes everything as "brilliant" as does Whiley (and they both have no threshold for tolerable crapness), Mark & lard sound good and non-london but tend to play bad music, any of these other wankers on in the evening and at night only seem to understand the phrase "and this is a banging new tune from some t**t with a little black box and no sense of melody" and John Peel is only on for a couple of hours. Radio Three is drifting back towards their Mozart fixation and seem way too keen on sombre piano pieces. R4 is starting to compress. Local radio up here sounds like that irritating little git from the Haddows ads.
A normal person in the morning, uncompressed, playing a selection from the shelves of the local Avalanche or Fopp rather than Woolworths or Vermin, slightly nervous so that they're not obsessed by the sound of their own voice - you think it would be simple to arrange. Most importantly, someone is needed who actually likes listening to music. The people around at the moment are the sort of people that would get out a film, take it home, talk constantly over it (especially at the end when they've no idea what the plot is as they've been paying more attention to their own voice than the dialogue) then do exactly the same when they get it out again when they can't remember having seen it before next time they're in the video shop. I don't live in london but I gather this is what Xfm used to achieve prior to the vapid hand of Geldof tainting it with Capital-style blandness. It'll turn the country's music taste the same way the US sitcom audience has gone. Radio isn't led by the market, it has the power to influence people. Most kids out there are being brainwashed into accepting bubblegum synthetic arsewash with no lyrics as music. At the moment (not that I'm about to) it's the sort of musically-almost-starved environment I'd hesitate to bring a child into.

The XFM buyout was a disgrace, and while it is still a reasonable station to listen to, it is certainly a shadow of its former self.

At least it's there. The closest up here was edinburgh uni student radio. Only two hours a day was listeneable - the rest was some form of yah trying to give the impression of having a wide taste in eclectic music and a wit the size of Holyrood Park.

How did I know you were from Edinburgh?

For those who don't know, Fopp! is a very good independent record store in Edinburgh...

...in which they display what they're playing at the time. Very handy. Useful for hearing things that are only played once a day on major radio stations.

You're not wrong about most radio stations being run by robots. Half the time most radio stations use a computer to play the songs & links. The other half the time it's a tin-pot DJ who got their personality from a box of cornflakes.

What I want to know is:

Is there a special school that local radio DJs go to to learn how to speak in phoney accents and be really condescending to everyone, or do they just cultivate the skill while their head is stuck up their own butt?

http://www.h2g2.com/U38757

>>Is there a special school that local radio DJs go to to learn how to speak in phoney accents and be really condescending to everyone, or do they just cultivate the skill while their head is stuck up their own butt?<<

Of course there is. I went there, mate, and I can quite liderally tell you in a quite lideral kind of way that you really do get taught how to make crap jokes.

Which is why you should then ignore them and do something sensible with your job.

Which is why I'm only on Sunday breakfasts, probably.

Okay mate ........chill out
Every DJ has a record list to play.
You can't call mark and lard for playing shite music,
they have to play the "radio 1 hit list" or whatever!

Also Whiley IS shite, she just fancies fatboy slim.

Not one-hundred percent true! Whilst R1 do have a play list, it is not the final say in what the DJ's play. A fair chunk of what is played is the DJ's choice.
But either way, no-one is ever going to like everything a radio station plays because they are designed to cater for too wide an audience, and very few people have such a huge musical taste themselves.
And personally, I prefer the music selection that's played in the pubs!

A message for the Aardvark.

Sorry but it is not possible to leave messages on your page unless you make an entry there yourself first.

Hi Aardvark,

I have just opened a Natural History Museum at http://www.h2g2.com/A416819 and I wanted to ask you two things.

Firstly, are you happy to be in the museum (you only have to stand still when there are visitors)? Secondly, may I link from your name in the museum to your Space ( although maybe there's no point)?


Amy the Ant

You awake?

I know you're there, you know.

The Natural History Museum is taking shape. I have designed a logo for it and I hope you will display it on your user page. Here is the code for the logo and links for GuideML pages. It can be modified for HTML pages by changing the LINK tags to HTML anchors.

The H2G2 Natural History Museum
You can find me in the H2G2 Natural History Museum run by Amy the Ant.

{{{BIG HUG -- but only if you promise not to eat me.}}}



Amy the Ant