Almost everyone's got a favourite radio station, and maybe a favorite personality. The people at your favorite station really do like hearing from you, and they do value your participation. But, there are some things they just wish you knew . . .

"What Every DJ Wishes Listeners Knew"
By Ace Armstrong

It's happened to almost everyone: you call up your favourite radio station to request a song, and the DJ says he'll try to play it. A few minutes turn into a lot of minutes and a lot of minutes turn into an hour or two and still no song. You think the guy on the air forgot about you, so you call back. Still, no song. What gives?

Well, there are a few things you don't know, or haven't realized, that affect what happens. Radio "civilians" often don't know what it's like behind the mic, so they get upset easily when they feel they've been slighted. This list of listener "dos" and "don'ts" will hopefully tell you a few things you didn't know about radio, and even help you to develop a better relationship with the folks inside the speaker. They'll definitely make life easier for your favourite disc jockey.

Don't call repeatedly to request the same song. If the guy on the air doesn't play a song, it's for a reason, and it's nothing personal. It may be that the song is not on the "master list" of songs available to play. The song may already have been played within the last few hours, or it may be scheduled to come up again in a few hours. It may be coming up, and you're just being impatient. The jock (as radio people call them) may not be allowed to play requests (most stations play no requests at all, even if they say they do. See "Ten Things You Don't Know About Radio (And Ten Things Radio Stations Don't Want You to Know).") Or, it may be that the jock simply doesn't have time. Remember that there are probably several thousand other people -- maybe even a couple million -- listening to the show, and a lot of those people are going to call in to make requests, too. Even if the jock is allowed to play requests, (s)he can't possibly play them all; it's physically impossible to play 100 four-minute songs within a four-hour period. So, jocks that are allowed to play requests have to make decisions about which songs will fit best within the flow of the program and work within the format. These decisions will rarely have anything to do with you personally; they're professional decisions based on the show and the format. (Bugging the jock will certainly not help you, though.)

By the same token, don't have your brothers and sisters and friends all call for the same song you requested. Nine times out of ten, the jock can tell, and and it will annoy him more than if you repeatedly called because he'll think that you're trying to fool him. You won't fool him, and even if you did, it probably wouldn't matter; once the song is requested, it's requested. If there are a hundred people calling who are obviously from different places with different voices who don't know each other (you can tell this, by the way, by their mannerisms, their word choices, etc.), then the song may get a slightly better chance of being played. But the ten or twenty calls your friends make won't make any difference in the speed with which the song gets played; in fact, it might not get played at all specifically because you annoyed the jock.

When calling, don't let the phone ring three times and then hang up. Again, remember that there are thousands of other people listening, too, and that the average radio station has three to five phone lines coming into the studio. In a lot of stations, every single one of those lines is lit up constantly. Even if the jock were doing nothing else but answering the phones, each conversation would still last 30 seconds or more, depending on what's happening. (If, for instance, the jock is recording something to air, the conversation may take five minutes or more.) In addition to answering the phones, though, the jock also has to pull music, put music away, talk on the air, get commercials ready to go, edit tape for air, and maybe deal with someone else from the station who needs something on another line. It may take five to ten minutes (sometimes longer) for the jock to answer the phone. Again, it's not that the guy behind the mic is being rude; it's just that there are tons of things to do, and answering the phones, while a priority, comes after doing the things that have to be done immediately. Be patient; good jocks will get to the phones as soon as they can.

Don't threaten or insult the DJ when you don't get your way. It's not the fault of the guy on the air if your song isn't played; as explained above, it's oftentimes out of the jock's hands. Threatening or insulting a jock will certainly not help you get your way; if anything, it will sometimes prompt a jock to drop a song he was supposed to play just because you wanted to hear it. It can also get you into legal trouble. Harassing phone calls to radio stations fall under the same guidelines as harassing phone calls to someone's home; it's illegal and you can be arrested for it. Those calls can be traced like any other, and with caller ID so available, it's naive to think that your local radio station can't find out who you are. Besides that, the jock can also make you look like an idiot in front of thousands of people. Any call that comes into a radio station is legally presumed to be okay to record and air; if you insult the jock on the phone, he is within his legal rights to record your call--even edit it--and then air it to make you look like a jerk.

Don't call to complain because you feel you should be insulted by a joke or bit that the jock does. Again, you are one of thousands of people. A good jock knows what will appeal to most of those people, and that "most" may not include you . . . especially if you're not a "core" target listener. Way too many people don't complain because they really are insulted; they complain because they feel they should be insulted. There's a big difference between the two, and too few people understand that.

In addition, most program directors and general managers get hundreds of complaints from well-meaning--but confused and frustrated--people who may not even be complaining about something that happened on their station. For instance, a program director at a rock station may get a complaint about something that his morning show did, when it wasn't even his morning show that did it; it was the morning show on the other rock station in town and the caller was confused about which station he was hearing. (Believe it or not, this happens constantly.) People who call to complain usually tend to exaggerate, too; this only causes program directors to ignore almost all complaints. Unless the joke or bit was specifically about you, nobody cares if you're offended. If it was out of line, the program director will take care of it himself without your input. That's what he's paid to do.

Don't call up to tell the DJ his station sucks. All this tells the jock is that you're probably a fifteen year-old kid wearing a Metallica t-shirt and smoking dope with your acne-afflicted friends, and to be honest, the jock doesn't care what you think of his station. You're not a core listener anyway, and all you're doing is making it harder for the people who are having a good time to get through. In fact, if you make it a habit of doing this, you might want to add your own do to this list: grow up.

Don't tell the DJ that if he doesn't play your song, you'll stop listening to his station. The odds are, you really won't, and even if you do, he won't care. You're one person among thousands. If he loses you but keeps ten thousand other people, it's a successful night.

Don't call and put your five year-old on the phone to request a song. The only person who thinks this is cute is you; to the jock, it's just an annoyance. You can't understand small children on the telephone, and you're preventing other people from getting through to the show--people who the jock needs to reach.

Don't call up and pretend you're trying to order a pizza. Everyone seems to do this, and everyone seems to think that (s)he's being original. Again, these are calls that merely keep productive calls from getting through. If this is the best thing you have to do with your time, you really need to get a life.

Don't ask the jock to dedicate a song to your dead friend. First, most stations don't do dedications, and if they do, it's almost always during specified times. Two, your friend is dead; (s)he can't hear the song. Three, death dedications only serve to bring everyone down, and that's the opposite of what you want to be doing when you're on the air. People listen to the radio so they can enjoy themselves; they don't want to hear about someone they didn't know dying.

If you win a prize, then at least try to PRETEND that you care. There are way too many contest winners who respond to a really nice prize (even things like new cars and thousands of dollars in cash) by giving the audio equivalent of a shoulder shrug: "Okay." There are a thousand people out there who would like to have won something, and they would be excited about it. If you don't want to win, don't play the contest.

Make sure you call if you do want to hear a song, or if you have an intelligent question or comment. Believe it or not, jocks really DO like it when people call; the phones are the lifeblood of many shows (especially mornings and nights). Jocks (most of them, anyway) are happy to talk to listeners who aren't whining or complaining or trying to insult the jock. Would you want to spend all day talking to people who did nothing but complain and harass you? Of course not. Neither does the jock. But most radio folks will spend HOURS talking to an intelligent, good-spirited listener. Just like you would.

Try to have fun! Most jocks want their listeners to be having a good time. That's what makes radio so rewarding; you get to make people smile. If you're in a good mood and just want to tell someone that you're having a great day, most jocks won't mind.

Don't hesitate to call if you have an idea to contribute to something that the jocks is doing on the air. The secret to being a successful air personality is really to be the straight guy and let the listeners be funny. If the jock is doing a call-in bit ("What's the worst date you've ever had?" for example), call in. Even if you think yours is lame, a good DJ will be able make it funny or interesting.

If you think a jock is doing a great job, let him (or her) know! A jock wants to know when something's working well (believe it or not, it's harder to tell when something's going right than when something's going wrong), and if you tell him, you'll brighten his mood and probably make his show go a little better. Radio people get so much negative reinforcement that they tend to ignore it; if they don't, they soon burn out and become bitter. Positive reinforcement, on the other hand, is another story. It's in such small supply that it really does have an effect.

If there's a jock you really like, develop a working relationship with that jock. A good caller can be hard to come by, and if you really like what a particular personality is doing, he'll appreciate your contribution. You obviously don't want to call every five minutes and bug the guy, but you'll sometimes find a jock who will say, "Hey, can you help me with this phone bit?" or even ask if it's okay to get your number to call you at home on a night that the phones are dead. If you develop a good relationship like this with a personality, that personality will probably do his (or her, as the case may be) best to play your songs or help you out when you request it.