“Jock In The Box”.

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1173765_10152112757319307_465519651_nThe fastest way I know to shape up an air staff is to play a game called “Jock In The Box”. This is the fun one where you play an aircheck at a staff meetings and all the Jocks critique it. The air talent though take it easy on each other knowing that they may be the next “Jock In The Box”
What happens next is the air talent usually beg you to stop playing the game because it’s too embarrassing. I would agree to their request pending their agreement to shape up and play by the rules. The moment they didn’t “Jock In The Box” was on again.
Jim Hilliard played an even more brutal game, this one was called “We’re Going To Seattle”. Jim would gather around all his programming geniuses and I use the term lightly because when you were in this special session with Big Jim, you didn’t feel much like a genius. His premise was, he had just purchased a new radio station in Seattle so now he wanted to create the perfect format for it. We would start with the type of music we were going to play, then move onto what style of news should we use, then create some exciting new features along with some giant promotions. After that we needed to select an air staff which was to be chosen from any and all of the Fairbanks Stations. Boy this was the tough part because we had a lot of great talent spread throughout our various markets. After we arguing for awhile about which ones would sound best would finally made our choices and Jim’s only comments as he left the room were, I want all those fun features and those giant promotions you guys just dreamed up to start Monday and oh yeah if the rest of our joxs on are stations aren’t good enough to go to Seattle what the hell are they still doing on our air.

Experience is a great teacher but unfortunately the lessons begin with the test.

I’ve never heard anybody say they are willing to live worse so a few can live better but that’s what seems to be happening.

The police said that when they were called in earlier to check out the weird behavior of the maniac in Santa Barbara who ended up killing 7 people and wounding 13 others that they didn’t search his place because they don’t like to disturb people with mental problems in fear of upsetting them. Are they f##king crazy! I think mentally disturbed people should be labeled dangerous and make it their and their therapist’s job to prove that they are not. Had the police searched the killers apartment they would have arrested him and seven innocent people would be alive today but somehow he has rights which he never gave them.

It’s not about whether or not people buy your art it’s all about whether or not they enjoyed it.

What you think is who you are.

The Super Bowl, The NBA Finals, The Final Four, The World Series, The Stanley Cup, The Olympics and The Indy 500 all have something in common. They are all very special events and the current participants have very little to do with the popularity of the event. While watching the Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend it occurred to me that after they went red which is the first time since Tony Hulman ran the race that they have done anything for the fans and maybe thats why the attendance has dropped from over 400 thousand to around 250 thousand. They have been too busy making the track safer for the drivers and trying to create parody by slowing the cars down with tons of restriction so local car guys can get involved. Hey this is a world event and we the race fan don’t want parody we want to see new fast stuff every year like we used to. If the 500 officials want to restrict things let them restrict the fuel even more but let the cars be as fast and powerful as they want. Two great things would happen in this kind of environment the excitement would come back to Indy and brand new inventions for fuel economy would show up that we would be able to use in our own cars down the road. Indy has to start doing the race for the fans and forget about the owners and drivers they can take care of themselves. The Indy 500 was created so the automobile industry could test new inventions at high speed and I figure we should get back to that premise. Hey Indy Shakespeare said it best, “The Play’s The Thing”.

I would love to hear a debate between a Harvard Professor and a self made millionaire about what each think the real meaning of life is.

You don’t have to spend much time thinking about sitting down, the thinking starts when it’s time to get up.

Your ego actually enjoys lying to you.

 

 

 

6 thoughts on ““Jock In The Box”.

  1. I recall you eventually had a hand in helping build a pretty good radio station in Seattle in the early 80s. I believe KLSY benefited quite nicely from your training sessions with the Fairbanks folks. Thanks one more time for your help and guidance in 1983 as KLSY was launched in Seattle.

  2. And I recall Dana that after being asked to convert a hybrid AOR station to AC I was also told that corporate wanted me to also convert the air talent. Hell even the Catholics gave up on that hundreds of years ago and now just want folks to bring them their babies. The best I could come up with was … If you follow are instructions to the letter you’ll soon be driving a Mercedes. As I also recall Dana, you got the first one. geo

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