It's Wake Up Time...Rise And Shine

The usual path undergraduates took in the communication department was to dabble in radio for a few years – maybe just one, and maybe just a semester to get it over with – and then get involved in the television side of things for the rest of their time on campus. Because, I guess, the faculty thought everyone wanted to be on television. This was hardly true but it was hard to win an argument against the set-in-stone curriculum.

To drive this home was the senior-level advanced television production class where students had to not just come up with their own episodic television program but script it, record it, and – again, because faculty thought everyone wanted to be on television – host it.

You’re taking your guidance from the force

There wasn’t any sort of specific science to how PSAs were rotated in and out of the control room but there was some rhyme and reason instilled into the process to ensure some continuity. This method always seemed to be there: when I became Program Director I picked up the process as it had been left for me, improved it where necessary, and allowed those that followed me to do the same. It was fairly simple and painless.

Thirty second (0:30) spots were recorded to 0:40 second cartridge tapes and labeled in red. Labeling was done with a typewriter and one of the never-ending packets of labels that always seemed to come out of nowhere. Running out of labels one week? By the start of the next another packet surfaced – usually with a few sheets already missing. I’ve no idea how they were kept in stock unless they got passed along with Son of Funkenstein CDs (see I Can Feel It In My Heart Something's Wrong).

Arithmetic, mathematic, same old form but assymetric

Ad Council PSAs were always a big deal – maybe not so much the message but the medium. Every few weeks a new PSA campaign packet arrived and dumped unceremoniously into the lap of the station’s production director for review.

The packets were immaculate in design: glossy, tri-folded envelopes sized about 9x11 inches, dolled up in colors and photographs promoting the latest campaign. Sometimes it was cartoon characters or clip art on the outside of the envelope - sometimes it was images from the television version of the PSA promotion. Inside was a treasure trove of information, most of which we did little with.

Joke by joke they spot erase you

I’ve already mentioned that not every aspect of our university operated radio station was created by station staff (see Matter of the Heart) and that most of these programming elements were Public Service Announcements, mostly distributed by the Ad Council (see You know I’d like to believe this nervousness will pass) but other non-profit organization or assemblage as well.

I’m sure the popular question is why we even bothered with such things in the first place. Why would a rag-tag group of college students put forth any effort into interrupting music programming – rock music, easily the only thing garnering any college-age audience in the first place – twice an hour with thirty-second smidgens of long-winded good advice?  (We were jaded enough to think thirty seconds was long-winded?)

Why?  For training’s sake, I’m sure. Part of it was ensuring we knew how to follow the format clock (see I see you dancing on the stage of memory) and the traffic logs and taking the designated break. In time (for those furthering our futures with work at commercial stations) we would be employed by stations with operating costs and budgets and that advertisements paid the bills (and, likewise, employees). Plus there was nothing like a hands-on atmosphere to hear in action some of the vocabulary that Dr. Propel spouted off in his classes – such as stopsets, spots, and PSA, to name a few.

I’m sure another reason was to just give some buffers between the constant flows of music – though I wonder if these stopsets were something Syd (“the Kid”) insisted on to ensure we sounded more commercial and professional than we really were. I don’t remember a lot of PSA-laden breaks during my Freshman year, though by my DJing days as a junior and senior, it was recognized that stopsets occurred twice an hour across all shifts, were at least sixty seconds, and consisted of a recorded station promo, PSA, and then a sweep back into the music.

Lastly being non-commercial meant that we broadcast news and information in the public service. Right.

But how many people rocking out to Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, or (God forbid) Seven Mary Three appreciated the interruption with a reminder about getting their eyes checked? That’s when I was glad some of the PSAs were comical, attempting to add some humor to what could be dry subject matter. For example, there were a series of back-to-back fifteen second spots from the American Ophthalmologist Association that aired sometime around 1996-97. A female voice kept urging a driver to “back up, back up...back up...” until there was a shattering of shop widows or something; an announcer asked “Had your eyes checked lately?” The second fifteen seconds had another short vignette along the same theme. There were a handful of these spots in rotation: someone driving couldn’t see the road, someone baking couldn’t read the recipe, someone standing down a pitcher couldn’t make out the baseball. Each ended with a noticeable sound-effect – a honk, a retch, a thud – that helped to underscore the seriousness of the incident but maybe evoke a chuckle or two.

Yeah, the spots were meant to be humorous but this wasn’t exactly the way to get a laugh during the rock shifts.

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Dead Red Eyes
(Bachmann, Gentling, Johnson, Price)
Archers of Loaf
From the album White Trash Heroes
1998

Dead red eyes flickering half bright went on for ride (?)
In slick silk. They were on to my circumstantial slide,
Blow by blow chipped off shell and bone. Tripped and talked around
It could not fall through the crowd of careful lies busting open wide.
Sensible fact or fable, watch us fall from your favor. (?)
Since you knew too much about it dressed in wax you lit the town in
Candlelight, flickering half bright. Well I held it in my hands and now it's
Gone gone gone.
Saw it with my own two eyes, just pass me by.

Took a walk through a town of half stoned clones
Bound and gagging. Joke by joke they spot erase you,
Heard their news but it did not phase you one little bit,
Not one little bit. So I meet you by the light of main street
Stranded ghosts where I've been waiting. Kill it 50 times or more,
Before I'm through I'll kill it 50 times more, just to bring it back to life,
And bust it open wide again. Well I held it in my hands and now it's
Gone gone gone.
Blinded by the neon in your dead red eyes.

the one about sharp-dressed men pledging their allegiance to nautical-themed footwear

Something peculiar happened one autumn morning in Dr. Propel’s Intro class. People started wearing suits. Business suits. Neckties and such. Again, this wasn’t the faculty (which wasn’t really into this sort of thing to begin with), but the kids in class. This wasn’t the norm. Up until now male students wore just about anything: t-shirt and jeans, maybe a collared shirt, and so on. Yeah, once in a while you got a buttoned-down shirt but never a tie, never a jacket. Never the inkling that it was the norm.

And it wasn’t just there in the Communication Building – male students all across campus were waltzing around in this elaborate costume. Had the entire male student population of the university suddenly cleaned itself up and decided to spend the week in their Sunday best? No, as I was to find out soon thereafter from some of my more jaded contemporaries, this was all about buying friendship.

Yes, Pledge Week had come to campus.

One of the funniest things about seeing these students stride about in their elaborate costumes was how out of place they looked. You know, the low-maintenance kids with wild Hair Bear Bunch manes or dicey five o’clock shadows that threw on whatever they could find in their closest the first thing in the morning and then wore that the rest of the day. But now that they were zealots-in-training for the bacchanalias that were to come they started each day with a shave and hair-comb, tie with blazers, khakis, and body-fluid colored ties. And boat shoes. I never understood how or why nautical fashion made it to the mainland.

Anyway, the idea – as best as I and my jaded contemporaries could tell – was that the kids had to dress-up to play with the big boys. And this is where those jaded contemporaries liked to point out stuff about elitism, schmoozing and boozing, and how mindless conforming meant all of ‘em looked the same no matter which group they were trying to buy their way into (groups with names like Alpha Trian, Mu Fan Chi, or Up Salon Snuh).

And so they came into classrooms in this get-up and tried to look nonchalant but it didn’t always work. When that kid in the back corner, who wears nothing but t-shirts and shorts every day, suddenly shows up in a suit – you know something’s up. When the kid who smells like eggs unexpectedly begins dousing himself in cologne – you know something’s up. When the guy who never says anything to anyone starts butting into conversations between girls – you know something’s up. More so, when it’s Monday again, when uniforms have been hematologically resealed and perfect hygiene isn’t a must for the eight o’clock Comp class – you know Pledge Week is over.

The silliness subsides. Life went on.

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Bulldoze the Fraternities
(Cherry Two Thousand)
Cherry 2000
From the album Taint
1998