The Chris Moeller Archives

K(X'nO) means hugs and kisses

My former employer, Clear Channel Radio and sports station KXNO in Des Moines, is in some hot water with the FCC after a profanity-laced verbal attack on a colleague by show host Marty Tirrell was heard over the air during a commercial break. The air talent's--and I use that term loosely-- microphone had evidently not been turned off. (Full audio here.)

Several thoughts come to mind...

- While listening to the online clip, I first wondered how the broadcasters could not have known that they were still on the air. Even the recording studios at the station have an on-air sign that lights up when the mics are "hot." But it eventually becomes clear in the clip, after they come back from the break, that "Marty and Miller" are broadcasting from a remote location. Such a scenario always makes a show trickier for the control board operator in the studio. This director has to always remember to flip that switch, obviously, but Tirrell is given a pair of headphones and he has only himself to blame. In broadcasting school, you're taught that every microphone is "hot." Even at state schools.

- I always liked Larry Cotlar. Nice guy, self-effacing, great Cardinals fan. I never met Tirrell. His show was only on Saturday mornings when I left the station three years ago. I was working weekdays and Sundays.

- I could never understand, then or now, how a group of grown men could be so obsessed about high school sports.

- When this type of thing occurs, the underappreciated group of people who schedule the station's commercials have to find a later place on the schedule to re-air those commercials for the advertisers-- "make goods," they're called. But that wouldn't seem to be necessary in this case. Many more people will hear the audio clip of the commercial break on WHO-TV's website than would have ever been listening live to the show.

-This incident reminds me of the time Ross Peterson and I were doing the old "Baseball Show on KXNO." I cut loose on the air once in a similar fashion, but not during a commercial break because our show didn't have any commercials. I was upset that Ross had taken (and hidden from me) the one and only free admission pass we had for the Bob Feller Museum in Van Meter. Naturally upset over this professional breach, I called Ross "a jealous prick" and "a goatfucker" on the air during one of our Sunday evening broadcasts. He responded on-air by saying that I had embarrassed the station with my fawning over Feller and that he was going to "wrap my testicles around my neck." But I got along with the guy fine.

posted by CM @ 10:15 AM