6 things you didn’t know about working as a radio DJ.
I work at a radio station. Here are some fun facts:
-The DJs you hear are rarely live. They voice track hours ahead of time so they can go to their other jobs.
-Unless you’re an enormously popular DJ, you’ll barely make enough money to feed yourself, hence the other jobs.
-A lot of the voice tracks you hear are likely from other markets. If a station is too cheap to hire more on-air talent, they’ll have someone from another market go over your playlist and voice track. So, if you’re in Townsville, Kansas, the DJ you hear introducing that Luke Bryan song coming up may be a hip-hop DJ from New Jersey making a little extra scratch.
-If a DJ is live, s/he is most likely out doing a remote broadcast. If you see a DJ on the phone at an event, they’re probably speaking with an operator back at the station. If you want to mess with them, wait until they start talking like they’re on the air, then yell obscenities or whatever you’re compelled to do. Even if they have a delay back in the studio, chances are the board op is an intern who’s not paying enough attention to black you out in time.
-When a DJ says the next track is by request, they’re lying 99% of the time. We just make up names to make it sound like we’re engaged with the audience. The request line is often just put on hold so that callers think we’re being slammed with calls and not just ignoring them. Every market I’ve worked in has done this. Every. Market.
-The playlist for the day is determined at the national level and then distributed to every market. And yes, it’s the same two dozen songs you’re tired of hearing all day just shuffled up. Even locally owned, private stations use national music services to do this for them.
Oh boy, could I go on…
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