[BC] Dead air or no air...

[Dana Puopolo]

I had a friend who did the sign off shift at a Boston area AM station. During
the summer, the pool at his apartment complex closed at 9 PM-not enough time
to get home with an 8:15 PM sign off. So, around 7:15 he'd be on the air
saying stuff like: "it's almost time to sign off for today". By 7:30, he was
long gone and the station off and locked up. He did this summers for YEARS and
no one was the wiser-including the GM and owner. He'd simply play a bunch of
spots back to back and  *poof* was gone.

Once he offered the first caller a 20 dollar bill right out of his wallet....

No one called.

-D

From: Jeff Carter <broadcast at hidden-valley.com>

Once on a Saturday, it was my day to put WCLP-TV on the air.  It
hadn't yet gone to 24 hour service at that point, so somebody had to
show up at 4:30 AM and fire it up every day.

Fast forward to 2 PM that afternoon, the power company got the
transformer changed and power restored...and *not a soul* had called
all day.  It was as if in our entire North Georgia and partial East
Tennessee audience  that I assumed we had, since I knew we covered the
area with adequate signal level, wasn't watching like I assumed they
were.

It was humbling to think of all the many thousands of dollars that had
been spent on that station, how much time I personally had put into
it, and yet not one person in all that huge coverage area missed it
enough to call a plainly listed number and ask what was going on.

I