You ever wonder what happens when a radio guy and a record guy have a conversation using canned pre-fab questions? Neither do we. But since magazines are dying and the web has all this empty space that needs to be filled
FMQB is going to fill it with two guys, one interview…
The gist is if Mario Lopez interviewed himself on how great he is while doing situps with the Lakers on his back, you might get the picture of what these face-offs are all about.
Questions like “What would I be surprised to see on your iPod?” garner answers that surprisingly are not as simple as the word music.
Because PDs are busy these days so if they can spell the artists correctly that is a win, let alone if they actually have heard the song prior to it hitting the airwaves. Now you are trying to tell me that there is an army of radio people enjoying the irony of putting themselves out of business by spending more time creating their own playlists rather than a playlist for their audience, but I digress.
How bout a question like “What do you think is happening on the show Lost?” Radio people love kitsch and nothing is kitschier than pseudo-hipster attention to a show that was over 5 seasons ago. Besides the answer is; Lost is about the erosion of the radio listener to tertiary technologies and despite our want to go back in time and kill Steve Jobs he is in actually a Terminator that cannot be killed because at all times he is watched by an invisible Unicorn that works for Arbitron and JJ Abrams.
See Radio People love to do things like “pick the brain” of a person, a house plant, or a cartoon coyote, so things like a Face-Off should be the most exciting thing in their day outside of the trip to Applebees for all you can eat riblets.
But sadly, Radio People really haven’t put the work into making Face-Off better than the movie of the same name. Because both had potential, I think the next time FMQB has such a segment on one of the blank pages of the web it should probably go like this:
Radio Guy: So you have to travel all over the country and listen to guys tell you why a # 1 record doesn’t fit their radio station, have you ever killed a hooker?
Record Guy: To be fair she was homeless
Radio Guy: When you see someone get an add that should have been yours does that make you want to get a diary from that market and ruin their ratings?
Record Guy: Guilty
Record Guy: What is the worst part about having to deal with record reps?
Radio Guy: Overall the fact that I don’t have time to listen to music let alone form an opinion because I am too busy trying to figure out my ROI on PPM and how it relates to the M-Score I gave my wife last night
Then at the end of the interview they could each pull off their masks and reveal that it was Joel Denver and Guy Zapolean all along, and they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids…
