Using Your Best Judgement, and Being Wrong

During a 3 hour show Friday night I had a man call from way up in Massachusetts (which was weird because my station is a 7 hour drive south) to speak about what else but Obama, Palin, and the economy, nothing unusual because its the hot topics and my host was talking about those things exactly.
Now it was a full night of callers, on average 8 of the 12 lines were filled at any given time, so it wasn't a surprise when his call didn't get on the air. He called back after being on hold for an hour to ask whether or not he was going to be able to get on, I politely explained that it's not my choice (lies, it is my choice most of the time but he seemed reasonable so I told him my host had the choice). The caller was put back on hold for a little while and still never got on, its rare but it happens. He then called back after being on hold for about 45 minutes and ended up explaining what he was going to say to me so I could pass it on to my host:

"You see, I believe that the entire world is run by 10 Jewish bankers..."

And that's all I needed to hear.

Getting tired of this

No, I'm not getting tired of my job...but this just happened:

Caller: "Yes, we would like to talk about what Native American's want to be called."
Me: "Well, we're not talking about that right now, we're talking about Paul Newman."
Caller: "Yes, but I thought the hosts were getting tired of talking about him."


FUCK.

Harry Kalas and Ned Yost

From a caller:
"Ned Yost was fired from the Brewers today."

Me: "ok..."

Caller: "I Just thought you'd like to know because Harry Kalas just called me."




I don't even know.

Jinx

Like many major stations in the US we get weather updates every few hours from The Weather Channel. They're good people and do a good job. A caller told me recently to "Tell the guy who does the weather updates to stop saying showers because everytime he says it we don't get any rain."
Bad jokes?

Let's talk about Chinese people! With their kung-fu and their silly ching-chang-chong talk! We can't understand you! Go back to yer country!

I'm not racist at all, I felt that a quote from the Dave Chapelle Show skit "The Black White Supremacist" when he was talking about how he hates Chinese people. I'd show you the clip but its been removed from every video website because of the copyrights, so buy Season 1 instead.

We just had a guest on about Asian Americans and how they are viewed for college screening (thank god it was previously recorded) decided to let me know that "This woman should be working in a massage parlor."
I'm glad to see racists call me constantly to tell me things like this when I'm at work. I also enjoy when I'm supposed to do something to appease these callers like kick the guest off the air. Is everyone in this world a moron?

Infomercials vs Regular Programming

We as call screeners/board ops/producers generally start out at the bottom of the barrel doing any kind of show available. Saturday's are generally my day for doing a multitude of different programming. I've done everything from a show about medical footwear (thank god for planned callers) to lawyers giving free advice. For some weird reason listeners hate change in their programming schedule for their weekend much like people who watch a lot of TV don't like it when their favorite show moves to a different day or hour. It's funny, I sit at work right now and it's the first Saturday of new programs and already I've had around 10 callers ask me when a certain show is going to be on and what happened to the old show that was on this time slot. It's almost funny to hear these people in a state of panic about what happened to the old show. Then again I feel the same way with my TV and the Simpsons get moved around.

Getting Fired

Not literally, I think.
Slowly but surely I have become more and more selective in calls that get through which is labeling me as a bad guy by many of the callers. Not every call is bad though, some may be not relevant or some might just be something I don't agree with. Today was an interesting example of all types of bad calls because of the topic, "Language". It basically boiled down to people not learning the American language despite living in the country (I personally think that if you live here, at least make an attempt because I for one would learn a new language if I moved to a different country that doesn't speak English). It brings out the worst in people and sometimes the best. From what I remember (there's a lot of calls) most of them were racist and one person I distinctly remember saying, "The owners of the big guys radio stations (i.e. Rush, Hannity, etc.) are all Zionists." Funny part about that one was he had a really, really good point before that about something that I currently can't remember, but the Zionist comment stopped all of that getting on the air.
At times callers can be long winded when trying to give me the gist of their point, which incorporated with the phones ringing, listening for possibly having to hit the delay button, and paying attention to the host getting ready for breaks puts a strain on my attention. There was a particular woman who said something that wasn't going to get her through plus her taking forever to make her point that I said thank you and hung up on her. She must have went ballistic in her car because she called for about 20 minutes asking me why I wouldn't put her on with the host. Thank god for caller ID despite her having her number show up as "unknown". As a colleague of mine named Tom said to me the other wee, "You develop a 6th sense for bad callers." I assume this applies for when they block their number also. I mistakingly picked up the phone because I have to make sure at some point that it was or was not her calling me back which led to her arguing that she should be allowed on but I was past that point of any reconciliation of giving her air time. She (the caller) then told me that I was "sexist" and she was "going to get me fired" because I didn't let her on plus it's my hosts "job to decide which calls are bad", not mine. I can only reiterate that yes it is my job not the hosts. Hosts have enough to worry about during their show to not have to deal with idiot callers, no matter how long you've been listening and calling in to the station (according to her, she's been calling for 5 years and always gets on).
Funny thing is, I've probably let her on before and she's probably made some good points, just not today.