Happy April Fools Day! Last
Thursday night, I was at the radio station broadcasting my show, and I was
about halfway through it when the phone rang. I rarely pick up a call at the
station when I'm doing my show, but I wondered who might be calling so late. If
Shauna needed to reach me in an emergency, she’d call my cell or text. After the
second call, and about ten rings, I finally answered the phone. The guy on the other
end of the line was calling to ask about the Hunters Bay Radio Super Jackpot
Radio Bingo game. For those readers who are not local, Hunters Bay offers a radio
bingo game on Monday nights, and it’s a lot of fun. Players send funny on-air shout
outs to each other, and the odds of winning some money are pretty good. There are five games in all, and the prizes increase
with each game, with the potential to win the $4000 super jackpot in the last
game. The profits from the game go directly back into the community we serve,
so not only is radio bingo fun to play, but the money raised is used to do good
things. The caller said he’d been listening to the station and wanted to know
how he could play. Ever the promoter of the radio station, and eager to
encourage another player to join in, I began to give him the various locations
locally where he could purchase bingo cards. When I asked him where he lived,
so I could recommend the nearest location, he said he was calling from Airdrie,
Alberta! Unfortunately, our bingo game is only legal in the Province of
Ontario, but I was delighted to learn that we have listeners in Alberta!
Perhaps he was just playing an early April Fools joke on me, who knows. I often
feature Western artists on my show, and this does sometimes attract listeners
from out of province.
Hunters Bay Radio does
not track their audience, as do many commercial stations. It is an expensive
undertaking and, as a community radio station, we have not so far attracted
many national sponsors. That said, I often wonder what our reach is, and how
many people might be listening online. I naturally assume that my audience is
not very large, but I don’t know. If I play an original song that might not
otherwise get radio exposure, the featured artist might ask his or her friends
to listen online to hear the song. While our FM signal is not very strong - on
a clear day we may be heard as far south as Orillia, and perhaps a little
further north than South River – we have no idea how many listeners might be
tuning in online. Hunters Bay Radio recently applied for a permit to boost our
signal with a repeater in Bracebridge, to fill in a lot of our dead zones in
that area, but we were met with significant opposition from the area’s
commercial stations. They spent a lot of money to campaign against our
expansion, and their efforts succeeded, because our application was rejected by
the CRTC. How a small community radio station in Huntsville is any competition
for commercial radio stations with a far greater broadcasting range is a
mystery to me. I suspect that the mere fact that the commercial stations are
trying to keep us from expanding our audience is a sign that they feel threatened.
I despise most commercial pop radio, and increasingly, it seems to promote the
worst music money can buy. I forced
myself to listen to an hour of Moose FM the other day, and it was quite simply abysmal.
Music lovers in our community know that Hunters Bay Radio wins hands down in
the music programming department.
I was curious about
wherein began the tradition of promoting hoaxes on the first of April, and
there is evidence that the tradition dates back many centuries. Some suggest
Chaucer started the tradition when he referred to the non-existent date “32 March”
in his Canterbury Tales. Some suggest it is merely a light-hearted celebration in
anticipation of springtime, dating back to the Julian calendar, wherein the
vernal equinox marked the beginning of the New Year. Whatever its origin, it is
not universally celebrated, and there
is sometimes debate about what is considered funny. There was one hoax in
Boston, wherein some DJs at a radio station declared that Boston’s mayor had
been killed in a car accident. The people responsible for the hoax were
summarily fired. The other problem with April Fools hoaxes is that some news is
deemed to be a hoax when in fact it is true. I suggest we all double check our
news today, because, as the above-referenced photo points out, the truth is
sometimes stranger than fiction. By the way, here’s a little message for the
local commercial radio stations, Happy April Fools Day. You may have the money, but we've got the soul.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2019 ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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