100: Radio

From WBC Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life on Air Glass. And let me do something that I've never done before. Let me just reach out and retune your radio for you. You're on air to WVLB.

Good evening, Bob. I'm going to write more than one letter. I'm going to write the station. I'm going to write the Chamber of Commerce.

Basketball team, I always wanted to go to Miami High. You're going to flip through the dial, pass the stations that you listen to all the time. Just skim up the dial, you know, slowly, from station to station. Wait for something.

You don't even know what. Something. Anything. Something like this.

A radio signal whose source is impossible to figure out. And the intimacy of one voice. What could be more personal? Even in another language.

This recording off the radio is one of those things that got recorded and then was passed from person to person to person. Finally, it ended up on a compilation tape of radio moments put together by radio station WFMU in New Jersey. And that's how we got it. By anybody's best guess, it's a radio station in Northern Canada.

The speaker's in a way. And here's what gets a little hazier. Because they're talking about a strike over and over on this tape, it's possible that this is a situation where the regular radio staff is on strike and these are the replacement workers. Or it's possible that these are the regular workers who are about to go on strike, dead up, at the end of the road.

Or maybe that's not the story at all. That's actually one of the things that I like about this. Like, a lot of good radio. Part of what is so appealing about it is what it leaves you wondering and thinking about when it's over.

Can you guys do tuning your radio? and stumbling upon this, you know, just stumbling on this it's so ephemeral this moment just happening and passing and about to evaporate into nothing forever and that's part of what makes radio different from other media, I think that quality where it can seem so small and so fleeting Don't be bummed, look at it! Take it down, never I'm not the idea in mind Ian Brown used to host the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show Sunday morning and he was really great to listen to he's smart and pretentious and this great interviewer and writer and when the show was revamped and he was taken off the O's house he read this little radio essay on his last day about the intimacy, you know, the intimacy of radio the false intimacy of radio that feeling that we get together every week, you know you and me, I mean literally, that's what it feels like it feels like you and me, you and me even though we don't know each other at all anyway, months passed after he ended that job and we wanted to get him on our show on This American Life and I called him up and he was, um, not brusque but business-like, very, uh, proper, formal and it's not ridiculous to say, I feel sort of silly saying it but it was hard not to feel a little strange about it it was hard not to feel a little bit like here's this friend who went suddenly cold and I would not feel that way about Ted Koppel or Peter Jennings or anybody else who've ever seen on television, I can tell you that there is just something about radio, there's just something about radio it's more personal well this is our hundredth episode of This American Life which we get a program which is a theme and for our hundredth show we bring you an hour of stories about the medium in which we work program and radio, what makes it great when it's great what makes it terrible when it's terrible, which it often is at one of our program today, Brigadoon, searching for an illegal radio station in Miami that keeps appearing and disappearing and appearing again in the mist act two, the invisible leading blind Jacket stumbles on a radio station that seems to completely ignore the last six decades of broadcasting style and convention act three, radio most people listen to an act of if we spend some time with the radio programmers who think that it's better to play the same exact songs over and over all day long the consultants make every radio station sound the same in short, the thinking that makes most radio in America today so boring and we defend those guys act four, noble calling a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who says that when peace comes to his country if he's to more, he has just one wish he wants to do a radio show like Howard Stearns stay with us the following program is furnished by are you married or are you living in sin? no, please you bless you, boy, you bless me act one, Brigadoon we're devoting this first half of our program to the ephemeral thrill of stumbling onto some radio station some radio moment that you don't know where it came from and you don't know what it is but you just cannot stop listening we have this first story to make you scan in Miami a friend's takeaway was the one who first found the north side black power pirate radio station way down on the left of the FM dial you could only tune it in up on the north side so we'd listen to it while we drove down 79th street whenever I went to his house you could tell it was fire radio because of the number of times the DJs would say in every sentence they'd play all this poorly recorded local rap like this one sign too many suckers and not enough stretches where the guy rats living in the M, the I, the AMI sometimes I gotta ask myself why but then they'd play Tupac and then every couple of beats the DJs would just cut in over it and just scream, howl, or go and then the music would cut out completely most of the time there'd be four or five DJs all in the room with a mic all just talking and yelling and telling jokes over the music it was totally loud and chaotic in phone they even took phone calls somehow they'd play a beat over the radio and then people would call it the rap over it over the phone talk about DIY actually they were never really that overly political at all really we only called it the black power station because of one time when they were taking calls this dude called up and said check it out man southern bell vans have parked in front of my house for three days there ain't nothing wrong with the goddamn phone it's the white man spying on us and trying to keep us down like I said, it was a great station besides being really great radio the station was exciting who were these guys?

where did they broadcast from? and how did everyone in the city know their number to call in when they never gave it out over the air when the DJs talked I'd listen to see if there was even some discernible code that they used I couldn't catch one I never found out anything about it really but eventually I just moved away from Miami but after all my plans fell apart one by one last year I found myself back in Miami trying to sort it all out I ended up living back up on the north side off 79th street good old 79th street home to the welcome to Miami water power and the IS building six lanes of road from beach to swamp full of rusty old American cars blasting bass the home of the urban trailer park and the indoor flea market the 99 cent quarter malt liquor I always thought 79th street and not the beaches or hotels it's probably the true heart of Miami you can look at everything and think you know this is all when somebody's idea of a good idea right away I started trying to tune in to the station but I couldn't seem to find it I didn't know if my radio had bad reception or if they'd just gone off the air I wasn't even sure of the exact frequency really I became sort of obsessed with finding out what happened to those drives but there was no way to find out meanwhile I kept busy taking long bike rides to explore the north side an almost touching daily tour of the very architecture of defeat often I rode by a saddled Bobby Maduro stadium which is named for a Cuban baseball star who never made the majors originally it had been built in the 50s by a Cuban financier who was trying to lure major league baseball to Miami even then he built it way too small for the major leagues the financier lost all his money eventually backing Castro and then later backing anti-Castro revolutionary by the 1980s the city had only used as a shelter and processing center for Nicaraguan refugees and now it's a host to a weekend food market in its parking lot eventually I pretty much fell in love with the north side for its own sake and I gave up the search for the station but then one time on my daily ride past the unused warehouses and huge fence-off lots full of weed and rubble and the boarded up housing projects I found what could have been an important clue about the station down at the end of a dead end street where almost certainly no one would see it someone had spray-painted tape radio 61.5 W-E-E-D now 61.5 would seem to be a radio frequency W-E-E-D would seem to be a station's call letters was this some kind of ad? how could it be a station though if the FM bands didn't even go down that way? even if there could be a station at 61.5 no one would have a radio that could tune it in 61.5 would almost certainly be dead air static I decided to even try it as a phone number 615 W-E-E-D not in service I figured the sensors never really and people walk around down there on that dead end street if 61.5 was somehow a station they were probably broadcasting from a warehouse on that very street and that the broadcasters themselves must have painted it but later that same day I found the exact same spray-painted message and the same exact writing in black paint 30 blocks north in Little Haiti well I never did find out what we met but that night it was hot as hell outside the beginning of the mind in summer and I was just laying around feeling sweaty and miserable when I checked the radio for the first time in the weeks and I couldn't believe it the station was back on the air DJ Funky 1 was on playing music and taking calls he'd play a little instrumental beat part and then suddenly cut in completely over the music put the collar on the air and yell what's up?

the collar would say I want to say it two times for Little Haiti DJ Funky 1 would say alright baby Little Haiti's in the house what's up? next caller wanted to say one time for the Larchmont click alright what's up? one time for Arena Powers one time for the 6A one time for Edison two times for the 74 boys and a shout out to Shadow Man it went on all night music and calls outside my window the station signal was flying starring over the dark roads and streets and avenues that's the open windows and open apartment doors and front pages and the whole sad city out there sweating in the night I drank some talk hands from the 7-year-old Discan gas station beer special and listened and it felt like every radio on the north side must be tuned in finally after a while I heard the phone number actually given out on the air so one afternoon the only music was on and they weren't taking calls I called up anyway I couldn't believe it when DJ Funky 1 himself actually answered the phone I said uh uh uh what are you guys called? he said we're the space station well where do you guys broadcast from?

Carroll City I said uh do you like have a license or anything? DJ Funky 1 started laughing really hard and he said uh yeah yeah we got all that man and then he hung up on me Carroll City was at the very north end of the county it had originally been a white suburban subdivision but eventually it was where city planners tried to get the rising black population of the 60s to move to when the city needed new slumway and as far away from downtown as possible these days it's a city menacing residential sprawl of little home to gain graffiti known widely as a place for kids from white suburban subdivisions go to buy drugs I wrote up there but I found no more graffiti clues to the station's whereabouts later with a car radio I found that you couldn't even get the station that well north of 125th street so I started keeping my eyes open for any new clues on my ride home from the more wealthy southern parts of town where I was working it was a long ride home but always interesting when we left downtown for the north side it was like crossing over into the flip side of the postcard we rode out of the pink and blue neon glare of air-conditioned malls and chains-floors and gated condos and hotels and skyscrapers into a dark narrow maze of funky old wood houses hand-painted signs and corner stores the suburbs have the police protection but the north side has the voodoo well finally one day I got a huge clue when the station was apparently having an on-air live promo party DJ Funky 1 said come on down we got all this great food down here at Mama's Kitchen we got the fried chicken plate for five bucks at Mama's Conk Dinner for seven bucks could it be DJ Funky 1 and a pirate radio transmitter vibe in a restaurant? the address they gave out was only a couple blocks away in the heart of Little Haiti but when I got there there was no restaurant at all just two black dudes on a couch in front of this tiny house cut up into four efficiencies there was no music anywhere there was no sign of a transmitter I said uh are you guys with the radio station? they looked at me like I was crazy and nodded uh this is Mama's Kitchen I can smell chicken they said it was I said but where's DJ Funky 1?

where's the station? they broke up laughing and then one guy said everyone listened to that so Mama's Kitchen was really just some guy's mom's kitchen I ended up passing on the conk dinner and I just bought a frozen cup of cherry Kool-Aid for a quarter I took it to my favorite spot by the tracks and sat there with it laughing in the summer heat now that I met two people from the station or had I the whole thing was even more mysterious well I guess I don't mind not knowing and now I'll probably never find out more about the station because it was time to move away from the north side but I had one last Saturday night with the station one last night of the station sending out the Miami-style base to be packaged and delivered to the suburbs via 79th Street one last ride through the ruins and failing streets and bad ideas to talk to you late at night like radio Biggie Scam's story first appeared in this handwritten self-published scene Scam some music during the story was by the Nishin Burrito Project in San Francisco which delivers free organic vegan burritos to the homeless one night a week music from Wayne Shorter Greg Osby while Assistant City Manager Virginia Doloff resigned on Friday after two weeks of negotiations over severance issues City Manager Brian Martin disclosed that Martin had asked Act 2 the invisible leading the blind so much radio listening happens in the car this radio signal is one that I've been tributing editor Jack Hitches upon on a long drive it was my decision I don't want to get into it you hire and fire until you get one that works last month I was cruising the backwoods of Massachusetts on assignment in a rental car for the longest time radio wasn't much help in relieving the boredom of interstate travel after three hours my finger was numb from jamming the seek button when the radio suddenly snagged this station and it was two elderly gentlemen reading it was unlike anything I'd heard all morning for that matter for the last 30 years well a good Monday morning to you and welcome to the March 2nd edition of the news it's being read to you by us volunteers us being Mike it's me and yours Judy Gordon Monday morning hosts here and we read for the reading disabled or anyone else who'd like to listen and in the background you're listening to a usually swinging band playing Beatles music Ted Heath from London, England and we'll hear more of Ted on the way out at 12 o'clock and then at 11 we'll be playing Engelbert Pumperdin nice fella of course music is not our game here we'll just put it in to relieve give ourselves a break and get us in the mood to read to you because for the next two hours we will be reading you're listening to the Lowell Association for the Blind talking information The service is provided for the reading impaired. Mike and Gordon read items right out of the Lowell Sun, the National Telegram, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. They happily lack all the mannered, practiced intonation and attitude of commercial radio.

Their keen story selection favors homeric battles among sewer commissioners and landfill managers or pronouncements from local cranky professors. I knew right away that I found my escape from Gordon Liddy in Shambawamba. We really stick to local news if we can. Merrimack values, southern New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, anywhere within our listening mind.

But it's always local news because we feel, and I think Mike will agree with me, they can hear the national and the international news on their regular radios or television. Yes, I agree. And we're going to get underway with Mike reading from the National Telegraph, today's edition, by the way. Yes, good morning.

And from the University of New Hampshire, the headline here says domestic assault researcher backs unorthodox views. Murray Strauss defends his theory that wives assault husbands as often as the reverse. That's Mike, who seems to have naturally married the vocal charms of Lawrence Wealth and Howard Cassell. Gordon's the other one, who tends to wear a quieter style.

In this story, Mike reveals that the official statistics on domestic abuse are flawed because men simply don't report their beatings to the police. And Mike explains why. Although both men and women are likely to be ashamed of being hit by a partner, many men are even more ashamed because they feel it shows them to be a wimp, he said. Every story ends with a touch of banter from the two hosts.

You know, Mike, that's never happened to me. Oh, me neither. Well, you're married, I'm not. Of course, no wife would ever hit me because it would have to be somebody else's wife, and I don't make friends with other people's wives.

I can't remember if I've been hit by somebody else's wife. Oh, you can. That was a very serious story, but we sort of made a little bit light of it at the end. And we're sort of informal here on our little radio station, and we hope you don't mind it.

Bob Malibu. Informal is not quite the right word. The right word is surreal. Even though the readings are as ordinary as anything found in a newspaper, dear Abby, horoscopes, their intensity makes the listener feel not so much like he's hearing a radio station as living in this place where Mike and Gordon dwell.

Even the obit serves or thing. Eugene R. Goyette of Alfred, Maine, committal prayers and services will be conducted at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the chapel at St.

Joseph's Cemetery in Chelmsford. Mrs. Anna E. Lekas, or Lekas Kunzler of Lowell, wife of Charles E.

Kunzler Sr. Calling hours are at the, no, no, it's another one, I'm sorry. That was the, that was, she's evidently already been buried, Mrs. Kunzler.

Rule could not turn these stories off, whether it was assistant city manager Virginia Doloff getting fired because she hadn't done enough to stimulate growth along one part of lower Middlesex Street, or sewer commissioner Tom Moran, who, now a candidate for selectmen, was worried that his sewer experience might peg him as a one-issue politician, or the account of Representative Mill Nozzle breaking his leg. But the story that had me spellbound for ten minutes was a long and treacherous account of the annual meeting of the Drake at Water Supply District. It was rich in character and subterfuge, a mini Shakespearean drama. Essentially, three board members who faced pay cuts had packed the meeting with relatives, and in the end, they got raises.

Graham's relatives at the meeting included his wife and about ten brothers, sisters-in-laws, cousins, and nephews. Also present were about fifteen Graham friends, neighbors, and business associates. Bladis had about ten relatives at the meeting. Three sons, a sister, a brother, a cousin, and in-laws.

Anna's wife, daughter, son, and son-in-law were there, as were several of his neighbors. In all, counting relatives and friends of the commissioners, Bladis and Gaudette totaled close to one hundred. But wait, there's more. Twenty-six from the school department, six firefighters, three police officers, and two from the sewer department.

Lambrose gives... The disputed raise, by the way, was a mere $2,000, but the ferocity of the battle was apparent, and even the political tactics were strangely familiar. Like Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich, the raise plotters pretended to be astonished that anyone would question their motives for going to the meeting, so they shrouded themselves in patriotism. It's just one of those things that happens, said district clerk Michael Bladis.

Everybody can go to a meeting. Shame on the people who don't. But it's... By the end of the piece, my heart went out to Maureen Cares, who had arrived innocently ready to defend smaller Jeffersonian government, but she was easily crushed.

I'm disappointed, said Maureen Cares, who attended with her husband. This was my first water district meeting, and it strikes me as though the other side, and I hate to use that term, it appears that there were some efforts to bring out a particular constituency. Mike? I think that should have been subtitled all in the family.

And now I'd like to introduce Lowell's weather wizard, Steve Roberts. Good morning, everybody. My core audience of this program is maybe 200 blind people in New England who actually hear the broadcast on special radios, configured to receive its non-AMFM signal. Occasionally they air the show on the local college channel, just how I heard it.

But for the most part, Mike and Gordon's universe shares in our airspace, but is not of it. It's what like Wobegon would be if real people lived there, and then broadcast their own show, without Garrison Keillor. In this alternate universe, the men are not always strong. Rather, they are savagely beaten by their wives, and the children are not at all above average.

From Tingsboro, sophomores at three-area technical high schools scored poorly last year on a nationwide test of English, math, and other key subjects. Greater-little sophomores scored in the 27th percentile, meaning 73% of the school systems nationwide scored higher. We're approaching... Not that there isn't a good deal of Keillor's sweetness on the air.

Mike and Gordon discuss a pledge drive that will occur between now and the I'm not making this up, Acme Club Picnic. Later, there's a discussion of the election of the town hog reeve. That's the guy charged with rounding up the village's pigs if they bust out of the pens. When you hear this program, you realize just how homogenized everything else on radio is.

This is banter that hasn't been focus-grouped or copied from another show with better ratings. Finding Mike and Gordon was like discovering radio as it might have been 65 years ago, a kind of er-radio, beautifully preserved in amber. By the way, I have a little funny I want to make. Is El Minio related to that old movie star, Sal Minio?

No, I don't think so. I had to say that. I just had to say that. Well, that's all right.

I'll ask Dutch. He's an aficionado of these things. Sal Minio, right? Okay, Steve, thanks a lot.

You're welcome. Back to the news we are. Chumstwood, we have a... Answers, real answers in a minute for Public Radio International when our program continues.

This is American Life, I'm our class. Each of you in our program, of course, which is a theme, bringing a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, radio. What makes it so great?

What makes it so terrible? And we've arrived at Act 3, the radio most people listen to. We're going to restart June 26th. Three tickets?

Myra, please. Back to you. All week long. This is a recording of V-103, W-V-A-Z, in Chicago.

A few years back, V-103 was in fourth or fifth place. The radio is not an art background. No, no, no. It's a science.

And by applying scientific principles, consult with Tony Gray, and program director Max Myra, transformed V-103 into a tie for number one in the Chicago market, year after year, with adults age 25 to 54. This, of course, means lots more ad revenue, much bigger profits, twice as many adults listen to that and listen to Chicago's public radio station. The story of how Max and Tony did this, major station number one, is the story of how radio works pretty much every commercial station on the dial. This is the science of modern radio.

And it begins here, 15 blocks away from the radio station. These are the offices of a company that V-103 hires called strategic media research. Every day, young women in 10 windowless rooms, get on the phone in late afternoon and early evening, and call radio listeners. It's targeted research.

For V-103, they only call the listeners that V-103 wants more than any others. These are 35 to 44-year-old African-American women. They go for women rather than for men for a very simple reason, Tony Gray tells me. Women are more likely to actually fill out the Arbitron diaries which ratings are based on.

In most cases across the country, the stations target females because you know you can rely on the women to fill out the diaries. So they get these women on the phone, and they help them up to a computer, which plays them brief clips of 30 different songs over the phone. It takes about 15 minutes. For each song, the women press numbers on the phone's keypad to indicate if they're familiar with the song, how much they like the song, and if they're getting bored of the song, which Max says is the most important thing.

Once you get a record on the air, you have to know when to take it off, because there's nothing more annoying, for nothing that would drive a person away from a station than a song that they could just tie it on. Every week, a printout of the audience scores arrives on Max's desk, and he marks it up, dividing the songs into A songs, B songs, and C songs. A songs will be played on V-103 every three and a half hours. B songs will be played every five hours.

C's will be played twice a day. These 30 songs are the only new songs that V-103 plays. They make up 40% of the music on the station. The other 60% is what radio programmers call goals, proven songs, that always test well with target audience.

For V-103, that means Marvin Gaye's sexual healing, making by Anita Baker. On last week's list, Max crossed off six songs just did not test well enough to stay on the station. One of them is a sentimental favorite from Max, by his favorite artist, an artist that he does not want me to name on the radio, so I'll just say that he's a crossover black artist. He married Lisa Marie Presley.

The reason this song is in brackets is because we've been playing for several weeks, so it's saying it'll never be a hit. The research is saying it's not going to happen. Now, you like this song. I love this song.

I love the artist. But you cannot let this face interfere. No, it's not about me. It's about listeners.

It's about playing what they want. You have your own radio station here. Play whatever you want. That's my job.

You said the most important thing. I have my own radio station at home, and I play all the stuff I want to play as often as I want to play. I make tapes. But when I come here, it's about business.

Big business. Millions of dollars are affected by the decisions we make, so that's the real bottom line. V-103 has four competitors who are going after the same demographic group that they are. The average person says Max jumps around between two and three radio stations all the time.

If at any moment, V-103 has a song that scores lower with the audience, and one of its competitors has a song that scores higher, V-103 loses. Some programming tidbits I picked up during my visit to V-103. If you play rap music, you pretty much say goodbye to any adult audience. So even stations that target African-Americans usually don't play much rap.

V-103 plays none. Sampling is another matter. One of the reasons that sampling bits of old songs is so popular now in pop music has to do with the way that radio stations operate, with the science of modern radio. Picture, if you are a songwriter, and you put some famous uplick from a pop song into your song, when radio stations do this telephone surveys of listeners, way more listeners, especially older listeners, are likely to say that they recognize and like your song, and radio stations will add your song to the playlist.

One of the songs that Max is adding is a song called Too Close, which has a sample in it. This is another song we were looking at, because normally we would not go on a song like this, because it tends to be a little young, but the band for this song is from a familiar adult song. What's the sample that they steal? What is that song?

You have to put it in. Oh, Christmas Rackin' by Curtis Below as well. Remember that? Oh, the 80s, right.

Oh, the 80s, right. The demo is not going to make you mad to hear this song, because it's just so familiar. It's like, you know this song. What is this song?

When they came to B-103, Max and Tony made some changes in personnel. They tinkered with the station's slogans and promotions. They paid a marketing firm called 200,000 women on the phone, telling them to listen for a contest on B-103. But the main thing, he says, the single most important thing, that moving from number five to tied for first place, is picking their music more carefully, letting it not be.

They did not test well with the target demographic. A higher degree of discipline. And what, again, my experience has been, a short playlist always seems to fix the problem a lot quicker than, let's say, a more liberal playlist. It happens every month.

The moment they get good numbers. It happens every month. I can't sleep. The night before the book comes out.

I can't do it. I can't sleep. I can't do it. And then when I pull them up, I always have my head down.

I don't even want to see them. And then, you know, luckily, we've had some, you know, we've been at the top of the page, but, man. Running a station in a scientific way means, of course, that most radio stations sound the same. That's why most radio is so boring.

Why we hear the same songs repeated over and over, everywhere on the dial, from city to city. Why B-103 can't even play oldest writing. I should know that public radio does not stand above all this. Most notably, The Morning Show, Tom Joyner, who is syndicated around the country, who does one of the most idiosyncratic, funny, truly interesting radio shows I have ever heard.

It comes quickly from this day in black history to the three-minute radio soap opera It's Your World, from serious and semi-serious to straight-out comedy. It is surprising and just great by any measure. We kind of made a little noise, huh, Mr. Novak?

You can get some power, I would say, huh? No, no, the people. Not me. It's not me.

Okay. A few weeks ago, Joyner and his morning crew took on conservative columnist Robert Novak. This is why President Clinton was in Africa apologizing for slavery. Novak at the time said something on television about how African-Americans would not be in the United States if not for slavery.

Joyner's show started a barrage of mail to the Chicago newspaper that publishes Novak syndicated column and very, very quickly, Novak came on to Joyner's show to try to clarify his position for the audience's audience. Some of our really fine citizens are African-Americans in government and business, athletics and show business. You know how they got here? They were all slaves, weren't they?

So it's a kind of a problem. We wouldn't have this enrichment of our society that wasn't for slavery. I never said slavery was a good thing. I said it was an unusual thing.

Let me talk about it. When you say it's kind of a problem, the it in that sentence presumably stands for slavery. So if slavery is kind of a problem, one more thing about the scientific way of making radio is it's weirdly democratic. Every song is chosen by Poland.

Here's this multimillion dollar business with all these well-groomed men and women in their expensive clothes spending every hour of every day thinking about how to please middle-aged inner-city black women. How many other civic institutions are doing that? And let me just say one thing. I'm not in the business of offending people and I am genuinely sorry if anybody wasn't offended by the marks I made before or even every marks I made this morning.

Okay, we appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Novak. All right.

You got it. CNN watching the Bureau. Well, of course, the science of radio, the machine of modern radio, takes as well as it gives. It breaks hearts.

Lots of people and ideas get knocked off the air as programmers try things they think more predictably and scientifically attract less. I had a job as a DJ on two big New York rock stations, and she got pushed out for more predictable programming. She began a station called Z-Rock. I was the voice of Z-Rock, and what they'd have me do was, I was kind of younger, I don't think I'd do it now, but I was the only female voice on the station, so I had to be really, really angry, which isn't the way that I am, personally.

So I'd be like, I am 14-8 Z-Rock, you know, and I was going to hurt somebody. So sometimes, sometimes... And were those instructions to you? Like, did they actually sit with you and say, no, no, angrier, make it sound angrier?

No, actually, I did all the production. I just did everything. It was funny. I think I got paid, like, $5 an hour.

And then, at the end of the day, there was a boss that would hear everything, and he'd say, could you sound more, I don't know, like a dominatrix? And at some point, you became a DJ, a regular DJ on the station, right? Right, well, what happened was, they started out this butt rock station. It was called Q104.3.

What are you calling it? Butt rock. Butt rock. And I mean that in the most endearing way.

I really love the music. It was ACDC and Aussie, and for some reason, the best way to describe it would be to call it butt rock. And the way commercial radio was, there's these very slight parameters. But this guy, as program director, knew that the best thing to do with me was to let me go.

And even on the very first shifts that I did were Saturday nights, he'd let me play some of my own records, which was an amazing amount of freedom. I know it doesn't sound like very much, but it was enough space to be a human and to have a lot of fun with the listeners. So what happened? So what's happening about that?

Oh, because in 1996, I guess, Viacom came on more than one station, and they decided that they wanted to have a station that appealed to males ages 25 to 54, so they changed the format from pure rock, which is what they called it, to classic rock. You know, these distinction between pure rock versus classic rock versus new rock. It's so Talmudic, you know, it's just like so fun. Classic rock.

Oh, it was like Aqualong again, and like Jimmy Buffett, and like stuff that just, I was literally praying to get fired when I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I kind of walked into the promotions closet, and I saw these Jimmy Buffett t-shirts, and I said, okay, I don't want to work here anymore. I hope they fire me. I said, that's the sign of the Indy Crisis ride, the Jimmy Buffett t-shirts.

That's exactly it. I had to turn into resignation. Then, she worked for other jobs, including one of her first radio stations, Z-Rock and K-Rock. But she decided she couldn't work there when she saw what those jobs would be.

And I just kind of knew what was going to happen to me was that they'd want me to become, you know, somebody that said what they wanted me to say. Like, you know, like, you know, you know those, they're called liners in commercial radio where DJs say stuff like, keep your button set on us. Wow, I didn't know there was a name for that. Yeah, that's called a liner, where they say, like, you know, 20 songs in a row are your money back, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah. So, like, really, like, middle of the road, kind of, you know. And these were people who were actually in, you know, like, maybe 10 years before, they were the most vital and vibrant DJs, and they had just been beaten. They were people who were just absolutely beaten, you know, they were reduced to having to say, just remember that button one, like, keep your button locked on us, and every day is a no-repeat day, and we play 20 songs, or someone wins $20,000.

And literally, like, what would be in front of you as you were in the air? Would there be a list of, you're going to play this song, you'll play this song, you'll play this song, you'll play this song, you'll play this song? Yeah, it's basically a list. It's a list that says exactly what song comes at what time, you know?

And so then what's the pleasure of being a DJ? What is the thing that you're doing yourself? Somebody else is judging the songs and all that. I don't know why people become DJs, but I don't think that they look at the room like a really big phone or something really vital or exciting or alive, but more like they look at it like a, like a room.

You would look at the radio station like a really big telephone. Yeah, yeah, I thought of it as a really big phone, and it was a magic room, you know, it was just the most vital room, and I really, really liked the listeners. I just, on my phones, lit up the whole show, and I just basically talked to people, and I talked about what people were doing at work, and talked about what they were eating at lunch, you know? People would send me pictures of what they did, and it was this whole, it was this community, you know, and if it was hot and people were working on roofs, you know, I'd have them call up and talk about how hot they were and who's the hottest, and I shouted out songs.

I know it sounds really hokey or stupid or whatever, but you were just making somebody's day, and I can't tell you how much I loved that, and that's what I think breaks my heart the most, is I miss that, like, you wouldn't believe. It's so weird, it's like you were betrayed by radio itself. I just so don't want to sound like a bitter person, and there aren't very many people, if anybody, that understands what I've gone through, which is, you know what I'm saying, it's just like an open wound, or like, I'm just so heartbroken, you know, like, this is something that I love so much, and I just don't think that it exists. It's like being in love with somebody that you've never met, or, you know, it's like some kind of strange situation where I just love this thing, and I don't, you know, I don't see it anywhere.

So what are you doing now? Now? Oh, God. Well, actually, I've been doing, like, a lot of cool things, like, being in a band, and I've been writing a lot, but, like, the real reality of it is I, like, ran out of money, and so I'm, like, answering phones, and I wagers for a while, and, uh, and, uh...

And do you listen to the radio on your job? Oh, um, I actually, I actually tuned into some internet stations. There was, there was a station I really liked in Calgary that was, uh, they didn't even play good music, but the people just seemed real, you know? Um, so...

Wait, you got on the internet, you had to search on the internet for a radio station in Calgary? I actually went all over every single thing that they put on Yahoo, and I listened to every single station that existed. Until you found one that you could stand. Until I found one.

Like, there was nothing in the metropolitan, the five-state area. Actually, on the actual radio, you literally had to hook up to pull on a station from another country. We'll be right back. But before his appearance on this radio program, Worldview, he invited the producer, Lee Rubinowitz, that someday, if he comes to his country, he has another dream.

He would like to do a radio program himself, one like Howard Sterns. He'd seen Sterns' movie, Private Parts, on an airplane. We reached Florida, at the United Nations offices in Geneva. That's the kind of radio program I would do in Timur one day.

I probably would cut me off the air. But, uh, his approach, you know, is really, you know, hilarious. And I enjoy listening to him when I can. So you've heard his radio show?

Oh, yes, yes, yeah. I heard it before, long before the film came in, when I was in New York, you know, a few times I heard it, you know, on a taxi, like when you take a taxi somewhere. I hear, at first, I didn't know what the hell is this, but I noticed the taxi driver would crack up, would laugh, and then I would join in. So after that, of course, I heard it many times whenever I could, yes.

Let me play you a little clip from the Howard Stern show, okay? Yeah. All right, here we go. This is a clip he's talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So I said Fred, let's go chase Arnold into the bathroom. He's on the right, we think it is. Don't call him a barbarian. He went in there and he's like, hey, you know, what?

Hey, boys. Hey, boys, please. Thank you so much for a nice compliment, but please. Sorry about you, Arnold.

That's okay, boys. So can you imagine that your own radio program in East Timor would go in this kind of direction? Well, I don't know whether I can afford to be here. To be exactly like that, they would get me off the air right away.

But it is entertaining. Can you imagine what you'd like to do on your radio show? What would you like to do? The kind of program, the kind of show that would not take people too seriously, like government leaders, politicians.

Do you think, I mean, when you describe it that way, it makes it sound like you'd have mostly a political show. You saw it in Howard Stern's movie Private Parts and he has like naked ladies in the studio. I mean, would you do that? In our societies, in our countries, I couldn't do that.

I don't think you'd find too many women in the third world that would do that. You have to take into consideration that in certain countries, there are certain things that people are not yet prepared to listen. For instance, if I were to talk on about sex the same way Howard Stern's show talks, the bishop would excommunicate me right away. Yes.

And I should say, you won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a co-award. You ended on special. Yeah.

The bishop of Carlos Filipe Schimendelo is an outstanding, courageous individual. So to have a radio program similar to Howard Stern when it comes to discussing sex. And let me ask you to explain, what's appealing to you about Howard Stern? Well, he challenges all the hypocrisy, the snobbies and the double-standers.

He says things that I think that most people would want to do and to say, but they don't dare. You know, when you describe this program the way you do, I mean, it sounds, in a way, it's almost a diplomat's dream. A diplomat can't usually say exactly what's on their mind. Exactly.

You have a radio personality who gets to say exactly what he wants. Exactly. Many diplomats feel like they do. You get frustrated with all these, you know, posturing at the United Nations.

And sometimes I lose my temper and I tell some people what I actually think of them. And if I were not constrained by the delicate work I do, if I were to have my own radio program, I tell you, I would be almost exactly like Howard Stern. We don't believe you. I don't really care what you believe.

I don't believe you. I think that Mark has a radar in his pants for money. Yep. Do you think there are many members of the Diplomatic Corps who listen to Howard Stern and are fans?

Oh, yes, yes, yes. People have fun. They enjoy it very, yes. Most of them feel as if, well, that's exactly what I would like to say myself.

And if only I could have a job where I were able to speak honestly like this. Exactly, yes, yes. Now, over the last few weeks, knowing that we were going to do this interview, we've been trying to arrange to get you onto the Howard Stern Show so you could take a look first hand at your potential new career. And we haven't been successful so far.

And I understand that at one point you were in contact with them. You called them up. Yeah. Can you tell me what happened?

Well, first the lady had no idea what I was talking about. I told East Timoth she said, East what? She probably thought I was calling from the East Side of New York. After I tried to explain, she even didn't know what the Nobel Peace Prize is all about.

She'd never heard of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, no. And then she passed on to the editors or the producers or whoever. And they said, well, they say they don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah. I'm interested in the porno cruise content. All right, listen. This is the ultimate prod.

It's a porno cruise. It's like 70 hot chicks. We're going to be naked the entire time filming porno. We're going to be poolside.

It's a cruise. A legitimate cruise. And we've got two tickets to give away. In other words, they're having a cruise and it's going to be all porno actresses.

And they're giving away tickets to it. But that is all. Again, it's a joke, no? No, I think it's real.

It's a joke. I think it's real. Well, if it's a joke to joke, people, I would. Many, many years ago when I was a journalist back in Timor, on April Fool's Day, I ran a story saying that a Swedish cruise vessel had a renegown not far from the capital.

And there were many blonde, nice Swedish women around. And I tell you, everybody, including some very respectable men, they all rushed there. Only once they got there, they got there. There I was, you know, waiting for them.

There was no boat, no switch. You were ahead of your time. Thank you. In a certain way, you're trying to get freedom for your home.

Do you view this kind of speech, which is often, I have to say, Howard Stern is often criticized here in the States for the things he says and the way he is. Do you view this as being, in a certain way, what freedom is all about? Yes, obviously. That is freedom.

It is freedom, but it is freedom. It is honesty. And that's why he's so popular. And many people hate him because of that.

But he should, in fact, receive a medal, a medal of freedom for what he's doing. Jose Ramos-Cordo in Geneva. To Rachel Day and Alex Bloomberg, Benedict C. and Laura Cain, Debbie Mitchell and Marjorie Strusko, Keith Halbert and Jay Kurness, Danielle and Dutty, Julian Malcolm, my parents and sisters, Kathy and Melinda at PRI, Danny Miller and Terry Gross, Jennifer Farrow and Michael Greenberg, Manoli and Carrell and John and Chris and everybody at the NPR New York Bureau.

To buy a cassette of this or any of our 100 shows, call us at WBZ here in Chicago 312-832-3380. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International Funding Program with provided by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting with John D. and Catherine team of Bartham Foundation and the listeners of WBZ Chicago, WBZ Man of the University of Victoria, who has issued new orders for how I'm supposed to do the show from now on. Could you sound more?

I don't melt like a dominatrix. I'm Mary Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. PRI Public Radio International.