"State Your Opinion"

At my first radio job thirty years ago, when I was a lowly weekender, the station had hired a guy with no radio experience to be the news director. This guy had apparently worked at a small newspaper somewhere in his past and he brought it up every time I saw him (he was a little guy but he had a huge mutant head -- one day I'll have to tell you about my aversion to people with disproportionate heads, like Food TV's Giada De Laurentis.)

Now, the station didn't really need a news director. The disc jockies read five minutes of news at the top of every hour, news culled from the AP wire machines. What the station did need was an evening disc jockey. So this guy played records from 6-11 P.M. -- a chore he detested -- and from 11 to Midnight he hosted a news talk show.

Imagine you're a news director, given the opportunity to discuss local, regional and national issues five nights a week. Would you prepare a list of topics each night? Would you invite politicians to debate their positions? Would you at least offer up a theme for each show?

Not Big-Headed News Director Disc Jockey (hereafter BHNDDJ). After the reading of the 11:00 P.M. news, he would announce that the phone lines were open. There were no call screeners. The station didn't have a delay system. BHNDDJ would answer the phone on the air, welcome the caller to the talk show, then intone in his reed-thin eastern Kentucky accent, "State your opinion."

The caller would start talking about whatever was on his or her mind -- leash laws, the president, Kentucky basketball -- and BHNDDJ would stand up and leave the room.

That's right. The host of the show would walk to the outer office to check the AP wire while the caller was on the air.

It turns out that BHNDDJ had a very short attention span. He also was more fond of being able to say he hosted a talk show than he was at actually, you know, doing the show.

It didn't tale long for listeners to catch on. After BHNDDJ left the room, callers would engage in long profanity-filled rants on marijuana legalization, bestiality and UFOs. It was kind of like an early version of the Art Bell show, if directed by Clerks Kevin Smith.

It probably won't shock you to learn that the BHNDDJ talk show was short lived.

All this is leading up to an invitation to drop by the message board and State Your Opinion. Things have been pretty active there lately and the gang likes talking about books, movies comics and writing.

Play nice. And if your head is too big for your body, I don't want to know about it.