Since our last review the Friday before last, we have continued listening to WZBH primarily during the workdays from as early as five-thirty in the morning to as late as midnight. Most of our listening was sporadic being about a half hour to an hour here and there. Last week, we skipped the Matt and Crank program altogether.
During this two week period, the inflammatory programming and inciteful rhetoric prevalent during the day a couple of months ago was all but gone. Promos during the day for the Matt and Crank program remained nuetral in tone and none of the other DJs, particularly JJ and Chris Steele, slipped in their off-hand remarks that added to the White- Christian- heterosexual- male-centric Matt and Crank promos. That was until Tuesday.
Matt was absent on Tuesday. Crank filled the show with past prank phone calls that, somehow, they really believe are funny. For the first time we heard the Holiday Inn call. The premise of the "prank" and the phony accent was so God-awful that we came to the conclusion that either the call was real and Holiday inn hires people with the intelligence God gave an oyster to run their front desk or the whole call was staged. We tend to believe it was staged. Maybe one of Matt or Crank's friends needed five bucks for a bottle of Boones Farm so agreed to play along with Matt.
The other two prank calls we have previously reviewed: Matt and Crank takes aim at gays and ends up shooting the entire military, One racist at his finest and his boy at his finest. Hearing both of the clips on the replay only made them sound worse than when we first heard them. Too bad Crank chose to replay the prank calls. Of the two, we believe Crank is the more intelligent and funny personality, but, unfortunately, lacks the confidence to step out from behind Matt's dark shadow and shine in his own right.
That evening, Chris Steele shocked us with his reference to "chicks." After giving out the station's number, he made the comment that a "hot chick" could feel free to call him. In the past, we would have found the use of such derogatory slang as further accentuating the White- Christian- heterosexual- male-centric tone of WZBH's programming. Now we simply see the slang as an idiot kid using an archaic slang term because he feels it makes him sound more macho. Maybe some day Chris Steele will mature into a man and drop "chick" from his repertoire of words. If this last sentence sounds harsh, it was meant to be. He should've used "chick" a month ago so this critic could've won his beer money.
We were also shocked by another quick blurb on this morning's Matt and Crank show. The station requested that anyone considering a lawsuit against them should give the station a call. That blurb was the funniest segment of the whole show, probably because Matt and Crank didn't have anything to do with putting it together. We're all tempted to call because we really want to know what prank is behind the message. Would we win free tickets to a concert if we called? Or would we win a bag of WZBH junk promo items like coffee mugs, beer huggers, and pens? Concert tickets we would take, but we doubt we could make a buck and a quarter selling the promo items on eBay. We don't want to risk winning junk so none of us at The Critics Page has the nerve to call. Maybe someone else could call and fill us in on what the prize really is.
We have decided to occasionally listen to WZBH, but as long as the programming continues as is, we really won't have much of anything to review. Thank you for everyone who has been using the blog and our companion FaceBook page.
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