Who's whiter?

From the days of Matt Walsh until present, whenever Crank wanted to "win" a point in a debate or wanted to justify his "open mindedness", he would point to his Portuguese wife and say, "I'm not racist. I married a foreign woman!"

Who's whiter? We say the baby, followed by Maria, with Crank lagging behind a shade and a half darker as the unshaven, dumbass redneck.

You know, we really get upset when foreigners weasel their way into this country. Ok, Maria, you were blinded by love and you married Crank to get him legalized on Delmarva as a citizen, but we have 500 pcs of gold if you send his ass back to that foreign country on the other side of the Susquehanna.  We'll double that offer if you take him down to Wallops Island on the next rocket launch and send him on his merry way.

Hey, Crank, even though we don't believe you belong on Delmarva, congrats on the new addition to your family.  Our only question is why did you feel it necessary to flaunt your heterosexuality in such a public way?

WZBH sold

Thanks to an anonymous commenter on another post of ours, we learned Great Scott Broadcasting sold a bulk of its stations, including WZBH.  We don't know what that means for the future of "Delmarva's only rock station" nor for the current on air personalities. 

Back on Aug 19, 2010, Matt and Crank aired a particularly offensive show.  The next day, they dared listeners to "go ahead and call the station" to get them fired.  They weren't going to apologize for what they said.

To date, Matt Walsh got fired within the year because he never apologized.  Crank, as Matt's side kick, remained, but he has yet to apologize for his role in that particularly offensive show.  Because ownership of the station has changed, we will not discontinue our reviews of the morning show with Crank no matter what the show ends up being called.  We're still waiting for an apology from Crank, or Crank's dismissal, regardless of who owns the station.

We do hope the new owners will move WZBH in new directions.  Unfortunately, Adams Radio is based in Minnesota so it will remain to be seen how sensitive they are to local programming, promotion, and needs.  For that reason, we will continue our overall reviews of WZBH.

If any execs at Adams Radio are reading this, please consider one of us five drunk rednecks for a position with your company.  Beer money is getting tight down here and we'd appreciate a job offer.

Job application for cohost on The Worst Show Ever....

Dear Hiring Manager

Apparently, Crank is the coworker from Hell.  In four years, he has gone through, count 'em, six cohosts.  Yup, six of them: Matt Walsh, JJ, Sarah, Phoebus, Ian McKay, and Leah.  While most good companies would've fired the coworker from Hell, Great Scott Broadcasting promotes Crank to Operations Manager and allows Crank to fly solo, a gig he has failed at more than once.

Us five drunk rednecks are opportunists and one of us needs a job.  Mr. Crowley is willing to take on the employee from Hell and may the best man win.  Please accept Mr. Crowley's résumé as his expressed interest in the position of cohost on The Worst Show Ever. 

Bubba Joe Crowley
Second House Past the Oak Tree
Crowley's Bend, MD 21613

 

Objective:   Git a paycheck.

Edeacation:

                Crowley's High School   1987-1996 
                                * Gradeated ninth grade auto shop
 

 Experience:

                All my life to six months ago   Pa's Farmhand

                Responsbilties:

                                * Plowed fields, fed farm animals, baled harvests.

                                * Left job when DEA claimed Pa grew illegal tobacca and stole the farm from us.

                Achievements:

                                * Tell time by position of the sun.

                                * Spit a tobacca wad twenty feet, knockin a fly clear to the ground.
                                * Tell you the kind of grass jist by chewin the blade (legal grass, not the other kind).
                                * Learned to operate complicated chemistry machines by brewin white lightnin in
                                   Pa's back woods.  (DEA seized this, too.)

                Six months ago to present       Crowley's Corner Auto Shop

                Responsbilities:

                                 * Clean up all the beer cans and cigarette butts throughout the day

                                * Layed off from lack of business.  Folks actually spected us to fix their pickups, not
                                   leave them up on blocks.

                Achievements:

                                * Crush a beer can on my forehead with no visible damage, cept to the can.

                                * Perfected wolf whistle and other communication skills with women.
                                * Learned proper way to mount gun rack in back of a pickup.

Refrences:   Never been outside of Dorchester County.  Everyone else I know is my kin.

Thank you for taking the time to review Mr. Crowley's qualifications.  Based on the current cast of talent at WZBH, he feels he is more than qualified to fill the position and take WZBH to new heights.  He feels confident the next cohost to leave The Worst Show Ever will be Crank - if you choose to hire Mr. Crowley.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.  It is Mr. Crowley's turn to buy the beer so the sooner you can get him on the payroll, the sooner he can start buying the beer he owes the rest of us.

Regards,

Five Drunk Rednecks

Riding the subway to work with Crank

Last Wednesday, Crank started a segment centered on a study of subway riders in Chicago who were commuting to work.  The gist of the study claimed riders who spoke to a stranger during the ride had a "happier" day than those who chose to ignore those around them.

Simple enough of a story to start a discussion.  Could've been a good topic of discussion if one were creative enough to link a study of the city-dwelling Chicago commuters going to work to the rural-dwelling Delmarva commuters going to work, but, alas, we had Crank leading the discussion.


Is this the subway Crank rides to work every day?

Crank went on for about ten minutes talking about riding to work on a subway and asking his listeners if they were apt to talk to a stranger.  After about the dozenth time of mentioning subways, one of our critics felt compelled to call in with one simple question: just how many subways are there on Delmarva?

Crank fumbled around and said, "Ok, you're riding in your car with strangers.  Are you apt to talk to them?"

Our critic responded "If there are strangers in my truck, then I picked up a hitchhiker, and I'm not likely to do that except for maybe once in a blue moon."

Crank promptly hung up the phone and rambled on about airplanes or something while deriding our critic as incapable of understanding an analogy of riding in an enclosed vehicle with strangers.  Even in a city, we don't know of many people who commute to work on an airplane nor do we know of many Delmarvans who ride in their vehicles with strangers or ride a subway to work so, no, we don't know what Crank rambled on about. 

There were many ways Crank could've sparked a good discussion...and maybe even been funny at it.  The problem is that to have been able to effectively pull off a funny fifteen minute segment, a creative, funny person would've had to been sitting behind the mike.  WZBH has no such talent on staff.  A creative, funny sidekick could've have helped Crank out, but Leah is fairly new and was relatively quiet during the segment.

Why do we bring this up?  Remember when we said WZBH was hemorrhaging talent?  In less than a week, Leah has been axed from the Crank Show and moved to DJ from ten until three.  Tonya, who used to hold that slot, disappeared, maybe because work interfered with her twelve-hour-a-day beauty rest.

The latest shake up, in less than a month, means Crank is back on his show, solo.  He's had many other solo opportunities, including a solo gig at another station, and flopped miserably.  Do the powers that be at WZBH simply enjoy watching a fish flopping around out of water as it gasps its last breath of air?

Here's our tally of lost talent in less than a year:

1. JJ
2. Captain Blue
3. Doug McKenzie
4. Ian McKay (missing, not confirmed gone)
5. Sarah
6. Phoebus
7. Spera
8. Tonya

We'll probably be adding Tyler soon.  After our glowing review of his show, Tyler has moved away from talking about the music.  The drastic change became painfully obvious to us when he talked about bullying a customer at a convenience store.  His story sounded reminiscent of a Matt Walsh story, only with a more pleasant voice.  A little over three months after writing that glowing review, we really haven't heard Tyler speak as enthusiastically about the music as he did that day we reviewed his show or even when we first heard him back in March. 

As listeners, we can only connect the dots the best we can given the information we have.  When a no-talent is also Director of Operations, the team under him (or her, if it were the case) can't be any better than the no-talent.  For WZBH, that means Crank is the cream-of-the-crop in talent.  Everyone else needs to be even more boring and disjointed than Crank or they need to tone down their talent so as not to outshine "the boss". 

If the powers that be would grow a pair, they would can Crank, try to woo back some of their past talent or simply start over with new local talent.  And they would terminate the Nikki Sixx nationally syndicated show contract.  My gosh.  Nikki Sixx's show is Crank's show, only with a more pleasant voice.

Sarah outsourced to Montana country

<sigh>

Ok, we admit it.  We went for the sensationalized headline.  You know, like the headlines Fox News tries to grab you with.  In reality, Sarah moved over to CAT Country, 97.5.  Don't bother clicking on the link.  A bunch of drunk rednecks must've designed it because half the links over on that site don't work (at least at the time of this writing).

Back in April, we talked about the hemorrhaging of talent out of WZBH.  Almost a month after posting that analysis, Sarah signed up with Cat Country at Delmarva Broadcasting Company.  Country isn't really our thing, but a couple of us did tune in just to hear Sarah.  Not sure what she's doing, but we are sure she's made a positive career move.  There's more to the world of radio than bland dumbass stories interspersed with the music.  We always thought Sarah could make it big in radio and we hope her move will allow her to grow as an entertainer.

After our review of the new guy, Tyler, who took over Doug McKenzie's afternoon spot, his show drastically changed.  We were excited over his enthusiasm and his radical ideas of talking about the music instead of talking about dumbass stories.  Since our review a little over two months ago, we haven't heard Tyler talk about the music and the singers behind the music since.  While he is still the bright spot in the WZBH lineup, he's about as bright as a lightening bug in the afternoon. 

Tonya took over Captain Blue's spot from 10 am until 3 pm.  Don't know who she is and don't care.  We've already determined she's a lazy <fill in your own expletive here> who likes to sleep twelve hours a day.  Really, Tonya, how many times a week do you have to tell us that you like to sleep twelve hours a day?  Contrary to what Crank tells you, you work for a rock station.  Scrap the dumbass stories, talk about the music, and don't tell us about your sleeping habits.  Rockers sleep twelve hours - or more - on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only.  The rest of the time, they are up and doing, partying, and raising Hell.  Quit acting like an old lady.

Crank finally got a token side kick, Leah.  (We're not sure of the spelling of all the new names at WZBH because the Director of Operations, namely, Crank, has yet to update the WZBH website.)  It's not that it's important we know the proper spelling of Crank's new sidekick.  We didn't think there was anyone out there with less talent than Crank, but, by God, Crank found her.

In fact we understand what Crank's ultimate goal has been.  He's a boring no talent who talks about a lot of non-interesting topics in the "name of entertainment."  Listen to Crank and Leah then tune in at 7 pm for Nikki Sixx and his side kick. 

What's the difference?  Not much other than Nikki Sixx made a name for himself as a member of a great hair band of yesteryear whereas Crank isn't known past a handful of Delmarva listeners.  But the comparison is telling of WZBH's programming goals at the hands of the Director of Operations, Crank, a man that the powers-that-be put way too much faith in.  Play some music and talk about dumbass stories.  That's what Nikki Sixx does so it must work.

The Golden Age of Radio doesn't need to be dead, but the likes of Crank are hammering in the final nails to its coffin.  Washed up rockers like Nikki Six aren't helping, either. 

Oh yeah, that's right.  WZBH was big on "support your local businesses" about a year ago.  Now they have not one, but two nationally syndicated programs eating up their airspace.  Nikki Sixx takes up five hours every night of the work week (remember WZBH's "big and exciting announcement"?) and Hard Drive takes up Saturday nights.  We find it hard to believe that there is no local talent that could have filled these spots. 

Now you might be asking why we come down so hard on Crank.  Let us ask you this.  The number one most memorable rock song is "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold", and what's the name of that song?

When a caller challenged Crank and Leah for not having that song in their top ten most memorable rock songs, both were stumped.  Neither even hinted that whoa, those lyrics sound familiar.  No, in Crank fashion, make the caller sound like an idiot for talking cryptically. 

Then the caller finished the lyrics.  "And she's buying a stairway to heaven." 

In a split second, Crank knew everything about the song.  Thank God for Google, huh Crank?



Could Crank recognize this iconic rock image?

You work for a rock station.  Memorable songs have lyrics few forget.  Yes, the song was before your time.  There were memorable songs before our time, but we recognize the lyrics even if we aren't sure of the song.  The standard of remembering, or at least vaguely recalling, is much higher on you than it is on us.  You failed with your caller.  And you failed with some of your listeners, some being at least two listeners.

 "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year... Running over the same old ground, and having found... The same old fears."

Time to dump the fish bowl. 

Better say gooddbye to Tyler while you can

Two of our critics grew up in the Golden Age of Radio, an age when DJs decided what to play on their shows and their shows were just that - creative shows, the auditory equivalent of a TV show.  Rock and Roll ( a phrase coined by none other than a famous DJ, Alan Freed) exploded on the scene and the music's form changed as quickly as new records could be made.  DJs of that bygone era played what they liked and helped form the careers of up and coming rockers as well as their own careers while constantly pushing the broadcasting envelope with the quickly changing style of music. 

DJs who didn't appeal to a national listening audience still helped bands gain local fame and hits.  Strawberry Alarm Clocks, for example, released a song, Barefoot in Baltimore, that made a number one local hit by virtue of DJs from DC to Philadelphia playing the song regularly, even though the song only charted 67 nationally.

By the way songs are chosen for play on radio today, Barefoot in Baltimore would most likely have been a blip across the airwaves and quickly forgotten.  If a DJ really liked the song, he wouldn't get to play it because it would have quickly fallen off the playlist dictated by a program director.     

Meet your DJ of tomorrow

DJs, today, are little more than glorified disc changers.  Very few DJs get to play what they want to play.  Corporate execs do the research to maximize profits and the DJs are handed playlists
that result from all of that research.  The playlists not only tell the DJs what to play, but also how often and in what cycle of rotation.  It's not hard to see how radio stations in the near future could save tons of money by outsourcing the DJ positions to a mix of computer-driven hosting and nationally syndicated shows to give the auditory illusion of being "live" broadcasting.

Oh wait.  WZBH appears to be going the nationally syndicated route already.  They already have Hard Drive and have announced a new show, Sixx Sense, to be airing soon.  It will only be a matter of time before the morning show is replaced by a syndicated show and the rest of the dead air time will be hosted by a computer instead of a live, local person.  (In fact, we dare to say that as the air time is being eaten up by national syndicated shows, Great Scott Broadcasting needs to get off their "support local" high horse.  Using national syndicated shows translates to a loss of local jobs.)

It is really sad to see the developing trend, especially when a DJ like Tyler comes along.

We first mentioned Tyler about a month ago.  Two things about his show impressed us: he talked about the music and the music groups at least three times in an hour and he never felt a need to tell us who he was. 

AC DC still plans to make music after 40 years,
according to the band's official website.

We listened to him a couple of Wednesdays ago.  He relayed a rumor circulating about the group, AC DC, that they may be done as a musical group.  Malcom Young, Tyler explained, returned home, apparently ill, and the band had made a pact a long time ago that if any member could no longer play, AC DC would disband instead of replacing the lost band member or playing without him.  Tyler than asked his listeners to call in with their favorite AC DC song and he would play the song with the most votes in AC DC's honor.

You had to hear the show to appreciate the excitement he generated.  Listeners were calling in and a few even congratulated Tyler for doing such a good job.  Our two critics listening weren't the only ones feeling the excitement Tyler generated.  Heck, our two critics felt compelled to call in their own votes.  Tyler made listening to the radio fun again.

We've listened to Tyler a few more times since that Wednesday and the excitement he creates with his listeners hasn't waned.  His performance is reminiscent of the great DJs of a bygone era.  Too bad he doesn't get to choose his own playlist.  If he could, that would be an added dimension to his show that could probably propel him to legendary status.

You might be wondering, by now, that if Tyler is so good and enjoyable to listen to, why should we be saying goodbye to him while we can?

First, he breaks the mold of WZBH style of programming and the style of programming the operations manager, Crank, thinks radio should be all about.  Since at least 2010, that style has been to find dumbass stories, stories of extreme behavior, or any story well outside of the expected White, Christian, heterosexual male behavior and ridicule the story, ridicule the people involved, and ridicule the stereotyped group of people likely to be starring in such stories. 

The basis of the morning show is to find stories for Crank to ridicule.  There would be no morning show if the dumbass formula were banned.  Crank would be clueless about what to talk about. 

In the morning slot of ten am until three pm, after a song ends, Sarah finds stories and polls to ridicule before flicking the switch to a commercial.  DJs of yesterday, including JJ, Captain Blue, and Doug McKenzie relied on the dumbass story formula as the staple of their show, too.

Tyler comes along and, gasp, shuns the ridicule formula and talks about the music and the groups behind the music.  He doesn't care if you are a friend or foe of anything.  He only cares what your favorite beer or favorite AC DC song is.  He doesn't care about making some sort of social or political statement.  He only cares that his listeners are having fun and feel like they are an important part of his show.  And he cares about making his show all about what radio is supposed to be about - the music and the performers behind the music.

We're fairly sure that Crank, as operations manager, has a lot to say about who stays on air and who doesn't.  Anyone who doesn't follow his formula of programming (that is find things to ridicule), that DJ may as well as start looking for another job.  And if anyone dares to show even an inkling of more talent than Crank has (which means just about anyone who knows how to talk into a mic), they definitely have one foot out the door with the door about to hit them in the ass because he can't get out the door fast enough.  (Ever wonder what happened to Ian?  We have.)

Second, even if we are completely out in left field with our above analysis, there is no disputing Tyler is full of talent.  With a little polishing and experience, he is destined to explode on the radio scene.  Bigger markets, and maybe even satellite radio, are going to steal him in a heartbeat.  We only hope that when he does become a radio star, a feat very difficult for DJs to achieve in today's corporate run radio world, he doesn't forget about his roots here on Delmarva.

If you haven't listened to Tyler, you have to catch his show weekdays, three in the afternoon until seven - only on 93.5, The Beach - Delmarva's only rock station. 

(Don't worry, Crank.  We won't send you a bill for this bit of advertising this time.)

It's over between Sarah and us

We won't hide it.  Us three guys have had a love affair with Sarah for the last more than a year.  Always the wallflower, we held out hope that one day, she would jump off the wall, take control of the mic, and show her little boy cohosts how to really entertain the masses.  Alas, Sarah has cowered under the oppressive thumb of Crank and has become content playing the role of a wallflower.

The Crank Show (the morning show has always been about Crank) is run with an iron fist, Crank's fist.  He is the star and anyone sharing the mic is merely decoration.  Decorations are supposed to enhance, not overshadow.  When a cohost begins to overshadow Crank, he/she is kindly shown the front door and a new decoration is ushered in. 

JJ and Phoebus were the two latest decorations discarded like tinsel on a Christmas tree.  They served their purpose and had to move on.  Ian would've been discarded if it weren't for the saving grace of WZBH's high employee turn around.  Doug being fired and Captain Blue simultaneously leaving left a lot of hours to be filled.  Ian got shuffled to the evening shift - as far from Crank as possible so that he wouldn't overshadow Cranks poor morning performance.  Otherwise, he probably would've been shown the front door.

Now Sarah is a smart one.  She quickly learned what happens to cohosts who try to spread their wings and be a star in their own right.  She decided a paycheck was more important than growing professionally in her career.  She happily hangs on as the decorative wallflower on The Crank Show in the morning.

After her four hour stint as a wallflower in the morning, she goes solo for five hours playing the role of dumbass critic.  There's no doubt in our minds that the operations manager, aka Crank, pushes the DJs to report on the dumbass stories.  Dumbass stories have been a staple of Crank's performances since the old Matt Walsh days.  He gets a perverse pleasure out of taking extreme stories and ridiculing them as if they were everyday, normal stories.  That might explain why every DJ recites dumbass stories during their stint.

Sarah's normally bubbly, optimistic outlook has turned negative under the influence of Crank.  One can even hear the negativity in her voice. 

"Yeah, like we need an app to tell us if an apple or a cookie is more healthy to eat."

That's a typical ill-informed comment we would expect from Crank, not Sarah.  The app that compares the nutritional value of different foods may seem worthless to you, Sarah, but let us ask you this: "You sense the beginnings of a cold coming on and want to load up on foods high in vitamin C.  Would you start eating salads, apples, oranges, or chocolate chip cookies?"

What really set our one critic, Mark, off to end the relationship is a ringing cell phone.  Every time he listens to Sarah, at least once an hour, he's digging for his cell phone because he swears he hears it ringing. 



Cell phone our critic
hears ringing when
listening to Sarah.   
Not pictured:
the ringing

With the nice weather, Mark's driving down the highway with his window opened.  Despite his age and generally ugly looks, he still believes that a beautiful woman may want to flirt with him so he drives with his window opened so as to better communicate with the potential female flirter.

Between the radio, the opened window, and Mark's age-induced hearing loss, a ringing phone is hard for him to discern.  Inevitably, while listening to Sarah, he hears his phone, starts digging through the pens, lighter, and cigarettes in the cup holder to retrieve the phone, and discovers no one was calling, not even the pretty woman on the cell phone in the car that just passed him.

For Mark, the ringing phone may be the final reason to end the relationship with Sarah, but the rest of us are hanging on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, Sarah has retained a bit of her own individuality.  Crank would never think of playing tricks on his listeners, at least not one as elaborate as simulating a ringing phone. 

Some of you reading this might think we are lower than the belly of a snake for ending our relationship with Sarah.  It is, after all, not her fault for following the script written by Crank.  If one is given a B-grade script to follow, a B-grade performance is what the audience will get.

Yeah, that's true, but Sarah shouldn't settle for B-grade just to keep her job.  There are other radio stations, stations that encourage performers to grow and shine on their own.  If only Sarah would drop off the wall at WZBH and join another station where she would be encouraged to blossom as an entertainer....

Oh, just in case you, Sarah, (or any of our readers) ever sense a cold coming on and want to eat a high vitamin C diet to ward the cold off, skip the orange and go for the broccoli and red bell pepper salad.  One red bell pepper, alone, has two hundred times the vitamin C as an orange has.  Throw in the broccoli (and kale if you have it), and you'll have more vitamin C than an orange tree.  Of course, if you had the food app, you could have found the answer with a click of a few buttons instead of hearing it from us.

Underneath this creature you might find Justin
Bieber, NJ Gov. Chris Christie, Crank, and at least
one of us rummaging around in the muck looking
for new story ideas.

WZBH hemorrhaging talent

In the last year, WZBH has seen the loss of five DJs (or "on air personalities", the seemingly favored job description at Great Scott Broadcasting) and possibly a sixth - JJ, Phoebus, Spera, Captain Blue, Doug McKenzie and possibly Ian McKay.  Ian has been missing in action all week, but we haven't been able to verify if he is no longer with the station or is simply on vacation. 

Of the employees who have left, only JJ can be verified as having moved to a new radio station (Ocean 98).   Phoebus is pursuing a career with World Gym, Spera appears to be seeking employment in York, PA, Captain Blue is touring with his band, and the whereabouts of Doug McKenzie and Ian McKay are unknown.

"So a bunch of people are gone," you might be saying.  "What's the big deal?  People leave their jobs all the time."

One doesn't need a degree in business nor extensive business experience to recognize when a company is in trouble, although it does help to have one such experienced business consultant on hand to decipher what might be going on over at WZBH.  A near complete personnel turnaround within a year is a sign of a company in trouble.

The nature of the employee exodus suggests upper management trouble.  JJ's exit was followed by Phoebus' exit a couple of months later, followed by Spera a couple of months after Phoebus, followed by both Captain Blue and Doug McKenzie on the same day a couple of months after Spera.  Three weeks after Captain Blue and Doug McKenzie left, Ian McKay has gone missing, possibly gone.

In response to our review on March 23, an anonymous commentator explained, at length, the inside workings of radio.  If one reads the comment carefully, it becomes obvious "anonymous" was an insider to WZBH as well as to the radio industry.  Before any listener knew Doug was gone, anonymous wrote  "...Doug, who is no longer there...."  When one says that an employee is "no longer there", that is a politically correct way of saying he was fired and obviously coming from someone working either at WZBH or with Great Scott Broadcasting. 

The business consultant on our staff interprets the information provided so far as a possible problem in upper management.  Employees are becoming dissatisfied with their jobs and are leaving in droves.  (Another possibility - but less likely given the nature of the business - is upper management decided to save money by cutting employees' hours.  If we had seen more nationally syndicated shows airing, we could see a cut in air time for the DJs, which could force them to look for employment elsewhere.)

Thanks to the wonderful world of the Internet, if one knows how to ask the right questions, one can find a wealth of information in a matter of minutes.  Ok, sometimes hours or even days if the answers to the questions asked raises even more questions.  In addition, people love to talk and a wealth of information can be gleaned from the social media, if one knows how to find it.  So we started digging to answer the question, "Why the huge turn around in DJs at WZBH in the last year?"

Matt was fired back in the summer of 2011.  Almost a year later, June 2012, Crank left WZBH and joined WGMD as star of his own talk show.  He failed miserably and two months later, returned to his old spot on the morning show at WZBH.  With the exception of Chris Steele leaving WZBH (to pursue his medical career) between Matt's firing and Crank's leaving, all was quiet at WZBH.

Tragedy struck on March 17, 2013.  CEO Mitch Scott passed away.  We haven't been able to pinpoint an exact date, but some time after Mr. Scott's passing, Crank was promoted to operations manager.  All was quiet at WZBH for four or five months until JJ left in the late summer.  The hemorrhaging hasn't stopped since.

Our business consultant zeroes in on the operations manager as a possible cause of the recent flight of employees.  The station appeared to be running fine until Crank became operations manager.

Operation manager is an important upper management position.  Operation managers are responsible for hiring people, negotiating contracts, addressing budget matters, understanding general business operations and guiding work teams for projects.

We have stated, repeatedly over the last couple of years, that Crank is a control freak who always needs to be right.  He doesn't allow his cohosts to shine in their own right and for every sentence they utter, Crank has four or five sentences to further clarify his cohosts' statement.  Heck, this morning, a paid advertiser was a guest and Crank couldn't let the paying advertiser explain what his beer product was.  Crank jumped in and explained the product as if he were marketing director for the beer company.  The Worst Show Ever should be renamed All About Crank to reflect more accurately what the show is about.

Someone with a heavy-handed, controlling personality who always needs to be in the spotlight is not the personality type a company would want in an operations manager position.  WZBH put Crank there anyway.  We don't know if it was Jeff Scott or Jim McHugh's decision to give Crank the position, but we think it's safe to say both can be blamed for a boner decision.  Let's face it.  Crank rode the coattails of a DJ who had to be fired because he brought the station to the brink of a lawsuit, then Crank upped and left for another station, and when he returned, was rewarded with an upper management position.

Free advice from our business consultant: take a hard look as to why your DJs have been fleeing your station and fire Crank to prevent future losses. 

Doug McKenzie was your program director who was probably fired at the hands of your operations manager.  Programming since Doug's departure has become a predictable mix of today's rock hits liberally mixed with rock hits of twenty years ago, hits more suitable for the sister station, Big Classic Rock 98.5.  Yes, Van Halen, Guns N Roses, and AC DC were big bands in their day, but does the operations manager, who most likely is subbing as program director right now, really think changing WZBH to a glorified classic rock station will expand WZBH's listening market?

Crank has more than demonstrated, over the last three years, his lack of creativity, talent, outside-the-box thinking ability, people skills, and diversity tolerance.  WZBH and Great Scott Broadcasting should seriously reconsider their decision to put Crank at the helm of operations. 

A couple of weeks of twilight zone shake ups

By sheer coincidence - we're sure - after publishing our last review on Friday night (technically Saturday morning) two weekends ago, the following Monday Captain Blue and Doug McKenzie were conspicuously absent.  News of their whereabouts strangely silent.

Neither DJ works at WZBH or Great Scott Broadcasting.  We have not been able to get the scoop on Doug.  He's simply disappeared. 

Captain Blue, however, is apparently taking his band, Captain Blue's Grass Band, on tour.  One of these days, maybe we'll catch his show.

We'll miss both of them, but wish them well on their new endeavors.  Both were true class acts on the radio.  We're positive that their new paths will be rewarding ones.  If we had known they were leaving, we would've offered a farewell review instead of the one they got. 

We tuned The Worst Show Ever in this morning.  To our surprise, only Sarah showed up for work.  We only listened for about an hour but gathered that Crank wouldn't be returning until Wednesday.  No word on where Ian is or when he's coming back.  Sarah supposedly was airing "the best of The Worst Show Ever" clips, but we heard no clips in the hour we listened. 

Please tell us Ian is coming back and Crank has mysteriously disappeared for good then everything will be right in the world.

See? We haven't been sleeping on the job

Wow, we can't believe it's been two months since our last review.  Hopefully, we'll make it up to you in this review chocked full of commentary.

WZBH website

C'mon guys, update your dang website.  How are we supposed to know anything about the two new guys or even how to spell their names?  A company that can't keep their website up-to-date is a company that runs a slip shod operation.  Slip shod operations might explain why, on the sister station Big Classic Rock, Alice's show repeatedly gets interrupted mid-song for station identification and definitely explains why Crank not only is still on the air, but is also operations manager.  Really?  Operations manager?  Get operating on your dang website and while you're at it, fix the interruptions going on over at your sister station.  Two of us critics really like Alice's show.

The Worst Show Ever

Since our last, not-so-favorable review, we have learned that the new guy on the morning show is not Phoebus' older brother and his name is Ian McKay.  We didn't like Ian, thinking he was nothing more than Phoebus' older brother.  We're pretty sure we got the tin foil hat description of him right, but the two women in our group were insistent we three guys should give Ian a chance.

See, the two women are infatuated with his laid back, baritone voice.  Quietly sexy as they put it.  Of course us three guys immediately took a dislike to Ian because, well, we're guys who don't have sexy, laid back baritone voices.

Us three guys still don't like Ian, but that's along the same reasoning that the two women don't like Sarah.  Just as Sarah is a threat to them, Ian is a threat to us.  Childish, we know, but that's what beer and wine does to you.

Just as the two women like Sarah when they aren't sipping their wine and are listening to her sober, us three guys are finding Ian to be rather funny, in a laid back sort of way, when we aren't drinking our beer and are listening to him sober.

His greatest talent is making Crank squirm in his seat.  At least twice, Ian managed to challenge Crank's position with simple questions and Crank audibly became agitated.  Crank's voice upped a half pitch higher and his words spoken per minute increased by a third.  Ever hear a Chihuahua bark at some random noise and then when that random noise becomes a threat, the Chihuahua starts barking real fast at a high pitch?  That was Crank's response to Ian.  One could visibly see Crank squirming in his seat.  That's a pretty talented feat for a radio jock to accomplish for his listeners.

We're going to be bold and make a programming suggestion.  Scrap the "friend or foe" segment.  The "friend or foe" segment is a left over from the Matt Walsh days when anything spoken had to be a let's-hate-it or let's-make-fun-of-it style of programming.  Replace the segment with a "make Crank squirm" segment.  Ian and Sarah can start Crank squirming, callers can add to it, and the listener who correctly predicted Crank's word speed and pitch before the segment began would win twenty crazy bucks to Louie's Pawn Shop.

Oh, heck.  The business, cost saving side of us says fire Crank and replace him with a tape of a yapping Chihuahua.  The show would be more entertaining.

Captain Blue

We've always been neutral towards Captain Blue, but he really got to us these last couple of weeks when we listened to more than just a few minutes of his show at a time.  He does a segment called "question of the day" and he tells listeners why his question is the question of the day in a few.  Innocuous enough.  An hour later, we still don't know why its the question of the day.  Then he builds suspense as if he is going to tell you, only to say he'll tell you "after this", which is either a commercial break or another song.

None of us watch reality shows like American Idol or Master Chef  because we can't stand the fake suspense at the end.  You know what we're talking about.  

"...And the person going home tonight is..." and then there's a long pause

"...Stay tuned and find out after the break." 

Captain Blue builds the same fake suspense as the folks over on the reality shows build.  The tactic is not suspenseful nor entertaining.  It is annoying.  Lately, we all have found ourselves switching stations or listening to a CD when Captain Blue comes on.  We do like his food segment at lunch time, but his fake suspense isn't worth suffering through until he gets us to the food segment.

Doug McKenzie

A funny thing happened to two of our critics a couple of times in the past two weeks of listening.  Leaving Crisfield and heading to Pokomoke, Doug would give us a segment equivalent to a dumbass report.  Almost two hours later, leaving Salisbury heading to Cambridge, we heard the same report, almost word-for-word.  Either the Crisfield-Pokomoke-Salisbury triangle is some sort of worm hole that allowed us to listen to Doug's show two hours ahead of time or Doug is reading, almost verbatim, from a script. 

We seriously doubt there is some sort of worm hole or time warp in the area.  Needless to say, we are greatly disappointed in Doug.  We've always held Doug in high regard as a professional.  He still is professional, but, apparently, for only two hours at a time before he has to start repeating himself. 

Tyler?

If someone at Great Scott Broadcasting (specifically the operations manager, remember him?) would do their job and update the WZBH website, we would know for certain who hosts the seven at night time slot. 

A couple of times, we have listened to the first hour and we think the DJ may have said his name was Tyler.  One thing we do know: you probably have a good host when the host doesn't feel a need to tell his listeners who he is.

Tyler, if that is his name, did something we thought was a lost art among DJs - he talked about the music and the music groups.  The first time we listened, he talked about the music three different times in one hour.  If only more DJs, not only at WZBH, but across the radio dial, would follow suit....

None of us really listen to radio past six in the evening, but we all agree Tyler is someone to listen to when we do tune in at night.

Spera

Spera is the DJ after midnight that none of us have listened to.  With the surprise we found in Tyler, perhaps one of us should make it a point to stay up late and listen.  The programming style at WZBH appears to be start the day off with the worst programming and progressively get better as the day wears on.  Tyler's show is the best programming we've heard.  If our observation is correct, Spera should be a star.

On the other hand, he could be the worst, even worse than Crank, since the day technically begins at midnight.

None of us five are so old that we can't stay up past midnight on a work night and listen.  If you have stayed up and listened to Spera's show, please let us know. 

Editor's note

Yes, the Five Drunk Rednecks have been sleeping on the job else they would've known Spera left WZBH last month.  Then again, if the operations manager were doing his job, the WZBH website would have been updated to reflect the program changes.

Who the Hell is the new guy...Phoebus' brother?

Leave it to the powers that be at WZBH to maintain the status quo.  Yeah, there's some new guy on the morning show and our logical guess, as subdued as he is right now being new and all, is he is yet another White conservative male.  We won't go so far as to say "Christian" because, what little we heard today and a few days ago, he hasn't indicated a religious preference.  We're willing to bet, though, that his Christian views will come through.

Let us make it clear now.  All five of us are Christian.  However, all five of us reject far right, White conservative males who claim to be Christians because they have proven themselves, time and time again, to be nothing more than bigoted false prophets. 

This morning proved the tone that has been standard since Aug 19, 2010, that day of a particularly offensive show by Matt Walsh and Crank.  The topic, this morning, was McDonald's is the most hated company, and, of course, minimum wage came up.

After commercials, the topic continued, with the expected arguments of get-a-real-job-if-you-want-to earn-more-than-minimum-wage and the somewhat unexpected twist of managers earn near 40K per year so apply yourself and work to that position.  Yeah, 40K per year is something to aspire to considering the median income of the average worker is 56K per year.

Yup, typical conservative speak.  Let's say every minimum wage employee of McDonald's, and every minimum wage employee of every Burger King, Hardees, Taco Bell, KFC, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Chiles, TGIF, Golden Corral, Green Turtle, Subway, Starbucks Coffee, Wendy's, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, Applebees, Chik-Fil-A,  Dominoes, Arby's, Panera Bread,  Dairy Queen...and we could go on for pages more, but you get the idea.  There aren't enough "management" positions for most employees to move up to.

The question, then, becomes, while working at a minimum wage position at a national chain, should an employee expect somewhat near a living wage as he/she learns new job skills that he/she can take to another career?

Phrased this way, most people would answer yes.  But our morning hosts chose to phrase the question differently, namely if one is working minimum wage, aspire to do more instead of being a loser.

If only Crank, Sarah, and the new guy aspired to be more....  Better yet, why don't the powers that be at WZBH aspire to be more?  Less than a year ago, WZBH boasted about being a "local" station supporting our "local" businesses.  Crank isn't local.  Sarah isn't local.  We don't know about the new guy on the morning show yet.  The five drunks at WZBH haven't updated their site to tell us who the Hell he is nor is his name  mentioned during the morning show, or at least the new guy's name hasn't been mentioned during the times we listened. 

Point is when Crank went off about "standard orders" from McDonald's, we listened in disbelief.  Eat local, dude.  Any local burger joint will cook your burger as you order it.  If you're in a hurry, go to the national chains and take whatever the heck they give you.  Lord knows none of us want to be behind you in the drive through as you "special order" your burger.  Entitlement asshole.

All that said, what can we conclude? 

The morning show will be the same, drab crap it has been for the last three years.  Don't expect any alternative views, spirited debates, or fireworks.  As long as WZBH's powers that be have determined that Delmarva wants hear conservative, White Christian males, then that's what we get from the station. 

We don't object to their hiring decisions.  We do object to the stereotypes they decide to hire because they are afraid to hire twenty-first century thinkers, thinkers who could propel the station into an age of "must listen". 

All of us growing up on Delmarva has suffered the refrain of "you're thirty years behind everyone else."  Yeah, Delmarva is thirty years behind and WZBH ensure we will be fifty years behind everyone else.  C'mon, WZBH, hire people who will interject life and diversity in your programming.  Be bold and lead Delmarva into the 21st century.  The new century is thirteen years old, already.  When do you plan to catch up to today?  Fifty years from now?

Phoebus leaves radio and sparks fly on the fifth reincarnation of the WSE

What a surprise on Thursday morning's Worst Show Ever.  One of us tuned in and two noticeable changes brought a smile to his face. 

First, the wallflower, Sarah, aggressively challenged Crank's opinions and came into full bloom.  The subject they were discussing was whether or not college football players should be paid.  Our critic wasn't keeping score, but he claimed Sarah won.  All he could tell us was Sarah felt strongly that players should not be paid because they signed a contract and, besides, they're getting a $100K free education...that's pay enough.  She expressed herself the way our critic knew she could.  All he could remember from Crank's side was subtle deferment to Sarah's point of view. 

The second thing he noticed was the absence of Phoebus.  With the lump of clay gone, our critic knew why the wallflower had a chance to bloom.  Flowers wither in clay, but bloom profusely when there's a lot of crap around.  No wonder Sarah came into full bloom Thursday morning.

Doing a little research later that night, we discovered that Phoebus isn't on vacation.  He's left radio to join the coaching staff at World Gym Millsboro.  We wish him the best and advise him to refrain from using his ailing Sylvester the Cat impersonation.  He might get his ass kicked by those much bigger guys we see on the website photo.

Our interest piqued, we all tuned in this morning promptly at six.  Sarah was a little more mellow than how our critic described her performance the previous day, but, yes, finally we all can say that the wallflower is blooming!  Ok, the three guys are grinning ear-to-ear, but the two women only begrudgingly acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, Sarah will blossom into an entertaining morning host show.

Right now, Sarah is a flint spark trying to ignite wet kindling.  Sarah is about ten years younger than Crank and Crank is entering his middle-aged years.  Even though the two more or less agree philosophically (conservative Christian), the age difference alone should ignite sparks to set the show on fire.  At least us three guys are hoping Sarah is the woman we always pictured would be able to body slam Crank to the ground and shut him up.  Wouldn't it be a wonderful show if Sarah sat in the Captain's seat and every time Crank spoke, his thoughts were prefaced with "Permission to speak, ma'am"?

As for reviewing the content of the show, honestly, none of us paid much attention, nor did any of us listen to the whole show.  We all were more interested in the dynamics between Crank and Sarah than we were about what they had to say.  We've seen the spark and we may have to listen more.   From Crank and JJ to Crank, JJ, and Sarah to JJ and Sarah to Crank, Phoebus, and Sarah to Crank and Sarah, maybe WZBH has finally hit a winning formula for the morning show.