Interview with Chris Collins #2: April Fools Radio
SacTV.com "Video of the Day" review by
Alex Cosper on April 1, 2012
April Fools Day was once an important day on every radio calendar as a fun day to catch the audience off
guard. Chris Collins and Kill R Bee of the FM 102 Morning Zoo in the 80s and 90s joke about pranks they
played on the air when anything was possible. Collins says one year FM 102 told the listeners they
were going country on April 1, imitating Sacramento country station KRAK, which on the AM dial at the
time. Switching from hip hop to country at that time would not have made sense at the peak of the
station's popularity. Collins says the prank worked for about twenty minutes, culminating with irate
listeners calling in and a warning from the hotline. The video takes another twist, pointing out that
today's radio industry changes formats as serious gestures that turn into big jokes. Read more about Sacramento radio history
here
Part of what made April Fools a fun day at many radio stations was that at that time in the eighties
and nineties a high percentage of people could be fooled by the radio. The famous Lincoln quote about
how "you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time" did
not apply that much to radio, in which large audiences were constantly fooled every April Fools Day and
beyond. Many people simply gave the medium of radio credibility since it constantly satisfied their desires
to hear a consistent stream of favorite songs and entertainment.
The most interesting time marker in radio history concerning fooled audiences was the War of the Worlds
broadcast with Orson Wells in the 1930s. Radio was such a new medium at the time that it was not questioned
for its content, because it was too busy being admired for its technology. The medium had not been known
for fooling its audiences on a mass level until the newscast-sounding broadcast, which actually had listeners believing
that aliens were invading Earth. The event was actually an experiment in advertising research and psychology,
funded by big companies, to find out how powerful the medium could be at influencing society.
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