[arp242]

There's an old Soviet joke:

A man goes to a newspaper stand every day, buys a copy of Pravda, glances at the front cover, curses, and throws it away.

After a few weeks of this the seller just has to ask what's going on: "why do you always look at the cover but never inside?"

"I'm looking for an obituary."

"An obituary? But those are in the back!"

"Oh no, the obituary I'm looking for will be on the front page."

[jzb]

This reminds me of my first job in radio. I worked weekend mornings 6-12. The station had started with a "beautiful music" format, then recently had switched to adult contemporary.

They retained a lot of the old advertisers: funeral homes. They sponsored two regularly scheduled readings of funeral notices at 7 and 11:45. Basically, radio obituaries.

One woman didn't like the format, so she'd tune in exactly at 11:45. If we ran them early for some reason, she'd call and demand we read them to her. This happened about twice a month.

Sometimes I got the call, sometimes it was the guy who came in after me. Always the same voice. We called her the funeral lady.

One morning the other guy had enough and I heard him taking to her, "look, lady, is there someone in particular you're hoping is going to die? Just give me a name and we'll call you when they're dead."

[9659]

"The Obituary Show" was probably a big money maker. Sponsored by a funeral home, I expect. Great place to be heard by your future customers.

[Aloha]

Man, I miss beautiful music being a viable radio format. It makes such great background music.

[jzb]

The Funeral Lady would agree with you. Well, if she's still around. This was 30 years ago, and I would have guessed the owner of the voice on the other side of the phone was already north of 80.

I've no beef with the genre but I think it would've been really boring to DJ.

[Aloha]

I'd imagine it was mostly just watching the automation systems run, and waiting to talk.

I might be biased - but the tail end of the beautiful music era was probably a high point for FM Broadcast audio quality - it was the last point before the emphasis towards loudness started.

[verisimi]

That guy wasted a lot of money, cos looking at the front page is free!

(Sorry)

[pkphilip]

:) interesting and funny at the same time