The deejay or DJ was invented in the 1930s during the Great Depression. This is a classic “chicken egg” scenario because historians often wonder: were deejays spawned by the Great Depression or did deejays produce the great depression experienced by radio listeners who didn’t want anyone blabbing over their free music – like Light Opera.
Yes, many radio stations used to broadcast a cacophony of programming where "Light Opera" actually fit right in; a format one could only label as “convoluted”. Today it’s called “NPR”.
Anyway, people hosting music shows on radio are known by many names: deejays, DJs, radio personalities, and sometimes repeat felons.
Deejays provide conversation and chatter between songs that are played on a radio station and post chattery little notes on radio station blogs. Repeat felons just post bail.
Now, before the repeat felons are unfairly characterized, let’s understand why some deejays eventually move to the repeat felon rung. Ask yourself: how many businesses do you know...
- Consciously put a 41-year-old man in a radio studio with no further supervision;
- Surrounded by songs 13-year-olds adore;
- Provide him with 5 incoming telephone lines so these nubile pubescent and hormonally active fans can call in and privately speak with the 41-year-old;
- Who they think he is 19 thanks to the radio station’s brilliant marketing department and Photoshop?
In fact, the radio business is probably the #1 reason for the existence of the term “jail bait”. I rest my case. (Please see this, this, this and especially this.)
Give Me Your Poor, Your Tired, Your Unstable
Radio is like a Statue of Liberty for people with issues. It serves as a beacon – calling out to those who might otherwise be in therapy and instead, offering them jobs where they are put in charge of a mass communications medium. I have spent all my adult life working in Radio and I can promise you this: it is a magnet for wackos, weirdos, wannabes, and gonnabes (pronounced "gone-a-bees". I just made that word up).
It pains me to say this but almost everyone on-the-air is mentally disturbed in one way or another. It may be slight - possibly even undetectable to the human ear - but the only reason anyone chooses to work in a business that chews you up and spits you out like the Slap Chop is because they have a brain defect. Nothing else explains why a human being would want to subject themselves to such pressure and competition.
