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Friday brought an unusual field trip to AM640's John Oakley Show. They were clearly sponsored by Canada's Wonderland for its opening day of the season. It saw the erstwhile host sitting somewhere outside in the newly reopened park, dressed, as he pointed out, in a coat and toque, while carnival music and the sound of roller coasters and riders screaming echoed in the background.
There's nothing really wrong with that, per se, but he also noted that because of the remote, he won't be able to take phone calls. OK, but does a talk show without the ability to actually talk to someone still qualify as a talk show?
I'm sure there's some money for Corus in this, and I don't get the impression Oakley is all that happy being there, without the comforts of his Corus Quay home. But to have it go on for three hours with all that BG noise and distractions and no way to shut out that natural sound, while trying to discuss newsworthy topics, does seem a bit much. Especially on a Friday.
Maybe not a great day for Talk Radio.
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There's no *good* reason not to be able to take calls during a remote show.
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Agreed, but he didn't explain why they couldn't, just that it wouldn't be possible. He did, however, welcome texts.
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RadioActive wrote:
Agreed, but he didn't explain why they couldn't, just that it wouldn't be possible. He did, however, welcome texts.
I love texts! It's radio! Easy to make them all up!
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I heard some of Oakley's remote from Canada's Wonderland.
The part I heard was with the PR woman for CW.
Any question he asked her was answered with ..."Oh you're so right , John Canada's Wonderland makes it a specialty."
Or "Oh John you are so right Canada's Wonderland has the best food on earth."
However at one point the truth crept out when Oakley observed she's ridden the Leviathan roller coaster 30 times.
He asked her if she ever gets tired or jaded with the ride to which she replied to the effect that, "Oh if I ever said that I'd lose my job."
Ha.
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I suspect the reason they "couldn't" take calls is that would have cut into the infomercial.
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Painful radio. The constant phony 'laughing' doesn't help. I'd love to hear Oakley's true feelings about this 'remote'.
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Having listened to as much of that as I could handle, that was clearly a 3-hour commercial for Canada's Wonderland. None of the regular features, like Topics Worthy of Discussion, were there and outside of a Joe Warmington interview, they didn't talk about a single news story.
Instead, we were treated to the head of Wonderland, the Wonderland ride coordinator and the person in charge of entertainment at Wonderland, among others. I don't care who was on air, there was simply no way to make three hours of that interesting.
Add to that the noise from the music and roller coaster making it difficult for listeners (and at times, the host) to hear, and it was less than amusing at this amusement park.
I hope they won't try and do that again, but I'm sure Corus made a few bucks selling all that air time.
How bad was it? They actually drove me to Reshmi Nair on CFRB and CBC's afternoon drive show. I'm not sure that's ever happened before.
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rje1 wrote:
AM640 is the demo Canada's Wonderland is looking for?
Stations with better demos don't have entire drive shows for sale.