A Nameless Blog

Over Labor Day weekend, it seemed like every FM station had some gimmick going.  One station played its entire catalog from Z-to-A by song title.  A Tucson classic-rock station gave all its DJs a vacation and called it a “no talk” Labor Day weekend (they also played bands in foursomes without any explanation).

I love it when radio stations have silly weekend gimmicks.  I remember fondly when our alternative station played only songs from the early nineties.  They also do a thing every day in which for an hour, they play only songs released in a certain year.  If I catch it in the middle, it’s fun to guess which year they’re doing.  The aforementioned Tucson classic rock station also had some sort of Super Bowl of Rock (or maybe World Series or Grey Cup of Rock) that paired off classic artists.  This hour, it’s Ozzy versus Zeppelin.  We’ll play only those two for the next hour.  Cast your votes!

On the radio, gimmicks are normally interesting and fun.  They force stations to stray from their normal playlist, so listeners get to hear songs they normally don’t.  They make the listener more active, as well.  Even if it’s something as inane as, “which REO Speedwagon song will be the fourth in this set?”, you’re still thinking more about the music than you normally would.

So my question is, why is it that gimmickry is so embarrassing in every other medium?  Think about it: car dealerships have countless gimmicks that rarely make any sense — Come out to Great Neck Lincoln and the kids can ride an elephant!  Why should hot dogs and balloons sway a person’s decision to spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle?

The worst offender, I must admit, is professional wrestling.  In recent years, they’ve avoided gimmickry for the most part.  But remember that Kane’s first character was Dr. Isaac Yankem, Jerry Lawler’s dentist.  Don’t forget that WCW once had a “mysterious egg” that birthed a dancing turkey called the Gobbledygooker.  Right now, the WWF has had matches between Chavo Guerrero and Hornswoggle, a bearded midget (sorry: leprechaun).  Every match is handicapped in some way (hand tied behind Chavo’s back, Chavo gets blindfolded) and Hornswoggle somehow outsmarts Chavo in a cartoonish manner in order to get the unlikely — yet all too predictable — pinfall.  It’s gotten so bad that fans have started a backlash against these matches.  Ugh.  Sure, some gimmicks work, but they’re quite often a terrible idea.

Let me amend my question from a couple paragraphs ago.  I shouldn’t wonder why gimmicks are normally horrible — they just are.  If I want a car, I’ll choose a dealer based on normal consumer reasoning, not whether they have a bounce house.  I just find it interesting that something that’s normally horrible can be so entertaining in the format of an FM radio station.

No earth-shattering observation here.  I just want to be on record about my preference for twofer Tuesdays and British Invasion weekends.  I’ll talk at you again soon.

-Darrell

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 2:20 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.