RADIO IS AWESOME! the dj with no name to perform

An evening of comedy, stories, and music
with DJ No Name & surprise local celebrities
Mainstage Comedy and Music Club
Wed., April 9
315 1st Ave. N.
Doors open 7p,
how 8p; $20; $40 for VIP seating & champagne at 6p with No Name & friends
Tickets Fri., 3/21 at 3p @ Mainstage Box Office or call 206-217-3700

We said really nasty things about Bob Van Dyne back in the summer of 2006 when he took the 7-10p at KIRO before they hired Frank Shiers on full-time.

Van Dyne is an FM jock who then KIRO PD Tom Clendening gave a chance to give newstalk a try, and we suppose we coulda been nicer.

(Sadly, that's the caption of our life: the comment on the report card, the line in the divorce decree; a count on the arrest warrant; the prevailing opinion by the parole board , and probably our epitaph -- "he coulda been nicer." )

No thanks to us, Van Dyne probably would have made it in newstalk -- but he got an offer to return to his old music gig as DJ NoName at The End (KNDD,107.7FM) on the midday show

That ended recently when Entercom laid him off.

As we reported, the Entercom geniusi replaced him with a show called Radio Impulse. It's really wired and SO META -- listeners use e-mail and text messages to request songs and then get responses on whether and when that request will be played!  Market manager Jerry "Swing blade" McKenna, (responsible for the firing of Allan Prell from KIRO in 2005) told the P-I's Bill Virgin they were trying "to come up with a midday show that speaks to our audience."

Actually, the new show doesn't speak to the audience as much as it writes to it and the "new media" format has the added advantage (for the company, of course) of requiring two less paychecks; which is actually a very "old media" concept.

As we have so many times with fresh-fired radio folk, we've become friendly with Bob Van Dyne, and we're glad: he's a pro, and has a great attitude despite behaving just been diddled by corporate media.

"It's the way of radio, now," he says.

We don't write about music radio much or about FM in general, but it's been hurt for longer and harder than newstalk by media consolidation and the subsequent loss of live and local jocks.

"It makes it hard for young people to get into the business," he says. He started typically after college doing promotions and handing out stickers at The End; becoming a weekend DJ after a while, then full time at night.

That door is closed these days, with radio stations run by robots twittering to satellites, and stations with nobody home except the cleaning lady once a week.

Bob won't say what he's got on the fire job-wise, but on April 9, he's performing at the Mainstage (see above) doing his wry comedy. It's a benefit for himself (he's got a mortgage and two kids, for god's sake) but it promises to be a real Radiotown get together  -- Van Dyne has lots of friends and fans... be there, or be nowhere.   

Comments

[abob]

What idiot is gonna sit through endless commercials waiting for some stupid radio station to play the song he or she wants to listen to? Just like millions or folks with an IQ above above double digits, my mp3 player instantly provides me any song I want, whenever I want it, and for as long as I want to hear it. Commercial music radio is bogus. Talk radio is the only reason to lisen to radio at all.

[Duffman]

abob: nailed it! I wish him well, however. :)

[litlnemo]

"We don't write about music radio much or about FM in general, but it's been hurt for longer and harder than newstalk by media consolidation and the subsequent loss of live and local jocks."

Absolutely. It's terribly sad what has been done to music radio in the name of profit. (Hell, look what's been done to "Music" TV.) Good music radio can be a wonderful thing, but it's nearly extinct now.

[darko]

So why are you so nice to this guy abnd you try to ruin Restione,and Hersholt? Cause you're a mean prick, that's why...

[AuthenticAndrew]

Teenagers often like to be pro-active with radio stations but this still doesn't make sense. The only way it could work is if there's a personality to say
"here's a request from Timmy from Renton" so that Timmy can feel some pride or whatever for having influenced the song choice. What's the fun in having a song played and not getting any credit for having chosen the song, and if the song is popular then how would you know that you had chosen it and not somebody who messeged the station twenty minutes prior?

[Toucan]

Radio is screwed. They have left local people. I got so sick of listening to commercials on my commute, I went to XM last year and never looked back. Now Sirius and XM are merging, so subscribers can have everything and no commercials!

[sparky]

I guess it depends on what kind of music you like..KPLU and KINK are not dead and I listen to both of them a lot. Perhaps you were talking about AM radio, but I have lousy reception on that all the way around, so I mostly stream it, unless it is a day where the Atmosphere Gods are looking down on me kindly.

[AprilMayJune]

Ok, I will bite: I don't understand the current usage of the word "meta". According to Wikipedia:

"'meta' is sometimes used as an adjective ("that statement was meta"), though this is not proper usage."

I am not being critical, just curious. I am also probably behind the times.