Tell Me Something I Don't Know

Every once in a while I’ll hear a song on the radio and wonder who sings it. If I’m lucky, the DJ will announce this once the song is through. A lot of times, though, that doesn’t happen and I’m left with an unanswered question that may bother me for up to thirty seconds or so.

Apparently, this exact situation has been deemed a crisis situation by one of my local radio stations. To combat this, after every single song an additional recording, made by one of the DJs, is played which tells you the title and artist.

This means that somewhere at that radio station some poor soul is going through every song that’s ever been made and making a recording of the title and artist so it can be played on the air in conjunction with that song. My personal theory is it’s punishment for screwing up, like if this person swore on the air or tried to cause a mass panic by announcing that aliens were attacking.

Anyway, this can be helpful in the rare case that you don’t know the title or artist of the song. However, I’ve come to find it insulting that they have to announce information to me that, in most cases, I already know. It’s like somebody being with you in the car and announcing things like, “That’s a stop sign”, or “That’s the center line.” It’s got to the point that as soon as the helpful voice comes on at the end of the song, I automatically change the station, completely out of spite.

Sometimes it’s like adding insult to injury: “I already know that was Rascal Flatts! I only caught the last ten seconds and still my ears are bleeding! Aaaarrrggghhhhh!!!”

My thought is that if the radio stations are going into the business of teaching us stuff, they should at least make them things most people wouldn’t know, like the average life span of a giraffe, or who invented the Oreo.

Maybe this says more about me being easily annoyed than anything else. But whatever the case, I had to get it off my chest. And, in case you didn’t know, you have just read Kurt’s latest blog entry.