First time I heard this I nearly fell off my chair! Digressing for a moment, most of us on air people have heard or have access to a station blooper tape that got played at various occasions… Station Christmas parties being the usual place for such hilarity. Not this time. This one is NOT from a station in house recording, it was made by the contributor.
Steve Tefft has the knack of having his recorder on at *just* the right time. Here’s an aircheck that reminds us that sometimes automation isn’t ALWAYS bad… given the right circumstances.
Steve writes:
(Here is an) outtake of WTIC news reader Paul Reynolds, from Christmas night, 1985. It starts with the jingle intro to the news, followed by about 20 seconds of silence(apparently Reynolds was passed out in the newsroom). Then, talk host John Birchard scrambles to his mike, vamps for time, then hands it over to Paul…who does his thing.
About 30 seconds into the newscast the engineer realizes what’s happening and yanks Reynolds off the air.
…Christmas parties might have been scaled back a bit in 1986 🙂
OMG! this is absolutely hilarious! “The time is coming up on 17 degrees”….Brilliant! Let’s put this recording into context. Christmas 1985 fell on a Wednesday, and the time is 8:00 PM. so we can only assume one of two things…WTIC had a Christmas party on Christmas day that must have started sometime in the afternoon for Reynolds to be that plastered by 8:00 PM, or because it was Christmas day, there was probably almost nobody in the studio so Reynolds decided he’d might as well hit the sauce to pass the time until his newscast. Either way, the visitors to airchexx.com are the real beneficiaries of Mr. Reynolds’ good time.
This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard! I played it for a few o my friends, and we all had a question, I’m not sure if anyone can answer this? Does anyone know if Mr. Reynolds was fired for his on-air performance that night? Or were the rest of the WTIC staff so plastered tat nobody noticed until later? No matter what, it’s a slice of great radio and ‘m glad I found it here on Airchexx!
Oh wow!!! I really don’t know what else to say at this point. Let’s just make sure that we don’t drink before we go on the air! That WTIC 1080 aircheck had me saying “What???” I can’t understand what Paul Reynolds said at this point, except that everything was all jumbled up!
OK, sorry if my comments don’t make sense. This is my first time posting my comment to Airchexx, so bear with me… 😉
Again–I sent this tape in, not Steve McVie Solomon.
Sorry about that Steve! I goofed and I’ll fix it. I knew it was you and typed Steve McVie instead. Dang old timers….
All fixed, my friend. Thanks for pointing it out. Please, in the future if you notice a goof, send an email to steve@airchexx.com so I can fix it quietly LOL!!
I believe he was no longer heard on ‘TIC after that night.
The original tape included Reynolds’ newscast from the previous hour and he sounded normal. Must have gotten pretty busy over the next hour!