By Jim Schuh

During my 42 years in radio broadcasting, I experienced a few rather unusual moments.

One occurred while I was broadcasting news – a storm knocked out power at the transmitter and it was a few moments before I realized I was talking only to myself.

That isn’t really embarrassing – not like the time I was in the studio, trying to record a 30-second weather forecast at 6 on a Sunday morning.

I was attempting to make a recording for insertion into the station software so it would play when the software system called for it.

I was having a particularly rough time reading the forecast – I had what I called a “thick tongue” and kept flubbing the words. So I started over, and over and over.

Finally, just before I finished a “good take,” the telephone rang, disrupting my recording. I uttered an expletive, annoyed that my “good” recording was ruined. A man at the other end of the line asked why we kept repeating the weather forecast. The question stunned me – I was in the recording studio, not the main studio and wondered why the listener was hearing me.

A chill went up my spine as I sought to figure out what was going on. I soon discovered that the microphone boom had hit a little button off to the side of a cabinet and put the recording studio on the air live. I quickly reversed the process.

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