Yankee…Hotel…Foxtrot…
Those of you reading this in Maine may have seen some incredibly disturbing television commercials lately, advertising a radio station known as “FRANK-FM.” You who don’t have the dubious honor of being able to see these ads, allow me to paint a mental picture:
The ad begins innocuously enough, with a blandly attractive female talking head saying something to the effect of, “Let me tell you about this great new radio station!” The camera closes in on her lips, while the woman proceeds into a manic state of commercial radio glossolalia, morphing from female to male announcer voices without warning, Steve Miller Band and Bachman-Turner Overdrive songs emerging fully formed from her mouth.
I never know whether to feel sorry for the woman, or just run screaming from my TV set. Either she is a simple meat-puppet being remote-controlled by a not-so-benevolent radio-based lifeform, or we are witnessing the last vestiges of a woman’s sanity slipping away. Regardless of the cause, it’s an incredibly unnerving bit of sensory overload.
Or I could just be remembering the ad wrong – I’ve only seen it twice.
You know those station ID bits you hear frequently on adult contemporary radio? They usually go a little something like this: ascending horn chart over a bouncy rhythm, singers start in with “Mooore muuusic…” then interrupt their jingle to speak together in a manner not unlike chirpier cousins of Star Trek’s Borg, “It’s the Mix!” then return to singing the station’s call letters and frequency.
I’ve often wondered what those creepy unison-voiced singers look like. Something tells me she’s one of them.
Popularity: 3% [?]
April 29th, 2004 at 3:25 pm
CLEARCHANNEL IS EVIL AND OF THE DEVIL!
Yes, I feel better now. Thanks for asking, Andrew.
April 29th, 2004 at 3:40 pm
Yes.
Yes, they are.
The scary part is, it’s not even a ClearChannel station. There are different radiomegaconglomocorps controlling Maine’s airwaves, so ClearChannel isn’t really to blame for the dire state of radio around here….but, yeah.
May 6th, 2004 at 5:27 pm
I have finally gotten around to seeing that ad. At first, I thought it was me. Were the fillings in my teeth suddenly broadcasting radio signals that just happen to perfectly match the words this woman was mouthing? No, my wife assured me, sadly I was not suffering some hallucination. The only other thing I can think of is the woman was touched by a Windigo, a ghost of American Indian lore which would make people become canibals and/or possessed by random AC/DC-type butt-rock. The only thing we as a society can do to protect ourselves is find this woman-beast stuff large cloves of garlic down her throat.