All right, let`s say it again, so there can be no misunderstanding: DO NOT PLAY YOUR RADIOS WHILE YOU ARE FLYING ON AIRPLANES.
The other week, I had a column explaining how, on a long airplane flight, I had turned my Walkman to the FM band-and had been stunned to find that there were 100, maybe 200 stations available. The FM band was jam-packed, from one end to the other, with radio shows from cities large and small. The stations kept changing as the jet flew; listening to them was a little like reading every local newspaper all the way across America.
At the end of the column I told of checking with the Federal Aviation Administration, and of being informed that what I had done was forbidden. Illegal. ”Turning a radio on during a flight can definitely interfere with the plane`s navigation and communication systems,” an FAA spokesman told me. ”The radio can generate a signal of its own.” The spokesman said that listening to a radio while airborne is potentially very dangerous.
I took note of this in the column, warning people not to try it. Many readers, however, thought that I should not have even mentioned the subject in the first place. A number of pilots phoned, too, with differing opinions. One pilot said that one of these days a person playing a radio on board ”is going to cause a plane to crash into a mountain”; other pilots said that radios on board present no hazard at all, and that pocket calculators are far worse to use on a plane.
Anyway . . . I am probably the most paranoid flier in America, and I wasn`t kidding-I will not use a radio on board again, and if you do, you`re foolish.
Having said that, let us move on to the point of today`s column-which is that after the original radio-on-the-airplane column appeared, I heard about a man who listens to radios on airplanes all the time . . . as part of his job. The man is Scott Shannon, who is program director and on-air personality at WHTZ-FM in New York. WHTZ is a hot station, and Shannon, or so I was told, searches for new talent by flying around the country listening to his radio six or seven miles in the air.
”It`s true,” Shannon told me. ”In addition to what I do at my own station, I`m always looking for talent for other stations around the country. I coach them and train them and sometimes rename them. And I`ve found that the best way to find the best radio people is to listen from an airplane.”
As an example, Shannon mentioned a flight he was taking several years ago. ”We were flying over the southern United States,” he said. ”I heard this girl on the air for about 12 seconds-her signal faded in and out that fast. All I heard her say is, `Right now in Roanoke it`s 78 degrees.` She didn`t say her name. She didn`t say the name of her station. But I made a note of the station`s position on the dial, and of what time it was, and when I got back to New York I found out what station it was, and I called her, and I ended up getting her a job in New York.”
Sometimes, if he is on a plane with one of those air-to-ground public phones on board, he will get up and call a person right from the jet. ”I`ll do that if I hear a voice that I like,” he said. ”Or I`ll do it if I hear a disc jockey that I know. I`ll just say, `Hey, I`m up here listening to you.` ”
He said that he can judge talent much better from an airplane than from listening to audition tapes. ”You get a more valid feel for a person`s abilities if you`re up there in a plane,” he said. ”On an audition tape, a person might be trying too hard. If you`re flying over that person`s radio station, though, the person doesn`t know that you`re listening. It`s like eavesdropping. You`re hearing what the person is really like on the air.”
Shannon said that by listening to radio people from airplanes, he is able to come across talent that he otherwise might never have known about. ”Maybe someone is in a very small market, and is too shy to approach a big market,” he said. ”I`ll hear that person from an airplane, and I`ll know the person can handle the big time. If you`re good enough, you can go directly from a small market to a major market. You can skip the middle steps.”
He said that, during the literally hundreds of times he has listened to his radio aboard airplanes, no flight attendant has ever asked him to turn the radio off. ”I`d do it if they asked,” he said. ”But they never have.”
I told him about my discussion with the man from the FAA. I don`t think I`ll go into Shannon`s response here; after all, you would assume that the FAA knows more about air safety than a radio executive/performer.
So I`ll just leave you with two thoughts:
To all you small-town disc jockeys all over America: Be on your toes. You never know when Scott Shannon may be up there listening to you.
To all you people who fly on airplanes and own portable radios:
Don`t do it. I mean it. Don`t.
