Faced with temperatures diving into the high thirties, Florida radio broadcasters are being commended for excellent community service today as they work together to cover the harsh winter weather. Some examples:
All-news WZHS/Fort Lauderdale went into non-stop "Freeze Watch" programming Sunday, offering continuous tips on how to use household objects including electric hair dryers to keep warm. Listeners were warned about the dangers of starting fires in their living rooms, and WZHS reporters monitored local department stores and announced the best prices found for wind breakers and light jackets. Also, the teletype sound effects used on the station were temporarily replaced with a continuous loop of chattering teeth.
"Bitchin' Oldies" WXOT/West Palm Beach vowed to extend its library back to the year corresponding to the high temperature of each day through the cold snap. Today, listeners could hear songs from as far back as 1961 including "Mashed Potato Time" and "Duke of Earl" when the high temperature of the day was declared to be a bone-chilling 61 degrees.
In a humanitarian move, Top 40 WQUF (Z-92)/Miami earmarked a box of giveaway long-sleeved station T-shirts for Dade County homeless people, and gave away electric space heaters to the 92nd caller each time the sound of the "super shiver" (a refrigerator door closing) was played.
Classic Rock WKNT/Boca Raton PD Skip Paycheck owns no long pants and couldn't make it out of his house due to the cold, but was able to control the Prophet System from his home computer, forcing the automated station to celebrate the chill by playing "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner continuously. "I'm sure the phones would be going nuts right now if we hadn't had them disconnected in the latest round of cuts," he told us.
