Ever fall asleep accidentally on the job? Did you get caught? Or perhaps you intentionally found a little place to curl up and grab a few zzz’s?
I’m sure it’s happened to me a few times over the years but never while on the air. Except once.
Way back when I was a teenager in broadcasting school I fell asleep on the air.
You see the broadcasting school could be heard on the community cable TV station when there was no video programming – mostly evenings and overnights.
And my instructor thought I needed to be punished for something that I was probably guilty of, so he made me work overnight Christmas Eve into Christmas morning – playing classic country Christmas music. At the time only playing Irish whaling sea shanties would have been a worse punishment to this teenager.
There might have been five listeners tuned into the community cable station.
Things started off well at midnight but I faded fast by 3am Christmas morning.
I cued up a hillbilly festive favourites album and put my head down on the control board for just a moment (to rest my eyes) and the next thing I knew it was almost 7am and I could hear the sound of the needle at the end of the album side going, “che-chunk, che-chunk”. My 5 listeners had been treated to that sound for almost 4 hours. (Who am I kidding, there were no listeners after a couple of minutes of “che-chunk”)
I cued up another record and introduced it as if nothing had happened and a few minutes later my replacement walked in (who was also being punished for something by having to get up Christmas morning). I waited through the holiday season to hear about any repercussions but it seems no one was listening and had heard the “dead air”. And I never fell asleep on air again.
What’s your sleeping on the job story?
