The listeners who tuned into the Canadian radio station Kiss Radio in the morning on the last Wednesday in June were not surprised. The protest song Killing in the Name by the American metal band Rage Against the Machine unexpectedly rang out from the airwaves of a radio focused on undemanding pop-rock.
If they had played the song once on air, an audience accustomed to much softer music might have dismissed it as an accidental mistake. However, nothing else could be heard on the frequencies of 104.9 FM for the next 24 hours, the metal burner sounded several hundred times during that time on the Canadian station.
Fortunately, she played it in a censored version, and the words “fuck it, I won’t do what you want me to do”, which are repeated in the original, did not reach the surprised audience. He writes a diary about it The Guardian.
Several listeners tried to call the radio studio to find out what was going on with their favorite station. However, the unknown person who was sitting by the telephone line at that moment refused to explain the matter to them in any way.
“I’m not authorized to give you any more details. My only job is to make sure Rage Against the Machine plays over and over again. What do you think? Do you like it?” the mysterious man asked the callers. He did not want to comply with any wish to play something else.
The strange incident occurred a day after some morning show hosts learned that they had been fired by radio management. “The five years we’ve spent at Kiss Radio are over. The station is changing and we’ve unfortunately been informed that we will no longer be involved in its new chapter. We’re grateful for your patronage,” wrote Kevin Lim and Sonia Sidhu on Facebook , who presented the morning session.
After complaints from listeners spread on Twitter, the station became a viral hit, with people not only listening to it in Canada, but also in the United States, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. However, the next day, to their disappointment, it turned out that the endless repetition of the hit Killing in the Name was not a malicious act, but a proven marketing trick.
Kiss Radio has decided to change the format and instead of pop-rock ballads, go to more alternative music genres under the new name Sonic Radio. “We couldn’t think of a better way to engage listeners than to play this iconic anthem all day long. It took a while to get the world’s attention,” explained program director Christian Hall.
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The development went by itself, there was a tendency to put people in the studio during the day who would not endanger the health of the listeners, recalls station co-founder Ondřej Štindl. | Video: Martin Veselovsky
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