Read How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? Online
Authors: David Feldman
How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? (10 page)
One of the main strategies for keeping us tuned in longer is to promote what is coming up next. As Danny Wright puts it,
Never talk about last night or a movie you saw last week or what you just played. Billboard the next few tunes and events to keep listeners sticking around.
PDs employing this strategy often frontsell. Before a commercial break, a jock might say, “Coming up, the new Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, and an oldie by the Beatles.” The hope is that the listener will stay glued to the station if she likes one or more of the songs.
Of course this strategy can backfire too. If a listener would rather hear fingernails on a blackboard than Whitney Houston, he may desert the station, even if he was mildly curious about the identity of the Beatles oldie.
Many of the “more music, less talk” stations feature “music sweeps,” in which five or more songs are played in a row without commercial interruption. Frontselling eight songs at a time is tedious, and backselling is deadly. Some stations solve the problem by frontselling only one or two songs and doing the same on the back end. Some feature what Al Brock calls “segue assists,” in which the jock IDs the song before or after every record.
6.
Selling records isn’t a radio station’s job
. We spoke to several radio programmers who echoed this sentiment. The trade association of the recording industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), launched a campaign to promote IDs, plastering stickers on DJ record copies saying, “When You Play It, Say It,” the “It” meaning title and artist. In 1988, the RIAA released a study of over one thousand radio listeners, between the ages of twelve and forty-nine, indicating that about two thirds of the respondents would like more information about the records they heard on radio. Listeners between twenty-five and forty-nine years old were particularly vehement, and several programmers we spoke to revealed that the lack of IDs has surpassed “too much talk, not enough music” as the number one complaint of listeners.
Increasingly, radio stations are conducting “outcall” research, telephoning listeners and asking them about their musical preferences. This type of research is of little value if respondents don’t know the titles and artists of the songs played on the stations. One PD we consulted, who wished to remain anonymous, indicated that his policy of heavy backselling had nothing to do with helping record companies:
We try to backsell as much as possible for two reasons. First, it answers the listeners’ primary question: What was that we just heard? Second, it helps us with our research. How are we supposed to ask listeners to call in our request line if they don’t know what they’ve heard on our station?
Consultant Steve Warren suggests that there
are
alternate ways of supplying listeners with information about titles and artists, including manned request lines and listener hotlines (in which an employee answers questions about the music, the station, contests, etc.). Warren indicated that at times it doesn’t hurt to have calls come indirectly to the DJ—it’s a good way for jocks to stay in touch with their fans.
Disc jockeys have so many chores to perform besides listening to music that many are understandably not excited about IDs; after all, their time on the air is extremely limited. So, we guess we can’t be too hard on our very Human Numan for not frontselling or backselling every song. After all, he estimates that on his average three-hour shift, he speaks on-air for a grand total of
seven minutes
.
Submitted by the guy in the shower, New York, New York
.
Why
Do Pigeons Make a Whistling Sound When They Take Off in Flight?
Those aren’t pigeons’ voices but rather their wings you are hearing. Bob Phillips, of the American Racing Pigeon Union, told
Imponderables
that we are hearing the sound of air passing through feathers that are spread wide for acceleration, beating faster for lift, and spread wide for takeoff. Although we tend to associate this kind of high-frequency noise with hummingbirds, many birds produce similar tones, not unlike the sound of the wind whistling through the branches of trees.
Submitted by Martin C. Farfsing of Redwood City, California
.
To prove the wholesome, family orientation of our readership, we can point to a surprising cluster of Imponderable obsessions about the subject of milk. Perhaps not the sexiest topic, but certainly among the most nutritious.
What’s
the Difference Between Skim and Nonfat Milk? And How Do They Skim the Fat from Whole Milk?
Don’t believe it if anyone tells you there is any difference whatsoever. By law, skim milk and nonfat are the same: containing less than 0.5 milkfat content. (The milk solids that are
not
fat must equal or exceed 8.25 percent.) In practice, all the fat possible is eliminated from the product.
Any nonfat (or lowfat) milk that is shipped interstate must contain added vitamin A. Most of the vitamin A content in milk is contained in the milkfat. Most manufacturers add enough to equal the amount of vitamin found naturally in whole milk.
How do they separate the fat from whole milk? Our favorite dairy consultant Bruce Snow, explains:
When milk comes from old Bossy, it contains somewhere between 3 to 4 percent butterfat content (sometimes a percentage point more from cows like Guernseys and Jerseys). To obtain true skim milk, a machine called a “separator” is used. It whirls the milk around, and because the fluid and the butterfat content have different weights, centrifugal force separates the two ingredients into skim milk and cream. The cream is used to make butter, ice cream, whipped cream, etc.
Submitted by Herbert Kraut of Forest Hills, New York
.
Why
Does Some Lowfat Milk Contain One Percent Fat and Other Lowfat Milk Contain Two Percent Fat?
As we just learned, most cows naturally produce milk containing from 3 to 5 percent butterfat. In most states, “whole” milk is defined as milk with at least 3.25 percent butterfat. Lowfat milk, then, is any milk that falls between.5 percent (skim or nonfat) and 3.5 percent (whole).
In practice, 1 and 2 percent milks are the most popular types of lowfat milk. In fact, we’ve never seen 3 percent milk, probably because that one half a percent would not reduce the calorie count enough to appeal to dieters.
Many consumers were sick of looking at what looked like water residue on the bottom of their cereal bowls; lowfat has been steadily gained market share for the last thirty years, stealing customers from both former skim milk and whole milk drinkers. In fact, lowfat milks outsell “whole” milk in most parts of the country. Two percent seems to be winning the cash register battle against 1 percent, but not without a cost to the waistline; that extra percent of fat adds about thirty calories to each cup of 2 percent lowfat milk.
Submitted by Herbert Kraut of Forest Hills, New York
.
Why
Do Plastic Gallon Milk Containers Have the Counter-Sunk Dips on Their Sides?
According to Michelle Mueckenhoff, technical services manager of the Dairy Council of Wisconsin, and every other dairy expert we bored with this question, those dips are there to provide structural support and strength to the container. And nothing more.
Submitted by Daniell Bull of Alexandria, Virginia
.
Why
Aren’t “Green Cards” Green?
We’ve never been ones to make cheap, easy jokes about our federal government. Sure, there is excess and incompetence in any large conglomeration of workers. We were confident that there was a perfectly brilliant strategy behind naming what are most often blue cards “green cards.”
So we contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service and were lucky enough to come in contact with Elizabeth A. Berrio, chief of the INS Historical Reference Library, who specially prepared a document to share with
Imponderables
readers. And we’re happy to conclude that there is a totally logical reason why green cards aren’t green. Well, would you believe semilogical?
What we know as a “green card” came in a variety of different colors at different times in its history. We still refer to them as “green cards” for the same reason dismissal notices are called “pink slips,” sensationalized news is called “yellow journalism,” and intended distractions are called “red herrings.” In each case, an idea was originally associated with an actual item of the respective color. A Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) alien living in the United States may carry a card that is not green, but refers to it as a “green card.” The alien does so because the card bestows benefits, and those benefits came into being
at a time when the card was actually green
.
The green card is formally known as the Alien Registration Receipt Card, from I-151 or I-551. The first receipt cards were from AR-3 and were printed on white paper.
This receipt proved that a noncitizen of the United States did register, but it didn’t indicate whether the alien was legal or illegal. After World War II, when a new wave of immigration began, the INS started issuing different documents to indicate whether an alien was a visitor, a temporary resident, or a permanent resident.
This method…helped to identify the immigration status of each alien. Thus, the small, green I-151 had immediate value in identifying its holder as a LPR, entitled to live and work indefinitely in the United States. As early as 1947, LPRs protested delays in processing their I-151s, complaining that employers would not hire them until they could prove their permanent resident status.
In 1951, the green cards became even more valuable:
regulations allowed those holding AR-3 cards to have them replaced with a new form I-151 (the green card)…only aliens with legal status could have their AR-3 replaced with an I-151. Aliens who applied for replacement cards but could not prove their legal admission into the United States, and for whom the INS had no record of legal admission, did not qualify for LPR status and might even be subject to prosecution for violation of U.S. immigration laws.
By 1951, then, the green Alien Registration Receipt Card Form I-151 represented security to its holder. It indicated the right to permanently live and work in the United States and instantly communicated that right to law enforcement officials. As a result of the card’s cumbersome official title, aliens, immigration attorneys, and enforcement officers came to refer to it by its color. The term “green card” designated not only the document itself, but
also the official status
desired by so many legal nonimmigrants (students, tourists, temporary workers) and undocumented (illegal) aliens. The status became so desirable that counterfeit form I-151s became a serious problem.
To combat document fraud, the INS issued nineteen different designs of the I-151 between its introduction in the 1940s and its complete revision in 1977. One alteration to the design in 1964 was to change the color of the card to blue. The 1964 edition was a pale blue. After 1965, it was a dark blue. Regardless of color, the I-151 still carried with it the benefits indicated by the term “green card,” and those who wanted, obtained, issued, or inspected I-151s continued to refer to it by that name.