supervision of the ladies of the household. From fourteen to twenty-one, they served as (e)squires attached to adult knights who, in return for having their horses attended to, their armor polished, etc., were supposed to train them in the knightly arts.
By the thirteenth century, twenty-one was customary age for a young man to be knighted. Likewise, among middle-class families in the towns and cities, a boy would normally be apprenticed at adolescence (i.e., around fourteen) to a “master” to learn a trade or craft. The customary apprenticeship period was seven years, until the age of twenty-one.
We wonder whether today’s teenagers would exchange the right to drink at an earlier age for the right to leave home and work for up to twelve years before the age of twenty-one.
The English age of majority was by no means universal, even in Europe. Professor de L. Landon points out that in Roman law, children were “infants” until the age of seven; “pupils” until the age of puberty (girls, twelve; boys, fourteen); and minors until marriage for girls or age twenty-five for boys.
Submitted by Scott Wallace of Marion, Iowa. Thanks also to John Anthony Anella of South Bend, Indiana; and Joey Maraia of Nacogdoches, Texas .
Why Don’t Disc Jockeys Identify the Titles and Artists of the Songs They Play?
We have a nifty secret for curing the morning blahs—sleep through them. Yes, we admit it: We’re night people. We sleep until noon, run the shower, and flip the radio on to WHTZ, better known as Z100 in the New York City metropolitan area, and listen to the midday jock, Human Numan. Z100 is what the radio trade calls a CHR (Contemporary Hits Radio) station, a modern mutation of the old Top 40 format. Z100 has a small playlist of current songs.
Human’s a terrific disc jockey. He’s not full of himself. Doesn’t reach for laughs. But we have one big complaint: He rarely, if ever, identifies songs. As we’re writing this chapter, we’ve heard the new New Order single played at least twenty-five times on his show but have yet to hear the title identified.
Fate threw us into Human’s lap one day, and we got to talk to him about this Imponderable. DJs have two options in identifying a song: introducing it before they play it, or “frontselling”; or playing the song and announcing the name of the recording artist and/or song afterward, or “backselling.” The first thing that Human wanted to let Imponderables readers know is that the vast majority of DJs, especially in major urban markets, have little artistic control over what they play and what they say on the air. In a letter, Human discussed the pressures and constraints of a DJ in his kind of format and used a fifteen-minute segment of his show to demonstrate:
Think of the DJs in the Top 100 markets as actors or football players. The coach designs the plays and the playwright gives the actor his lines: It’s the same for the American DJ.
The program director (PD) is the second most powerful person at a radio station, behind the general manager (GM). The PD hires the DJs and has the power to fire them, promote them, and has complete control over their shows.
The PD creates a structure for the DJ’s show called a format clock . This is a paper clock that has no hour hand because it is used every hour. On this clock, for example, it says where the one is: SEGUE, to proceed without pause (radio language for “shut up, just play the next song”). A DJ can never talk where the PD has indicated SEGUE on his routine clock.
Then between the 1 and 2 on the clock, somewhere about seven minutes past the top of the hour, the PD might indicate LINER. This element means that the DJ has been given a 3 “by 5” card with the “lines” he should ad lib or read verbatim, depending upon how strict the PD is. The LINER is a very important sell, one that the station must convey without any DJ
By the thirteenth century, twenty-one was customary age for a young man to be knighted. Likewise, among middle-class families in the towns and cities, a boy would normally be apprenticed at adolescence (i.e., around fourteen) to a “master” to learn a trade or craft. The customary apprenticeship period was seven years, until the age of twenty-one.
We wonder whether today’s teenagers would exchange the right to drink at an earlier age for the right to leave home and work for up to twelve years before the age of twenty-one.
The English age of majority was by no means universal, even in Europe. Professor de L. Landon points out that in Roman law, children were “infants” until the age of seven; “pupils” until the age of puberty (girls, twelve; boys, fourteen); and minors until marriage for girls or age twenty-five for boys.
Submitted by Scott Wallace of Marion, Iowa. Thanks also to John Anthony Anella of South Bend, Indiana; and Joey Maraia of Nacogdoches, Texas .
Why Don’t Disc Jockeys Identify the Titles and Artists of the Songs They Play?
We have a nifty secret for curing the morning blahs—sleep through them. Yes, we admit it: We’re night people. We sleep until noon, run the shower, and flip the radio on to WHTZ, better known as Z100 in the New York City metropolitan area, and listen to the midday jock, Human Numan. Z100 is what the radio trade calls a CHR (Contemporary Hits Radio) station, a modern mutation of the old Top 40 format. Z100 has a small playlist of current songs.
Human’s a terrific disc jockey. He’s not full of himself. Doesn’t reach for laughs. But we have one big complaint: He rarely, if ever, identifies songs. As we’re writing this chapter, we’ve heard the new New Order single played at least twenty-five times on his show but have yet to hear the title identified.
Fate threw us into Human’s lap one day, and we got to talk to him about this Imponderable. DJs have two options in identifying a song: introducing it before they play it, or “frontselling”; or playing the song and announcing the name of the recording artist and/or song afterward, or “backselling.” The first thing that Human wanted to let Imponderables readers know is that the vast majority of DJs, especially in major urban markets, have little artistic control over what they play and what they say on the air. In a letter, Human discussed the pressures and constraints of a DJ in his kind of format and used a fifteen-minute segment of his show to demonstrate:
Think of the DJs in the Top 100 markets as actors or football players. The coach designs the plays and the playwright gives the actor his lines: It’s the same for the American DJ.
The program director (PD) is the second most powerful person at a radio station, behind the general manager (GM). The PD hires the DJs and has the power to fire them, promote them, and has complete control over their shows.
The PD creates a structure for the DJ’s show called a format clock . This is a paper clock that has no hour hand because it is used every hour. On this clock, for example, it says where the one is: SEGUE, to proceed without pause (radio language for “shut up, just play the next song”). A DJ can never talk where the PD has indicated SEGUE on his routine clock.
Then between the 1 and 2 on the clock, somewhere about seven minutes past the top of the hour, the PD might indicate LINER. This element means that the DJ has been given a 3 “by 5” card with the “lines” he should ad lib or read verbatim, depending upon how strict the PD is. The LINER is a very important sell, one that the station must convey without any DJ
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