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And now, "Executive Producer Brandon" and "Producer Cristi" present to you the...
If you are a regular listener to the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show, none of this (below) is new information. Still, we feel it our civic duty to you... the listener... to give you all the tools of success you need when calling our show. If you stick close to guidelines below, this will astronomically increase your chances of getting put on the air (and drastically affect how quickly we can get you on) so that you can speak your mind and talk to Rob, Arnie & Dawn. Enough intro, let's get to the rules...
When you call our show, you aren't immediately patched through to Rob, Arnie & Dawn. We will walk you through every step of the process over the phone, but you must LISTEN to us. "Producer Brandon" will field your call and press the buttons he needs to press to get you on the air. Before he can do this, we need to get 5-6 seconds of basic information from you, namely two things... what is your first name (we don't want to know/don't care what your last name is) and we want to know what your basic comment is. When you call the show, "Producer Brandon" will answer the phone at all times with the following phrase... "It's the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show, can we have your first name?" This let's you know immediately, right off the bat, that you have called our show and not gotten a wrong number. So please, don't just call us and say.... "uhhhhhhh..... is this.... uhhhhhhhhhh... the Rob, Arnie and.... uhhhhhhhhhhh Dawn..... uhhhhhhhhh show?" The answer is yes... that's why we answered the phone by saying very clearly... "It's the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show, can we have your first name?" You have to listen when you call in, so don't just dial our number (888-390-9850) and start yelling. We know that Dawn brings that quality out in people, but listen to us when you call and we'll get you on the air as fast as possible. Plus, this will speed up the process and save you a ton of minutes on your cell phone.
Save your grandiose speeches. All that "Producer Brandon" needs (or I need) to get you on the air is your name and the basic theme of what you want to say. For instance... "Rob is wrong about Barak Obama," "Arnie is so right about housewives not having real jobs, "Dawn needs to shut up"... phrases like that that are concise and organized will get you on the air so fast, it will make your head spin.
#3 Why? Because nobody cares. As soon as you make it common knowledge that you've gotten through and talked on our show before, we will hang up on you immediately (and often times delay your call off the air completely). All we want is your input to the show and your comment. We have tens of thousands of people who call this show and have a hard time getting through because of the volume of calls we receive. We don't need you being a jerk to people and announcing it to the world just because you got lucky. Plus, nobody wants to listen to a radio show that has the same 7 callers that call in all the time.
#4 The main reason for our success is that for the most part, real human beings call this show. It doesn't matter if you are blue collar, white collar, single, married, divorced, have 7 kids, have no kids, are black, white, red, brown, purple or a foreigner. It doesn't matter what/who you are or what your walk of life is, what your career is, or what you think society thinks of you... if you want to speak your mind, call us. We don't want regular "radio call-in" callers calling our show... we want you. If you're not sure whether or not you should be calling our show, here's a quick test... if you pick up the phone and dial 888-390-9850 and think to yourself... "what in the hell am I doing? Am I this depraved? I can't believe I'm calling a goddamn morning radio show. This feels ridiculous. I feel like and idiot, but to hell with it, I want to tell Rob, Arnie & Dawn that... (insert what you have to say here)." If that's how you feel when you pick up the phone to call us, congratulations... you're our ideal caller. Say what you gotta say and let the good times roll.
#5 If you are a real fan of this show, tattoo this on your forehead. Sound like a dumb rule? Keep this in mind. The point in calling our show is to talk to Rob, Arnie & Dawn... not to phone screeners who have no time or desire to chitchat with you. We get calls like this every day. "Oh, I don't want to be on the air, I just wanted to tell you, the phone screener, how I feel about (insert whatever topic we're talking about here)." Seriously... this is not a joke. These idiot listeners actually waste their time (and ours) talking to our phone screeners instead of letting their voice actually be heard by our hundreds of thousands of listeners. Look, we're not trying to be jerks here, but we (phone screener/producer people) are busy as hell behind the scenes. We have 1,000 things we're trying to do simultaneously and we have NO time or use for you (the caller) if you aren't calling in to be on the show. In fact, let me speak for every phone screener who has ever fielded a call for this show... we don't care. We don't personally care about where you stand on what or why you're calling. We just don't give a shit. We're paid to do a job... to get you on the air as quickly as possible, so long as you follow the rules laid out on this page. Does this sound like we're biased against you? Guess what... this means we're biased IN FAVOR of you. Nobody who answers phones for this show gives a flying shit if you're Democratic, Republican, Hindu, Scientologist, Muslim, born again Christian, pro-government, anti-government, pro-environment, anti-designated hitter rule, pro-gay, anti-lesbian, pro-choice, pro-life, pro-"undocumented worker," anti-"illegal alien"... we just don't care. We don't care about what you do for a living, what your heritage is or what you want to say to us... unless you want to speak your mind the air, then we're all ears. Give us the information we need so we can put you in touch with Rob, Arnie & Dawn so people can hear what you have to say. Oh, and by the way, keep these two things in mind... A) if you ever call the show and tell the person who answers the phone "I don't have time to stay on hold, but just tell Rob, Arnie & Dawn that I think..." xwe will hang up on you before you can finish your sentence. B) If you ever call the show and say, "I don't wanna be on the air, just pass this along..." we will hang up on you before you can finish your sentence. We don't care if you're calling in with the answer to global famine, if you don't want to be on the air, don't call this show. We don't have time to deal with you. Any questions?
#6 Everybody at your office thinks you're hysterical. Congratulations. Keep it to yourself. If you could do it for a living, you would be doing it right now. If you really want to be a part of our show, if you really want to extend the amount of time we keep you on the air and learn from/react to what you have to say, don't be funny... be yourself. When you call us, dazzle us with your maturity and with the content of what you have to contribute and the way you see the world. If you call us and try and turn our show into open mic night, all it does is grind the show to a freaking halt and force us to embarrass you in front of half million people. As fun as that is for "Executive Producer Megan "... and "Producer Brandon" it does nothing for the show.
#7 If you get on the air and Rob says "Ben (or whatever your name is), good morning... what would you like to say..." and you respond like a typical maggot listener and say "uhhhh.... my name is Ken, not 'Ben' Rob..." we will hang up on you immediately and not take calls from anyone named Ken or Ben (or anybody who we even think sounds remotely like you) for the rest of the month. Nobody cares what the pronunciation of your first name is... everyone cares very deeply about what you want to say and what you can contribute to the show, and we have a limited amount of time to get that out of you. It doesn't matter how great your comment is or how smart the world thinks you are... if you act like a turd on our show because we got one or two letters wrong in your name, we'll dump you and rejoice at how you screwed yourself out of being on our show.
#8 Calling into the show can feel weird, but it's no different than talking to your asshole friends at a bar, or your favorite asshole relatives at the dinner table. We're just people. Talk to us.
#9 Here's a little script of how half the horrible calls to our show start .
(5 seconds of dead awkward silence follows as Becky (or whoever the idiot listener is) sits there like a retard, not paying attention to the fact that she's on the air on the most popular radio show in this part of the world.) Arnie: "Becky... are you there?" (5 more seconds of silence, then) Dawn: "Are you there Becky?" Idiot Asshole Becky: (after 5 more seconds of dead silence)... "Oh... is that me? Am I on?"
#10 We are on a 30 second broadcast delay, which means that everything that you are hearing on your radio happened 30 seconds ago. Only the voices you hear in the earpiece of your phone are happening in real time. If you listen to the radio for your cue to start talking because you want to hear how cool you sound on the radio, you're going to embarrass yourself and get hung up on. You must listen to your phone to hear what we are saying and to get yourself on the air.
#11 Chances are, you'll get between 2-4 sentences to get to the basic point of what you have to say before you force us to hang up on you. So if you launch into your modern day version of the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech, you'll get about 10 seconds in before we dismiss you and move on to the next caller. If you can't get to your point in that amount of time (or less), you need to write us a listener mail instead of calling us. The ONLY exceptions to this rule are complex problems for "Dr. Rob" or if you have ever served in our military or law enforcement and want to talk about anything ever. Yes we are playing favorites. No we don't care if you don't like this.
Once you've told the phone screener what you are going to say, don't change your comment. Rob is taking your call based on whether your subject matter has anything to do with what we're talking about, or based on whether it will add something to the show. If you are put on the air, it means that Rob has found some entertainment value in your comment. If you get on the air and change that comment completely, three things will happen. 1) you will be ignored or hung up on (probably the latter), 2) you will be ridiculed for lying to the phone screener. 3) We will mock and ridicule you for saying something uninteresting and irrelevant and single you out so that all of your friends and co-workers know what a goddamn moron you are. (**Listener note... "Executive Producer Megan" and "Producer Brandon" hate you people the most.)
#13 If the phone screener doesn't laugh at your joke or react to your comment, that doesn't mean that its bad. "Producer Brandon" is trying to simultaneously listen to the show, listen to your comment, process your comment and try to type it to Rob in 10 words or less. Your joke/comment may be very interesting or funny, but he's busy trying to figure out how to condense it into a coherant point, so he may not have time to laugh or respond. Or maybe it really is that your comment or joke is horrible. Maybe you should throw yourself off a cliff. Could go either way. Similarly, if he is has to interrupt you or cut you off at any point, he's not trying to be rude, he's just trying to get you on the air (or at least on hold) as fast as humanly possible, and then answer all of the other phone lines that are ringing off the hook. If we really wanted to be rude to you, we'd do a hell of a lot more than just interject during on your sentences, so don't get your shorts in a knot.
#14 We want to get your comment on the air as fast as we can, but calling this show is not like putting a quarter in a gumball machine. You don't just dial the number and immediately get to talk to the #1 radio show in this region of the world. Sometimes, you may get lucky and get on the air in a matter of seconds. Sometimes it may take a few minutes or longer depending on the topic and how many people are calling in with relevant things to say. On any given day, we've got about a half million peole listening to this show, several thousand of whom are trying to call in. So if you want to make a comment on the air, it may take a few minutes for Rob to get to you. That doesn't mean Rob is never going to take your call. Believe it or not, Rob is trying to time your call to give you the best chance of success on the air. Leave the timing to him, he's a pro at it. But if you can't hold don't call.... oh, and don't ask how long the wait is going to be, becasue we (the phone screeners) don't know. Its Rob's show, he'll take your call when he feels like it. The producers have NO control over when or if he takes your call. We can just put you on hold, and keep checking back to see if you are still there. If you act like a jerk to us on the phone, we will hang up on you... and then high-5 each other for doing so.
#15 Look, everybody on this show has the dirtiest mouths on the face of the ass-fucking Earth off the air, way dirtier than all of you amateurs. Shit, Dawn is the nicest one out of all of us and you would need therapy for years if you heard how fucking awful Dawn's mouth is during commercial breaks. That being said, all of us on the show are adult enough to keep our language reasonable (if not respectful) on the air for 5 hours a day. If we can do it, you can do it... we promise you. So when you call our show, here's a quick rule of thumb... don't curse. Even if you think the word is safe, don't curse... ever. Also, don't use any kind of sexual innuendo... ever. We are smart enough to know the boundaries... you are not (this is not an insult to you, it's an indictment of how absolutely RIDICULOUS the legal climate of our industry is these days and how miserable and embarrassing the cowards are who are pulling the strings). If you make a half-assed attempt at some sexual comment, or if you fail to use language that we can broadcast, we will delay your call off the air immediately, even if what you have to say could bring peace to the Middle East.
#16 What does that mean? The "Rob, Arnie & Dawn" show is broadcast on a 30 second delay. This means at the push of a button, Rob can delete your un-airable (or just plain shitty) comment off the air and no one who is listening will ever know it happened unless we go out of our way to make it obvious to you.... the listener... because we can exploit it for a comedic moment (welcome to Showbizz 101). So if you are dumb enough to think that you can call the show and shout "FUUUUUUCK!!!" or "SHHHHIIIIIIIIT" or shout the name of your dumb startup company and "sneak it past us," well then A) your an idiot and ....B) you're living in the dark ages. Save your energy.
#17 Here's a very public secret about the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show... the only thing we LOVE more than disagreeing with each other is when you disagree with us. That's what gets all of us out of bed in the morning. Think of the alternative... NOTHING is more boring than listening to a radio show where everybody agrees with everybody and callers agree with us and we agree with callers and blah blah blah. If we don't have callers who disagree with what we say, we have no show, period. But here's the obstacle... no matter how upset you get with whatever asinine comment Rob, Arnie or Dawn say, you have to call this show ready to LISTEN, and ready to back up your side of the story with facts... with logic... with reason... and with information. In short, we want to engage you in a dialogue. A dialogue means you talk, then we talk, then you talk, then we talk... until we've all said what we have to say. If you just call into our show thinking your going to shout as loud as you can for as long as you can until people listen, well then your call will last about 5 seconds. If you call into our show and you listen and have an intelligent conversation with us and can logically, intelligently and calmly defend your position and bring new information/perspective to what we're taling about, you may be on the air for 15, 20, 30, 45 minutes... the sky is the limit.
In closing... These are the basic ground rules. Think they seem a bit harsh? Well, like all good laws, these guidelines are liberating, not limiting. If you truly get this show, you will not only understand how important these rules are, you'll start to resent the jerks who don't follow the rules for ruining the show (God knows we do). Stick to the boundaries above and you'll get every opportunity to make your thoughts known on the Rob, Arnie & Dawn show... and you'll sound like a pro while doing so. Got any questions or comments? Are we forgetting any rules? Drop us an email and let us know. If you think this page is uncalled for, or that we are being too harsh on our callers for posting this page, please click here and let us know what we can do to create a better climate for our audience. |
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