Death on Air

The passing of HRH Prince Philip caused radio stations around the UK to quickly amend their playlists today. This was done – as one announcer explained on air – as a mark of respect for the Duke of Edinburgh.

So if you tune in to your local station you're not likely to hear any songs that relate to death, and nothing too heavy. Your favourite Satanic core and Gothic industrial tracks will have to wait for a bit, while Glenn Campbell and The Carpenters are dusted off and aired once again.

Not that radio jocks have had to scrabble urgently for an appropriately-mellow playlist – it will already have been there waiting in the wings, for occasions just such as this. When I worked in radio back in 1978, this was known as the D&D playlist – for 'Death and Disaster.'

Picture if you will a younger version of myself sitting at a radio desk that had large knurled knobs, a few faders, old-fashioned throw-switches, a row of gauges showing audio levels, and twin record turntables, one on either side. The microphone hung from above, and the headphones I wore were huge, but top quality. There wasn't a computer in sight.

Off to the right was a shelf with a collection of LPs (which stands for Long Playing records for those of you who are too young) which were the Death and Disaster records. These had been chosen – I was informed when I started – as the go-to stack of music in the event that a member of the Royal family died, or when there was some other nationwide tragedy. The music was innocuous, mostly instrumental, and unlikely to upset grieving listeners.

As announcers we were told that the most likely situation for using the D&D pile would be if the Queen Mother died, choking on her gin and tonic while screaming at a horse race on the telly. As it was, she outlasted my radio career by a long shot.

But anyway, here we are in 1978. Radio Nelson – call-sign 2ZN – was my first station, situated in the charming city of Nelson in New Zealand's South Island. It was a great station and very much a part of the local community.

So it came as no great surprise when our station manager, Don Jones, told us one day that in order to continue providing a valuable public service while the local newspaper was on strike and not publishing, we would be announcing local death notices following the six o'clock news each evening.

This, he said, was the least we could do, though elsewhere in the station the marketing bods were rubbing their hands in glee knowing that any local businesses wanting to advertise would now have to come to 2ZN rather than The Nelson Evening Mail.

2ZN Radio Nelson in the 1970s
Image: Nelson Photo News

We announcers were somewhat dismayed at this news. Not only did we have to read out the death notices, we were instructed to do each one twice. We prayed the newspaper's union and management would reach an agreement sooner rather than later, as we couldn't think of a more effective way to reduce the listening audience to record low levels.

In those days, on the top of each hour, we would take a news-feed from Radio New Zealand's corporate centre in the capital Wellington, and when that had finished we would switch back and read our local news, provided each day by our station journalists. It was following the local news at six o'clock that the death notices were to be read, using – you guessed it – music from the easy-listening Death and Disaster collection in the background. You can probably see what's coming.

I had been listening to the six o'clock news-feed and waiting nervously for our journalist to deliver our local bulletin, but even after the main news was halfway through he still hadn't shown. I had the death notices and had read through them, but no news is not good news.

Just before the main bulletin was due to finish the journo flew into the studio waving a raft of news stories at me and apologising profusely. I quickly scanned the pages so that I had some idea of what I'd be reading, then the main news finished and I turned on the mic. 'Good evening, it's four minutes past six and here's the local news...'

All was good and I got through the bulletin, except that during the final item I realised I'd forgotten to line up any D&D music for the death notices. Continuing reading, I reached out with my right hand and selected a disc from the Death and Disaster collection, secure in the knowledge that it had been chosen specially and would not offend anyone.

I put the LP on the turntable, dropped the needle onto it, and then, as I introduced the death notices I slowly faded the music up in the background. I was relieved to hear that it was indeed quiet, with no heavy guitar riffs, and no vocals.

'And now, we bring you today's death notices,' I said in a suitably sombre tone. 'We are sad to announce the passing of Dora Blakehurst of Motueka...'

I am making this name up right now as I have no idea who died, and even at the moment I was reading I wasn't taking any notice either because, through my headphones I was horrified to recognise the music that I'd blindly selected.

It was a very soft and instrumental version of Roberta Flack's 'Killing Me Softly.'