Thursday, July 03, 2008

Letters from a Nut

There's a great book called Letters from a Nut where a guy writes these fairly amusing letters to various places. In any case, I've been listening to 1010WINS on my commute and found certain things annoying about their broadcast, so I sent them my very own Letter from a Nut:
Dear 1010WINS,
I am very confused. Your channel announcer claims that 1010WINS is "All News, All the Time," and the logo on your website supports this statement. Yet, often the announcer states that 1010WINS has "News, Weather, Traffic, and More!" These are clearly contradictory claims! From listening to your broadcasts on my drive to and from work, I've determined that the latter statement is true, with "More" clearly referring to "Commercials." Then why do you persist in claiming "All News, All the Time" - you should really change your logo and sound bite to say "Some News, Every Now and Then," or perhaps "Almost all Commercials, Almost all of the Time." I would even accept, “Day old news, repeated verbatim every thirty minutes, interspersed with traffic reports and commercials all of the time.” But this is not the major reason for emailing you.
You see, I have a complaint regarding the oft-repeated claim "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." Since you have a news cycle that repeats every 10 minutes (“Traffic and Weather on the Tens”), as well as every 30 minutes (“Sports news at 15 and 45 past the hour”), I figure that although it feels like your broadcast is mostly commercials, there must be only 8 minutes of ads for every 30 minutes of broadcast, or else the 22 minutes claim is completely nonsensical. In that case, since there’s no way to fast-forward through the commercials, I feel you should change your slogan to “You give us (and our advertisers) half an hour, we’ll give you the world.” But that is still not the main complaint.
My main complaint is that I’ve given you 22 minutes (actually, 30 minutes). In fact, I’ve given you my whole hour-and-a-half commute (that’s over 4 times 22 minutes, or 3 times 30 minutes), each way, for a few weeks and you have yet to give me the World. I was expecting a package in the mail or something, declaring me Owner and Supreme Ruler of The World, but I’ve received nothing. You didn’t even email me a tracking number! But then, I thought, you might not have my email address. So I figured I’d contact you so you’d know where to send it, so now you have it: ~~~~@gmail.com Eagerly awaiting the world, ~~~~~ ~~~~~~
I'll be sure to post any response I get.

5 comments:

  1. I've read, and enjoyed, the Letters from a Nut book. Your email to that radio station was pretty funny too. Did you ever receive a reply?

    gregcpaul at gmail dot com

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  2. Haha I absolutely love the Letters from a Nut books. Did you see recently the author was outed by Seinfeld?

    I knew it would inspire copycats to send letters like yours. Ever get a response?

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  3. FoLfaN,
    I did get a response, see here: http://lanseybrothers.blogspot.com/2008/08/further-letters-from-nut.html
    I didn't know that the author was outed, just looked it up. Thanks!

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  4. Haha congrats on the response. Yeah watch the Larry King episode where Seinfeld brings the real Ted L. Nancy on with him. Pretty funny.

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