omarzaki.com - Omar's Oasis Paradise

The Don Miller Morning Show

The morning show on 99X makes me want to vomit. I wrote a letter to the program director this afternoon and dropped it in the mail. Here is the letter in it’s entirety.

Omar Branson Zaki
420 Battersea Dr.
Lawrenceville, GA 30044
Email: omar@omarzaki.com
Phone: (770) 309-6884

November 17, 2003

Chris Williams
99X Program Director
780 Johnson Ferry Road
Fifth Floor
Atlanta, GA 30342

Dear Chris:
I’ve been meaning to write you since I head the Morning X went the way of the dodos. I am tickled the program directors at 99X had the good sense to take that screed off the air. A few years ago, after subjecting myself to about a year of the Morning X and the Regular Guys on 96 Rock, I stopped listening to morning radio, opting instead for tapes or sleeping. When I heard the Morning X got sacked, I was elated and for the first time in several years, stopped my early morning radio dial on 99X. After ten minutes of talk and 15 minutes of commercials, I threw the Credence back in the player.

First of all, sending Barns off to Hollywood and bringing on replacement idiots does not mean the Morning X is gone. Spinal Tap may have changed its name each time they replaced a drummer, but stayed the same goddamned band. I’m not sure who Don Miller is (maybe an evil genius mastermind brain living in a glass dome), but the new yahoos chewing me ear off about stupid shit like drunk sorority girls don’t constitute a change in programming warranting calling the Morning X by a new name. You tricked me into listening, and for that, I am deeply offended. Rest assured, I won’t make that mistake for a long time coming.

Secondly, the Don Miller Morning Show is actually dumber than the Morning X was before. Jimmy always pissed me off with his snotty neo-liberal 90’s urban white guy attitude, but at least while he wore his black turtlenecks and drank his Starbucks, nobody ever said “you mean Jimmy from the country station?” Sadly, I guess the Don Miller Morning Show took more than a few hints from the Regular Guys and just ripped off Jackass. Pushing your “Fat Kid” down the stairs in a barrel with a tape recorder is a testament to people with bad taste everywhere and possibly a world record in pointlessness. I was going to ask “why don’t you push a fat kid down the street in a shopping cart,” but I see now making that point would be futile. I remember several years ago the Morning X putting a cell phone in a vacuum tube at a drive through teller. The phone got sucked into the bank, and the Morning X talked to the teller. Thanks Steve and Vicky. That day, the Morning X really showed me how they were in touch with mainstream America. The guys at work talked about that one around water cooler for days. I digress. I suppose less has really changed over time than I thought. Recently, to make matters fearfully worse, a week or two after “Fat Kid” throws himself down stairs in a barrel, an act the Regular Guys would call “redneck and stupid,” “Fat Kid” takes a trip to a trailer park to make fun of poor people. I heard the promo where some 14 year old girl living alone opted for Skynard tickets over a $300 MP3 player. Well, you really made her feel stupid. I’m sure were she smart, she would own a computer and know what a MP3 player was. But she doesn’t have a computer. And she didn’t know what an MP3 player is. So I guess she really is dumb. You pretentious elitist bastards. She’s 14 and lives in a trailer. Of course she’s stupid. Of course she’s a redneck. It wouldn’t have taken your report to convince me a dumb underage redneck girl lives in a trailer park. What happened to 99X’s inclusive urban liberal values. Last I checked, making the poor and stupid feel poor and stupid wasn’t the first item on 99X’s mission statement. Then again, maybe when the people realized the Morning X was a terrible program 99X lost ratings, so you decided to start broadcasting to a poor and stupid audience. Hey, I know you want to tear listeners away from 96 Rock, but if you are hungry, you don’t blow a hole in the bottom of your already leaking ship to catch fish. I am now thoroughly convinced that your morning program show constitutes the base (at least a very low level) for the totem of everything rotten, slimy, and discussing in America. Congratulations.

Third, Jimmy Barron should be taken off the air. His humor is cheap and an insult to the intelligence any person with an IQ above room temperature. Jimmy’s “War for no Reason” gave me no reason to listen to the program. 99X actually played a radio broadcast of a short middle-aged man fighting a trailer-park butterball. Maybe you didn’t understand that when you aired the show, so I will repeat it.

99X actually played a radio broadcast of a short middle-aged man fighting a trailer-park butterball.

Or at least I assume you played it. I head the advertisement, so I didn’t make a special effort to tune in. Maybe it was a big joke and you laughed at all the fucktards tuning in, but I doubt it. And if you did, that was dumb because you drove away people with standards. When you do fire Jimmy, don’t worry about putting him on the street; plenty of wealthy parents are eagerly standing around with cash in hand waiting for Jimmy to DJ at little Susie’s 13th birthday party.

My main complaint is more of a question. 99X is a great station at the worst times of the day. Why? The OrganicX show Sunday morning is my favorite show on radio. I make it a point to get up before noon on Sundays just so I can turn on the radio and go back to bed. I don’t understand why when I tune into your station on the way to work I should listen to four or five idiots have a condescending discussion about non-issues. Do non-thinking people really bring in the big ratings or big advertisers? Aren’t there plenty of people with taste in music nipping at your heals to play something musically entertaining in the morning? The Sunday School program is pretty good, and if anything, playing unpopular (but quality) music distinguishes 99X from the top 40 army of Clearchannel stations and pulls (very loyal) listeners away from the college radio stations. But the four hour commercial for stupidity you call The Don Miller Morning Show has to go. Are Americans stupid because they listen to your morning programming, or is your morning programming stupid because Americans listen to it? If the answer is the first, you should change the format and you will retain your listeners while improving the quality of conversation around the city. If the answer is the latter, I don’t suppose we have any hope of pushing the quality of life in this fair city to a level anything higher than a total mental wasteland. What does the total lack of intelligence in the morning say about your station as a whole? I know the answer will come easy. If not, there really is no hope.

Sincerely,

Omar Branson Zaki
Potential Listener

Posted by omarzaki at November 17, 2003 06:20 PM