SEATTLE — Staff of Washington-based alt station WFRD reported complete bewilderment this past week over hearing a ringing phone in their office, which, once answered, proved to be from a caller requesting a song despite it being the year 2026, confirmed sources.
“Out of nowhere, we heard this ringing, which kind of sounded like it was in the studio,” said WFRD DJ Shayna Woolsy. “At first, we assumed it was from a song—we’d been playing Geese, so, who knows, right? But it kept going on well after ‘Taxes’ ended. Turns out, it was from a phone in the studio. Not a cell phone either. It was, like, connected to the wall. I’d never seen such a thing before. We answer, ready for god knows what, and it was this… guy? He wanted us to do ‘Trinidad’ next. We’d already been planning that, so the whole thing was a waste of time. What a creep.”
Before streaming, tapes, CDs, vinyl, cassingles, 8-tracks, and humming, calling into radio stations was among the only ways to hear individual songs, as noted by WFRD caller Reed Fisher.
“I’m old school. I listen to the radio. I talk on the phone. I’ve even sent a handwritten letter in my lifetime. When I heard the new Geese, I had to hear more, ideally over my FM. So, I called WFRD up, and here we are,” said Fisher. “Getting through was not easy—they must be flooded with requests day in and day out—but I persisted, and eventually, I got to hear that Brooklyn sound.”
Despite the recent nosedive in intentional calls to radio stations, the practice did once enjoy wide popularity, as telecoms specialist Patricia Bamberg explained.
“Calls into radio stations made up around 25% of the nation’s phone traffic in the heyday of FM, which came to a screeching halt when Pandora launched in 2005,” said Bamberg. “Since then, when anyone does call in for a song, we immediately dispatch a team for a wellness check. They sign callers up with Apple Music, drop off some of the consensus best albums of the last 20 years, and give them with a smartphone, which they walk them through streaming on. By the time they leave, callers are usually looping Fiona Apple’s ‘Shameika’ all on their own.”
At press time, Fisher was seen knocking on his neighbor’s door for a chat, a move that led his neighbor to immediately call the police on him.
