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Tear Jerker / Radio

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  • There was something on the annual bird count when the topic turned to a database of animal sounds, including extinct ones. And they played back a strange bit of birdsong recorded in the 80s, with all these pauses. After it was over the guest said that this was a male, and that song was the mating call, and it's supposed to be a duet. But this was the very last of that bird, and they recorded hours and hours of him singing it, endlessly calling for an answer that never came.
  • TRY to watch "The House of the Dead" without crying.
    Ianto: Jack...? I can't remember...
    Jack: I didn't think you'd be so real...I had hoped for less...
    Ianto: (heartbrokenly) Thanks.
    Jack: No, y-you don't understand- I thought it would just look like you-
    Ianto: IT?
  • A radio talk show in which a DJ had people tell him their love dramas before choosing a song for them. Well, one of the cases had a girl who contracted AIDS from her Jerkass ex-boyfriend who had unprotected sex with her and others deliberately to get them sick as revenge for getting the illness. Cue to the DJ choking and crying as he talked her out of committing suicide right there in the spot.
  • A local country radio station on a week they were having a radiothon for St. Jude. They overlaid songs like "Sarabeth", "One More Day" and "Go Rest High On That Mountain" with stories from parents with kids battling cancer. The worst of them was a mother talking about her daughter who lost a fight with cancer over the song "Streets of Heaven".
  • Casey Kasem always used to do "Long Distance Dedications" on his "American Top 40" radio countdown shows. One from the late 1970s was particularly moving; it was one from a young woman to her older brother, who'd ran away awhile back. The woman hoped that her beloved, much-missed brother would hear what she had to say and come back home. The song she decided to dedicate to her brother was "This One's for You" by Barry Manilow.
  • In CBC's Wiretap, one episode in Season 3, entitled "A Secret History of Famous Friends", told a bizarre story of Barney Rubble accidentally running over Fred Flintstone's pet Dino, and how Fred and Barney's friendship begins to fall apart afterward. Eventually, they make up and have a heart-to-heart talk. Afterwards, an actual musical number from The Flintstones plays, in which Fred and Barney sing about how they'll always be friends. You can listen to the episode here. (Season 3, "A Secret History of Famous Friends").
  • Terry Wogan's final show (Friday, December 18th 2009). After having been on BBC Radio since The '60s and entertaining generations of people, it is time for him to finally leave Radio. And after two and a half hours of a truly heartbreaking broadcast (Old, slow songs. Presents from Sarah Kennedy, John Marsh and Charlie Nove, even a special message from the Prime Minister). It's clear that by the end, he's fighting back tears. So he finishes on a truly heartwarming message to his viewers. Before leaving Radio forever. Ken Bruce (Who came on afterward) announced that it really was "The End of an Era" for broadcasting. After 40 years of waking up to Terry Wogan's dulcet tones in the morning. He shall never be there again. Never there to share a smile, a laugh, or a tear with his beloved listeners. He shall be missed.
  • Of all things, The Ricky Gervais Show manages one in one 2002 episode. Steve and Ricky inform Karl live on air that he only scored one GCSE (Karl never went to collect his results), which was an E in History. The kicker is that Karl had actually sat at least 4 or 5 other exams, but had forgotten to register for them, thus discounting them. His reaction when told this is actually quite affecting, and even more so, it is one of the only times when Steve and Ricky don't take the piss and offer to help him resit History and remind him that he's done well for himself and he doesn't need the grades.
  • This anti-bullying radio add features children that review what they've learned in school. Near the end, they all tell the listeners that the one thing they didn't learn was why nobody ever helps.
  • Music radio whenever someone huge from their genre format passes on. And sometimes, even someone not. The day will likely be devoted to taking calls from grieving fans, often filling an entire block with their music (sometimes they run for hours — days, in the case of John Lennon) and just remembering another lost idol.
    • By 2010, when Michael Jackson died, this was no longer done to such a massive degree. DJs played one or two songs and then went back to the regular format, albeit with news updates. (To be fair, many stations did this at the news of Lennon's shooting, before it was known that he had died.) However, some rock stations devoted several consecutive hours' worth of programming to Neil Peart's passing.
    • At noon on January 27th, 2020, all radio stations in the Los Angeles area went silent for one minute and eight seconds to mark the sudden loss of not a musician, but an athlete: Kobe Bryant. Many morning shows earlier that day also played his Oscar-winning poem, “Dear Basketball.”
  • When a station changes formats, especially from a popular or rare style to one less desired (e.g., Christian radio corporation Educational Media is buying up AAA stations and grand old rock institutions like WPLJ and repeating its signal, turning them into identical, bland, automated Christian Rock stations, all called K-Love). Sometimes, DJs are given time to prepare a last goodbye, others not.
    • Special mention goes out to the end of Detroit’s “105.1 The Groove”. It starts out with a Barry White speech/song and keeps getting worse...and this from a format around for only two years . note 
    • And to KSWD, 100.3 "The Sound" in Los Angeles — short for "The Sound of Southern California" — where programming director Dave Beasing made no secret of the management and staff's respect for pioneering rock station KMET, and the announcers (real LA residents, well-known, beloved voices like "Uncle Joe" Benson and Rita Wilde — not voice-tracked robots 1000 miles away) made a point of connecting with the audience as personally as possible. Even a format change, from AAA/deep cuts to a more standard classic rock playlist, couldn't stop them. Then owner Entercom merged with CBS and was forced to "divest" two of its stations and on November 16, 2017, The Sound left the air forever, replaced with K-Love. The outpouring of grief and love from listeners and staff alike lasted over a month, and the station's final moments can be found on YouTube.
      This has been KSWD Los Angeles. This is The Sound.
      And this dream will self-destruct in three, two —

      • Hope will find a way: Just before the end, AAA "Smart Rock" KCSN of Cal State Northridge and KSBR (mostly jazz) of Saddleback Community College merged and renamed themselves "The New 88.5". Six months later, Andy Chanley, the signature voice of KSWD, took over afternoon broadcasting, followed by KSWD regulars Julie Slater, Lesley James, Mimi Chen and several others, with an essentially KSWD format. The old KSWD. The website sported pictures of Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Beatles, and so on, and the words "You Deserve Better Radio." As if it weren't obvious enough, KCSN as of September 2022 started calling themselves "The SoCal Sound." And the call letters KSWD are now used by a Seattle AC station calling itself "94.1 The Sound."

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