Ottomaton

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

There is a burning question in the minds of many KRFY Panhandle Community Radio listeners: Who is this “Otto” and where does he find the inspiration to put together his famous “Eclectic Mix”?

For the uninitiated, Otto’s Eclectic Mix is a long-running program on KRFY 88.5 FM known for playing an accumulation of songs that don’t normally get airtime. Otto has been a staple of KRFY’s programming since the station first started broadcasting in 2011, and nobody seems to know who Otto really is.

“Everyone is curious about Otto,” said Programming Manager Jack Peterson. “It’s a question we get from time to time.”

Perhaps Otto is a hermit, working 12 hours a day poring over and selecting misfit songs that are often outshined by the more popular tunes that permeate the airwaves. Maybe Otto is second-cousin to Harvey the Rabbit, an amalgam of radio deejays invented to soothe our jagged souls, one song at a time.

The truth, at long last: Otto isn’t a living, breathing deejay, but rather, a complex automaton engineered to give KRFY listeners the opportunity to listen to music from off the beaten track.

When not sharing his eclectic mix with radio listeners, Otto moonlights as an airline pilot. Courtesy photo.

The mix is really just a list of about 6,000 songs, of which about 2,000 are in the top tier for selection. The algorithm declares that no song will be played that has been on the air within the previous three weeks, and nothing will play from an artist whose work has been in rotation for the past hour. Once a song on the mix has seen a lot of airtime, it doesn’t come out of the mix entirely, but it shows up less often. Also, while Otto’s selections are often from familiar artists, it doesn’t usually include their hits. If the mix cues up Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album, KRFY listeners are much more likely to hear “Glory Days” than “Born in the USA.”

“We have a memo called ‘The Philosophy of Otto’s Eclectic Mix,’” Peterson told the Reader.

All deejays that have spent time at KRFY have added to the memo. The mix was started by Jeff Poole back in 2011, but now it’s mostly KRFY board member Jim Healey who manages it. Healey also hosts Folk Music Thursdays and The Morning Show on Thursdays.

“When we went on the air in 2011, there was a time when we didn’t have a lot of local programmers,” Healey said. “The station was mainly dependent on computer-selected songs out of groupings of songs we put together. It became ‘Otto’ as a spinoff of the word ‘automatic.’”

When it comes to adding songs to Otto’s Eclectic Mix, everyone has the opportunity to suggest inclusions, which are then ratified by the board.

“Someone might call up and say, ‘Here’s a great song I heard, can you put it in the mix?’” said Peterson. “The goal is to play stuff you don’t often hear and definitely not to overplay it.”

Peterson said the mix is a way to help KRFY fulfill its mission to provide a different spin on radio.

“It’s community radio,” he said. “Our mission is different from commercial radio. We’re not as driven by advertising or profit motive at all.”

At one point, there was a “no Beatles” rule to Otto’s mix, because The Beatles got their own hour of playtime on Sundays, but fans of the Fab Four will rejoice knowing the boys from Liverpool are back in the mix.

“We even have a spoken word piece in the rotation,” said Peterson. “It’s Sean Connery reading the Beatles’ ‘In My Life.’”

“What’s nice about Otto is, it’s a collection of different genres, decades and different kinds of music,” Healey said. “You don’t know what you’re going to get.”

When pressed on what Otto would look like if transformed into a real entity, Peterson likened his appearance to “Otto” the blow-up pilot on the movie Airplane, while Healey claimed Otto would “probably be a montage of all the local KRFY programmers; Jack Peterson’s nose, Bernie Moser’s ear, Suzy Prez’s mouth,” and so on. “It would be a little bit of everybody.”

There is a cold comfort in automation. The precise machinations, efficient algorithms and unwavering dedication to the completion of a task can inspire us mortal beings to get the most out of our time here on planet Earth. If we reach, as R.E.M. calls it, “The End of the World as We Know It,” and life on Earth morphs into a Mad Max-like existence, music lovers will be pleased to know that even in post-apocalyptic times, Otto’s Eclectic Mix would still keep churning out the tunes — as long as there’s power.

“It would keep playing as long as the battery backup system works,” Peterson said. “It can go unattended indefinitely, as far as I know.”

Somehow, the image of an imaginary deejay named Otto spinning the tunes well into the afterlife on Earth just works.

Until then, listeners can catch Otto’s Eclectic Mix most days from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and again through the wee hours from 2-5 a.m.