January 22, 2005

Winter Park, Florida (AP)

The disc jockey at Rollins College's WPRK-FM unofficially set a record
Friday for the world's longest continuous broadcast by a single DJ. Plotkin,
25, took to the airwaves at 9 a.m. Monday, and signed off at 11:03 p.m.
Friday, a 110-hour span. A DJ in Switzerland lasted 105 hours in July 2002.

"Everything I did, every facet of my life for the past five days, I was
broadcasting on the radio with a wireless (microphone) or here in the
studio," Plotkin said Friday evening in the seconds before reaching Hour 106
and breaking the old record. "I miss the outside world."

The event, planned for more than a year, raised $19,638 CDN for the
52-year-old radio station. The broadcast, which also went out over the
Internet, drew donations from as far as Peru.

It will take Guinness, keeper of the world's records, four to six weeks to
validate Plotkin's feat.

Under Guinness' rules, Plotkin had to speak at least once every 59 seconds.
And there was no napping while "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" played - songs could not
be longer than six minutes.

In between spinning CDs from indie rockers, Plotkin hosted local bands,
interviewed artists and civic leaders, gave interviews himself and took cold
showers in a stall built down the hall from the studio.

He was watched by medical professionals, journalists, friends, family and
assorted well-wishers.

Toward the end he tried to put CDs into closed trays, banged his head on the
microphone and forgot his station's call letters.

"I'm a lab rat," said Plotkin, his face unshaven and his eyes fading in and
out of glassiness.

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/news/...ntent=e012202A