XHRM (Magic 92.5)/San Diego Firecracker 500 Countdown 'Hacked' By Russians In Station Prank

Magic 92.5 Outlasts The Russkies

This year's LOCAL MEDIA SAN DIEGO Urban AC XHRM (MAGIC 92.5)/SAN DIEGO FIRECRACKER 500, which counts down the favorite songs of all-time, as voted by the station's listeners leading up to 4TH OF JULY weekend, was subject to an in-house prank. 

This year, with more than a million votes tallied, while all the jocks were in the studio -- just beginning to announce the #1 song -- weird sounds began crackling in their headphones, followed by "MOSCOW RADIO" taking over the station's frequency in a spoof.  They announced their own #1 song as chosen by "VLADIMIR PUTIN and his comrades," "The Russian Macarena," by NICOLAI SOPOLOV and the SEXY SIBERIANS, featuring NICKI MINAJ... "which was horrible, unlistenable," according to those at the studio.

After about four minutes, the SAN DIEGO station "regained" control of the airwaves, reportedly "using some tricks they saw on a 1987 episode of 'MacGyver,' involving paperclips, reel-to-reel tape, a stale box of bagels brought in by a local label rep, and an IGGY AZALEA promo CD."

The station then issued the following statement, "We apologize to our listeners, and are taking measures to ensure this never happens again, including upgrading all of our hardware from WINDOWS VISTA to XP; we think that will help, at least from the research we conducted using ASK JEEVES."

By the way, the real FIRECRACKER 500 COUNTDOWN #1 song was MARK MORRISON's "The Return Of The Mack."

You can hear the actual audio of the hacked broadcast, along with a video re-enactment below. 

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