> Was I supposed to get some kind of special 9 volt battery?
>
> snit--hates limpdick and who will be buying a battery operated radio from a
> store that I will test IN the store before horriblecane Ivan heads this
> way! &%!)%^&!)# --snat K
Try some of the obvious. Check the orientation, replace each battery in a row, one by one. If only one is bad, it will fuck up the series connection between all of them. They usually come with AC adapters, so make sure the radio actually works on AC first. Then don't forget to unplug the AC connection.
Sometimes it is just dumb things like that....
CG