I don't go to a lot of movies, these days, for no single reason in particular. If I had to nail one down, I'd have to say there are few films that motivate me to leave the house, what with being able to watch DVDs in the privacy of one's own home. When there's a movie I just have to see, I'll usually hit a matinee, and it's a good thing, too--those of us who can still hear very well ( I was told my ear drums are "pristine") are bombarded by the level of the soundtrack. Loud, loud, loud! Perhaps to drown out the incessant chatterboxes who regularly attend.
Pirate Radio is a film well worth taking two hours of audio punishment in today's multi-plexes. Being a true radio guy, I loved every minute. I think the last time I had my enthusiasm for the act of playing music on the radio reinvigorated by a film was in 1988, when I went to see Good Morning Vietnam...twice! I was working at a poorly programmed AC station in San Diego. A.C. means "adult contemporary," but that's a misnomer. The format should really be called S.S.B.M: "Sick, Sappy, Background Music," or perhaps the more creative of you can find other more denigrating words that start with the letters "B.M." Any you come up with would be dead-on accurate, as far a s I'm concerned.
After seeing Good Morning, Vietnam, I just had to find an outlet where I could enjoy being an air personality, again. Even for a man of 28 years, as I was then, a well produced movie could inspire me. Today, in a more consolidated, neutered radio business, I feel energized by watching Richard Curtis' hilarious homage to the guys who defied the stuffy British Broadcasting Company, and delivered mid-60's rock and roll to the United Kingdom from boats off the British coast. Yes, that was really the case. Regardless of the fact the Beatles were changing popular culture or that The Stones, The Who, even the Dave Clark Five were influencing kids and ruling playlists around the world, the BBC, as repressed as today's AC radio, limited Rock and Roll to two hours a week. Bear in mind that British broadcasting was all government run, at the time-- payed for by licensing fees leveled on all who owned radios. Commercial broadcasting was considered in poor taste. To hear the rock and roll that was emanating from their own country, Brits had to scan the dial for stations from the European continent...until the Pirates started broadcasting.
Richard Curtis does movies that are engaging, exquisitely assembled, and excellently cast. You may recognize a couple of the titles: Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral. In the U.S., I've heard these films refereed to as "Chick Flicks." Women should love this compliment, because it gives the fairer sex credit for being able to absorb intelligent, witty dialogue and plots better than the plodding, grunting, flatulent male, who'd rather sit and watch things blow up. When it comes to these particular movies, the term does not apply.
I watched Pirate Radio in a sparsely populated, stadium-seating theatre, with only a few of us occupying the massive chairs. Two bald, older gentlemen who may have been teens during the year the movie is set (1966), clapped and sang along with the energetic 60's soundtrack (when they weren't hauling their melon-sized prostates to the men's room, at least three times. I noticed because they had to walk right past me...in a near empty theatre). I'm not going to reveal the plot, or expound upon the story, I'd like to focus on the parts of the film that brought to mind some of my own radio experience.
For example: the camaraderie on that ship was a lot like our 10-watt station on the campus of Long Beach State, 30 years ago. We did it all for free or for college credit, but like the Pirates, there were forces that wanted us shut down. In late 1980, the administration at Long Beach State, continually exasperated in the shadow of U-S-C and U-C-L-A, wanted the "prestige" of a public radio venue, and purchased the license of station KLON from Long Beach City College. This, plus the general attitude that "those damned kids" were talking to no one and accomplishing nothing," meant that our own KSUL had to go bye-bye in March of 1981. A fight ensued, of course, but to no avail. A lot of Pirate Radio reminded me of that time. Had the higher-ups at Long Beach State had an ounce of vision, both stations, KLON and the 10 Watt KSUL could have co-existed, with radio-loving students still able to play music and learn. Snobbery and managemental dysfunction, however, ruled the day. As 2010 looms, a Radio/TV Department has not and does not exist at Long Beach State. KLON is now K-Jazz, run as an independent enterprise, by a commercial broadcaster, Saul Levine.
I was one of the students who hung around to work at KLON, thinking that playing jazz records would be cool. Instead, I lost five years of my career, learning nothing about REAL radio, and not enjoying the esprit de corps we had at KSUL. The guys reading this who are KSULers know what I'm talking about.
The other thing that struck me as I guffawed at the dialogue and situations in Pirate Radio, were the parallels to my current situation. God, those guys were having fun! The music, then, was new, but unlike any other era in the long history of Rock and Roll, music from the mid 1960's (I'd say 1964 through 1968) has youth and life that keeps it fresh and vital. The kind of music that pumped blood through our veins as oldies at KRTH prior to 2006. I defy anyone of any age not to get caught up in the life force of those songs. Reality intrudes, of course: missing from the music mix in the film is the Beatles, probably due to licensing issues. When viewing the film, try to imagine a Beatles song during the musical lulls. It is, after all, a movie.
I thought about how great it would have been to have had a Pirate Radio Weekend, giving away tickets to a special station screening, and playing the hits from the soundtrack, all of them very familiar, and very radio friendly. I have no say, just frustration knowing how great a weekend that could have been for listeners in Southern California, as opposed to what we were actually doing. As for career, I'd have killed to spend three months on that boat.
Go see Pirate Radio, and remember how much you love good music--and how Brits went to extremes to both provide it and to hear it. You'll laugh out loud, and consider it sad that we've become so jaded as to accept so much less coming out of our speakers.
LENO VS LETTERMAN, 2009
We thought this battle had been fought and won years ago. Jay Leno has always been a superb stand-up comic, ill-suited, I've believed, for the roll of interlocutor, and heir to Johnny Carson. This is not the first time the majority of Americans have disagreed with me. Look at the radio ratings.
Jay Leno, as the result of a serendipitously pre-scheduled guest shot by Hugh Grant, (following Hugh's ill-advised purchase of fifty-dollar fellatio in 1995) passed David Letterman in the late night TV ratings war, and stayed on top until NBC made the first of its succession of programing errors. For first, to keep Conan O'Brien in fold, was a promise to give the 12:35 host the reigns of the Tonight Show in 2009. Second, they imposed "retirement" upon Leno. NBC "fixed" this sticky wicket with what I'm sure they believed was an intelligent way to save millions. They stopped placing expensive dramatic duds into the 10 PM slot, and developed at 5 night a week show for Leno--it would be cheap to produce, and keep Leno from jumping to ABC or Fox.
Sounds like a winner, right? Wrong. It was error number three. I never bought it. It's not that there had not been precedent for wicket fixing. When Jack Paar stepped down from the Tonight Show in 1962, NBC was not happy at all, and had to wait nine months before Carson, then considered Paar's "heir," could get out of his ABC contract. Paar, in turn, started a Friday night variety show that ran until August of 1965. One night a week, not five. Not against some of the hottest dramas on the air, mainly on CBS.
I hate to say I told you so, but regardless of the spin, outside the 11:35 comfort zone he developed after Hugh Grant's arrest for illegally having his bob lobbed, Leno is laying a bomb--a Daisy cutter, to use verbiage from the world of ordinance. What will never surprise me about TV networks, as their power and influence wanes, is how impotent they are when it comes to developing something that will work.
David Letterman is beating Conan regularly, now. Still ironic, still curmudgeonly, but freshly ( and astonishingly) painted as a Lothario. There are women I've run into who are upset that CBS has not punished him for his dalliances...but then I know without question that we've worked for individuals who have done far, far worse without offering the slightest whiff of a mea culpa. Letterman wasn't married, at the time, and as far as we know, did not force himself upon these women. It would be easy to apply selective outrage toward Dave, but believe me, I've seen guys in positions of responsibility be absolute degenerates while exploiting their power. What's unsettling is that so many people are more upset with the sex-capades than the extortion attempt that brought the ugliness to light. It's all bad news, but the alleged blackmailer is the even more significant villain of this piece.
PETROS
He's not everyone's cup of tea, and it took me a while to cultivate a taste for him, but if you enjoy sports talk, you've got to hear Petros Papodakis, the Petros part of "Petros and Money, " on Fox Sports Radio (KLAC 570, in L.A.). A running back and team captain prior to the Pete Carroll/ championship era at USC, Petros is a dervish--a whir of verbal energy, wit and, yes, intelligence. I haven't gotten so much zest out of afternoon drive since the late, great, Real Don Steele or Jo Jo "Cookin' Kincaid (and my own work at Q-105, 1991-92). He sings, he screams, he admits to taking Lexipro...punch him up and listen. If he doesn't blow the eyebrows off your face, stick around. Petros is really good. And I don't compliment everyone, you know...
A Happy Thanksgiving to all. With any luck, we'll get through the holidays without having the music from our radios put us all into insulin shock.
POSTSCRIPT, NOVEMBER 28, 2009
Recently, an old radio friend related in an e-mail that he once had a chat with one of the orginal 1960's "Pirates." This Brit had done three months aboard Radio Caroline, the vessel upon which events in the movie were based. The man told my friend the boat was an old rust bucket, that you couldn't get through a shift without vomiting, and that he was considered persona non grata, and couldn't return to England.
To top it off, the week after I saw the movie, it was gone from that complex. The reality of
Pirate Radio, as is the case with most subjects of motion pictures, has rearedits ugly head. Still, I'd buy the DVD.
#
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
MAD ABOUT MAD MEN
As 2009 gracefully enters its final two months, I accept the idea that there are few genuinely great television shows. If you love what they now call "procedural" cop shows, series that take you through the process of solving a crime, the CSI's and NCIS are by far the best. If comedy is what you crave, ABC has resurrected its viability as a television network with Modern Family, an absolutely hilarious half-hour of familial dysfunction. Few watch, but smart minds love 30 Rock and The Office, two well-written shows that never fail to produce big laughs.
There's also no excuse to miss a program, anymore. If you can find out what time, you just set the TIVO, DVR or VCR. If you can't, TIVO reminds you. Or just watch on demand if your cable company provides the option. That's why there's only yourself to blame if you haven't seen Mad Men, an hour of motion picture-like quality that flows in reverse of the short-attention-span theatre that most of TV programming has become.
Mad Men is set in the early 1960's, and it's visual authenticity is breath-taking. It's realism is jarring--unlike the movies and television from the era it depicts, Mad Men rips the facade off a time long passed. That it is not on a major network (it's on AMC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific) makes no difference. If it were on CBS. ABC, or NBC, it would have been quickly cancelled and forgotten. It's a show that gives its characters the time to truly interact, and viewers the time to ingest the depth of its writing. Better the show be watched a few million on basic cable, revered by critics, rather than be axed for another hour of Jay Leno.
The second to last episode of the season was so moving, I watched it twice. It was set against the assassination of John F. Kennedy. How this real life tragedy was woven into the drama was done masterfully, and reminded me that I'm old enough to have been through that weekend...in November of 1963.
With few exceptions, no one in Mad Men's cast was alive on that fatefull weekend. I was four. The images of what I saw on television burn brightly in my mind, though I had no feeling for the weight of what had taken place. I don't recall the Friday it happened. The earliest reaction I remember is asking aloud why the news was still on, and wondering where the cartoons were. Instead of Bugs Bunny, there was David Brinkley, at his slanted desk.
The next day, a Sunday, there was the image of Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, just about the ages of my sister Lisa and me, kneeling at the side of the coffin. The face of CBS coreespondent Harry Reasoner is another memory, speaking softly, reassuringly. Film of a color guard in close-up, folding an American flag with military precision, ran as my mother folded clothes. While the bulk of the country attempted sleep, those of us on the west coast got a respite from the onslaught of news...I know this because I went to the store with my father, and when we got back, a rerun of Mr. Ed was playing on Channel 2. I remember being in that nearly empty store, eye level with a box of Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, with Huckleberry Hound on the front. Kids notice things like that.
The pictures and thoughts from that weekend were all jogged by how the two children on Mad Men reacted: with questions, not knowing why adults were in tears, and transfixed by what was on that black and white TV screen, without a clue as to what they were watching. From a child's point of view, I found it to be exactly as I had behaved and reacted. For a medium that cheats facts and suspends disbelief on a constant basis, I find this fantastic. Well done. It couldn't have been better. A television drama captured the moment so succinctly it could have been a memoir. If you've never seen Mad Men, you should catch up on DVD. I'm utterly knocked out by it.
TWICE IN A LIFE IS ENOUGH
Being reminded that 46 years have passed since the Kennedy Assassination also brought forth memories of the more recent national trauma: 9/11.
Because I'd been so young, years passed before I was aware of the impact JFK's murder had on the country. I was full of questions as a child and as a young man. Not so much about who really killed him, but about how crushing it must have felt to be an adult, and cognizant of what had happened. I found out when I was almost 9, in 1968 when the world seemed to be tearing apart at the seams. The RFK and MLK assassinations were so shocking, I'm not certain a lot of parents knew how to help their kids cope with the grief. Seeing color videotape of RFK at the old Ambassador Hotel's Embassy Room, waving the victory sign and heading off into the kitchen is still too much for me.
9/11, however, happened when I was 42. The shocking deaths of not one national leader, but over three thousand citizens was beyond any of our scopes of reality.
I had a lot of time to think about the parallels of these two national tragedies in my lifetime: November 22, 1963 and September 11, 2001. The breaking of the news, the national coverage and preemption of commercial messages for four days. The jarring images. The fall out. As human beings, we endure, we heal, we move ahead with these events in our memories, and we are remarkable in that way. But at the half-century mark, I'm more than willing to speak for anyone reading this: Twice in a lifetime is enough. Let's hope we never have to go through anything like that again.
Perhaps if we held a mirror up to these events and see what we've learned, some growth can be gained from the pain. When JFK was assassinated, it marked the first time more Americans received news of tragic, historic importance via television. The reporters of the time, mostly men, mostly journalists who'd begun their careers at newspapers, comported themselves with what has been called "rigid detachment," "dolorous, but contained." They followed their creed of impartiality without displaying too much emotion (aside from a visibly choked-up Walter Cronkite when he delievered confirmation of the President's death), but their collective calm helped a grieving nation. The tape of the coverage on CBS and NBC survives in its entirety, and to see it is to view a medium coming of age, and living up to its responsibilities.
By 9/11, television news had changed. It was no longer a public affairs arm of broadcast entities, allowed to do good deeds so as not to impede the path to station license renewals. It was now a money-making force. In color, live via satellite from anywhere in the world, its pictures accopmanied by one-line captions emblazoned across the bottom of the screen. Yet the pros were there to do what had been done in 1963. Dan Rather, uncannily, filled the role he'd filled after JFK...a much older man, but just as inquisitive. The late Peter Jennings, like Walter Cronkite on November 22, forgot to put on his suit coat, and remained that way for four days.
Instead of three networks in full news mode, it was the spectrum of cable and satellite channels--QVC and Home Shopping Network went dark; on HBO movies played, but sister channels to ABC, CBS and NBC carried the feed from their mother networks. And a staggered nation tried to cope.
In the case of both these events, JFK and 9/11, political exploitation was an inevitablity. After President Kennedy, LBJ was swept into office in his own right, and twisted enough senatorial arms to pass Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare and the acts of the Great Society, before he was crushed by the weight of Vietnam. Following 9/11, the George W. Bush /Dick Cheney administration muscled the Patriot Act through congress, and went to war. I'll leave it up to you to decide what benefited the country in the wake of tragedy, and what did not. Because that's how those who truly reported the events would have it.
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE MANNY RAMIREZ?
Home for the winter, that's where...and with the rest of the Dodgers. They did what they could with what they had. I really don't care that Manny was soaping himself up and singing Meringue favorites in the shower as the Phils' Jimmy Rollins jolted a two-run, game winning double off Jonathan Broxton to beat the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLCS. It was a case of lightning striking twice--Matt Stairs popped a mammoth blast off Broxton in Game 4, last year to steal a win from L.A. and insure a Phillies pennant in five games. The 2009 result was just the same.
Other than that, it was a terrific season. 95 wins, the Western Division championship, a three game sweep of St. Louis and their vaunted pitching rotation in the Division Series. Any other off-season, all I'd say is they should go out and get a front line, ace starter. This winter will be different, though. Not in the Dodgers glorious history have their owners been in the midst of a nasty divorce. The Frank and Jamie McCourt parting promises to be edgier than Days of Our Lives (and with actual soap operas going south, why not have real life folks who control one of baseballs enduring franchises air their peccadilloes and promiscuity in public?). My advice to any Dodger fan is to follow my lead: Let whatever happens, happen. Just hope Rupert Murdock and News Corp (read: FOX) don't enter the picture, should either victorious McCourt be forced to sell.
Besides, it's November. God help us, I saw the first Christmas Tree, already. Prepare to have your bells jingled for a loooong time!!
There's also no excuse to miss a program, anymore. If you can find out what time, you just set the TIVO, DVR or VCR. If you can't, TIVO reminds you. Or just watch on demand if your cable company provides the option. That's why there's only yourself to blame if you haven't seen Mad Men, an hour of motion picture-like quality that flows in reverse of the short-attention-span theatre that most of TV programming has become.
Mad Men is set in the early 1960's, and it's visual authenticity is breath-taking. It's realism is jarring--unlike the movies and television from the era it depicts, Mad Men rips the facade off a time long passed. That it is not on a major network (it's on AMC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific) makes no difference. If it were on CBS. ABC, or NBC, it would have been quickly cancelled and forgotten. It's a show that gives its characters the time to truly interact, and viewers the time to ingest the depth of its writing. Better the show be watched a few million on basic cable, revered by critics, rather than be axed for another hour of Jay Leno.
The second to last episode of the season was so moving, I watched it twice. It was set against the assassination of John F. Kennedy. How this real life tragedy was woven into the drama was done masterfully, and reminded me that I'm old enough to have been through that weekend...in November of 1963.
With few exceptions, no one in Mad Men's cast was alive on that fatefull weekend. I was four. The images of what I saw on television burn brightly in my mind, though I had no feeling for the weight of what had taken place. I don't recall the Friday it happened. The earliest reaction I remember is asking aloud why the news was still on, and wondering where the cartoons were. Instead of Bugs Bunny, there was David Brinkley, at his slanted desk.
The next day, a Sunday, there was the image of Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, just about the ages of my sister Lisa and me, kneeling at the side of the coffin. The face of CBS coreespondent Harry Reasoner is another memory, speaking softly, reassuringly. Film of a color guard in close-up, folding an American flag with military precision, ran as my mother folded clothes. While the bulk of the country attempted sleep, those of us on the west coast got a respite from the onslaught of news...I know this because I went to the store with my father, and when we got back, a rerun of Mr. Ed was playing on Channel 2. I remember being in that nearly empty store, eye level with a box of Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, with Huckleberry Hound on the front. Kids notice things like that.
The pictures and thoughts from that weekend were all jogged by how the two children on Mad Men reacted: with questions, not knowing why adults were in tears, and transfixed by what was on that black and white TV screen, without a clue as to what they were watching. From a child's point of view, I found it to be exactly as I had behaved and reacted. For a medium that cheats facts and suspends disbelief on a constant basis, I find this fantastic. Well done. It couldn't have been better. A television drama captured the moment so succinctly it could have been a memoir. If you've never seen Mad Men, you should catch up on DVD. I'm utterly knocked out by it.
TWICE IN A LIFE IS ENOUGH
Being reminded that 46 years have passed since the Kennedy Assassination also brought forth memories of the more recent national trauma: 9/11.
Because I'd been so young, years passed before I was aware of the impact JFK's murder had on the country. I was full of questions as a child and as a young man. Not so much about who really killed him, but about how crushing it must have felt to be an adult, and cognizant of what had happened. I found out when I was almost 9, in 1968 when the world seemed to be tearing apart at the seams. The RFK and MLK assassinations were so shocking, I'm not certain a lot of parents knew how to help their kids cope with the grief. Seeing color videotape of RFK at the old Ambassador Hotel's Embassy Room, waving the victory sign and heading off into the kitchen is still too much for me.
9/11, however, happened when I was 42. The shocking deaths of not one national leader, but over three thousand citizens was beyond any of our scopes of reality.
I had a lot of time to think about the parallels of these two national tragedies in my lifetime: November 22, 1963 and September 11, 2001. The breaking of the news, the national coverage and preemption of commercial messages for four days. The jarring images. The fall out. As human beings, we endure, we heal, we move ahead with these events in our memories, and we are remarkable in that way. But at the half-century mark, I'm more than willing to speak for anyone reading this: Twice in a lifetime is enough. Let's hope we never have to go through anything like that again.
Perhaps if we held a mirror up to these events and see what we've learned, some growth can be gained from the pain. When JFK was assassinated, it marked the first time more Americans received news of tragic, historic importance via television. The reporters of the time, mostly men, mostly journalists who'd begun their careers at newspapers, comported themselves with what has been called "rigid detachment," "dolorous, but contained." They followed their creed of impartiality without displaying too much emotion (aside from a visibly choked-up Walter Cronkite when he delievered confirmation of the President's death), but their collective calm helped a grieving nation. The tape of the coverage on CBS and NBC survives in its entirety, and to see it is to view a medium coming of age, and living up to its responsibilities.
By 9/11, television news had changed. It was no longer a public affairs arm of broadcast entities, allowed to do good deeds so as not to impede the path to station license renewals. It was now a money-making force. In color, live via satellite from anywhere in the world, its pictures accopmanied by one-line captions emblazoned across the bottom of the screen. Yet the pros were there to do what had been done in 1963. Dan Rather, uncannily, filled the role he'd filled after JFK...a much older man, but just as inquisitive. The late Peter Jennings, like Walter Cronkite on November 22, forgot to put on his suit coat, and remained that way for four days.
Instead of three networks in full news mode, it was the spectrum of cable and satellite channels--QVC and Home Shopping Network went dark; on HBO movies played, but sister channels to ABC, CBS and NBC carried the feed from their mother networks. And a staggered nation tried to cope.
In the case of both these events, JFK and 9/11, political exploitation was an inevitablity. After President Kennedy, LBJ was swept into office in his own right, and twisted enough senatorial arms to pass Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare and the acts of the Great Society, before he was crushed by the weight of Vietnam. Following 9/11, the George W. Bush /Dick Cheney administration muscled the Patriot Act through congress, and went to war. I'll leave it up to you to decide what benefited the country in the wake of tragedy, and what did not. Because that's how those who truly reported the events would have it.
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE MANNY RAMIREZ?
Home for the winter, that's where...and with the rest of the Dodgers. They did what they could with what they had. I really don't care that Manny was soaping himself up and singing Meringue favorites in the shower as the Phils' Jimmy Rollins jolted a two-run, game winning double off Jonathan Broxton to beat the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLCS. It was a case of lightning striking twice--Matt Stairs popped a mammoth blast off Broxton in Game 4, last year to steal a win from L.A. and insure a Phillies pennant in five games. The 2009 result was just the same.
Other than that, it was a terrific season. 95 wins, the Western Division championship, a three game sweep of St. Louis and their vaunted pitching rotation in the Division Series. Any other off-season, all I'd say is they should go out and get a front line, ace starter. This winter will be different, though. Not in the Dodgers glorious history have their owners been in the midst of a nasty divorce. The Frank and Jamie McCourt parting promises to be edgier than Days of Our Lives (and with actual soap operas going south, why not have real life folks who control one of baseballs enduring franchises air their peccadilloes and promiscuity in public?). My advice to any Dodger fan is to follow my lead: Let whatever happens, happen. Just hope Rupert Murdock and News Corp (read: FOX) don't enter the picture, should either victorious McCourt be forced to sell.
Besides, it's November. God help us, I saw the first Christmas Tree, already. Prepare to have your bells jingled for a loooong time!!
Monday, September 21, 2009
AS I WAS SAYING...
It seems I spent the month of August doing everything but making an entry here at BLOGSPOT. My friend John Nixon reminds me, on occasion, that it's time to produce a few cogent thoughts. John, by the way, is one of radio's greatest production minds. We worked together for a short time in San Diego, but have been friends for 23 years. We had a hilarious time in the production studio and in the halls, but at that place, humor never reached the air. It seems ridiculous for an entertainment concern to have an air sound so rigidly constrained, while employing two guys so humorous. We were lashed down like patients in a straight-jacket when it came to on-air presentation. Which do you think would have created better ratings? The constipated, Phil Collins-heavy play-list of K-Lite, or Dave and John making people laugh, both on air and with creative production? Such is the conundrum of the radio business, where theory trumps sense, every time. By the way, K-Lite averaged numbers in the 1.o share territory. It became a station more in need of Ex-Lax than a tubby guy on a Dodger Dog diet.
(To be fair, in 1988, with a both a call letter and slight format change, the station improved, but all improvisation was limited to the morning drive hours. When those fellows left, the station quickly perished. I got out of there in July of '88; John departed for the Pacific Northwest the next year).
DAVE'S SUMMER VACATION
Some vacation. You don't really vacate any place when semi-employment is a fact of life. You sort of keep yourself busy until you're needed--in my case, that's by my former place of full-time employment...where I'm still working each weekend. I've had an on-going broadcast idea floating since February, a great idea in fact. Making it happen has been the difficult part. If and when it hits, I'll be more than happy to share it with everyone. Other than that, I tried to sell a short story to a couple of magazines--an effort that met with little interest. To be sure, it was not one of my better efforts. It was more like a therapeutic fictionalization of someone I worked with. This was a person who used the request-lines as his personal bordello, talking to the mentally wrecked who reach out to the ambient voices that waft from their radios. To quote from the film "A Face in the Crowd," these distressed women were , "...the locker room where he eased up after a rough day." The story could have been better, I suppose, and needs telling. I'm not sure how many people are aware of how nuts are taken advantage of by the narcissist/ egomaniacs who find their way behind a mike. One thing is certain: consolidation of radio stations under one or two company umbrellas is squeezing a lot of those types out of the business...perhaps the only silver lining in what, for on-air people, has become a very dark cloud.
The tale of my summer, then, can be summed up as the two weeks in August I spent filling in during afternoon drive. You radio guys will understand the following: The Personal People Meter gives us ratings data on a weekly basis, and from August 10 through 21st, I drove the numbers up from a 2.9 share to a 3.7, in the 25-54 age group. For ages 35-64, the ratings rose from a 4.6 to 6.1 while I was on. I had anticipated having a good run, but was even more delighted than expected. I was also suprised and pleased by the response from the management. I had no need to reaffirm my abilities to myself or friends, or a good number of radio people. It's a great feeling, though, to have listeners in L.A., at a key time of day, acknowledge that one is very good at his craft.
THE GUIDING LIGHT IS OUT
I have no trouble admitting that, since I was old enough to walk home from the bus stop by myself, I've been aware of The Guiding Light. When I was in kindergarten, class would end at 11:30, and by 11:45 I was home. My mother would be tending to her housework with the TV on, and usually as I walked in the door, if Mom wasn't cackling on the phone with some relative, I'd hear an announcer intone, "...and now...The Guiding Light."
It's funny how these things happen. Every summer after that, when it was too hot to go outside, or a second TV was unavailable, my mother's schedule of soaps on CBS sort of ruled the viewing habits of my sister Lisa and I. Love of Life at 11am, followed by fifteen minutes of Search For Tomorrow, fifteen of The Guiding Light, then news at noon. For reasons I never knew, my mother didn't watch As the World Turns at 12:30, but would warm up the set again at 2pm when the game show To Tell The Truth would precede Edge of Night. The afternoon of serialized angst would conclude with The Secret Storm at 3. Not every day was like this, but enough. Through it all, the house was spotless, and dinner was always at 6. It used to amaze me how my mother could slice vegetables into a bowl while watching Edge of Night, never once breaking a nail or slicing a finger while completely keeping up with the travails of the shows fictional citizens of Monticello.
Being a child with an active imagination, I did many things while this soap stuff was flooding the house--drawing, playing with G.I. Joes, Tonka Trucks, Army Men, etc. But as I got older, while all the rest of those shows fell victim to changing times, there was always...The Guiding Light. From fifteen minutes in black and white, to full color; from a half hour to an hour; from 11:45 to 1:30, to 2pm Pacific, if one was around the house, it seemed a better choice than reruns of Cannon, or much later, judge shows and televised paternity tests. Plus the actresses were much more attractive.
By college, and then my first night job in radio, I'd either watch when I got home, or check it out when I woke up following a work-night. In the '80's, I'm pretty sure I awoke more often to what was by then simply Guiding Light (they dropped the "the" in 1977) , than those keeping normal hours did to The Today Show. And so life went.
By the time VCRs became common place, I had an excuse to quit the habit, but didn't. I set my device for 2pm daily, and would fast forward through episodes whenever I had the chance. And the years zipped by.
Afternoons, nights, overnights...naps, appointments, lunches, daytime dates, trips out of town...
I always kept up with Guiding Light. I was a little ashamed until about 15 years ago when I read that the esteemed journalist Bill Moyers followed As The World Turns in much the same way. Yes, even guys with little time during the day, get caught up in soap suds--the stories are ridiculous, but as I've said, the stable of actresses make rising at midday more palatable.
Now that CBS has, after 72 years (57 on TV) brought Guiding Light to an end, I'm free of this life long addiction...yet left with a wee bit of an empty feeling. Had it not been for recording devices, of course, this would have happened much sooner. To the remaining souls who got hooked on soapery long ago, I say get ready: Youngsters at habit forming ages have better things to do than invest their time in fictionalized serials--there's Facebook, Twitter, file sharing and Beatles Rock Band to take up idle time. In another seven years, the soaps will be as extinct as the DoDo.
HI THERE, SPORTS FANS...
The Dodgers have had A SPECTACULAR summer...even though several losses were frustrating and could have been avoided. On this date, they are 90 and 60, five games up on Colorado in the National League West, with 12 to go. I'm not taking anything for granted. In earlier posts, I've pointed out the things that have gone terribly wrong in Dodger history. Keep your fingers crossed that Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp keep jolting the ball out of the park, that Randy Wolf stays hot on the mound, that everybody stays healthy as the Blue travels through D.C., Pittsburgh, San Diego, and for the season ending series with the Rockies at Dodger Stadium.
By the way, I have no earthly idea as to what happened to mighty Manny Ramirez. Nothing but supposition can account for his limited ability to thrill in 2009. It could be that 2008 was a mirage--naw, he's to good a hitter for that. It may be that when he was suspended 50 games for using that female hormone, he was coming off a steroid cycle, which would explain his late season, super-hero home run tear upon being traded to the Dodgers last year. It might be that the long suspension rendered him unable to get in the groove, or that being hit on the hand in July has something to do with his reduced production. No one knows for sure. We do know that no matter what any East Coast sports talk hack says (or for that matter the numb-nuts who blather on and on from the West Coast) his mere presence in the line up has benefited the evolution of Ethier and Kemp into stars. Now if we could just get the opposition to hit the ball to someplace on the field where Manny doesn't have a glove on his hand...
I hope to have more career news and fun stuff a little sooner, next time. Until then, Go Dodgers, and Goodbye Guiding Light.
#
(To be fair, in 1988, with a both a call letter and slight format change, the station improved, but all improvisation was limited to the morning drive hours. When those fellows left, the station quickly perished. I got out of there in July of '88; John departed for the Pacific Northwest the next year).
DAVE'S SUMMER VACATION
Some vacation. You don't really vacate any place when semi-employment is a fact of life. You sort of keep yourself busy until you're needed--in my case, that's by my former place of full-time employment...where I'm still working each weekend. I've had an on-going broadcast idea floating since February, a great idea in fact. Making it happen has been the difficult part. If and when it hits, I'll be more than happy to share it with everyone. Other than that, I tried to sell a short story to a couple of magazines--an effort that met with little interest. To be sure, it was not one of my better efforts. It was more like a therapeutic fictionalization of someone I worked with. This was a person who used the request-lines as his personal bordello, talking to the mentally wrecked who reach out to the ambient voices that waft from their radios. To quote from the film "A Face in the Crowd," these distressed women were , "...the locker room where he eased up after a rough day." The story could have been better, I suppose, and needs telling. I'm not sure how many people are aware of how nuts are taken advantage of by the narcissist/ egomaniacs who find their way behind a mike. One thing is certain: consolidation of radio stations under one or two company umbrellas is squeezing a lot of those types out of the business...perhaps the only silver lining in what, for on-air people, has become a very dark cloud.
The tale of my summer, then, can be summed up as the two weeks in August I spent filling in during afternoon drive. You radio guys will understand the following: The Personal People Meter gives us ratings data on a weekly basis, and from August 10 through 21st, I drove the numbers up from a 2.9 share to a 3.7, in the 25-54 age group. For ages 35-64, the ratings rose from a 4.6 to 6.1 while I was on. I had anticipated having a good run, but was even more delighted than expected. I was also suprised and pleased by the response from the management. I had no need to reaffirm my abilities to myself or friends, or a good number of radio people. It's a great feeling, though, to have listeners in L.A., at a key time of day, acknowledge that one is very good at his craft.
THE GUIDING LIGHT IS OUT
I have no trouble admitting that, since I was old enough to walk home from the bus stop by myself, I've been aware of The Guiding Light. When I was in kindergarten, class would end at 11:30, and by 11:45 I was home. My mother would be tending to her housework with the TV on, and usually as I walked in the door, if Mom wasn't cackling on the phone with some relative, I'd hear an announcer intone, "...and now...The Guiding Light."
It's funny how these things happen. Every summer after that, when it was too hot to go outside, or a second TV was unavailable, my mother's schedule of soaps on CBS sort of ruled the viewing habits of my sister Lisa and I. Love of Life at 11am, followed by fifteen minutes of Search For Tomorrow, fifteen of The Guiding Light, then news at noon. For reasons I never knew, my mother didn't watch As the World Turns at 12:30, but would warm up the set again at 2pm when the game show To Tell The Truth would precede Edge of Night. The afternoon of serialized angst would conclude with The Secret Storm at 3. Not every day was like this, but enough. Through it all, the house was spotless, and dinner was always at 6. It used to amaze me how my mother could slice vegetables into a bowl while watching Edge of Night, never once breaking a nail or slicing a finger while completely keeping up with the travails of the shows fictional citizens of Monticello.
Being a child with an active imagination, I did many things while this soap stuff was flooding the house--drawing, playing with G.I. Joes, Tonka Trucks, Army Men, etc. But as I got older, while all the rest of those shows fell victim to changing times, there was always...The Guiding Light. From fifteen minutes in black and white, to full color; from a half hour to an hour; from 11:45 to 1:30, to 2pm Pacific, if one was around the house, it seemed a better choice than reruns of Cannon, or much later, judge shows and televised paternity tests. Plus the actresses were much more attractive.
By college, and then my first night job in radio, I'd either watch when I got home, or check it out when I woke up following a work-night. In the '80's, I'm pretty sure I awoke more often to what was by then simply Guiding Light (they dropped the "the" in 1977) , than those keeping normal hours did to The Today Show. And so life went.
By the time VCRs became common place, I had an excuse to quit the habit, but didn't. I set my device for 2pm daily, and would fast forward through episodes whenever I had the chance. And the years zipped by.
Afternoons, nights, overnights...naps, appointments, lunches, daytime dates, trips out of town...
I always kept up with Guiding Light. I was a little ashamed until about 15 years ago when I read that the esteemed journalist Bill Moyers followed As The World Turns in much the same way. Yes, even guys with little time during the day, get caught up in soap suds--the stories are ridiculous, but as I've said, the stable of actresses make rising at midday more palatable.
Now that CBS has, after 72 years (57 on TV) brought Guiding Light to an end, I'm free of this life long addiction...yet left with a wee bit of an empty feeling. Had it not been for recording devices, of course, this would have happened much sooner. To the remaining souls who got hooked on soapery long ago, I say get ready: Youngsters at habit forming ages have better things to do than invest their time in fictionalized serials--there's Facebook, Twitter, file sharing and Beatles Rock Band to take up idle time. In another seven years, the soaps will be as extinct as the DoDo.
HI THERE, SPORTS FANS...
The Dodgers have had A SPECTACULAR summer...even though several losses were frustrating and could have been avoided. On this date, they are 90 and 60, five games up on Colorado in the National League West, with 12 to go. I'm not taking anything for granted. In earlier posts, I've pointed out the things that have gone terribly wrong in Dodger history. Keep your fingers crossed that Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp keep jolting the ball out of the park, that Randy Wolf stays hot on the mound, that everybody stays healthy as the Blue travels through D.C., Pittsburgh, San Diego, and for the season ending series with the Rockies at Dodger Stadium.
By the way, I have no earthly idea as to what happened to mighty Manny Ramirez. Nothing but supposition can account for his limited ability to thrill in 2009. It could be that 2008 was a mirage--naw, he's to good a hitter for that. It may be that when he was suspended 50 games for using that female hormone, he was coming off a steroid cycle, which would explain his late season, super-hero home run tear upon being traded to the Dodgers last year. It might be that the long suspension rendered him unable to get in the groove, or that being hit on the hand in July has something to do with his reduced production. No one knows for sure. We do know that no matter what any East Coast sports talk hack says (or for that matter the numb-nuts who blather on and on from the West Coast) his mere presence in the line up has benefited the evolution of Ethier and Kemp into stars. Now if we could just get the opposition to hit the ball to someplace on the field where Manny doesn't have a glove on his hand...
I hope to have more career news and fun stuff a little sooner, next time. Until then, Go Dodgers, and Goodbye Guiding Light.
#
Monday, July 27, 2009
A FEW WORDS ABOUT UNCLE WALTER
I've waited until all the tributes and requiems subsided to write a few words about Walter Cronkite. There are 30 year-olds who have no idea what it was like to watch the CBS Evening News when Walter anchored. They'll never know. Only those who've been around for 45 years or more can attest to the truth echoed since his passing at age 92: Walter Cronkite was fair, mostly accurate, tough, competitive, a world class ad-libber, and completely natural.
What I would like to add are some of the facts that have been shunted aside. Like all people in the business of broadcasting, Walter had to deal with the mercurial nature of his executive superiors. Yes, he was Uncle Walter. Yes, he would eventually be considered the most trusted man in America. But it wasn't like he didn't have to fight naysayers and pettiness from within his company, even at a time when news departments were largely left alone to operate at a loss.
Author Barbara Matusow pulled back the curtain on the history of TV Network news in 1983 with her book The Evening Stars. Her Chapter The Age of Cronkite highlights the fact that CBS executives weren't exactly sold on Walter's ability to anchor outside special events like political conventions. When Cronkite did get the job in April, 1962, at age 46, the Evening News was a 15 minute telecast, and the majority of people in America still claimed to get their information from newspapers. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley's Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC was still considered the nightly model for TV news, and held a considerable ratings lead over CBS.
Cronkite's lobbying was among the factors that convinced CBS to extend the Evening News to a half-hour in September of '63. Huntley-Brinkley followed a bit later, and continued to top the ratings. What has been lost in all the obituaries for Walter Cronkite, is how CBS nearly killed the goose that would eventually lay golden eggs. That would happen during the political season, in 1964.
For reasons even they were at a loss to explain, Huntley and Brinkley's NBC coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco garnered a 55 ratings share, as compared to CBS's 30. (According to Barbara Matusow, David Brinkley said the accomplishment was acknowledged at a meeting with NBC President Robert Kintner, who "...offered a warm glass of whisky--no ice-- a damp handshake, and a gruff word of thanks.")
What everyone should remember about Walter Cronkite, besides the impact his stature and his character had upon while delivering earthshaking news over the course of 19 years in the anchor chair, is how he weathered CBS' knee-jerk response to that lopsided ratings victory by NBC. The trouncing so annoyed CBS Chairman William Paley, he had Cronkite demoted for the next jewel on the network schedule, the 1964 Democratic National Convention. CBS replaced Walter with the duo of veteran announcer-reporter Robert Trout and Washington reporter Roger Mudd. Marketed as "Mudd-Trout," the team did worse against NBC than Cronkite had. Though he seriously pondered whether to leave CBS after such a slight, he never wavered in public. He remained a company man, and went about his job with the same furious curiosity and perfectionism, because that's how he was wired.
Times changed. Events demanded more than Huntley-Brinkley and NBC could offer. CBS built a deep team beneath Cronkite, a former wire-service reporter in Worl War II, who demanded as much as he gave. By 1967, the tables had turned, and The CBS Evening News overtook all others for the next 17 years.
If that were not enough to persuade you that even a God among newsmen was susceptible to the withering politics of broadcasting's inner sanctums, the Matusow book offers another nugget that points out where Walter's boundaries were. While playing tennis with a friend, the subject of Harry Reasoner came up. Reasoner was a CBS correspondent that bolted for the anchor chair at then-third place ABC. After a few mildly successful years, Harry had earned enough capitol to defend his people when he needed to. When one of Reasoner's producer friends was threatened with firing by ABC, Harry said, "If he goes, I go."
A while later, CBS let one of Cronkite's producers go in much the same way. Asked during the tennis match why he didn't stand up to CBS the way Reasoner had with ABC, Cronkite replied, "Harry's tough, alright. But if I'd interfered they'd have gotten rid of me, too." The most trusted man in America was clear-eyed enough to know how the business worked.
This brings us to his retirement. By all reports, Cronkite, at 65, had the gusto to go on for years. As viewers, as Americans, it's as if we were prohibited from having him behind the anchor desk or abroad; denied his enthusiasm and penchant for dotting the i's and crossing the t's as the world changed before us. This is part of the story everybody got right when Walter died: still the company man, he stepped aside early so that Dan Rather could ascend to the top, lest he be stolen away by ABC. Dan, a dogged reporter, was seen as ratings cat nip. The bottom line guys at CBS couldn't afford to let him get away.
In retrospect, this decision not only robbed us of having Cronkite for several more years, it cost CBS Roger Mudd, who after years as Walter's number one substitute, had expected to get the job. The day the decision was announced, Mudd left his desk at CBS, Washington, not to return until he was retired, and writing his memoir in 2007.
What CBS had in Walter, with his "retirement" was an ill-used giant of news gathering, kept in the shadows lest he block the spotlight on its new anchor. The Eye network also got the peculiar intensity of Rather--frenetic, never comfortable-looking, and with a legion of haters. Though a superlative reporter, who's own truth-seeking would get him "relieved" after a 2004 story about President Bush's curious history with the National Guard, Rather was cast as an ideologue by those to the political right. He never attained the level of trust and comfortability that Cronkite enjoyed. By 1984, The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather had slipped behind ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, never to climb the ratings rung, again.
It would be fun to suppose how Walter would have dealt with the changes in the TV news business as the '80's progressed. New technology made whiz-bang graphics more plentiful, satellite time became cheaper, equipment lighter--he could have done the news from anywhere in the world, as it's done today. Perhaps his authority would have diminished as compnaies merged, lay-offs ensued, as news bureaus around the world closed, and as cable made inroads. We don't know. All I can say is that those of us who are old enough to remember are grateful to have had him on-air during a tumultuous time in history, when calm and a steady hand was needed; when the incendiary voices we have today (on cable and talk radio) might have made matters more explosive and tear the country asunder.
His collegue Bob Scheiffer, who did a year at the anchor desk himself, said it best in his own memoir: "It wasn't the anchor chair that made Cronkite--it was Cronkite who made the anchor chair."
Walter Cronkite. 1916-2009. A giant in his time. Our time. For all-time.
What I would like to add are some of the facts that have been shunted aside. Like all people in the business of broadcasting, Walter had to deal with the mercurial nature of his executive superiors. Yes, he was Uncle Walter. Yes, he would eventually be considered the most trusted man in America. But it wasn't like he didn't have to fight naysayers and pettiness from within his company, even at a time when news departments were largely left alone to operate at a loss.
Author Barbara Matusow pulled back the curtain on the history of TV Network news in 1983 with her book The Evening Stars. Her Chapter The Age of Cronkite highlights the fact that CBS executives weren't exactly sold on Walter's ability to anchor outside special events like political conventions. When Cronkite did get the job in April, 1962, at age 46, the Evening News was a 15 minute telecast, and the majority of people in America still claimed to get their information from newspapers. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley's Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC was still considered the nightly model for TV news, and held a considerable ratings lead over CBS.
Cronkite's lobbying was among the factors that convinced CBS to extend the Evening News to a half-hour in September of '63. Huntley-Brinkley followed a bit later, and continued to top the ratings. What has been lost in all the obituaries for Walter Cronkite, is how CBS nearly killed the goose that would eventually lay golden eggs. That would happen during the political season, in 1964.
For reasons even they were at a loss to explain, Huntley and Brinkley's NBC coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco garnered a 55 ratings share, as compared to CBS's 30. (According to Barbara Matusow, David Brinkley said the accomplishment was acknowledged at a meeting with NBC President Robert Kintner, who "...offered a warm glass of whisky--no ice-- a damp handshake, and a gruff word of thanks.")
What everyone should remember about Walter Cronkite, besides the impact his stature and his character had upon while delivering earthshaking news over the course of 19 years in the anchor chair, is how he weathered CBS' knee-jerk response to that lopsided ratings victory by NBC. The trouncing so annoyed CBS Chairman William Paley, he had Cronkite demoted for the next jewel on the network schedule, the 1964 Democratic National Convention. CBS replaced Walter with the duo of veteran announcer-reporter Robert Trout and Washington reporter Roger Mudd. Marketed as "Mudd-Trout," the team did worse against NBC than Cronkite had. Though he seriously pondered whether to leave CBS after such a slight, he never wavered in public. He remained a company man, and went about his job with the same furious curiosity and perfectionism, because that's how he was wired.
Times changed. Events demanded more than Huntley-Brinkley and NBC could offer. CBS built a deep team beneath Cronkite, a former wire-service reporter in Worl War II, who demanded as much as he gave. By 1967, the tables had turned, and The CBS Evening News overtook all others for the next 17 years.
If that were not enough to persuade you that even a God among newsmen was susceptible to the withering politics of broadcasting's inner sanctums, the Matusow book offers another nugget that points out where Walter's boundaries were. While playing tennis with a friend, the subject of Harry Reasoner came up. Reasoner was a CBS correspondent that bolted for the anchor chair at then-third place ABC. After a few mildly successful years, Harry had earned enough capitol to defend his people when he needed to. When one of Reasoner's producer friends was threatened with firing by ABC, Harry said, "If he goes, I go."
A while later, CBS let one of Cronkite's producers go in much the same way. Asked during the tennis match why he didn't stand up to CBS the way Reasoner had with ABC, Cronkite replied, "Harry's tough, alright. But if I'd interfered they'd have gotten rid of me, too." The most trusted man in America was clear-eyed enough to know how the business worked.
This brings us to his retirement. By all reports, Cronkite, at 65, had the gusto to go on for years. As viewers, as Americans, it's as if we were prohibited from having him behind the anchor desk or abroad; denied his enthusiasm and penchant for dotting the i's and crossing the t's as the world changed before us. This is part of the story everybody got right when Walter died: still the company man, he stepped aside early so that Dan Rather could ascend to the top, lest he be stolen away by ABC. Dan, a dogged reporter, was seen as ratings cat nip. The bottom line guys at CBS couldn't afford to let him get away.
In retrospect, this decision not only robbed us of having Cronkite for several more years, it cost CBS Roger Mudd, who after years as Walter's number one substitute, had expected to get the job. The day the decision was announced, Mudd left his desk at CBS, Washington, not to return until he was retired, and writing his memoir in 2007.
What CBS had in Walter, with his "retirement" was an ill-used giant of news gathering, kept in the shadows lest he block the spotlight on its new anchor. The Eye network also got the peculiar intensity of Rather--frenetic, never comfortable-looking, and with a legion of haters. Though a superlative reporter, who's own truth-seeking would get him "relieved" after a 2004 story about President Bush's curious history with the National Guard, Rather was cast as an ideologue by those to the political right. He never attained the level of trust and comfortability that Cronkite enjoyed. By 1984, The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather had slipped behind ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, never to climb the ratings rung, again.
It would be fun to suppose how Walter would have dealt with the changes in the TV news business as the '80's progressed. New technology made whiz-bang graphics more plentiful, satellite time became cheaper, equipment lighter--he could have done the news from anywhere in the world, as it's done today. Perhaps his authority would have diminished as compnaies merged, lay-offs ensued, as news bureaus around the world closed, and as cable made inroads. We don't know. All I can say is that those of us who are old enough to remember are grateful to have had him on-air during a tumultuous time in history, when calm and a steady hand was needed; when the incendiary voices we have today (on cable and talk radio) might have made matters more explosive and tear the country asunder.
His collegue Bob Scheiffer, who did a year at the anchor desk himself, said it best in his own memoir: "It wasn't the anchor chair that made Cronkite--it was Cronkite who made the anchor chair."
Walter Cronkite. 1916-2009. A giant in his time. Our time. For all-time.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A SURREAL DAY IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
They say we truly grow older when we realize our own mortality, a realization that comes first with deaths in our own families, and then with the passing with enormous figures in our popular culture. Those of us who spent 1976-77 in high school danced to The Jackson's Enjoy Yourself, and watched Charlie's Angels with an ache in our teenaged loins. On this day, June 25, 2009, we all aged considerably.
In the summer of 1977, Elvis Presley died suddenly, sending shock waves around the world. Elvis? Dead? My late sister Laura came running from her bedroom, putting a loud, disbelieving voice to the news that this 42 year-old man, his career in decline for years, had passed away. In those days when tabloid news was pretty much restricted to actual supermarket tabloids, we scarcely realized or acknowledged his problems with weight and prescription drugs, making it much harder to understand that, at such a young age, he was gone.
Much the same can be said about Michael Jackson, except that we've known, via one outlet or another, of his controverseys and peculiarities. He was a year older than I. When the first bulletin crawled across the TV screen around 2:30 PDT (I'd been watching the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox head into extra innings, tied 5-5), I figured he'd make it. It was on a sports talk show that I heard news of his death confirmed by the website TMZ, while local L.A. Tv stations and the cable news outlets were waiting for their own sources to make it official.
Shocking? Absolutely. When you get past the shock? Not as surprising. A 50-year-old man training intensely for one more come back, suffering cardiac arrest. A 50-year-old man, perhaps, not fully realizing his body is 50, and likely compounded by more than we know--his history with presecription drugs largely goes undiscussed. Hell, my own doctor told me last year that if I wanted to start jogging or running, I should have a stress test first. At 49 or 50, we are not what we were at 25.
This news, the surreal word that Michael Jackson was dead, obscured the fact that the pain and discomfort Farrah Fawcett experienced for three years , had ended, and that she was gone. From her great fame as Charlie's main Angel, to befuddling appearances on Late Show with David Letterman, Farrah was a beguiling creature. Tons and tons of high school and college-aged guys, and many more servicemen, hung that iconic poster of Farrah on their bedroom walls. To be truthful, I tacked the centerfold of a Playboy playmate named Denise Michelle (April '76) on the back of my door, but I watched Charlie's Angels until it began to drive my testasterone- charged teenaged senisibilities utterly wild.
But, back to the point of all this: the deaths of pop culture icons remind us that we are getting older, and mortality is the destiny of all. Farrah died at 62, but in our minds (and on that poster) her visage will forever be 29 years of age.
Michael Jackson dreamed of one last tour that would remove the stain of the last 16 years...years beset by allegations and peculiar behavior. The sad irony of life, as those of us old enough can attest to, is that his music, his phenomenal legacy between 1969 and 1993, will fly off the shelves of what stores still sell CD's, and burn up iTunes on the internet. He may become bigger than ever as some of his less appreciated or well remembered efforts after Thriller find their way to the air, with all the appropriate kudos.
There will be the inevitable books, with unimpeachable sources telling their stories without fear of reprisal, and we will learn in hideous detail of his massive foibles and peculiarities. The fact remains, however, that hardcore fans will pay no attention. In death, he will once more be the giant whose 1982 album sold more than any other by a solo artist. Like fans of Elvis rear-up in fury at the mere mention of drugs or dietary gluttony, those who deeply mourn the King of Pop will look past prurient revelations, and fiercely defend their lost Idol.
And perhaps we can hope that for the first time since his childhood swerved into superstardom, then disfunction, Michael Jackson has found peace.
In the summer of 1977, Elvis Presley died suddenly, sending shock waves around the world. Elvis? Dead? My late sister Laura came running from her bedroom, putting a loud, disbelieving voice to the news that this 42 year-old man, his career in decline for years, had passed away. In those days when tabloid news was pretty much restricted to actual supermarket tabloids, we scarcely realized or acknowledged his problems with weight and prescription drugs, making it much harder to understand that, at such a young age, he was gone.
Much the same can be said about Michael Jackson, except that we've known, via one outlet or another, of his controverseys and peculiarities. He was a year older than I. When the first bulletin crawled across the TV screen around 2:30 PDT (I'd been watching the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox head into extra innings, tied 5-5), I figured he'd make it. It was on a sports talk show that I heard news of his death confirmed by the website TMZ, while local L.A. Tv stations and the cable news outlets were waiting for their own sources to make it official.
Shocking? Absolutely. When you get past the shock? Not as surprising. A 50-year-old man training intensely for one more come back, suffering cardiac arrest. A 50-year-old man, perhaps, not fully realizing his body is 50, and likely compounded by more than we know--his history with presecription drugs largely goes undiscussed. Hell, my own doctor told me last year that if I wanted to start jogging or running, I should have a stress test first. At 49 or 50, we are not what we were at 25.
This news, the surreal word that Michael Jackson was dead, obscured the fact that the pain and discomfort Farrah Fawcett experienced for three years , had ended, and that she was gone. From her great fame as Charlie's main Angel, to befuddling appearances on Late Show with David Letterman, Farrah was a beguiling creature. Tons and tons of high school and college-aged guys, and many more servicemen, hung that iconic poster of Farrah on their bedroom walls. To be truthful, I tacked the centerfold of a Playboy playmate named Denise Michelle (April '76) on the back of my door, but I watched Charlie's Angels until it began to drive my testasterone- charged teenaged senisibilities utterly wild.
But, back to the point of all this: the deaths of pop culture icons remind us that we are getting older, and mortality is the destiny of all. Farrah died at 62, but in our minds (and on that poster) her visage will forever be 29 years of age.
Michael Jackson dreamed of one last tour that would remove the stain of the last 16 years...years beset by allegations and peculiar behavior. The sad irony of life, as those of us old enough can attest to, is that his music, his phenomenal legacy between 1969 and 1993, will fly off the shelves of what stores still sell CD's, and burn up iTunes on the internet. He may become bigger than ever as some of his less appreciated or well remembered efforts after Thriller find their way to the air, with all the appropriate kudos.
There will be the inevitable books, with unimpeachable sources telling their stories without fear of reprisal, and we will learn in hideous detail of his massive foibles and peculiarities. The fact remains, however, that hardcore fans will pay no attention. In death, he will once more be the giant whose 1982 album sold more than any other by a solo artist. Like fans of Elvis rear-up in fury at the mere mention of drugs or dietary gluttony, those who deeply mourn the King of Pop will look past prurient revelations, and fiercely defend their lost Idol.
And perhaps we can hope that for the first time since his childhood swerved into superstardom, then disfunction, Michael Jackson has found peace.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
APRIL ODD AND ENDS
The sun just set on the third straight sunny, southern California day, with temperatures close to or above a hundred degrees. That's not unprecedented, but it's freaky for April, never-the-less. It reminds me that summer is not far away, and I haven't been on a real vacation for a long, long time. Nor have I enjoyed the natural beauty of the world outside So. Cal. for what seems like most of the decade.
There's so much to visually experience in this state, from the interior pleasures of Yosemite and Mount Shasta, to the hundreds of miles of precious coastline. You could spend years just soaking in the views from Eureka to Rosarito Beach.
For years, one of my favorite places of repose has been Point Loma in San Diego. It's a thumb-shaped bluff of peninsula that creates an entrance to San Diego Bay. A national park and monument stands near the peninsula's edge, named for Juan Cabrillo, the first European to sail into the natural enclosure. From the site of this monument, looking east, one sweeping gaze can take in the entirety of the city, it's airport, the skyline, North Island Naval Air Station, Coronado and its bridge, and, on an exceedingly clear day, Tijuana. Fighter jets land, while submarines, freighters and the occasional aircraft carrier churn their way into or out of the bay. The sands on Coronado reflect the sun and, at one time, shone as white as snow. The scope of this view is more picturesque and fluid than any other in this part of the state. If you cross to the other side of the bluff, you can look out over a seemingly endless Pacific Ocean, especially breathtaking as dusk nears.
I went there with regularity in 1987 and the first part of 1988, during another particularly difficult time in my career (difficulty in radio means A) not working, or B) remaining in a job you've come to hate with the searing heat of a thousand suns, or C) having to present A-C music in an A-C style...which for me is like a cat having its fur rubbed the wrong way). The therapeutic properties of just looking out at this magnificent vista from a location like Point Loma cannot be too strongly emphasized. I remember that view more fondly than the on air situation I encountered during those years. The Spanish word for the Cabrillo National Monument at Point Loma would be tranquilo.
MANNY'S BACK
Since my last blog, all has been squared away with Manny Ramirez. Though the Dodgers had an eight game winning streak end in Houston this evening, Manny ripped a homer to the farthest reaches of that pin-ball machine the Astros call a stadium. Their pitching is young, the middle relief a question mark, but other than that, it's the most dangerous Dodger team I've seen since the 1970's. Why? Not only are they young and talented, with a world-class hitter and sure-fire Hall of Famer in the middle of their line-up, aside from Manny, they are superior defensively. This will make for an interesting summer for all us Dodger fans.
ADIOS, DESGRACIADOS!
That's become my favorite Spanish word, thanks to the telenovela, Dona Barbara. There are a ton of desgraciados in the storyline, and they are liberally refered to as such. The English definition, of course, can range anywhere from "wretch," "disgrace," or "jerk," to the penultimate BASTARD! Dona Barbara deals with a lot of desgrasiados, and can be one herself, a great deal of the time. The series ends in May, and I have to tell you, it's been a hoot. Spanish-language television is an adventure worth the undertaking. The stories are told with a lot of tears, a lot of action, and an honesty you don't get with its English language counterparts. Dona Barbara could not have dealt with her enemies as grotesquely on NBC as she has on Telemundo. Watching has been a fun experiment while I've had time on my hands. I can now refer to cretins in the radio business as DESGRASIADOS!! Maldita Sea!! (that one means "damn it. It's always the four-letter words we learn first, isn't it?).
SCRUBS
On the subject of TV, here's a show that's taught us the meaning of cultural phenomena like Soup Shower (the act of placing a bullion cube in the head of some unsuspecting schmuck's shower); Bacon Back (slathering Crisco on to some sunbather, instead of Coppertone); and Grill Face (the result of college girls, hopping on to some drunken guy's back while he's standing too close to a Bar-B-Q...the results being predictable, as he pitches face-first into the fiery place between the burgers and hot dogs).
Scrubs has also given us the startling medical statistic that, "...75 percent of all (baby) deliveries are accompanied by an accidental dukey."
Underrated and under watched, Scrubs may well have delivered more genuine laughs than any sit-com in the first decade of the 21st Century.
AND IN CONCLUSION
...with hope, friends, the summer will bring some much need and well deserved career news. Stand By, as they say...
There's so much to visually experience in this state, from the interior pleasures of Yosemite and Mount Shasta, to the hundreds of miles of precious coastline. You could spend years just soaking in the views from Eureka to Rosarito Beach.
For years, one of my favorite places of repose has been Point Loma in San Diego. It's a thumb-shaped bluff of peninsula that creates an entrance to San Diego Bay. A national park and monument stands near the peninsula's edge, named for Juan Cabrillo, the first European to sail into the natural enclosure. From the site of this monument, looking east, one sweeping gaze can take in the entirety of the city, it's airport, the skyline, North Island Naval Air Station, Coronado and its bridge, and, on an exceedingly clear day, Tijuana. Fighter jets land, while submarines, freighters and the occasional aircraft carrier churn their way into or out of the bay. The sands on Coronado reflect the sun and, at one time, shone as white as snow. The scope of this view is more picturesque and fluid than any other in this part of the state. If you cross to the other side of the bluff, you can look out over a seemingly endless Pacific Ocean, especially breathtaking as dusk nears.
I went there with regularity in 1987 and the first part of 1988, during another particularly difficult time in my career (difficulty in radio means A) not working, or B) remaining in a job you've come to hate with the searing heat of a thousand suns, or C) having to present A-C music in an A-C style...which for me is like a cat having its fur rubbed the wrong way). The therapeutic properties of just looking out at this magnificent vista from a location like Point Loma cannot be too strongly emphasized. I remember that view more fondly than the on air situation I encountered during those years. The Spanish word for the Cabrillo National Monument at Point Loma would be tranquilo.
MANNY'S BACK
Since my last blog, all has been squared away with Manny Ramirez. Though the Dodgers had an eight game winning streak end in Houston this evening, Manny ripped a homer to the farthest reaches of that pin-ball machine the Astros call a stadium. Their pitching is young, the middle relief a question mark, but other than that, it's the most dangerous Dodger team I've seen since the 1970's. Why? Not only are they young and talented, with a world-class hitter and sure-fire Hall of Famer in the middle of their line-up, aside from Manny, they are superior defensively. This will make for an interesting summer for all us Dodger fans.
ADIOS, DESGRACIADOS!
That's become my favorite Spanish word, thanks to the telenovela, Dona Barbara. There are a ton of desgraciados in the storyline, and they are liberally refered to as such. The English definition, of course, can range anywhere from "wretch," "disgrace," or "jerk," to the penultimate BASTARD! Dona Barbara deals with a lot of desgrasiados, and can be one herself, a great deal of the time. The series ends in May, and I have to tell you, it's been a hoot. Spanish-language television is an adventure worth the undertaking. The stories are told with a lot of tears, a lot of action, and an honesty you don't get with its English language counterparts. Dona Barbara could not have dealt with her enemies as grotesquely on NBC as she has on Telemundo. Watching has been a fun experiment while I've had time on my hands. I can now refer to cretins in the radio business as DESGRASIADOS!! Maldita Sea!! (that one means "damn it. It's always the four-letter words we learn first, isn't it?).
SCRUBS
On the subject of TV, here's a show that's taught us the meaning of cultural phenomena like Soup Shower (the act of placing a bullion cube in the head of some unsuspecting schmuck's shower); Bacon Back (slathering Crisco on to some sunbather, instead of Coppertone); and Grill Face (the result of college girls, hopping on to some drunken guy's back while he's standing too close to a Bar-B-Q...the results being predictable, as he pitches face-first into the fiery place between the burgers and hot dogs).
Scrubs has also given us the startling medical statistic that, "...75 percent of all (baby) deliveries are accompanied by an accidental dukey."
Underrated and under watched, Scrubs may well have delivered more genuine laughs than any sit-com in the first decade of the 21st Century.
AND IN CONCLUSION
...with hope, friends, the summer will bring some much need and well deserved career news. Stand By, as they say...
Friday, March 6, 2009
1979
That was the year that was. Gas lines, J.R. Ewing, The World Champion "We are Fam-Uh-Lee" Pittsburgh Pirates, and Benny Hill's syndication to the United States (well...OK...it meant something to me).
Two other things bubble up from the ooze that is my memory of that year. One is caused by my continued reflection on what impact Amp Radio will have on the business and the southland; the other is something that has revisited our consciousness as would an unsettled meal: Michael Jackson. Like what emerges from a crypt in a Zombie movie (and with the pallor to match), he is risen, once more.
Jacko, as the British call him, is a talcom-powered example that the relative few who attain icon status in this world can get away with almost anything. If you don't believe that's true, try slathering on kabuki make-up, dressing like Mohamar Qaddafi gone wild with Bedazzler, and start favoring the company of non-adults. See how fast you get taken to the psyche ward or beaten up, or both, with all deliberate haste.
His (alleged) misdemeanors notwithstanding, Michael Jackson is a pitiable soul. He's a lasting reminder of what can happen to talented, precocious youngsters when they are cruelly exploited and robbed of their childhood. By the same token, M.J. embodies our own basic human need to worship at the foot of the charismatic, regardless of their foibles or felonies. The innate ability of people to forgive allows Michael to exist. Not as the ground-breaking, breath-taking, one-gloved performer he was in 1979, but as the celebrity so burned into the iris of the public's vision, that he made news world-wide when he announced a series of "final" concerts, this week.
I'm not a fan of the individual. It's not easy to remain unsettled by a 50-year-old man who's beginning to resemble a Star Wars Storm Trouper. There is, however, no denying the talent...a talent that has come to represent what little was compelling about Top 40 music in 1979.
Last week, I wrote at length about the debut of Amp Radio, and why it's always exciting when a new Top 40-CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) station starts. That made me recall how much fun it is to be a young person when something new is breaking. I always felt I'd missed something having been just four years-old when the Beatles exploded on to these shores. My brothers got to experience that as teens...plus The Stones, The Animals, Motown and James Brown.
Every teen or young adult has a music scene to embrace, but it's once in a couple of generations that an act like Elvis or The Beatles come along to rattle cages and shake up the landscape of popular culture. The rest of the time, people between 10 and 20 years are either digging what's cool, or searching for something more iconoclastic. What broke big when I was 18 was huge, but eventually loathsome, and had, by no means, the enduring impact of Beatlemania.
Disco. To say the word, even today, after semi-revivals and nostalgic reunions, is to blanch a little with disgust.
In 1979, Disco was at its height, a fact that speaks to the patchwork quilt that was Top 40 music in the 1970's. The decade began as a series of tributaries that flowed out of the radio: Soul, rock (the "roll" half of the name faded away for a brief time), some million-selling country hits, and a syrupy melange of mush and chewed bubblegum. We're talking James Taylor and Carly Simon as a couple, Elton John's softer efforts, The Partridge Family, The Osmonds, and abysmal one-hit wonders like Reunion (Life is a Rock, but the radio Rolled Me). On Top 40 stations from coast to coast, songs by those artists were linked by jingles to Led Zeppelin, Chicago, Charlie Rich, Jerry Reed, and Isaac Hayes doing The Theme From Shaft. It was true Top 40--hits from all fields, but nothing comparable to what shifted tectonic plates when the British landed in 1964. There was no real "craze" that gripped the country until Disco was delivered forth from burgeoning technology in the recording studio, and the glitter-balled excesses of New York night clubs. And it took over the airwaves in late 1977.
A previously low-rated album-rock FM station in New York started playing Disco records in Top-40 styled rotation and shot to the top of the ratings. They knocked off Dan Ingram and the venerable WABC, the city's leading Top 40 station for a decade. In L.A., KUTE 102, with a bad signal and ratings to match, went Disco in '77 under the helm of Bill Stevens, and zoomed past all the Top 40's except KHJ, and even they were feeling the heat.
Of all the music trends of the 20th Century, though, from ragtime to the big bands, from the birth of rock and roll to hip-hop, Disco is the most difficult to assess in a fair, even-handed way. For a music style that accounted for millions and millions of records sold, thousands of dance lessons taught, and hundreds of Discos opened, it was vastly reviled. Sticky-sweet, simple, thumping and monotonous, Disco was the first music trend since the Cha-Cha that entailed having to learn steps from professionals. What really caused its disconnect was the robotic tempo. You HAD to dance to it, because it didn't lend itself to listening for long periods, and reduced those not dancing to spectator status. As it blared, you sat, you drank, you ogled, as you were bombarded by this catchy, happy music that, after a while, just wasn't very good.
Rockers, particularly, were offended by having to abide a music form that ignored the depth and nuance of stirring chord progressions, textured guitar solos, and all the elements that afforded hard rock its artistic credibility. One of the cultural changes as a direct result of the Beatles influence was Rock's evolution from high school dance accompaniment to concert event experience. A steady buzz, comfortable pair of jeans, and some roaring guitar licks what all a rocker needed to get his (or her) groove on--no dance lessons needed. From the Rocker's disdain for its homogenized milieu, came the prevailing chant of the time: Disco Sucks!
Students of pop culture will tell you Disco died because it didn't develop enough stars; that its flame burned bright, then quickly burned out. I submit that unlike most other items that are plastic, its shelf life was doomed by its inability to change, as all things must.
While it permeated the charts and the radio, Disco momentarily obscured the music that would climb out of clubs and neighborhoods, and last for 30 years and counting. Call them alternative and hip-hop today--they were known as punk/new wave and rap in 1979. These are the forms that would merge into the mainstream, and resurrect the Top 40 radio format that was on life support after an overdose of The Bee Gees and Donna Summer.
I was one of those guys who got sick of Disco pretty quickly. In the summer of 1978, when it was a relatively new thing, I had fun hitting dances in a three-piece suit, downing Seven and Sevens though I was underage, and trolling for halter-topped, long-haired girls. By 1979, the music was no longer tolerable. Even TV dance shows stopped about music and artists and spontaneous fun, as much as they were a showcase for semi-gymnast professionals. It wasn't very participatory. I told friends that the next dance move we'd see would be some heavily-cologned, expensively permed Disco King throwing his partner in the air and shooting her down with a skeet gun.
Disco waned in 1980, and by the end of the year it was done. It bobbed like a cork in the tub until groups like The Pretenders, The Go Gos, and a vanguard of what was new wave became 1980's Contemporary Hit Radio, CHR, the former Top 40. And yes, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Disco's death was the fellow who's music stood out in the midst of the Disco lemmings in 1979. In 1982-83, Michael Jackson's Thriller became (for decades to come) the biggest selling album of all-time.
30 years later, with music even more fragmented from market to market, itemized by demographic group, the odds against another trend as encompassing as Disco run high. We who love music can be thankful for that. Its vestiges live on, as evidenced by the popularity of ABC-TV's Dancing with The Stars. People will still dance and love it, to salsa, meringue and big bands, but Disco will continue to peacefully push up daisies.
The same odds that would gleefully prohibit another Disco-like phenomenon would also, sadly, rule out a future event as world tilting as Beatlemania and its aftermath. And those four lads from Liverpool didn't have MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or Texting to conquer the universe and alter a generation.
Two other things bubble up from the ooze that is my memory of that year. One is caused by my continued reflection on what impact Amp Radio will have on the business and the southland; the other is something that has revisited our consciousness as would an unsettled meal: Michael Jackson. Like what emerges from a crypt in a Zombie movie (and with the pallor to match), he is risen, once more.
Jacko, as the British call him, is a talcom-powered example that the relative few who attain icon status in this world can get away with almost anything. If you don't believe that's true, try slathering on kabuki make-up, dressing like Mohamar Qaddafi gone wild with Bedazzler, and start favoring the company of non-adults. See how fast you get taken to the psyche ward or beaten up, or both, with all deliberate haste.
His (alleged) misdemeanors notwithstanding, Michael Jackson is a pitiable soul. He's a lasting reminder of what can happen to talented, precocious youngsters when they are cruelly exploited and robbed of their childhood. By the same token, M.J. embodies our own basic human need to worship at the foot of the charismatic, regardless of their foibles or felonies. The innate ability of people to forgive allows Michael to exist. Not as the ground-breaking, breath-taking, one-gloved performer he was in 1979, but as the celebrity so burned into the iris of the public's vision, that he made news world-wide when he announced a series of "final" concerts, this week.
I'm not a fan of the individual. It's not easy to remain unsettled by a 50-year-old man who's beginning to resemble a Star Wars Storm Trouper. There is, however, no denying the talent...a talent that has come to represent what little was compelling about Top 40 music in 1979.
Last week, I wrote at length about the debut of Amp Radio, and why it's always exciting when a new Top 40-CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) station starts. That made me recall how much fun it is to be a young person when something new is breaking. I always felt I'd missed something having been just four years-old when the Beatles exploded on to these shores. My brothers got to experience that as teens...plus The Stones, The Animals, Motown and James Brown.
Every teen or young adult has a music scene to embrace, but it's once in a couple of generations that an act like Elvis or The Beatles come along to rattle cages and shake up the landscape of popular culture. The rest of the time, people between 10 and 20 years are either digging what's cool, or searching for something more iconoclastic. What broke big when I was 18 was huge, but eventually loathsome, and had, by no means, the enduring impact of Beatlemania.
Disco. To say the word, even today, after semi-revivals and nostalgic reunions, is to blanch a little with disgust.
In 1979, Disco was at its height, a fact that speaks to the patchwork quilt that was Top 40 music in the 1970's. The decade began as a series of tributaries that flowed out of the radio: Soul, rock (the "roll" half of the name faded away for a brief time), some million-selling country hits, and a syrupy melange of mush and chewed bubblegum. We're talking James Taylor and Carly Simon as a couple, Elton John's softer efforts, The Partridge Family, The Osmonds, and abysmal one-hit wonders like Reunion (Life is a Rock, but the radio Rolled Me). On Top 40 stations from coast to coast, songs by those artists were linked by jingles to Led Zeppelin, Chicago, Charlie Rich, Jerry Reed, and Isaac Hayes doing The Theme From Shaft. It was true Top 40--hits from all fields, but nothing comparable to what shifted tectonic plates when the British landed in 1964. There was no real "craze" that gripped the country until Disco was delivered forth from burgeoning technology in the recording studio, and the glitter-balled excesses of New York night clubs. And it took over the airwaves in late 1977.
A previously low-rated album-rock FM station in New York started playing Disco records in Top-40 styled rotation and shot to the top of the ratings. They knocked off Dan Ingram and the venerable WABC, the city's leading Top 40 station for a decade. In L.A., KUTE 102, with a bad signal and ratings to match, went Disco in '77 under the helm of Bill Stevens, and zoomed past all the Top 40's except KHJ, and even they were feeling the heat.
Of all the music trends of the 20th Century, though, from ragtime to the big bands, from the birth of rock and roll to hip-hop, Disco is the most difficult to assess in a fair, even-handed way. For a music style that accounted for millions and millions of records sold, thousands of dance lessons taught, and hundreds of Discos opened, it was vastly reviled. Sticky-sweet, simple, thumping and monotonous, Disco was the first music trend since the Cha-Cha that entailed having to learn steps from professionals. What really caused its disconnect was the robotic tempo. You HAD to dance to it, because it didn't lend itself to listening for long periods, and reduced those not dancing to spectator status. As it blared, you sat, you drank, you ogled, as you were bombarded by this catchy, happy music that, after a while, just wasn't very good.
Rockers, particularly, were offended by having to abide a music form that ignored the depth and nuance of stirring chord progressions, textured guitar solos, and all the elements that afforded hard rock its artistic credibility. One of the cultural changes as a direct result of the Beatles influence was Rock's evolution from high school dance accompaniment to concert event experience. A steady buzz, comfortable pair of jeans, and some roaring guitar licks what all a rocker needed to get his (or her) groove on--no dance lessons needed. From the Rocker's disdain for its homogenized milieu, came the prevailing chant of the time: Disco Sucks!
Students of pop culture will tell you Disco died because it didn't develop enough stars; that its flame burned bright, then quickly burned out. I submit that unlike most other items that are plastic, its shelf life was doomed by its inability to change, as all things must.
While it permeated the charts and the radio, Disco momentarily obscured the music that would climb out of clubs and neighborhoods, and last for 30 years and counting. Call them alternative and hip-hop today--they were known as punk/new wave and rap in 1979. These are the forms that would merge into the mainstream, and resurrect the Top 40 radio format that was on life support after an overdose of The Bee Gees and Donna Summer.
I was one of those guys who got sick of Disco pretty quickly. In the summer of 1978, when it was a relatively new thing, I had fun hitting dances in a three-piece suit, downing Seven and Sevens though I was underage, and trolling for halter-topped, long-haired girls. By 1979, the music was no longer tolerable. Even TV dance shows stopped about music and artists and spontaneous fun, as much as they were a showcase for semi-gymnast professionals. It wasn't very participatory. I told friends that the next dance move we'd see would be some heavily-cologned, expensively permed Disco King throwing his partner in the air and shooting her down with a skeet gun.
Disco waned in 1980, and by the end of the year it was done. It bobbed like a cork in the tub until groups like The Pretenders, The Go Gos, and a vanguard of what was new wave became 1980's Contemporary Hit Radio, CHR, the former Top 40. And yes, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Disco's death was the fellow who's music stood out in the midst of the Disco lemmings in 1979. In 1982-83, Michael Jackson's Thriller became (for decades to come) the biggest selling album of all-time.
30 years later, with music even more fragmented from market to market, itemized by demographic group, the odds against another trend as encompassing as Disco run high. We who love music can be thankful for that. Its vestiges live on, as evidenced by the popularity of ABC-TV's Dancing with The Stars. People will still dance and love it, to salsa, meringue and big bands, but Disco will continue to peacefully push up daisies.
The same odds that would gleefully prohibit another Disco-like phenomenon would also, sadly, rule out a future event as world tilting as Beatlemania and its aftermath. And those four lads from Liverpool didn't have MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or Texting to conquer the universe and alter a generation.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
TOTALLY "AMPED" & THE JANKEE JEARS
I'm not around many teenagers, these days, but I'd sure like to know how they use the radio. Sure, I'm privy to some of the market research. A lot of that data, however, can (in the hands of a cunning executive) yield whatever results desired.
I've read recently, for example, that more teens are listening to the radio now than, say, in the last decade. That report was posted on a radio trade website, and it flies in the face of all that I've heard from friends who have teenagers, and anything I've noticed in public. More than likely, the realty is mixed--kids who have the means download music from the internet, and constantly fill their iPODS with what ever they enjoy. Those for whom the computer culture is too expensive, rely on the radio.
It's an important point to make because Los Angeles just got a brand new Top-40/ CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) station, Friday, February 20. 97.1 AMP radio supplanted FM talk station KLSX, 97.1 Free-FM, one time over-the-air-radio home of Howard Stern. Its studios were no more than 20 feet from where I still toil on Saturday and Sunday nights, one year after being laid off.
The "flip" as we call it in radio, happened at 5PM, when Tom Leykis offered up his final few opinions on dating, divorce, and knockers he has known. Amp Radio then started the first of 10 thousand songs, from a studio on Venice Blvd., several miles away. On the air, it had all the requisite, whiz-bang excitement of everything young and new. Except that there won't be a live human speaking to you for quite a while...if at all.
It used to be that when a new hit radio station went on the air, there was the palpable feel of human endeavor. The technological progress we've made, and (some say) gleeful corporate cost-cutting has put an end to all of that. How do teenagers and young adults 18-34 like their music presented? Many in important positions maintain that the disc jockey as we knew him/her is a deterrent. Others believe that only the right personalities appeal to the desired demographic, with a full plate of fast-moving elements, phone activity, and interviews. It's all very subjective. The truth is, regardless of the market, small or large, corporations now feel the less money spent on talent, the better.
Maybe someone can answer my question: are teenagers excited by the start of a new radio station? I can only point to what I've known. In the 1970's, "the New Ten-Q" started in L.A., in the middle year of my senior year in high school. It really made no impact on anyone I knew. In those days, we all listened to stations that defined our interests. Those who had "more soul than they could con-trol" listened to 1580 K-Day, which played all the "soul-hits," and, believe it or not, Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John. Surfers and rockers couldn't live without FM stations KMET and KLOS. The rest sampled everything else, with KHJ as a default station of choice. Ten-Q, with its music sped-up by a good 3 to 4 %, was unsustainable to me, despite the fact The Real Don Steele was there. Every song sounded as if it were performed by Alvin and The Chipmunks.
The 70's were marked by the insurgence of FM stations over those stalwarts on the AM band. Cassettes and Eight-tracks found their way to automobile dashboards. You had more choices as to how to get your entertainment. It's not surprising that a "format-flip" would not have the significance that KHJ's did in 1965. From all that I've read and learned from those who were there, KHJ literally exploded, and within a year had revolutionized the way Top-40 music was presented over the air--with forward momentum, constant, creative contests, and a thrill that's still present when you hear ancient airchecks (available for your review, in their entirety at reelradio.com, an online radio museum...membership is $15).
I was too young to understand it, but I could sense from my older brothers that 930 on the AM dial was absolutely where the radio had to be at all times--from getting up in the morning, to washing dishes at night, and even on New Year's Eve. That's when I remember hearing some of those gentlemen I eventually worked with, and have written of in previous posts. They plied their trade to my brothers' delight, while I scrambled around as a 6-year-old. By the time I was a teen, I didn't get to experience that type of sensation.
Not, that is, until I was in my 20's and trying to make it as a jock, myself. I was working at a deadly dull Adult Contemporary station ( A-C, as it's known: where old, slow, lugubrious hits by groups like America and Bread, and artists like Phil Collins and Billy Joel commingle to salve the troubled psyches of some very wounded ladies) in San Diego. In early 1987, Q-106 went on the air, and it was intoxicating. The energy was contagious, the tempo mesmerizing, and , for those of us in radio, the suspense was mounting. Who were the jocks going to be?
They added an air-staff gradually, after a week of playing nothing but hits and giving away T-Shirts. The result was an enormous ratings debut. Their competition, the previously established KS-103, gave up without a fight. From my outpost at the lowly K-Lite 94.9 (Lite Rock and Less talk), I pined away for a chance to work there, but my abilities weren't yet honed to what they would be. Still, I'd seen the impact of a great station launch. (An epilogue: all things in radio change. By the mid-1990's, Q-106 was first steered in what they call "Hot" A-C, meaning a little more energy and a lot more Michael Bolton music. Then it became a Spanish-language station, and remains so, today).
I have no doubt that somewhere in metropolitan Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura County and parts of the Inland Empire, enthusiasts of Kanye West, Beyonce, Britney, Katy Perry, Lil' Wayne, and all who top today's charts, must be experiencing a sense of urgency. Those of us who are now too old to be CHR jocks get a kick out of Amp Radio, but are also extremely aware that this 21st century CHR will interface with listeners through all the modern avenues--twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Blackberrys, texting, etc. The fact that jocks are the last priority leaves some of us less excited than we would ordinarily be about a new station. I now know how old-time radio announcers felt in the mid-1950's when radio transitioned from soap operas, dramas and variety shows to D.J.'s. If they could cut through the jungle of theirown egos, they saw obsolescence.
MANNY, JOE AND "JANKEES"
Spring training is here, and anyone who loves baseball as I do is grinning it up. The dedicated baseball fan (as opposed to the off-the-charts-fanatics who maintain fantasy leagues year round) has spent the off season months keeping track of trades, free-agent signings, and doing some light reading on the subject. Dodger manager Joe Torre inadvertently stirred up a hornet's nest with his book The Yankee Years, written with Sports Illustrated baseball editor Tom Verducci. It's not penned like an autobiography at all. Verducci has blended interviews with all the main Yankee players from 1996 through 2007, Torre's last as manager. It's truly a great baseball book that only whipped up some flames in the New York tabloids and sports talk stations because of its assertions that Alex Rodriguez was a player unto himself. Previous to A-Rod's arrival, from Torre's first year through the third of three straight World series victories in 2000, the Yanks were a tough-minded, work-as-a-single-unit outfit, one on which the concept of team trumped selfish interests.
For all the useless words piled up and printed, coughed up and spewed over the air, the book came no where near as close to hurting A-Rod's reputation as Alex did himself when he had to admit to using steroids. If you read the book, and compare it to Alex's dissembling interviews, you know that Torre didn't defame him--Joe had A-Rod pegged. A-Fraud, indeed. Magnificent talent, varnished with a coat of "all shine, no substance." A-Rod is constantly concerned with image, and consumed with being catered to.
Finally, on the subject of catering to players with massive talents: As I write this, it's being reported that Manny Ramirez has rejected the Dodgers offer of 2 years at 45 million dollars, with an option to leave after 2009. This is bad news for the Dodgers, who need Manny's potent bat. You can't account for players (and their agents) who want to get all they can. It means an average year ahead for L.A., whose 2008 season was pulled out of the ashes only because Manny arrived for two cost-free months (Boston literally paid to get rid of him).
I hope that future posts will find him batting fourth in the Dodger line-up as the season begins, but hope appears to have faded, tonight. No slams, here. I appreciate what he did last season to start pushing nouns against verbs in order to blow him up. When it comes to ego and money and the unpredictable personality, all of this is not unexpected. We fans of the blue must move on--even if it means third place and stupefying mediocrity in 2009.
I've read recently, for example, that more teens are listening to the radio now than, say, in the last decade. That report was posted on a radio trade website, and it flies in the face of all that I've heard from friends who have teenagers, and anything I've noticed in public. More than likely, the realty is mixed--kids who have the means download music from the internet, and constantly fill their iPODS with what ever they enjoy. Those for whom the computer culture is too expensive, rely on the radio.
It's an important point to make because Los Angeles just got a brand new Top-40/ CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) station, Friday, February 20. 97.1 AMP radio supplanted FM talk station KLSX, 97.1 Free-FM, one time over-the-air-radio home of Howard Stern. Its studios were no more than 20 feet from where I still toil on Saturday and Sunday nights, one year after being laid off.
The "flip" as we call it in radio, happened at 5PM, when Tom Leykis offered up his final few opinions on dating, divorce, and knockers he has known. Amp Radio then started the first of 10 thousand songs, from a studio on Venice Blvd., several miles away. On the air, it had all the requisite, whiz-bang excitement of everything young and new. Except that there won't be a live human speaking to you for quite a while...if at all.
It used to be that when a new hit radio station went on the air, there was the palpable feel of human endeavor. The technological progress we've made, and (some say) gleeful corporate cost-cutting has put an end to all of that. How do teenagers and young adults 18-34 like their music presented? Many in important positions maintain that the disc jockey as we knew him/her is a deterrent. Others believe that only the right personalities appeal to the desired demographic, with a full plate of fast-moving elements, phone activity, and interviews. It's all very subjective. The truth is, regardless of the market, small or large, corporations now feel the less money spent on talent, the better.
Maybe someone can answer my question: are teenagers excited by the start of a new radio station? I can only point to what I've known. In the 1970's, "the New Ten-Q" started in L.A., in the middle year of my senior year in high school. It really made no impact on anyone I knew. In those days, we all listened to stations that defined our interests. Those who had "more soul than they could con-trol" listened to 1580 K-Day, which played all the "soul-hits," and, believe it or not, Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John. Surfers and rockers couldn't live without FM stations KMET and KLOS. The rest sampled everything else, with KHJ as a default station of choice. Ten-Q, with its music sped-up by a good 3 to 4 %, was unsustainable to me, despite the fact The Real Don Steele was there. Every song sounded as if it were performed by Alvin and The Chipmunks.
The 70's were marked by the insurgence of FM stations over those stalwarts on the AM band. Cassettes and Eight-tracks found their way to automobile dashboards. You had more choices as to how to get your entertainment. It's not surprising that a "format-flip" would not have the significance that KHJ's did in 1965. From all that I've read and learned from those who were there, KHJ literally exploded, and within a year had revolutionized the way Top-40 music was presented over the air--with forward momentum, constant, creative contests, and a thrill that's still present when you hear ancient airchecks (available for your review, in their entirety at reelradio.com, an online radio museum...membership is $15).
I was too young to understand it, but I could sense from my older brothers that 930 on the AM dial was absolutely where the radio had to be at all times--from getting up in the morning, to washing dishes at night, and even on New Year's Eve. That's when I remember hearing some of those gentlemen I eventually worked with, and have written of in previous posts. They plied their trade to my brothers' delight, while I scrambled around as a 6-year-old. By the time I was a teen, I didn't get to experience that type of sensation.
Not, that is, until I was in my 20's and trying to make it as a jock, myself. I was working at a deadly dull Adult Contemporary station ( A-C, as it's known: where old, slow, lugubrious hits by groups like America and Bread, and artists like Phil Collins and Billy Joel commingle to salve the troubled psyches of some very wounded ladies) in San Diego. In early 1987, Q-106 went on the air, and it was intoxicating. The energy was contagious, the tempo mesmerizing, and , for those of us in radio, the suspense was mounting. Who were the jocks going to be?
They added an air-staff gradually, after a week of playing nothing but hits and giving away T-Shirts. The result was an enormous ratings debut. Their competition, the previously established KS-103, gave up without a fight. From my outpost at the lowly K-Lite 94.9 (Lite Rock and Less talk), I pined away for a chance to work there, but my abilities weren't yet honed to what they would be. Still, I'd seen the impact of a great station launch. (An epilogue: all things in radio change. By the mid-1990's, Q-106 was first steered in what they call "Hot" A-C, meaning a little more energy and a lot more Michael Bolton music. Then it became a Spanish-language station, and remains so, today).
I have no doubt that somewhere in metropolitan Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura County and parts of the Inland Empire, enthusiasts of Kanye West, Beyonce, Britney, Katy Perry, Lil' Wayne, and all who top today's charts, must be experiencing a sense of urgency. Those of us who are now too old to be CHR jocks get a kick out of Amp Radio, but are also extremely aware that this 21st century CHR will interface with listeners through all the modern avenues--twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Blackberrys, texting, etc. The fact that jocks are the last priority leaves some of us less excited than we would ordinarily be about a new station. I now know how old-time radio announcers felt in the mid-1950's when radio transitioned from soap operas, dramas and variety shows to D.J.'s. If they could cut through the jungle of theirown egos, they saw obsolescence.
MANNY, JOE AND "JANKEES"
Spring training is here, and anyone who loves baseball as I do is grinning it up. The dedicated baseball fan (as opposed to the off-the-charts-fanatics who maintain fantasy leagues year round) has spent the off season months keeping track of trades, free-agent signings, and doing some light reading on the subject. Dodger manager Joe Torre inadvertently stirred up a hornet's nest with his book The Yankee Years, written with Sports Illustrated baseball editor Tom Verducci. It's not penned like an autobiography at all. Verducci has blended interviews with all the main Yankee players from 1996 through 2007, Torre's last as manager. It's truly a great baseball book that only whipped up some flames in the New York tabloids and sports talk stations because of its assertions that Alex Rodriguez was a player unto himself. Previous to A-Rod's arrival, from Torre's first year through the third of three straight World series victories in 2000, the Yanks were a tough-minded, work-as-a-single-unit outfit, one on which the concept of team trumped selfish interests.
For all the useless words piled up and printed, coughed up and spewed over the air, the book came no where near as close to hurting A-Rod's reputation as Alex did himself when he had to admit to using steroids. If you read the book, and compare it to Alex's dissembling interviews, you know that Torre didn't defame him--Joe had A-Rod pegged. A-Fraud, indeed. Magnificent talent, varnished with a coat of "all shine, no substance." A-Rod is constantly concerned with image, and consumed with being catered to.
Finally, on the subject of catering to players with massive talents: As I write this, it's being reported that Manny Ramirez has rejected the Dodgers offer of 2 years at 45 million dollars, with an option to leave after 2009. This is bad news for the Dodgers, who need Manny's potent bat. You can't account for players (and their agents) who want to get all they can. It means an average year ahead for L.A., whose 2008 season was pulled out of the ashes only because Manny arrived for two cost-free months (Boston literally paid to get rid of him).
I hope that future posts will find him batting fourth in the Dodger line-up as the season begins, but hope appears to have faded, tonight. No slams, here. I appreciate what he did last season to start pushing nouns against verbs in order to blow him up. When it comes to ego and money and the unpredictable personality, all of this is not unexpected. We fans of the blue must move on--even if it means third place and stupefying mediocrity in 2009.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
SO FAR, SO GOOD or DOIN' FINE IN 2009
It was an unusually cold Christmas in Southern California, and a fairly quiet New Year's Day. For me, It was almost like being fully employed again. Three weeks of radio work, in the daylight, plying the trade I've studied and executed so well. Sure, I had to endure Christmas music the likes of which must be played for people who can't come down from injections of speed, but we got through it. I could blog for page after page about this dolorous, morose Christmas music...painful dirges that have nothing to do with the merry spirit of the season, but I'll spare you and get to the point of this entry: 2009 has started quite well.
What, You say? With the economy tanking? With the United States in a financial panic rivaled only by the great depression? With jobs being lost by the thousands each week (including the radio profession--not so much panic, there, just expediency. The technology is allowing companies to blow people out by the dozens, and doesn't bode well for my own career interests. More on that, later)?
Yes. We're doin' fine so far in 2009 from the perspective of hope. Any year that starts with a skilled pilot successfully ditching an airliner in the Hudson River, and saving 155 lives, HAS to be a positive year. Add that to the Inauguration of an actually articulate, intelligent person to our highest office, and yes, the year has promise for positivity. Even for those who are not fans of President Obama, just to see his predecessor go is an occasion for revelry. Eight years of that simpleton in charge has left the country in a shape that only his blindest, most ardent minions could ignore.
Before I veer away from politics, I have to express even more than the relief that Mr. Bush has returned to Texas. If we can all suppress our partisan leanings for just a minute, a good look will reveal that the very idea of Sarah Palin even being in the vicinity of the White House (let alone a heartbeat away from the Oval Office) is mind boggling, especially at a time like this. Is it sexist to say that this glib person could probably be entertaining at a meeting of the Wasilla Community Players, and little else? Anyone who voted for that ticket, then viewed the Governor of Alaska holding court with reporters as a turkey got its head ground to bits has to see the light by now. If you didn't see it, there stood Sarah, beaming and prattling on about getting the government out of people's way (I think we've seen what happens when the government gets out of people's way: the government has to bail 'em out!). As she babbled, the guy who ran the farm rammed turkeys head-first into a steel funnel, its legs kicking as it's noggin was turned to a pulpy mass of viscera. We love turkey, but really don't want to see it's final moments in life played out as a woman who ran for Vice President spews disconnected political bullet points, in a bright, cheery manner. Yeah, that's who we want running the country, eventually.
Lastly, no Republican deny what drew nearly two million people to the Inauguration. Of course, the reverence will at some point recede, because he is, after all, a human being. So's The Chief Justice, who fucked-up administering the oath of office. I reflexively hit the jump button on my remote at the embarrassing moment, but it wasn't the President who goofed.
I wasn't surprised when later, on Fox News, Chris Wallace surmised that the oath might not have been legitimate because of the wording goof. Chris is a journalist-- he should be ashamed. But as we all know, there is no shame in the world of Fox. Before the holidays, I read a book about Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and it backed up what many of us had known for years: It's a propaganda arm of the Right Wing, and shouldn't be mistaken for news. You want objectivity? Try what's left of CBS, NBC and ABC...PBS, CNN. If you want to watch a dunderhead (Bush) put on a pedestal, and the new President stalked, then pounced upon at the first scent of blood, watch Fox. Just don't mistake it for news.
*
I just watched an episode of 30 Rock, one of the smartest (if not the smartest), funniest comedies on TV. Even after all the Emmys and Golden Globes, the ratings are still awful., and that's too bad. With television programs spread all over hundreds of channels, hilarious, well received, high-rated sitcom are rare. A fabulous talent like Julia Louis-Dreyfus is caged in drek like The New Adventures of Old Christine...well below her ability, and no where near 30 Rock in class.
Tina Fey must be the crush of a million guys who would have been too shallow to dig her twelve years ago, when she was a little heavier and less well known. It's good advice for us all to keep our eyes open for the Tina Feys of our world.
On the subject of ratings, I've said it for 15 years, and I'll say it for 15 more: Letterman beats Leno by miles. No, not in the ratings, but as a show. Where Leno is a practiced stand-up, almost without peer, Letterman is a real broadcaster, with the ability to work the irony and sarcasm out of a bit until it bleeds laughs. After his open-heart surgery, 9/11, and the birth of his son, he dialed back some of smirky Dave, and displayed depth of knowledge and interviewing prowess thatleaves many in the news business chartreuse with envy. This was especially evident when he finally got Senator McCain on his show and grilled him like a smoked salmon. For those who prefer Leno, it's a case of apples and oranges, I guess. NBC certainly is betting on the apples, what with elevating Jay to a nightly prime-time strip on the network, Monday through Friday at 10pm.
My reaction is that NBC is not just keeping Leno out of the hands of the other networks, b ut cutting costs, and taking a gamble. First, what are the odds that his current audience would break habit and follow him to another network like Fox or ABC? Secondly, does NBC really believe average folks in the Midwest who chose Leno over Letterman at 11:35, tune him in at 10? My bet is that they'll pick CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Without a Trace, and NUMB3RS. That noise you hear is Sarah Palin putting the NBC Peacock into a steel funnel to have its head turned into pate'.
Finally, a note on the evaporation of jobs in radio--I can't say too much, if I still want to land some work, but believe me, there are some folks who are still getting rich in L.A., New York, and Chicago. Filthy rich, and sometimes for no return in the form of ratings. Example: at least one organization is paying two million a year for a morning talent, while scores of jocks are laid off. The lack of equanimity is not quarantined to radio, as anyone who as followed the fiscal crisis knows. Because its entertainment, it's just a little more sickening.
'Til next time.
What, You say? With the economy tanking? With the United States in a financial panic rivaled only by the great depression? With jobs being lost by the thousands each week (including the radio profession--not so much panic, there, just expediency. The technology is allowing companies to blow people out by the dozens, and doesn't bode well for my own career interests. More on that, later)?
Yes. We're doin' fine so far in 2009 from the perspective of hope. Any year that starts with a skilled pilot successfully ditching an airliner in the Hudson River, and saving 155 lives, HAS to be a positive year. Add that to the Inauguration of an actually articulate, intelligent person to our highest office, and yes, the year has promise for positivity. Even for those who are not fans of President Obama, just to see his predecessor go is an occasion for revelry. Eight years of that simpleton in charge has left the country in a shape that only his blindest, most ardent minions could ignore.
Before I veer away from politics, I have to express even more than the relief that Mr. Bush has returned to Texas. If we can all suppress our partisan leanings for just a minute, a good look will reveal that the very idea of Sarah Palin even being in the vicinity of the White House (let alone a heartbeat away from the Oval Office) is mind boggling, especially at a time like this. Is it sexist to say that this glib person could probably be entertaining at a meeting of the Wasilla Community Players, and little else? Anyone who voted for that ticket, then viewed the Governor of Alaska holding court with reporters as a turkey got its head ground to bits has to see the light by now. If you didn't see it, there stood Sarah, beaming and prattling on about getting the government out of people's way (I think we've seen what happens when the government gets out of people's way: the government has to bail 'em out!). As she babbled, the guy who ran the farm rammed turkeys head-first into a steel funnel, its legs kicking as it's noggin was turned to a pulpy mass of viscera. We love turkey, but really don't want to see it's final moments in life played out as a woman who ran for Vice President spews disconnected political bullet points, in a bright, cheery manner. Yeah, that's who we want running the country, eventually.
Lastly, no Republican deny what drew nearly two million people to the Inauguration. Of course, the reverence will at some point recede, because he is, after all, a human being. So's The Chief Justice, who fucked-up administering the oath of office. I reflexively hit the jump button on my remote at the embarrassing moment, but it wasn't the President who goofed.
I wasn't surprised when later, on Fox News, Chris Wallace surmised that the oath might not have been legitimate because of the wording goof. Chris is a journalist-- he should be ashamed. But as we all know, there is no shame in the world of Fox. Before the holidays, I read a book about Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and it backed up what many of us had known for years: It's a propaganda arm of the Right Wing, and shouldn't be mistaken for news. You want objectivity? Try what's left of CBS, NBC and ABC...PBS, CNN. If you want to watch a dunderhead (Bush) put on a pedestal, and the new President stalked, then pounced upon at the first scent of blood, watch Fox. Just don't mistake it for news.
*
I just watched an episode of 30 Rock, one of the smartest (if not the smartest), funniest comedies on TV. Even after all the Emmys and Golden Globes, the ratings are still awful., and that's too bad. With television programs spread all over hundreds of channels, hilarious, well received, high-rated sitcom are rare. A fabulous talent like Julia Louis-Dreyfus is caged in drek like The New Adventures of Old Christine...well below her ability, and no where near 30 Rock in class.
Tina Fey must be the crush of a million guys who would have been too shallow to dig her twelve years ago, when she was a little heavier and less well known. It's good advice for us all to keep our eyes open for the Tina Feys of our world.
On the subject of ratings, I've said it for 15 years, and I'll say it for 15 more: Letterman beats Leno by miles. No, not in the ratings, but as a show. Where Leno is a practiced stand-up, almost without peer, Letterman is a real broadcaster, with the ability to work the irony and sarcasm out of a bit until it bleeds laughs. After his open-heart surgery, 9/11, and the birth of his son, he dialed back some of smirky Dave, and displayed depth of knowledge and interviewing prowess thatleaves many in the news business chartreuse with envy. This was especially evident when he finally got Senator McCain on his show and grilled him like a smoked salmon. For those who prefer Leno, it's a case of apples and oranges, I guess. NBC certainly is betting on the apples, what with elevating Jay to a nightly prime-time strip on the network, Monday through Friday at 10pm.
My reaction is that NBC is not just keeping Leno out of the hands of the other networks, b ut cutting costs, and taking a gamble. First, what are the odds that his current audience would break habit and follow him to another network like Fox or ABC? Secondly, does NBC really believe average folks in the Midwest who chose Leno over Letterman at 11:35, tune him in at 10? My bet is that they'll pick CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Without a Trace, and NUMB3RS. That noise you hear is Sarah Palin putting the NBC Peacock into a steel funnel to have its head turned into pate'.
Finally, a note on the evaporation of jobs in radio--I can't say too much, if I still want to land some work, but believe me, there are some folks who are still getting rich in L.A., New York, and Chicago. Filthy rich, and sometimes for no return in the form of ratings. Example: at least one organization is paying two million a year for a morning talent, while scores of jocks are laid off. The lack of equanimity is not quarantined to radio, as anyone who as followed the fiscal crisis knows. Because its entertainment, it's just a little more sickening.
'Til next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)