Blog post for Friday 1/21/11 – 19 degrees at 6:24 AM – 5 inches of snow
Listening for something to be done right
A radio rant, of sorts. My dad did say when he learned of my career choice – “Why don’t you just join the circus?”
To be fair he was supportive in his own way, which meant among other things he paid for my college education.
Radio was a pretty good way to make a living for a dumb guy like me. No heavy lifting. No mental strain to speak of.
Until they promoted me into middle management.
I should have stayed in the areas I was best at; programming and being on the air. I guess I was an OK manager. But I didn’t like all the meetings and I sure didn’t like the corporate monster that radio became.
Two pet peeves about radio that I hear on a daily basis: These are certainly not major things but they annoy the hell out of me.
1. It’s “DOUBLE YOU” dammit! Not “dubya”. DOUBLE YOU (Call letters)
To me this betrays both a lack of training and a lack of caring on the part of management. They should know better and should hear it and fix it.
2. Elements that are “Up-cut” This one takes a little more explanation.
Old time radio guys “Bob and Ray” used to do a bit featuring a character named “Wally Ballou.” Wally’s trademark introduction was always up-cut. It began “…ally Ballou here'” the beginning always being lost because somebody opened his mic a few seconds too late.
I hear this all the time.
Commercials start a few seconds into the material. Songs missing the first few notes. Network news starting after the open. In my time in radio it was because of sloppy work by disc jockey’s or production people. Now not so much blame can be cast there. Now it’s the fault of the (excuse the term) engineers and IT people who set up the systems and either don’t give a shit or, more likely, don’t know how to fix it.
Forgive me. Just an old radio geezer, tilting at antennas.
-30-
Today’s rant:
It’s time for an obituary.
People outside of journalism often think that obit writing is the dead end of a writers career, or maybe the place where the interns get put. In many cases they are right, but some news organizations, The New York Times is one, treat obituaries with loving care.
This is one I wrote on March, 19th, 2008. It’s pretty good.
Someday I may share with you the one I wrote for myself. It’s excellent!
In 1963 the first one was launched and proved him right. So every time you watch any TV or use a phone it’s probably being bounced off a satellite 42,000Km (22,300 miles) above your head and it was all dreamed up by… click here for more
