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less local radio ?
- Thread starter BigJimmy
- Start date
You are voicing the conventional "wisdom" expressed over and over and over in these forums. It's like we decided to stop meeting down at Emma's on the town square for coffee each morning and now we come over here to the funeral home where they have set up one of the parlors with a dignified little sign out in the hallway: "We are mourning the death of radio as we perceive that it should be. We meet here daily."
Maybe what we need is a new forum and ask RadioDiscussions to label it "Assemblers". Let's 're-image' what radio has done for a long, long time. Radio has long been a place, a happening where we assemble ingredients... just like your wife or mother assembling a meal in the kitchen. We call it 'home cooking'... even when the beef if from Nebraska, the vegetable and produce come from the Central Valley of California, and the ice cream came from a dairy 150 miles away.
My first gig was in June 1956. Carts were not part of our life yet. Some of you younger folks can just drool: "Oh, you were there when it was Live and Local. Yes, it was amazing. I may cry as I sit here and shake my brain and watch the bits and pieces of memory fall out on the desk top.
So, what was it like. We usually had a five minutes newscast each hour. Sometimes we ripped copy of a teletype and read some words composed by someone in NYC or Washington or Little Rock who we never met, and who never came to our town. Sometimes we flipped a switch and a newscaster on the network who had never been to our state voiced the news. I guess you could say our news was.... was.... syndicated.
I would reach into the little pigeon-hold library bins and gather up 18 little flat black things we called records. That's what it took to fill up an hour with an average spot load. They didn't make records in our county or our state. They came in the mail from places like NYC and Nashville. I guess you could say our music... something like 40 minutes of each hour was.... was.... syndicated.
About 25% of our commercials were ads for local merchants that were financed by "co-op ad funds" and they tended to come off of 12" or 16" transcriptions produced in NYC or Chicago or maybe Los Angeles. Voice-Over announcers of the 1950s. So something like 4 to 6 minutes of the hour was.... was... syndicated.
Then there was another 12 minutes per hour where we played out these little 3-inch tapes spindled onto pegs on the wall. These were local commercials given voice by the station owner, or in the case of a slightly larger station, by the sales guy. And when these guys recorded local commercials, they apparently ingested some kind of drugs to give them that carnival barker sound that was the only level of delivery that many local merchants would accept. So since these were not the voices of the owner or the salesman that we knew in normal conversation I guess you could say hey were.... were.... syndicated.
But here is what made radio back in the good old days wonderful. I would get to spend maybe 4 minutes per hour telling the time, LIVE, giving the temperature, LIVE, giving the title of the next record, LIVE and maybe sneak in a few cute little comments, or advise the listener that this record is brand new... just arrived today. Yes, that four minutes per hour was golden! It was live and local. And I'm quite sure it was that four minutes per hour that made radio the great golden success that it was.
[ - - - - - SARCASM MODE OFF - - - - - ]
Radio has always primary been a place where we assembled components that were birthed in another city, someone else's recording studio, and elements that repeated recordings played over and over and over... like that little 3-inch reel with the commercial for Harry's IGA Superliner.
Yeah, I know. I worked in some backwater places. I listened to the superstars in the state capital and in regional cities. They were smooth.. they had a sound of glamor..... but in the end, they were ASSEMBLERS who put the trousers on, one leg at a time.
I don't care if you have a real radio gig, or if you are running streaming out of your bedroom in the basement... make up your mind you will be better than the average assembler. And maybe some of your best parts for the assembly will come from a source some folks call syndication.
Maybe what we need is a new forum and ask RadioDiscussions to label it "Assemblers". Let's 're-image' what radio has done for a long, long time. Radio has long been a place, a happening where we assemble ingredients... just like your wife or mother assembling a meal in the kitchen. We call it 'home cooking'... even when the beef if from Nebraska, the vegetable and produce come from the Central Valley of California, and the ice cream came from a dairy 150 miles away.
My first gig was in June 1956. Carts were not part of our life yet. Some of you younger folks can just drool: "Oh, you were there when it was Live and Local. Yes, it was amazing. I may cry as I sit here and shake my brain and watch the bits and pieces of memory fall out on the desk top.
So, what was it like. We usually had a five minutes newscast each hour. Sometimes we ripped copy of a teletype and read some words composed by someone in NYC or Washington or Little Rock who we never met, and who never came to our town. Sometimes we flipped a switch and a newscaster on the network who had never been to our state voiced the news. I guess you could say our news was.... was.... syndicated.
I would reach into the little pigeon-hold library bins and gather up 18 little flat black things we called records. That's what it took to fill up an hour with an average spot load. They didn't make records in our county or our state. They came in the mail from places like NYC and Nashville. I guess you could say our music... something like 40 minutes of each hour was.... was.... syndicated.
About 25% of our commercials were ads for local merchants that were financed by "co-op ad funds" and they tended to come off of 12" or 16" transcriptions produced in NYC or Chicago or maybe Los Angeles. Voice-Over announcers of the 1950s. So something like 4 to 6 minutes of the hour was.... was... syndicated.
Then there was another 12 minutes per hour where we played out these little 3-inch tapes spindled onto pegs on the wall. These were local commercials given voice by the station owner, or in the case of a slightly larger station, by the sales guy. And when these guys recorded local commercials, they apparently ingested some kind of drugs to give them that carnival barker sound that was the only level of delivery that many local merchants would accept. So since these were not the voices of the owner or the salesman that we knew in normal conversation I guess you could say hey were.... were.... syndicated.
But here is what made radio back in the good old days wonderful. I would get to spend maybe 4 minutes per hour telling the time, LIVE, giving the temperature, LIVE, giving the title of the next record, LIVE and maybe sneak in a few cute little comments, or advise the listener that this record is brand new... just arrived today. Yes, that four minutes per hour was golden! It was live and local. And I'm quite sure it was that four minutes per hour that made radio the great golden success that it was.
[ - - - - - SARCASM MODE OFF - - - - - ]
Radio has always primary been a place where we assembled components that were birthed in another city, someone else's recording studio, and elements that repeated recordings played over and over and over... like that little 3-inch reel with the commercial for Harry's IGA Superliner.
Yeah, I know. I worked in some backwater places. I listened to the superstars in the state capital and in regional cities. They were smooth.. they had a sound of glamor..... but in the end, they were ASSEMBLERS who put the trousers on, one leg at a time.
I don't care if you have a real radio gig, or if you are running streaming out of your bedroom in the basement... make up your mind you will be better than the average assembler. And maybe some of your best parts for the assembly will come from a source some folks call syndication.
- Status
- This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.