When
I was young, I had a radio on my bed side table. At night, I would turn it on and listen. Sometimes, I would tune in to local DJs in
the Baltimore area but on some magical nights, my little bed side radio could
pull in voices from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York. I fell asleep to voices reading the news or
sports, talking to strange callers or playing music but I had to have a radio
on – still do. Predictions about the end
of radio have been constant but radio persists and thrives.
There
were several things that drew me to radio.
One was the power of the voice. The
right voice can draw you in and spin a web you don’t want to leave. I’m fascinated with voices and there are some
I can listen to all day. Dick Cavett has
one of those voices. He could be reading
the ingredients from a milk carton and I would be riveted. The voice can be a powerful tool and as a
teacher, I’m conscious of my voice and how I come across to my students.
When
I worked in radio years ago, I wanted to have a signature voice – something
people listened to just because it was me.
At the same time, it couldn’t be fake.
I’m speaking of both the voice and the meaning behind it. That is what makes the Morning Zoo format
that became so popular in the 1980s so appalling. The fake congeniality and laughter distorted
the most honest thing about radio – the voice.
It wasn’t just its fabrication but also the perversion of its honesty.
The
second thing that drew me to the radio was the feeling that the personalities
were free – they could do as they pleased and seemed to be having a great deal
of fun. Growing up in Baltimore, I had a
plethora of people I gravitated towards in the city. WIYY or 98 Rock was a mainstay for young
people, envious of the DJs who played music all day and goofed off in the
process. Chuck Thompson was the great
voice of the Baltimore Orioles and he was, like Dick Cavett, possessing of a
voice that could draw my hyperactive self to a stand-still. His successor, Jon Miller, was just as
magical and both projected the sense they had the perfect life and job.
However,
in something only radio can do, I could pull in stations beyond my burgh. My immature teenage mind was taken by the
Greaseman in Washington, D.C. In other
locales, Scott Ferrall in Pittsburgh and Don Imus in New York came through my
radio and drew me in. Ferrall on the
Bench is and was one of the more pioneering baffling radio shows because
certainly his voice had to be faked but it wasn’t. Don Imus was the anti-Stern – irreverent but
smarter. Stern never fascinated me like
the curmudgeon Imus. As Mr. Imus’ show
changed from “shock jock” antics to a more political and social satire, it fell
in line with my political maturation and I was hooked. When he landed on television, I watched but
it was not the same as radio. Of course,
one of my other political teachers was the irreverent conservative radio giant,
Rush Limbaugh.
When
one combines the radio qualities of the voice and the freedom of the medium,
one comes to the third reason I was always drawn to radio – the use of my
imagination. As a teacher, I see that
our students are not nearly as imaginative as they once were because they are
not asked to be. With radio, in trying
to visualize the DJ’s antics and the broadcast of sports, imagination is key to
truly understanding what is happening. I
still prefer baseball on the radio. When
they say the voice paints the picture, that picture develops in your mind. Oriole broadcaster Chuck Thompson helped me
“see” what was happening on the field.
The
point is that radio, often declared dead, has maintained a force in modern
media and there is a reason for that tenacity.
My hope is that it is not just older people like me keeping radio
alive. It is a medium of the spoken word
– not the image. That alone places it in
stark contrast with most modern media.
The spoken word requires thought – if not from the people on the radio then
those listening. It is the most intimate
form of media and requires the most from the receiver. That alone makes radio deserving of a future.
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