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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Not Just A Job, An Adventure

"I was dreaming when I wrote this
So sue me if I go too fast."
Prince, 1999

I was talking with a co-worker the other day about my early days in radio as a disc jockey.  This discussion happened while we drove the long and winding Pennsylvania Turnpike, listening to big-city radio stations one minute and small-city stations the next.  Mostly, all were disappointments that were easy to tune out. We were in a rented cargo van and the only source of entertainment besides the radio was conversation.  We turned off the radio and chose conversation.  Which, in the end, is probably for the better.  Human contact, an exchange of ideas, and all that.

I told him about a time when radio was fun for everyone -- the listener and the jocks.  Radio needs listeners, because -- then, now and for always -- radio lives on advertising dollars. The best way to sell advertising are ratings that prove to a potential sponsor that people listen. Even the music is a sales job, because airplay drives kids to the store or the internet to buy the latest hits.  When all the stations play the same hits, your station's edge becomes the jocks that talk between the hits.

And make no mistake, back then, being a jock was a profession.  Some of it, like talking over the 12 or 15 second intros of songs and managing the flow of a show, just came with repetition, until it was second nature. The next level was figuring out what to say, and there was a lot of help available.  Some jocks made a lucrative side business as joke writers, charging subscriptions for weekly sheets of paper with 25 liners tied in to the songs and political foibles of the day (I'm looking at you, Dan O'Day). Those of us who didn't have the money for subscriptions made a big deal about saying how the jokes were lame and we'd be better off writing our own jokes for free. But I admit, I stole from the sheets, and most of the jokes I wrote were just as lame (but they were my lame jokes, dammit!). The level after that was figuring out how you'd tell the jokes, establishing a personality.  A snarling cynic?  A friendly voice after (or during) a tough day at the office? A pal to all the kids? Someone who was just having a damn good time playing records? All of the above? Kids, sometimes adults, called with requests, and you added another layer to the show by putting these encounters on the air. A great station was one where all the jocks fed off one another, trying to out-do each other with liners and the production values in the commercials. The whipped cream and cherry on the sundae was when you had station management willing and able to finance fun and rewarding contests.  Stations that had all that were usually winners with big ratings.

For me, it was fun putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. In the small-town stations I was usually paid next-to-nothing, but if the station had all of the above, I gladly starved. Really, it was remarkably similar to being a starving actor. You had to audition for every single job. You sent a tape to the station where you wanted to work. Most often a rejection letter followed.  But occasionally you were invited to interview. You'd spend a day going through the process, getting your hopes up, then getting a call from the program director who says "you're a great talent, but we're going with the other guy."

On the Turnpike, I was able to compare radio then to now. I remember looking everywhere and reading everything back then, looking for material, and spending half an hour putting it all together for the show.  I remember jocks who walked in twenty seconds before airtime and had it all in their heads right then and there. Whatever the approach, you were a personality putting on a show, six days a week, trying your damnedest to make it so that people would make it a habit to tune in to your show and your station.

But this is all like the days of three or four TV networks and no cable. And no mp3 players.  It just ain't coming back. Stations I heard along the Turnpike in markets large and small are now owned by corporations large and small.  Now, back in the day, big-city stations were owned by RKO or ABC or Westinghouse. But these new corporations are focused on advertising dollars in a different way. They own six or seven stations, instead of one or two. Each station can focus on its small slice of the demographic pie. Those small slices add up to the whole pie for the corporation that owns the pie. So the stations don't have to compete.  And they don't. The music and personalities sound flat. They sound like they're not trying because they don't have to.  Some stations brag that they play whatever they want, but it sounds suspiciously like what everyone else is playing -- and they do it without jocks. Ironically, the same business conservatives who will tell you free-market competition brings out the best in everything own these radio monopolies.

But I digress into politics, which is getting natural for me these days.  I work for state government in Pennsylvania. Basically it's an extension of what I've been doing all my life, sticking a microphone or video camera in the face of a state senator and then turning around and feeding that sound and those pictures to waiting radio and TV outlets. 

Lately, though,I've been caught reminiscing, thinking fondly about the times when I only paid attention to state senators when I needed a punchline.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

That's What The World Is Today

It all started with Murphy Brown.

Knowing that I had worked in television, a friend of mine -- who had also worked in television -- presented me with a copy of the first season of Murphy Brown, the TV sitcom starring Candice Bergen as a strong-willed TV journalist. (I guess it didn't sell that well, because only the first season is out on DVD. C'mon, guys, the show ran for TEN YEARS! Doesn't that warrant a few more DVDs?) As my wife and I watched shows written and broadcast in 1988, we noticed they seemed to be talking about things my wife and I had been discussing just last week. Murphy and her colleagues on FYI were constantly battling the network to keep their news magazine about news and information instead of fluff;  a private memo Murphy wrote criticizing her fellow anchors was leaked; in the biggest meta-joke, Connie Chung shows up to scold Murphy for appearing on a sitcom (you remember Connie Chung, don't you?). Murphy might as well have been working for CNN in 2013.

It continued in my car.

I punched the satellite radio button to 70s on 7 and listened as the Temptations sang Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today). The great Norman Whitfield co-wrote that song with Barrett Strong (Barrett's big hit was Money (That's What I Want)) when Motown didn't want the Temps recording his song War, which became a hit for Edwin Starr, because it was too strident. Still, aside from a reference to "the Beatles new record," these lyrics written 43 years ago can be applied almost word-for-word to the problems we're facing today.  Which is why it's been covered by Anthrax, Love and Rockets, Tina Turner, Widespread panic -- hell, even Whoopi Goldberg sung it in Sister Act 2.

Racism, sexism, guns, poverty, war...as kids growing up in the 60s and 70s, my wife and I thought we'd fought all these battles and won some victories.  But, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Damn.

Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)

People moving out, people moving in
Why? Because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run but you sure can't hide
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
Vote for me and I'll set you free
Rap on, brother, rap on

Well, the only person talking about love thy brother is the preacher
And it seems nobody's interested in learning but the teacher
Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration
Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to my nation
Ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that's what the world is today

The sale of pills are at an all time high
Young folks walking round with their heads in the sky
The cities ablaze in the summer time
And oh, the beat goes on

Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon
Politicians say more taxes will solve everything
And the band played on

So, round and around and around we go
Where the world's headed, said nobody knows
Oh, great Googamooga
Can't you hear me talking to you?

Just a ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that's what the world is today

Fear in the air, tension everywhere
Unemployment rising fast, the Beatles new record's a gas
And the only safe place to live is on an Indian reservation
And the band played on

Eve of destruction, tax deduction, city inspectors, bill collectors
Mod clothes in demand, population out of hand, suicide, too many bills
Hippies moving to the hills, people all over the world are shouting
'End the war' and the band played on



Saturday, June 15, 2013

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

It's a trend I've noticed recently on Facebook, one I'm sure will get a good workout on Father's Day:
People giving a shout out to their deceased Dad or Mom on Facebook on a special occasion,like a birthday or anniversary.  Not just a "let's all remember Dad on his birthday, he would have been 89," but more like, "Hey, Dad,thinking of you on your birthday, miss you, wish you were still with us." So I expect Facebook will be full of such greetings on Father's Day.

I had no idea there were Facebook accounts in Heaven. 

(Also, I'd be just a bit scared if Dad answered...)

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Those Are The Days

In remembering the late Jean Stapleton, naturally we all got to thinking about All In The Family. Ken Levine (the blogger, TV writer, baseball broadcaster and disc jockey -- not the video game guy) had an interesting take on Edith Bunker:

There would be no ALL IN THE FAMILY without Jean Stapleton.... Archie Bunker – played so masterfully by Caroll O’Connor – was the most bigoted, crude character television comedy had ever seen (up until that time). Forget how funny he was. The audience needs some cue to know it’s okay to laugh. Otherwise, they just hate him and that’s that.... He was a man panicked because the only world he knew was changing and he had no idea what his place in it would be...So why did we accept Archie Bunker? Because Edith loved him. Because the person with the kindest heart on the planet knew he wasn’t really hateful, he was just railing. We loved her and if she loved him then he couldn’t be so bad after all.

Then I had a thought about Archie Bunker:  Bigoted, hateful, blaming those he disliked and/or feared for all the wrongs he suffered, feeling like the white man was being squeezed out in favor of those with different coloring or sexual orientation. In the 1970s, he was a figure of comic relief.  In 2013, he'd be elected to Congress.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Arresting Developments


One of the added bonuses (bonii?) that comes from watching the new episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix is that we once more get to hear their their jazzy end theme.

It's music you likely didn't hear when the series ran on Fox almost a decade ago because the network's standard procedure was to box out the end credits in order to promote an upcoming show. I didn't get a chance to hear the end credits theme until I got the DVDs.

But you can be happy in the knowledge that all is not well in Netflix land. It seems Netflix is "out-Foxing" us with the new Arrested, thanks to their new practice of starting the next episode in a new box before the old one (minimized in a much smaller box) has finished playing. If you want to hear the full end theme, and see the full end credits, you have to click on the smaller box playing the credits -- it will then finish playing out the current episode in full screen and allow you to select the next episode you want to watch, or select a different show all together....

...you know, choice, the reason I pay for Netflix in the first place.

Hulu does this now, too, with a variation -- they start playing an episode of a similar TV show before the credits are done on the old one. Just because I watched the latest episode of New Girl does NOT mean I want to watch the latest episode of The Mindy Project. I DO NOT WATCH The Mindy Project, even when I'm watching actual, real-time, un-time-shifted network TV. Or finishing the newest Modern Family doesn't mean I'm ready for the newest The Middle. I DO NOT watch The Middle.

Call me crazy, but I kind of like to watch the programs I WANT to watch WHEN I want to watch them. Which, I thought, is kind of why Hulu and Netflix exist.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

They CNN'ed It

Recent popular media is full of new nouns describing someone screwing up.  The Simpsons finished off an episode once with a dictionary entry for "Pull a Homer: to succeed despite idiocy."  On TV's Community, characters regularly refer to the character of Britta, the show's well-meaning idealogue who more often than not makes situations worse -- when something goes wrong, they say it "was Britta'd."  When it comes to news, I'd like to add another: to "CNN it."

I worked at CNN, in the Headline News section, radio division, back when the network was young in the mid-80s.  Even then, CNN had to deal with filling a non-stop programming hole; the problem with 24-hour news is that news isn't  always BREAKING. There are lulls, holding patterns, periods when an investigation is underway and the story really doesn't change. In the old days, CNN would fill with Larry King or Crossfire or other pre-produced shows that would eat up the night and weekend hours when not much happened.  Of course, the flip side of that is that when you commit to Larry King for an hour every night, and the commercial time is sold, POOF!  There goes the flexibility you have to cover a breaking story at 9:24.  And, as Jon Stewart reminded us, Crossfire just added volume to the conservative-liberal shouting match without adding value. 

So now CNN's moved closer to true 24-hour news, no fillers.  Except, of course, for the anchors and reporters who feel they must fill every second.  We now have to choose between the lesser of two evils:  the anchor continually chirping that "we don't know exactly what's happening right now, but there you see the smoke on your screen;"  and the reporter making whatever claim is in the air at the moment, as we saw in Boston, where John King was seen frantically working his iPhone quoting his sources about suspects being arrested, sources who were profoundly wrong.

The 24-hour cycle also seems to play right into that "you saw it here first" thing that competitive news organizations always have.  It's almost like they're saying, "We're always on, always throwing stuff out there, so keep viewing and you're bound to see us stumble into something good!" 

Well, here's a news tip for you: I don't remember who got it first.  I remember who got it right.

Monday, April 22, 2013

They Picked the Wrong Town

I worked in New Hampshire off and on for ten years. Boston was the "big city," and I used to escape there from time to time.  Still have very good friends who live in the city. I remember the locals being a little hard to warm up to.  They tended to look at people from other parts of the country -- let alone other countries -- as trespassers.

I learned the customs and language (I drove a "Toyoter") partly because I was on the radio and had to relate to the listeners, mostly just to fit in. After awhile, the locals came around and began to treat me like I was born there. (My oldest son actually was born there.)  It probably also helped that, besides being on the radio, I am white and Christian. 

I can see why those Chechnyan brothers might have had trouble fitting in, and why they might have wanted to get back at the those who didn't accept them. And I can see where they thought they could inflict maximum pain on the people they disliked by setting off bombs at the beloved Marathon on Patriots' Day, a very special day in the lives of Bostonians. 

Besides picking the wrong way to deal with their problems, they picked on the wrong city.  One of the reasons New Englanders take awhile to warm to you, one of the reasons it takes awhile to warm to them, is because they are genuinely tough.  Could be the winters.  Could be the ancestry.  Whatever it is, you don't want to cross a New Englander. New Yorkers will spit in your eye, but a Southy will gouge them out.




Friday, April 12, 2013

Eat The Rich

There are three reasons why it's so darned hard to tax the rich in America:

1) The people making the rules are rich.  You know, it's the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."

2) A lot of us are inadvertently "rich."  Example: my wife and I individually make very middle-class salaries, live paycheck-to-paycheck, and just manage to make ends meet.  But, come tax time, when we fill out the 1040 as "Married Filing Jointly,"  LORD!  Combine those salaries and we're suddenly perilously close to making $100,000 a year!  So, no, we don't want to see higher taxes for those making $100,000 a year, because, damn! That's us!

3)  We all secretly, deep down, believe that -- someday -- we, too, will be very very rich.  The big money is right around the corner!  It's what keeps lottery tickets selling and casinos open.  It's why we treat some older relatives nice, even though we can't stand them. It's why immigrants keep coming to America, legally or otherwise.

Me?  I don't need a solid gold bathtub or ownership of a Caribbean island (although I wouldn't refuse the island).  I just want a laptop that won't freeze up every time I try to download a movie.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Sounds of Coffee

My boss recently got one of those Keurig coffee makers for our office.  He says it will be cheaper and more efficient, and I agree with him on part of that.  We used to make two pots of coffee for the office, one regular, one decaf, on one of those Bunn restaurant drip-with-the-hotplate devices.  Everyone would have their cup and then two half-pots would be left to burn on the hotplates all day, until someone wanted a cup around 3 o'clock.  That person would dump the old, burned coffee and make a new pot to get their one cup and a full pot would be left to burn until it, too, was dumped at 5.  With the K-cups, everone gets one cup of coffee whenever they want, and no pots are left to burn or dump or clean.
Is it cheaper?  Maybe for the office.  The office used to pay for boxes of coffee bags for the drip machines.  Now we all chip in ten bucks each a month for two big boxes of K-cups. (We can go into the problem of the boss buying the machine but not the coffee for it at another time, when cooler heads might prevail.)
But here's what I've noticed while standing in line in the kitchenette waiting for my K-cup of coffee.  Pouring coffee from a pot, you get a wonderful splashing noise as it fills the cup, as if you're putting your cup under a fresh, clear brook of coffee.  When you put your cup under the Keurig machine and press the button, your coffee spits out into your cup like -- well, like someone's peeing in your cup. It's very off-putting.  Just a little something for the engineers to think of when they come up with the Keurig Mark 2 -- some way to pour the coffee into my cup, instead of peeing in it.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Old Wives Tales UPDATE!

Hey, maybe my grandmother had something there.  At least, the part about cuts in the mouth healing faster.  Here's a quote from an article written for the Oral Cancer Foundation:

Saliva, science has revealed, is much more than water. It is packed with proteins that help control the teeming hordes of microbes in our mouths. It is stuffed with substances that make our spit stringy, stop our teeth from dissolving and help heal wounds.

Here's a link to the whole article:

http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/dental/wonders_of_saliva.htm

So thanks, grandma.  It rained on Easter Sunday of 2013, so I'm keeping watch on the next 7.  Just in case.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Old Wives Tales, Holiday Edition

You wouldn't have pegged my grandmother as an ornery sort, but she was.  Must've been that Irish blood.  When, as a college student, I visited England and Ireland, she raved over even the most innocuous photo I showed her of the Irish countryside, but she didn't want to see even one photo of London.

As an old wife of long standing, she had all the required "old wives tales" stored away in her brain, ready to brandish at a moment's notice. For example, she took my mother, myself and my two brothers Christmas shopping when I was about five or six, and of course we stopped to sit on Santa's lap.  When we were done sharing our Christmas lists with the old guy, he gave us each a piece of candy.  I got a clear red little ball that shattered into little hot cinnamon-y pieces when I bit into it. One of those pieces gave me a little cut on the inside of my cheek, and the hot cinnamon just aggravated the cut.  I spit the pieces out and whimpered, which was enough to send my grandmother into action. She walked right back up to Santa, chastised him for giving a little child candy that would cut his mouth and demanded a softer piece.  She came back with soft taffy and another of her comforting scientific facts:  "Cuts in your mouth heal faster." I've never really seen any scientific proof for or against that, but it worked so well I used it on my kids a few times.

I caught her once.  I was about fourteen, crammed in a car with cousins and an aunt and my mother and grandmother, one of a chain of cars full of cousins and aunts that was making the trip between church and the home of one of those aunts for Easter brunch. It was raining, and my grandmother said in her best "tsk tsk" voice that it was too bad, because legend has it that if it rains on Easter, it rains for seven Easters after that.

"Then we'd never have a dry Easter," I said from the back seat.  "Because if it rains next Easter, then that sets off the next set of seven rainy Easters, and the next one will start seven more rainy Easters, and on and on and on. It's perpetual."

My grandmother was silent in the front seat, but I don't think it was because she agreed with me, or was astounded by my brilliance.  I believe she was fuming. She never did directly address my comment, deciding instead to point out as we drove by, that there was a house with a lovey lilac bush near the front door, and mustn't that smell lovely in the summer.

I decided she just didn't hear me and left it at that.  I probably should have just bit my lip.  I understand cuts in your mouth heal faster.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Minority Rules!

A recent news report from the U.S. Supreme Court, taking up whether or not to renew the Voting Rights Act, said, and I quote:

At issue was the law's Section 5, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, and jurisdictions in other states to "pre-clear" any changes in voting laws with federal authorities.
Justice Antonin Scalia said Congress' decision in 2006 to re-authorize the law was not the result of a studied decision, but of a "phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement." Politicians, he said, are afraid to vote against legislation with the "wonderful" name of the Voting Rights Act.

I was alive in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act passed...not very old, but alive.  Old enough, though, to remember seeing pictures on the TV of civil rights marchers getting knocked off their feet by fire hoses and ripped up by police dogs.

Those civil rights marches came about because those who were in the minority of the U.S. population didn't have a place in society or government.  The Voting Rights act, and other laws like it, helped elevate African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, gays, and others into the mainstream of American society. 

So you see, the "majority rules" situation that for so many years kept old fat white men on top and minorities on the sidelines has been flipped, replaced by minority rule!  Hooray! Only problem is, the minority that's ruling now is made up of old fat white men like Scalia.
 

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Possible Reasons Why "Community" Doesn't Feel Right


So far, my TV criticism has consisted mostly of snarky comments my wife and I make while sitting on the sofa watching Hulu. But I do read other critics and most of them said the new season of Community feels flat. After watching the first new episode of Season 4 the other night, I think I can pinpoint two reasons:

1) I'm really, really tired of the Dean in women's clothing.  Yes, I know, that's what he's always done, but that doesn't make me less tired of it.

2)  Abed is too autistic.  Again, that's always been a part of his character, but towards the end of last season, and throughout the new episode ("History 101"), it seems Abed's main function has been to disappear into his fantasy world while being sheltered by the other characters.  Despite his tendency to see everything in terms of TV, Abed has always been a smart, working member of the group.  Now he's the damaged one that everyone else is watching over.  Not nearly as interesting.

All long-running shows have a tendency to get lazy as they go on, and it usually hurts.  One quick example comes to mind: Kirstie Alley was whip-smart when she joined Cheers, only to become a whimpering neurotic by the time the show ended. 

So maybe I shouldn't be surprised.  It's just sad, because Community was always good for a parody or twist that was fun and entertaining. The Dean wore a dress, but he was in the show for two seconds. And Abed used TV tropes to cope with life, but he never used to escape into them to avoid it.

The Pope Isn't Retiring!



He's just giving up his job for Lent.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

TV With a Twist

The winter break is over!  Time for TV channels to resume their regularly scheduled programs, already in progress.

First, the return of an old BBC favorite, Dr. Zoo

Next, let's head to Capitol Hill, where Congress is debating gun control on CSPAN

And let's finish our broadcast day with a fresh take on an old sitcom involving wizard Harry Potter, who returns to Hogwarts 20 years later to teach.

TV is a lot more fun when you're not paying close attention, isn't it?