Local Radio Is Dead And I Am Sad

Radio isn’t fun any more. Radio doesn’t have larger than life personalities any more. And, rapidly, radio isn’t local any more.

When I was a kid I loved radio–listened to it intently. I wanted to be on radio and once college told me I was through being educated radio is just what I did.

Radio was everything I expected it to be and I loved it. Sure I fought with my bosses (Peter–I’m talking about you among others) and even got myself fired a few times, but radio was satisfying.

Doing mornings at WPEN is probably my all-time favorite job. I was given reasonably free rein and had a great time. I’d do it a little differently today, but I have no regrets.

I fell in love with radio because of the people I listened to on radio. They were smart, often witty and funny. I listened to Brucie and Dan Ingram on WABC and Gary Stevens on WMCA. Jean Shepard talked to himself for 45 minutes a night on WOR and I never missed him.

My favorite station was WKBW in Buffalo. I couldn’t hear it until the Sun set. I was a member of Joey Reynold’s “Royal Order of the Night People” and listened to Danny Nevereth, Bud Ballou and Sandy Beach. Rod Roddy, who later became the announcer on “The Price is Right” did overnights on KB–and I listened.

Radio was full service back then. Even stations ‘for kids’ had hourly newscasts. It was tough to be an uninformed teen. That’s much easier today.

Radio isn’t fun to listen to any more. Radio doesn’t have larger than life personalities any more. Radio isn’t local any more. What was local is evaporating rapidly.

The radio stations I listened to created a community. There is no more community. I can’t see anyone loving radio the way I loved radio… the way some of my friends loved radio. There is little to love.

Today Clear Channel Communications announced they were cutting another 600 jobs. They cut nearly 2,000 back in January. Local people are being hatcheted and replaced with nationally syndicated shows. Local people used to talk about local things in the time slots now devoted to Ryan Seacrest, Billy Bush, John Tesh and Rush Limbaugh.

R&R has a list of some of those let go. It’s sad to see. Lots of 10 and 20 years veterans. Lots of people whose shows were getting good numbers.

Helaine often says when TV is through with me maybe I should go back into radio. I don’t think there will be any radio left.

I am saddened.

Where Are They Today?

I have heard from lots of people because of this Internet thing. Though some voices from my past have said hello, there are many more I’ve totally lost contact with. Maybe if I mention some names they’ll surface.

Bob Weiss. I’m guessing the last time I saw or spoke to Bob was in the late 60s. He lived in an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. We had gone to summer camp together. His father worked at an advertising agency.

Sometime during high school his parents took the two of us to the Village Limelight to see Jean Shepard. In our mid-teens, we watched his live radio broadcast from a bar. At that time, it was certainly the coolest moment of my life.

Bob – send me an email.

Dan Weston. Dan was my roommate freshman year in college. We were on the 3rd floor at 132 Beacon Street. As is so often the case, we didn’t know how good we had it, living in Back Bay Boston as 18 year olds. I last saw Dan sometime in the mid-70s.

I can’t imagine what being my roommate must have been like, but whatever it was, I apologize.

Dan was from Jericho, NY where is father was a dentist. His sister was a harpist. I’m sure his mom was great, but I’ve got nothing on her.

After college, Dan moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania where he worked for the PBS affiliate.

Dan – drop me a line.

Marty Ingber. Marty lived near me in Electchester, the gigantic housing project, originally built by the Electrical Workers’ Union, hidden away in a two fare zone&#185 in Queens. I probably have seen him since 1968.

Marty and I were friends, but we weren’t best friends. However, I had two memorable moments with Marty. Actually, one is sure and the other I think was Marty.

The ‘sure’ moment was when the two of us went to a Mets game at the Polo Grounds. The Mets moved into Shea Stadium in 1964, so it was 1963. I was 13. Wow – that now seems awfully young to have gone with just a friend.

By this time the Polo Grounds, situated on Coogan’s Bluff in Harlem, was pretty decrepit. The NY Giants had moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season. Preventative maintenance was probably the last thing on anyone’s mind for the five years it stood vacant. The Mets were pretty awful anyway.

We bought whatever the cheapest seat was and moved around. We ended up sitting way up high in a virtually deserted area.

At that time a coffee commercial was running on TV with the tag line, “You get what you pay for.” Every time a Met would do something wrong (a constant occurrence) one of us would say the line to the other. We laughed all afternoon.

I guess you had to be there.

This next one I’m not 100% sure about. I think it was with Marty, and it took place in Midtown Manhattan. We were there with my next door neighbor (I was in 5E, he in 5F) Dennis Westler. We were just hanging out in the city.

As we walked past a nice looking office building on Madison Avenue, one of them realized it held the offices of Mad Magazine. We went in. When we got to the proper floor, one of them (not me – I am chutzpah challenged) claimed we were there for a pre-arranged tour.

Whoever it was who came out, took pity on us and showed us around. That was also amazing. There weren’t a lot of creative people to meet, but there was a lot of original artwork scattered around. I remember looking at some original “Spy vs Spy” panels.

Marty – say hello.

I’m sure there are more people from my past waiting to be found, but let me see how I do with these three. I’ll let you know how this turns out.

&#185 – It’s not this way anymore, but you use to pay for each bus or subway ride individually. A two fare zone meant, you lived somewhere where you needed to ride both a bus and subway to get to Manhattan. Living in a two fare zone makes you, by definition, geographically undesirable.

Excelsior You Fathead

I was on the sofa last night, playing poker and watching Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. The show was nearing its nightly end, the time it tends to be a little more off center. Keith turned to the camera and said, “Keep your knees loose.”

Holy s***! He was quoting a catch phrase from Jean Shepard.

Actually, I said the very same thing in public back in 1965. It was at the AT&T pavilion at the ’64-’65 New York World’s Fair. I was a participant in a picturephone demonstration. As a wise ass teen, “keep your knees loose” were my parting words. The AT&T employee running the show had no clue what I was talking about and looked mortified.

But Keith is on national TV.

When I was growing up, in the sixties, I listened to Jean Shepard every night from 10:15 to 11:00 PM on WOR. He was a monologist – he alone spoke for the entire 45 minutes. There is nothing on radio or TV like this today.

Shepard was willing to talk to his engineer or anyone who might be around (though they were never heard). Usually though, he just spoke directly to the audience, as if you were there in the studio with him.

He wasn’t political or particularly interested in most current events. His stories often went back to growing up in Hammond, Indiana and his friends, Flick and Schwartz. Sometimes he’d joke about his military career in a mess kit repair unit.

He was always irreverent. He always bit the hand that fed him. As a kid with a transistor radio under my pillow, he represented the adventure that awaited me. He was the cool part of being an adult.

I met Shep twice. Once was a personal appearance at a big and tall men’s clothing store on Long Island. I think I rode my bike, though it was quite far. I also saw him do his show at the Limelight in Greenwich Village&#185.

Even today, these are unforgettable moments. He meant that much to me.

I sent Keith Olbermann a note, letting him know that there was at least one person who understood what was going on. Though he made this arcane reference, he wrote back claiming radio allegiance to Bob and Ray.

I know lots of people who thought they were funny, but their humor aways evaded me. I am a fan of Bob’s son, Chris Elliot.

The most interesting part of Keith’s reply was his pointing out some of Shepard’s old airchecks are now on the Internet.

Wow, they are. I haven’t listened to much of the collection yet, but they’re on the Podcast site… dozens of airchecks. What I have heard so far holds up, even though it’s nearly 40 years old.

There’s more for real Shepard fans. Keith said Flicklives.com might end up being my new favorite site. Maybe that’s overdoing it a little, but it will demand a few hours of perusal.

Before he died, Jean Shepard turned into a mean spirited man who tried desperately to disassociate himself from the radio work I loved so much. That was a real shame, because his effect on me and many of my contemporaries was profound.

&#185 – I was taken to the Limelight by Bob Weiss, my friend from summer camp, and his parents. I have no idea what ever happened to Bob. If you run into him, please tell him Geoff says hi… and tell him to keep his knees loose.

New York City Trip Report – Day 3

Click here, or on any photo to see my album of photos from this trip.

Lots to talk about as we finish our three days in New York. But, before we get to the day, a little housekeeping.

First, there’s the question of Internet access. The Millennium Broadway doesn’t have high speed access. In this day and age, that’s inexcusable. I knew it coming in. The location was our most pressing concern. Still…

The first night, I used dial up and got a fairly decent speed. I haven’t used dial up regularly in a long time. I don’t want to get used to it again.

The Sony Vaio laptop I brought along had a WiFi 802.11b card in the PCMCIA slot, so I tried to see if it would find anything. Zip from the desk. I moved the laptop to my lap and sat by the window. With all the buildings surrounding our hotel you’d think there would be some activity… and there was.

Using Netstumbler, I started looking at what I was hearing. First, most of the activity is concentrated on channel 6, which is in the middle of the band and probably the default for most access points. It was for mine (though I’ve since moved it).

Much of the traffic is WEP encrypted. That’s smart. There was a cluster of encrypted AP’s, all with ID’s that made me think they were owned by Bertelsmann Music Group. There were other encrypted transmitters and, a few that were open and in the clear. They just weren’t very strong.

Thursday evening, I was able to send and receive my mail using an AP that identified itself as Apple and then a cryptic series of digits. Probably an Apple AirPort. I sent myself an email through that AP to see the actual IP address. It was routed using road Runner, which is the time Warner cable modem service.

When the weather turned rainy on Friday, I was no longer able to connect to Apple or any other in the clear AP’s.

Over time, we grew to dislike our little room. It never really seemed clean and had some stains in strange places that weren’t right. The bathroom floor always seemed dull, even after the maid had visited.

I still don’t know how a hotel becomes 4-star. Is it self assigned?

Finally, I made an interesting discovery, looking at our window on that rainy Friday morning. There were weeds and moss growing on the top of an air conditioner unit. I am unsure if this unit is associated with the hotel or an adjacent building.

Now, with all this said, it’s on to Friday. It was a rainy day – the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Thank heavens the parade was yesterday!

Helaine and Steffie wanted to do some shopping and go to lunch before we headed back to Connecticut. We left the hotel and headed toward Macy’s. Being a good weather oriented family, we were prepared with the proper outerwear.

Macy’s isn’t too long of a walk, so we headed out to Broadway and then downtown, toward 34th Street. As you leave Times Square, Broadway is a monotonous series of cereal box office buildings with first floor storefronts. It is an area without much charm.

Macy’s is located in Herald Square. I’m not sure how it got its name. It might be a similar story to Times Square, in that there was a New York Herald (which, by the time I was growing up was the Herald Tribune, and whose Sunday supplement was New York Magazine).

Macy’s is probably unlike any other store you’ve ever seen. Its two buildings cover a full city block with 10 stories and over 1,000,000 square feet. Above the 4th floor, the metal escalators give way to wooden ones that must be fifty years old. The store is beautifully decorated for Christmas.

Since Macy’s attracts so many shoppers, it also attracts its fair share of everything else. By the time we got there, there was already a TV crew with a microwave truck from one of the local stations. I also saw a reporter/photographer team from a Spanish newspaper and a long photographer from Women’s Wear Daily.

There were also protesters. I’m sure this isn’t isolated. Macy’s was being picketed by animal rights activists, who themselves were corralled into a small pen, shouting about animals being killed to make fur coats. Outside the front entrance, a lone woman railed on about Macy’s policy of racial profiling and how they had a prison in the basement. If she was changing hearts, it was impossible to see. No one seemed to pay her any mind.

As Helaine and Steffie went shopping, I walked through the area. It’s not a really thriving shopping district, though there is a lot going on. The area holds Penn Station, Madison Square Garden, and The Empire State Building.

Across from Macy’s, in a microscopic triangular shaped park, Yahoo had set up four laptops with wireless Internet access and was extolling their shopping site. Everyone I saw who entered their little promotion won a hat… except me.

I met the girls at the base of the down escalator, and we left the store and hopped on the subway. We were heading to Greenwich Village to Jekyll and Hyde – a theme restaurant with a SciFi/Horror bent.

Getting off the subway at Christopher Street, we headed into Sheridan Square. Up ahead was a theater that has been the home to the long running “Naked Boys Singing”. Hey, it’s Greenwich Village – don’t be surprised.

I had actually been at either Jekyll and Hyde or the restaurant next door back in the mid-60’s when Bob Weiss’ family took Bob and me to see Jean Shepard do his live Saturday night broadcast on WOR. For a kid who idolized Shep, that was an incredible experience. I wonder what happened to bob. I probably haven’t spoken to him since 1966 or ’67.

Maybe I was a little tired, and ready to go home, but Jekyll and Hyde was not that great for me. I had a pretty good turkey club tortilla wrap, while around us, figures mounted on the walls came to life. At the same time, some jerk at an adjacent table made loud cell phone calls. Across the way, a little girl was celebrating her 4th birthday. I wonder if Jekyll and Hyde would cause her nightmares to help remember the day?

We hopped the subway and headed back north. While I looked at the “Rodenticide” sign, Steffie had a ‘wildlife’ spotting on the tracks. Obviously Rodenticide only works so long.

By the time we returned to the hotel to pick up the Explorer and head home, it was nearly four. I reached for the claim check… but it wasn’t there! We did find it, in my coat which had been left in storage with the bellmen.

The trip home was pretty easy. The day after Thanksgiving may be busy at the stores, but it’s less than pedestrian on the Connecticut Turnpike. Manhattan to our house took a little less than two hours.

During our stay in New York, I took nearly 500 photos. On Thanksgiving alone, I snapped nearly 1 GB worth of images. We all had a great time. Our anniversary will go in the books as a happy one. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade will be a lifetime memory.

As I type this, early Monday morning, Priceline has just sent me a survey, asking about my hotel. I told all.

Click here, or on any photo to see my album of photos from this trip.