Recently I spoke with a local, well-respected print reporter who was able to accurately relate all the facts of a radio promotion he had heard when he was a kid 45 years ago.
The things he had heard on the radio as a youngster made such an impression that he was certain the years had magnified his recollections of just how creative the radio personality had been. When I played a recording of the promotion for him, the reporter was amazed at how great it still sounded.
Is this the sort of reaction that is limited to radio wonks? No. Here, for example, is an excerpt from comedian Lewis Black’s book, “Nothing’s Sacred:”
“When I was fourteen, I got an Emerson 888 transistor radio for my birthday and I listened to it at night when I did my homework. As I spun through the stations, I found WABC New York and hope entered my life. Somehow in the ether of radio waves, I arrived at the doorstep of the world. There was something wonderful and mysterious that existed outside of the suburbs, or maybe just inside my head, and the music took me to places I had never imagined. There were sounds that could turn me right side up and upside down and will me with a passion I didn’t know I had and a sadness I had never felt. It was music. It was my first drug. It was heaven.”
This isn’t a rant at how bad things are today. It’s a paean to how great things were back then. Radio, in those days, was in tune with its listeners. As I’ve noted before, the medium anticipated what they wanted and gave it to them. Radio didn’t follow the trends. It set them.
It’s hard to imagine that the radio programmers back then would have run spot clusters that ran longer than two minutes. In fact, listening to air checks, you’ll hear a song followed by a spot followed by a song. There was no reason for listeners to punch out because they knew the music would be back quickly.
Yes, some did punch out, but I’m betting TSL was off the charts then in comparison to today.
Radio and teens were a perfect match-up. In those days, the proverbial water cooler was school. Everybody talked about what they heard on the radio. If you had missed it, you weren’t part of the conversation.
That relative innocence is something many people would like to revisit. It’ll never happen. The shame is that young people will never experience it.
Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)
