My Professional Epiphany

By Frank Absher

It was a long, long time ago…had to have been in the early ‘60s, that I first felt a spark of excitement about radio. I didn’t know then how much it was a precursor for me.

And it happened in the unlikely place of Branson, MO., then a tiny, sleepy town in the Ozark foothills that was known for nothing more than lake cabins and fishing. My dad, in a futile effort to bond with the sons he’d ignored all his life, took me and my brother fishing on a rainy weekend, which, of course, made the whole trip even more intolerable for us.

During a break from trolling the river below the dam, we took a blessed walking tour of the town, and a chance glance in one of the windows we were passing turned on the light for me. There, in all its glory, was the first teletype I’d ever seen. That’s it…no fancy backdrop…just a teletype spewing out a continuous ribbon of paper filled with information.

The storefront was the town’s radio station, call letters long since forgotten. It must have been a daytimer, because in this hour at dusk, no one appeared to be in the building. But the teletype kept working, the carriage chugging along, the faint clatter making its way through the plate glass window. I stood - - - - mesmerized.

I don’t know why. I couldn’t take my eyes off this machine. The others were a half block away when they discovered my absence and looked back. Torn between wanting to just stay and watch the news come tumbling forth and the obligation of adhering to my father’s command, I finally opted for the latter, probably because it meant a decent meal at a local restaurant rather than another of his unsuccessful attempts at cooking in the camping trailer.

I never forgot that afternoon. My first radio job gave me even more of a taste of that magic. Watching that teletype, I knew something – information – that my listeners didn’t know yet, and they wouldn’t know it until I broadcast the info. Sitting in those studios at the Palace Hotel in Fulton, MO., I carried out my duty of bringing the information to those limited masses who were tuned in.

There were stories about Wall Street, the White House, a far-off war in Indo-China (by then known as Southeast Asia) complete with phonetic pronunciations of unpronounceable names. There were national weather summaries, pre-edited five-minute newscasts, expanded newscasts, sports summaries and game stories, regional summaries from surrounding states, and kickers. A kicker, read at the end of the news with a slight smile in the voice, was supposed to convey that not all was somber or negative, but that there were some humorous things still happening around us.

Fast forward a number of years to the big time, a network O&O in a Midwestern city. Here there was an array of teletypes, semi-isolated behind double-paned glass doors to keep the noise down. It was news junkie heaven. One could stand there and watch the news coming in from everywhere. In the news room, a cadre of reporters awaited assignments from the editor, who would rip the long roll of paper from each machine and go through the information to see what could be crafted into news for our listeners.

Once again, we were ahead of the game, armed with this knowledge before our listeners. We knew back then that people who wanted information would turn to us, and it was our obligation to keep them informed.

That’s all behind us now. It’s likely that the listeners have gleaned their news from the Internet before the news editors have had a chance to sift through everything on the wires’ computer screens. The public has done the job of checking the weather radar, stock quotes and running sports scores.

The days of having the information before the listeners are history, and the necessity of radio as an information tool has dropped several notches. Working in the newsroom wouldn’t be as much fun now, at least not for me.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration Required)