Radio That Inspired

by Frank Absher

For me, the light came on one day while driving home from work. I was listening to one of my co-workers on the radio and he made a remark during a song intro that applied the song to a specific segment of the audience.

The fancy word for that is “empathy,” but what he did in the minds of the listeners was let them know that he “got it;” he understood what was going on in their lives. Instead of talking at them, he was talking with them.

This made him a friend, rather than just a disembodied voice on the radio.

I was a newsman then, and I knew that I could do exactly the same thing. By selecting news stories which were important to the listeners and presenting them in a way that overtly related the stories to them, I became something more than a news voice. Listeners no longer mentally tuned out when the news came on.

Content wasn’t the only important aspect of broadcasting back then. Presentation was equally important. We didn’t have unknowing consultants a thousand miles away telling us how to do a local broadcast. We relied on the feedback of our listeners, who seemed to know very well what they liked and didn’t like.

I thought of this recently while reading an interesting article written by a university president about his memories of a favorite disc jockey. Dr. Robert Weisbuch is the president of Drew University. His musings had to do with his younger days when radio was still an important part of our lives.

Thinking back to those radio days, Dr. Weisbuch recalled how Lee Baby Simms would hold the attention of his audience, entertaining them and informing them at the same time. It was, in effect, the essence of what a good teacher should be doing. Weisbuch freely admits that he wasn’t doing that in the early part of his teaching career. Instead, he was trying to emulate the style of another instructor, and it wasn’t working.

He gave some thought to ways he might actually connect with the students and remembered the work of Lee Baby and other jocks of the time. Among the things that stood out were the energy that came through the radio speakers and the constant patter. Dr. Weisbuch decided to take that approach to the classroom. Later he wrote:

“Soon a far happier classroom Me developed, more from my radio exposure, by far, than from any experience I'd had in undergraduate or graduate-school courses. My classroom persona came as a surprise even to me. He was emotionally open, garrulous to a fault, motor-mouthed, capable of engaging interest and dialogue (the early DJ's, after all, were masters at taking phone calls), ready for humor, and available to high rhetoric. ‘I feel I really know you,’ a student said to me after class one day.”

I told Dr. Weisbuch how much I got from his story. As a radio person, you seldom know when your work touches a person or what makes a difference. Feedback like this makes the sacrifices worthwhile.

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