Blogging...mindless prattle or journalism for the can?
I spent quite a few years in radio broadcasting from the 70s through the early 90s.
I was a morning air “personality” as well as a program director, music director, babysitter, account rep, and a scapegoat. All of those positions were required of one person in small town radio. My morning shows ranged from Classic Rock time and temperature gigs to semi-zoo, talk fests aimed at the semi-intellectual crowd. I did voice and characters bits, sarcastic news commentary, live remotes, and spun an occassional song to two.
The final glide path came when, amidst budget cutting meetings, I refused to become the serious newsman. The owner/general manager genius decided that we couldn’t afford a news person any longer (part of a 3 person morning team) and decreed that I would have to spin around in my chair, put on a reporter’s hat, and read real news in between the Madame Julia and Dr J. Michael Klembottom comedy bits. Steve Allen used to to do bits about that hat thing. Anyway, the rest is history and I never got back into the abuse and hopelessness associated with small-town radio. Wait...those two words describe the restaurant management business! Nevermind.
Early on in my radio career, I was working at a low wattage, AM station in San Luis Obispo...we’ll call it KATY (because those were the call letters!). One of the clowns I worked for, Rockin’ Ron Kay (true name), used to get pissed at me for talking too much between songs. The rules in those days: Utter nothing but the 6 radio basics: Time, Temperature, Artist, Song Title, Your name, and Call Letters. The other addage was, “Never say in a paragraph what you can say in a sentence”.
He dragged me in his office one day...actually it was a coat closet where he managed to stuff a small desk with a hand printed sign that said Program Director on it...and said in his best, gravelly radio voice, “You want this fucking job?” “Ah”, I responded with my face getting redder by the second, “...yeh!” “Then you better stick to the basics...”, he reiterated what they were.
“I thought I was doing the basics”, I asked. “Are the words I am or The time is or That was
on that fucking list?’, he blared. “Oh, I understand now”, I said holding back sarcasm.
Rockin’ Ron pulled out another 16 ounce Colt 45 from under his desk (he would drink at least a 6 pack during every air shift), and headed for the studio to do his “award winning” show. Shortly thereafter, I moved on to another small town station and got bitched at for not saying anything more than the basics on my show.
My point is...radio and writing are both journalistic endeavors, related on some esoteric level. But as I work more and more on my writing of short stories and an eventual novel, I find it necessary to remove some of those radio rules from my style. My short stories end up being Micro-short stories. My novel, well...a short story. I guess I need to visit a priest of some sort and have some past journalism demons exorciszed.
One final note. An old colleague in radio (the late Don Roberts, a sportscaster in Pismo Beach) once described my morning show as “mindless prattle”. Just let me say this...there is not much in the world of broadcast or written sports that consitutes anything more than “mindless prattle”. And...in the world of blogging...geeze...even if you do take your laptop into the can, are you able to actually finish reading some the mindless prattle found here? Probably...it takes me a lot longer than 30 seconds!
It’s not Dosteyevsky...but I’m no Rockin’ Ron Kay either!
I was a morning air “personality” as well as a program director, music director, babysitter, account rep, and a scapegoat. All of those positions were required of one person in small town radio. My morning shows ranged from Classic Rock time and temperature gigs to semi-zoo, talk fests aimed at the semi-intellectual crowd. I did voice and characters bits, sarcastic news commentary, live remotes, and spun an occassional song to two.
The final glide path came when, amidst budget cutting meetings, I refused to become the serious newsman. The owner/general manager genius decided that we couldn’t afford a news person any longer (part of a 3 person morning team) and decreed that I would have to spin around in my chair, put on a reporter’s hat, and read real news in between the Madame Julia and Dr J. Michael Klembottom comedy bits. Steve Allen used to to do bits about that hat thing. Anyway, the rest is history and I never got back into the abuse and hopelessness associated with small-town radio. Wait...those two words describe the restaurant management business! Nevermind.
Early on in my radio career, I was working at a low wattage, AM station in San Luis Obispo...we’ll call it KATY (because those were the call letters!). One of the clowns I worked for, Rockin’ Ron Kay (true name), used to get pissed at me for talking too much between songs. The rules in those days: Utter nothing but the 6 radio basics: Time, Temperature, Artist, Song Title, Your name, and Call Letters. The other addage was, “Never say in a paragraph what you can say in a sentence”.
He dragged me in his office one day...actually it was a coat closet where he managed to stuff a small desk with a hand printed sign that said Program Director on it...and said in his best, gravelly radio voice, “You want this fucking job?” “Ah”, I responded with my face getting redder by the second, “...yeh!” “Then you better stick to the basics...”, he reiterated what they were.
“I thought I was doing the basics”, I asked. “Are the words I am or The time is or That was
on that fucking list?’, he blared. “Oh, I understand now”, I said holding back sarcasm.
Rockin’ Ron pulled out another 16 ounce Colt 45 from under his desk (he would drink at least a 6 pack during every air shift), and headed for the studio to do his “award winning” show. Shortly thereafter, I moved on to another small town station and got bitched at for not saying anything more than the basics on my show.
My point is...radio and writing are both journalistic endeavors, related on some esoteric level. But as I work more and more on my writing of short stories and an eventual novel, I find it necessary to remove some of those radio rules from my style. My short stories end up being Micro-short stories. My novel, well...a short story. I guess I need to visit a priest of some sort and have some past journalism demons exorciszed.
One final note. An old colleague in radio (the late Don Roberts, a sportscaster in Pismo Beach) once described my morning show as “mindless prattle”. Just let me say this...there is not much in the world of broadcast or written sports that consitutes anything more than “mindless prattle”. And...in the world of blogging...geeze...even if you do take your laptop into the can, are you able to actually finish reading some the mindless prattle found here? Probably...it takes me a lot longer than 30 seconds!
It’s not Dosteyevsky...but I’m no Rockin’ Ron Kay either!
posted by James | 9:49 AM
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