A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio

Launch

L A U N C H It was a perfect day for lust, a mild, sunny day in October 1968. The program director of the radio station had figured out a way to rendezvous with a female listener without his wife noticing he was not on the air. He preempted local programs, including his own, and carried ABC’s national coverage of Apollo 7. The station had not shown such dedication to public service in the past, but his wife, listening from across the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky, would not question his absence from the air. After all, this was America’s first manned Apollo flight. Someone was required to sit at the microphone and fulfill the government requirement that the station be identified each hour. The program director chose me. I was a twenty-one-year-old college senior and had been hanging around the station for weeks to learn the ropes. For five years I had been knocking on the doors of stations in my hometown , begging for a chance. Station managers told me that the Louisville market was too big to hire beginners and that I should make my start in the smaller towns of Kentucky. I was just about to do that when the program director of this tiny blip of a station in Indiana allowed me to sit in his studio and observe. Nowhewasaway,succumbingtomanlypassion,andIhadmyopportunity . As the ABC anchor cued the station break, I flipped the switch and spoke the first words of my broadcast career: “This is WHEL, 1570, in New Albany, Indiana.” 4 A V O I C E I N T H E B O X There were no fireworks in celebration and my debut escaped the notice of the local newspapers, but there’s nothing bigger in a young man’s life than realizing his dream. Never mind that I was working at the tackiest, most miserable little outpost in American broadcasting; I had crossed the threshold and joined the profession of Edward R. Murrow , Arthur Godfrey, and Red Barber. Why wouldn’t I be thrilled at joining the club? For nearly fifty years, broadcasters had informed and entertained Americans in ways that newspapers, magazines, theater, and motion pictures could not. They had made it possible for citizens to feel present at events occurring far away. Murrow’s rooftop broadcasts during the London Blitz brought World War II into the living rooms of Manhattan apartments and Iowa farmhouses. Earlier, people short on hope during the Great Depression heard reassuring words from their president on the radio, and radio performers offered the only professional entertainment most Americans could afford. Baseball fans no longer had to gather at the local newspaper office to be relayed telegraph reports of the World Series. Graham McNamee in the twenties and Red Barber in the thirties magically transported fans in the bayous and the Rockies to the ballparks of New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Arthur Godfrey, on radio and then on television, brought a folksy personality to the airwaves and made his audience comfortable with the entertainers he introduced. Broadcasting was run by people who, for the most part, believed they had a responsibility to listeners and viewers. The term public service was not uncommon in the early years of radio and TV. Broadcasting was a fabulously lucrative business, but money was not the only motivation. True, the programs were not always artful, challenging, and uplifting, but they were tasteful and responsible. Government told broadcasters they were to operate “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity,” and most did. Radio reinvented itself in the television age and began to rely on “narrowcasting,” each station using a format designed to appeal to a distinctive demographic group. Television was now the massentertainment medium, with three commercial networks drawing tens of millions to their shows. Broadcasting drove pop culture. Radio and TV’s Ed Sullivan Show had introduced us to Elvis and the Beatles—what 5 L A U N C H next? TV had replaced newspapers as our primary source for news. Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. I began my career at a crucial moment in the nation’s history, and I believe it was also a critical time for communicators. Broadcasting delivered the news of 1968, and most of the news that year was bad. We turned to radio and TV for escapist pleasure, and they betrayed us. Theytoldus ofyoungpeopledying...