Shot In The Dark: Gaping Hole

January 09, 2006

Gaping Hole

In the 1930's, farmers and ranchers and people in isolated hollers and towns in the middle of nowhere - people who had always been part of a nation, but rarely part of a society that went beyond their immediate region - gathered around crude radio sets, and listened to news from the larger world, music and happenings in cities they'd seen only on maps if at all. And slowly, they became part of a larger society.

During World War II, resistors - everyone from active armed guerrillas on down to people who hadn't the nerve or the ability to actively wage covert warfare but who kept a flicker of freedom carefully hidden in their hearts - listened to broadcasts on the BBC, and knew that the outside world hadn't forgotten about them, and was coming soon.

Teenagers across the country tuned in to AM stations in distant cities - scratchy ghost signals from the Delta, rock and roll boomers from distant cities, jazz from disembodied bands and points unknown - and began coalescing into something the world had, for better or worse, never seen; a separate "Teen" subculture, where belonging was a matter of listening to the same music.

A twentysomething who grew up in a Democrat family in a Liberal city, but always felt something was wrong; doubts gnawed at her, the rhetoric didn't fit, the facts didn't add up. Then she heard something on the radio - the wryly combative conservative from the great beyond, the one that so outraged her parents and her professors and her true believer friends - and heard a little bit of herself in response. And for the first time in her life she thought about politics, and went down to the courthouse and registered, biting her lip and wondering what Mom would think, as a Republican.

A guy in Minneapolis talks about driving across country with cats.

Which of these five doesn't fit?

On Hugh Hewitt's excellent "Messiah" broadcast - which the Salem network repeats every Holiday season, and a genuine gift to those who listen - Professor David Allen White said (paraphrasing closely) that music is the most spiritual of the high arts; it's the only art that has no physical manifestation (beyond the instruments used to create it); it happens, and then it's gone, except for the part that stays in your heart and your head.

Radio - in all its gloriously vulgar variety - is similar; it's the only mass medium that, but for a transient audible moment, exists only in the mind. The thin little strip of bandwidth, a musician or announcer or sound effect or recorded instant of news - is all there is. No pictures, no tangible artifact to hold onto. Which is one of the things that makes it so poweful; like books, radio lacks any context on its own; with books, the mind must make up the sounds and the smells and the pictures; with radio, one must make up everything but the sound in one's mind.

Which, like music, can give radio a very powerful, visceral connection in the human mind.

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Talking about driving cross-country with one's cat, however, does not.

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The best radio - from FDR's Fireside Chats to Tom Mischke - makes you feel like you're part of a community, whether a nation or a dyspeptic gaggle of swing-shifters with a taste for the stream of consciousness. Whenever radio people forget that, they pay for it.

I've told the story many times; I started in radio in 1979. My first talk radio job (of two) was in 1985, at the height of the "Fairness Doctrine", which mandated that stations needed to ensure moment-for-moment balance in all political content; it was easier to eschew politics and aim right down the "center". So talk radio, from its inception until 1987, was the province of swing-shifters and lonely people without much in the way of social lives; "blue hairs and drunks", one of my co-workers used to say. It said nothing, very pleasantly. It did everything Public Radio did, only worse.

There were exceptions. Some, like Howard Stern and Morton Downey Junior, were pure spectacle. Others - Don Vogel was a great example - gathered around them an audience that couldn't find anything like it, anywhere else. But for the most part, talk radio either languished in the ratings cellar or, in a few cases like WCCO or KMOX or KOA, held on to legacy ratings that, with the aid of sports coverage and being the "go to" station in bad weather, eroded only slowly throught the eighties and nineties.

Conservative talk radio reached out to a massive audience in America, one that felt felt, rightly or wrongly (hint: rightly) that the mainstream media looked down its noses at them. That the mainstream media is irremediably biased to the left isn't even questioned by rational observers; the only debate is the "why", whether conspiracy or institutional inertia. Conservative talk as an institution leveraged that feeling, and brought a sense of community to a group that had theretofore felt it only at annual caucus meetings, and only for those who'd been politically active at all (a tiny minority).

Last summer, in their infinite wisdoms, the management of KSTP-AM and KTLK-FM - and others around the country - looked at the post-election slump in conservative talk stations' ratings, and concluded that the heyday of conservative talk was over. Leaving aside the immutable fact that radio executives are as famous for reflective wisdom as, say, Lindsay Lohan; the state of conservative talk isn't really the issue. Any type of radio that grabs listeners' hearts, libidos, brains, team loyalties or gorges can succeed; no type of radio that doesn't will go anywhere.

Rush Limbaugh grabs the rising gorge. Dan Barreiro gives the sports wonk something to engage in. Michael Medved both illumines and infuriates - a masterpiece of manipulation, and often great radio to boot.

I'm not going to comment here about specific shows on KSTP-AM or KTLK-FM; I've already done my drive-bys of the likes of Willie Clark, Kris Krok, Brian Lambert, and so on. Time and practice may improve some of the efforts; management impatience will likely cut some of the improvement off at the knees. Radio will go on. Stay tuned.

But the radio that lasts is the radio that makes the user feel like they're part of something; something that matters to everyone (saving the nation from liberal scum!) or to the right people (saving the nation from the Packers! or saving the world from fans of uncool music) or to an audience of one at a time.

Which station in this town broadcasts radio that matters to people? You get to choose that.

All I'm saying is that if your office starts a ratings pool on Willie Clark or "Colton and Guest" - take the "under".

Posted by Mitch at January 9, 2006 07:02 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Excellent commentary, Mitch. My mother listened to talk radio constantly throughout the 1970s and 1980s, right up to her death, and it never occured to me at the time just how bland it all was. I heard quite a bit of Michael Jackson, Owen Span, Larry King, etc. but I wouldn't have been able to tell you just what those guys stood for, other than gabbing on the radio.

Rush Limbaugh turned me on to talk radio. In the early 1990s I noticed something interesting happening: The kind of people I worked with (lefties, of course) assumed that I listened to Rush to tell me what to think and believe. They could not fathom the possibility that someone could already agree with him before they heard what he had to say. Their comments ranged from "You don't really agree with what he says, do you?" to "Is he your hero?" to "Oh God, it's Rush the a**hole".

No one understood that sense of community that good radio provides. But that's why Rush was successful, and that's why I listened to him.

I don't listen to much talk radio anymore (the schedule doesn't allow for it) but I have found that same sense of community in the blogosphere. I don't read Shot In the Dark because I want Mitch Berg to tell me what to think; I read it because Mitch is a good writer and I agree with most of what he has to say. (Not everything, of course; else I'd go out and buy a Springsteen CD.)

But to the people who just don't get it, the blogosphere is an echo chamber and people who listen to talk radio are sheep. They can believe what they want, but I like being part of this COMMUNITY.

Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at January 9, 2006 07:57 AM

Bob Yates used to call it Theatre of the Mind. I love talk radio because I can be doing something else while listening. Like fixing dinner. You are right about the sense of community, Mitch. I caught quite a bit of NARN on Saturday. It was good. You and the gang have enough depth and variety to cover four hours. Without strippers and angry dwarves, too!

Posted by: Kermit at January 9, 2006 08:40 AM

I would have to say that the very best talk shows currently in the Twin Cities Are:

1) Dennis Prager- If you don't listen to this guy and you are a conservative, please, please, start. you owe it to yourself. He is probably the most intellectual radio host outside of Medved, however his show differs from Medved in being lower key and more attuned to issues of intellectual conservativism and morality.

2) Medved. Probably the most entertaining of them all as he almost exclusively debates those on the left. He is razor sharp.

3) Limbaugh- Don't listen to him as much because he is on at the same time as prager.

4) Hannity

5) Oreilly. Interesting, but he tries to play to his "independent role" a bit too much.

Outside of that, I don't listen to FM radio at all (except for a little now that Rush has moved)I have Sattellite radio, and that is what I listen to almost exclusively. For conservative talk, I like Tammy Bruce. Otherwise, I listen to the music stations which are far superior on Sirius then anywhere else. I have both XM and Sirius. The only reason I have XM is for the opie and anthony show (guilty pressure) and Sirius for its superior music and conservative talk content.

Posted by: Jim P at January 9, 2006 08:42 AM

I got turned on to conservative talk radio back in 1990 in an amusing way. I was spending a few weeks working with my uncle who was the groundskeeper for a local funeral home chain. In the course of one day, we had to go to a hardware store because he needed to pick up something for some maintenance work. He was nice enough to leave the keys in the van so I could listen to the radio. He told me to wait in the van and he'd be back out in a bit. Little did I know that my uncle has the uncanny ability to turn "a bit" or "a few minutes" into an hour and a half. I didn't care, I had cold pop, a radio, and I was still on the clock. He had on the Good Neighbor and I got sick of listening to farm reports and Ruth Clothesrack, so I started spinning the dial. I ended up hearing a blustery (in my opinion at that time since all I had ever heard on AM was the likes of Ruth and Boone and Erickson) guy talking about something in Washington having something to do with politics, so I decided to stop and listen for a bit. He said he was broadcasting with "one half of his brain tied behind his back", with "talent on loan from God" and from the "golden microphone in the EIB studios (and I wondered what the hell an EIB studio was) with Mr Snerdly (made me laugh out loud the first time I heard that name). I quickly determined he was railing against something Democratic and that immediately made me like the guy. Found out his name was Rush Limbaugh. I caught him for about the last half hour of his show and then decided to see what was next. Well, next in line after that was Turi Ryder. Talk about baptism by fire. All I can say about why I was a consistent listener to her for the next few years until she fled to Chicago, is, "You know how you just can't take your eyes off the scene when you know there will be an impending car wreck?"

One of the most memorable spots I heard her do was when she interviewed Don Vogel about his foot fetish. That and one particular show where she was gushing about her domestic associate's bedroom abilities, and how the stormy wind blew several times that night (ifyaknowwhutImean *winkwinknudgenudge*). I also remember her repeatedly gloating about "dancing on the graves of conservative Republicans" the afternoon that Clinton was pulling way ahead of Bush in the early returns. That's about all I remember from her show.

Oh, and I remember I heard Jason Lewis' first broadcast when I was delivering Dominos. His topic that night was bitching about the stupid R12 freon ban (automotive air conditioner substance).

Posted by: Bill C at January 9, 2006 10:21 AM

My worst radio moment ever: Listening to Barbara Carlson talk about the smell from under her breasts.
I now appologize to all readers for the image (except Angryclown).

Posted by: Kermit at January 9, 2006 10:43 AM

For the benefit of Angryclown: Barbara Carlson=an Irish Bella Abzug.

Posted by: mitch at January 9, 2006 10:55 AM

Beautiful article.

Growing up the radio was always on at our home. It was small town radio, with its clearinghouse (which was the best to listen to), big band Sundays, broadcasts from the local school sports, the school lunch menu, and anything else that was going on in and around town.

I love radio, whether the format is talk or music, well, except for country music.

Posted by: Lori at January 9, 2006 11:58 AM

I wanted to hope that this change would work out because it put Hannity out of commission and I haven't had much interest in Rush since high school, but I have officially switched my morning radio from KSTP to -- sorry Mitch -- KQRS and 93X. But I've given Willie-boy a fair shake, and he's outshined by every one of his background characters (news, traffic, weather, and Reusse), and that can't be a good sign. (And Bennett won't help me wake up, so that's out of the question.)

As for the rest of the changes... Someone had better tell Ron & Mark that insincerity is REALLY easy to hear on the radio. Krok at least has made himself listenable, if not terribly interesting.

Posted by: Steve G. at January 9, 2006 02:49 PM

"sorry Mitch -- KQRS and 93X"

I listen to KQ, about a third of the time, maybe more.

Bennett should be on mid-days - and I wouldn't jettison Prager or Medved for him...

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