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Didn't watch the Rose Bowl. Didn't watch the Rose Parade. Didn't go anywhere. Nice day.
Actually, I'm working on some ideas I have for... well, maybe I'll get to that here shortly. Today's not a day for work. Today's not a day for anything but... nothing. I like days like this.
ShareNext-to-last day of holiday "relaxation." Cat wouldn't let me sleep. Overcast all day. Had to run errands that involved going to craft and fabric stores.
It's a good day anyway. And technically not a work day. So take some idle time with me and watch "Million Dollar Password" in which one Sebastian Daskawicz-Davis, an associate of the Regular Guys show at Rock 100.5/Atlanta... well, go and fast-forward as best you can to the midway point to see how he does, but look for "Sabastian Davis" of Nashville, Tennessee. You'll recognize him by the inexplicable responses to easy clues. It's not quite "Odd Couple" level ("Aristophanes!"), but it's pretty painful. And funny.
ShareWith all the excitement of the day, I forgot to post anything here today.
So here's a post. Whoop-de-damn-do.
Tomorrow, the Eagles. You know I'll have something to say after that.
ShareBeing a Philadelphia Eagles fan means dealing with games like today's, in which the team for the most part followed the same, painful, losing game plan yet managed to win anyway thanks to the defense, a couple of big plays, and the Vikings, who are coached by a (much) thinner clone of Andy Reid. For every blowout victory like the Dallas game, we get many more like this, in which the team avoids the concept of running (I wasn't sure Correll Buckhalter made the trip for a while), is amazingly predictable on every play, and gives up some big gains, but ends up winning by attrition. It's enough to make you swear off football forever.
But we come back every week anyway, because we're masochists and because this team hasn't gone away yet. We're stuck with a maddening coach and a maddening quarterback and countless moments where it seems like the whole thing will be collapsing any time, and yet they're still playing and heading to the Meadowlands anyway. Being an Eagles fan means that you're always surprised that they manage to get from week to week, surprised that they stay alive, surprised that despite the atrocious display you see every Sunday, they're still there the next week to play with your heart again.
So the details aren't important. The defense kept them ahead and scored their only touchdown of the first half, Minnesota made mistakes, the Eagles floundered into the fourth quarter but a little flare to Westbrook turned into a critical touchdown... and it's on to play the Giants. All we need is three more games' worth of this and... but I can't think about that now. One game at a time. One maddening, embarrassing, painful, escape-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth game at a time.
And you wonder why we're always angry.
ShareI'm a little shook up at the moment. I needed to go through my late dad's files to handle a minor matter, and the act of going through reams of old papers and statements would have been benign enough had it not been for the letter.
Seeing his handwriting normally brings forth warm memories. His script looked like his voice sounded -- upbeat, energetic, happy. It's on countless envelopes and letters in the files, and even when attached to something like a bank inquiry or a pension letter, his voice comes back to me. I still expect to talk to him every day at 5:00, his voice happily barking "PERRY MICHAEL!" at me before launching into a spirited discussion of basketball or his latest adventure on the tennis court. I miss that dearly, but I've written about that before. Today, I happened upon something else, a letter he wrote to a doctor who was doing some sort of experimental therapy for his illness, a letter that started with something about being in so much pain that....
And I couldn't continue reading it. As the years pass, I like to think of my father as he was for most of his life, happy, athletic, vibrant. That letter reminded me of his last two years, when the pain got too much and his voice got scratchier and weaker and... well, I don't want to remember him that way.
So I'm going to go now and find something light and amusing and distracting to watch or read or do. And maybe by the time I try to get to sleep, Dad will be happy and healthy and himself again.
ShareIt's a little busy this week, so it'll be light here. But today was a little less emotional and more business-as-usual, so there's that.
And there were countless articles all over the papers and the Net about how Sunday's victory shows how great a coach Andy Reid is, and it all made me a little ill. Sure, he deserves credit for getting this far, but anyone who actually watches the game has to be appalled by the adulation he's getting. The defense has been mostly excellent, but is anyone watching their play calling? Other than the screen pass to Westbrook, what really worked? They spent most of the game in their standard passing 'n' punting mode and only David Akers kept them in the lead. Same as it ever was.
Tell y'all what: Let them beat the Giants this week before slapping the critics with the "he showed YOU" thing. If he does what he did against Dallas and against the Giants in their second meeting this season, sure, give him credit. If they come out ineffectually throwing and running out of time outs and challenges way too early while wasting valuable time, don't be surprised.
ShareThis is the time of year that I regret not booking myself to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. I should probably go; there are plenty of radio and music industry angles there. But something always gets in the way, and, besides, I think about the crowds, the futility of covering everything I'd need to cover, and the lingering nightmare memories of every convention I've ever covered in Vegas. I report from the NAB Show every April, I did Comdex back in the day, and Vegas conventions are just too damn big.
Part of it is the layout. The Convention Center is massive, and everything tends to be at opposite ends. At the NAB, I end up racing from the RTNDA conference in the Hilton ballrooms to the press office to panels in the North Hall to a presentation in the South Hall to the press room to a booth in the North Hall and back to the Hilton, over and over, lugging a laptop and furiously sweating. And there are hospitality suites and parties and, on top of that, my regular columns to write. I know a lot of people love Vegas for the gambling and partying and what-happens-in-Vegas stuff. All I get to do is race from convention room to convention room, write a lot, and collapse in the hotel room. (Okay, I do squeeze in workouts in the Venetian spa when I can, and if Fran's with me, we'll go hit some of the great restaurants there, but, still, it's exhausting)
But CES would offer something NAB doesn't, besides a lack of radio people. NAB booths are stacked with equipment I don't need -- transmitters, ENG units, HD Radios. CES has cool netbooks and wrist video phones and domestic robots and massive TVs and everything else I don't really need but really want. It's a nerdgasm. I really should be there.
Maybe next year. This year, I'm home in California, and I'll have to check with Joe and Hardwick to tell me what was worth seeing. And maybe I'm better off staying home anyway; no crowds, no sweating, and nothing tempting me to spend money I don't have on stuff I don't need. If I'm not there, I'm not thinking that I really need the world's thinnest Blu-ray player or that Sony Vaio ultra-light tiny netbook or OLED anything. Okay, maybe I'm thinking that, but it's not the same as being there.
ShareI do this all the time. I get 80% through a column, then I decide it's not right. I rewrite it, then discard it again. I sleep on it, pushing the deadline later and later and finally scraping together something passable.
First column of 2009: same process.
This one is, right now, about predicting something other than destruction for the industry. But when I got near the end, I realized that I had something to say about others' comments about talk radio in particular, and, well, that won't fit the present version. So I'm going to have to, you know, fix this. It's going to take some work, and it's already late, I missed most of the BCS game, and I've had enough. So it'll be tomorrow for sure.
This can't be how your George Will types work. Not that I'm George Will. I ain't no Cubs fan.
ShareThis week's All Access newsletter is about the same stuff as the first column of 2008. Back to the well:
Last year at this time, I wrote a column with predictions for 2008. I recognized then, as I do now, that prediction columns are lame. But I went ahead and did it anyway, because there's nothing easier than a throwaway predictions column at the start of a year, with the possible exception of a column reviewing how those predictions turned out. And so...
Back then, I said: "I predict that in 2008... money will be tight and managers will fire more talent to save money. In other words, radio in 2008 will be the same as radio in 2007, only with less human intervention."
Verdict: Well, that was an obvious one. I don't know that I knew just how bad things would get by the end of the year, but the general idea was there. It didn't take Kreskin to figure that out.
I then said: "I'm also going to predict that, despite it all, despite competing technologies and industry missteps and everything else, radio will still be around, people will still be listening, and there'll still be opportunity for those with talent and ambition and persistence.... the game won't be over this year, and not for a lot longer than that, either. There may be more competition now from iPods and satellite, and more coming down the road from streaming and WiMax, but it's not like radio is going to just go away."
Um, yeah, what he said. And, while things have gotten worse and may sink lower before they get better, it's still true now.
Now, for this year's predictions... let's just reuse the ones above. Times are tighter, jobs are scarcer, but despite it all, radio will still be around at the end of the year. Will business turn around by then? It might take longer, but the thing about radio is that it still works. It still reaches a massive audience, it still sells product, and for a lot of advertisers, it's still an efficient way to reach large numbers of customers. It's not as obsolete as a printed newspaper, and, if you think of things like streaming Internet audio as simply another method of distributing audio entertainment, and yourself as in the business of creating entertainment content and not in the tower-transmitter-license business, there are even more opportunities now than before, just waiting to be monetized. Add to that the ability to think of your product in new ways, like adding video and text and whatever else you can think of to a show, and....
And, of course, none of it matters if there's no money. So, for 2009, resolve to be creative, enterprenurial, persistent. But if things don't go well in the short run, be prepared to do something else to pay the bills for a while. That won't be fun, but if you want to brightside it, remember that even in the Great Depression, people listened to the radio and went to the movies. Stores sold things and bought advertising. A lot more people were working than not. And the sun still rose in the morning. Remember that a lot of the problem right now isn't that radio can't be profitable as a going concern, it's that the owners took on crazy debt and have to make the payments. A future in which stations are owned by companies that aren't buried in debt may be on the horizon. We just have to get there. The road may be a little bumpy before that, but I prefer to stay positive.
On that bright shiny note, it's time to remind you that All Access News-Talk-Sports is flying out of the gate with all-new material for you at Talk Topics, the show prep column that gives you what you need to do your show, namely items like the impact of the economy on Hot Dog on a Stick, Obama's comic debut, free food for crushing your friends' egos, why it's better to step outside to smoke regardless of how cold it might be, how cell phones and iPods can save your life, an unplanned trip to a Cuban prison, the value of five school days, why two high schoolers would have been better off just being late for school, how a church wound up paying for a vasectomy, why British folks are eating more squirrel lately, why personal grooming is not something on which to economize, two more Bernie Madoff wanna-bes, a particularly unfortunate karaoke exhibition, and way more stories about how lousy the economy is than I wanted to write, plus "10 Questions With..." News Radio WORD/Greenville-Spartanburg PD and host Bob McLain and the rest of All Access which, you may have noticed, did not rest through the holidays, pumping out all the news goodness you could handle. And there's a lot more to come; one thing I can assure you is that 2009 will be a big year for AllAccess.com, and we're grateful to have you come along to be part of the fun.
And it will be fun. Especially if the Eagles are still playing after Sunday.
ShareI forgot to post anything here yesterday, didn't I? Shouldn't I be taking weekends off, anyway? Didn't I say I was gonna do that a few months back? Why don't I listen to myself?
It's okay that I didn't post yesterday. Nothing happened. All I could have written was something to the effect of "Went to Target. Went to Smart and Final. Went to Sprouts. Watched football. Watched guys dig hole in front yard. Worked late. The end." That doesn't do anyone much good.
Today, of course, I did less of note. I never even took the car out. But the Eagles beat the Giants, which is about as momentous as weekends get these days. The defense did the job, as did Eli Manning, who reverted to the pre-2007 Eli, the one who gets intercepted and looks befuddled. It was so bizarre that Donovan McNabb actually sneaked the ball in from the one, which he for some reason rarely tries despite being built like exactly the kind of quarterback who should be able to hammer the ball across any time he wants. (He did it gingerly, sticking the ball out in front of him to break the plane without sacrificing his body, but, whatever, it worked)
And now it's Eagles-Cardinals in the Game Nobody Could Possibly Have Anticipated for the NFC title. The road to Tampa goes through Glendale, Arizona. It's tempting to find a ticket on StubHub and go, but I have to remind myself that it's a frivolous expenditure in this economy. So would flying to Tampa in a few weeks. Maybe I'll hit the Mega Millions before then.
ShareTonight, from a randomly plucked-from-the-shelf old TV Guide, some random ads from 1960:
It's amazing to me to think that at some point within my lifetime, an ad like this one could be considered a reasonable way to attract viewers to a TV show:
Of course, the ad ran two days after I was born, but, still, I WAS born by then. I grew to know MacDonald Carey as the man who said the deathless words "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." He still does, too, despite having passed away in 1994. "Lock-Up" was a cheapo Ziv syndicated production with Carey playing the real-life Philadelphia lawyer Herbert L. Maris. Among guest stars: Mary Tyler Moore! Buddy Ebsen! Angie Dickinson! Ted Knight! Leonard Nimoy! Gavin MacLeod! Joey Faye! Harry Dean Stanton! Dyan Cannon! Robert Conrad! Sally Kellerman! Joe Flynn! Lon Chaney Jr.! Donna Douglas! L.Q. Jones! Edson Stroll -- Virgil on "McHale's Navy"! Neil Hamilton -- Commissioner Gordon!
Why, yes, it's available on DVD!
And, yes, kids, people used to fix TVs instead of throwing them away:
I didn't know Raytheon did TV repair. Apparently, they did. And they deliberately frightened the bejeezus out of people reading TV Guide. I'm not sure that a screaming skull is the way to get people to call you, but it's 48 1/2 years too late for that now.
Finally, check this out:
I knew there were Morris Minors and 1000s floating around the U.S., but I didn't know they were actively marketed here. Perhaps using a turtle wasn't the best marketing concept for a car. But their "unibody" construction presaged my MacBook Pro by 48 years. You could have had one for the low, low price of "from $1,495."
Who has one now? At least one Jay Leno fan. And someone's trying to sell the original ad slick of this particular ad on eBay for ten bucks plus shipping.
Yes, the scans are back. More to come.
ShareWe're at a cancer seminar at UCLA this evening. If, five years ago, you told me I'd be attending cancer seminars.... But we do and I'm here in an auditorium in the basement of the new hospital amidst a roomful of survivors and family members and doctors.
The interesting thing you discover about what, for the lack of a better term, I can only term the Cancer Community is that the people you run into at things like cancer seminars are relentlessly cheerful and optimistic. Perhaps it's defensive -- what other option IS there? -- but it's sincere and it's reassuring. It's a reminder that while cancer, once in your family, becomes part of every day of the rest of your life, you can live a full, rewarding life anyway. So you do. Same idea: What other option IS there?
I can imagine that people who aren't touched by cancer get bored by people who are; after all, disease, especially one that's sometimes fatal, is a depressing subject. But even a mundane seminar on a Tuesday night in January brings out people who maintain hope in the face of daunting odds. I find them inspiring. People who take a licking and keep on ticking have that effect on me.
I think I'm supposed to stop writing now -- the speakers are starting, and pecking away on the cell phone keyboard is rude. But if my choice for a Tuesday evening is either "American Idol" or a roomful of fighters who won't allow cancer to get in their way, I know I'd rather be with the fighters. I bet they sing better, too.
ShareIn memoriam:
I knew I had to have one of these laying around. March 24-30, 1979, that's the one. He was 58 then, and the piece inside is a typical soft profile, with no mention of his debilitating back pain but some indication of his resentment that he never got the roles he wanted (he longed to get a role like McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). But he WAS Khan.
And then there was Partick McGoohan:
See what he was up against? "The Prisoner" was a cool show, the "Lost" of its day -- "Lost" crossed with "Twin Peaks," really -- but, man, am I gonna pass up Professor Irwin Corey on "The Dating Game," followed by Bob Eubanks himself, in color? I think not. And, on a regular week, NBC had "The Saint" and "Get Smart," so "The Prisoner" had a tough road. Yet it did well, and long after those other shows have passed into the realm of nostalgia, "The Prisoner" still makes enough people crazy that AMC is doing a remake with Jim Caviezel, which, of course, will not be the same. The original, with cheesy effects, odd wardrobe, and who's who of British sitcom and TV drama stars of the 60's and 70's (Patrick Cargill! Anton Rodgers! Paul Eddington! Peter Bowles! Donald Sinden! Victor Maddern! Leo McKern!), is goping to be impossible to eclipse.
The page 3piece in TV Guide is by Isaac Asimov and too long to run here, and excerpts would be confusing, since there's a long setup and equally long "Prisoner" discussion. The upshot is that TV is full of heroes, "The Prisoner" was conversely about failure ("Failure! That was the key!"), and "This is a new age we live in. The old shibboleths are gone. Let us, all of us together, with Patrick McGoohan showing us the way, backtrack to failure. Let us shamble along the leaden road to obscurity, head sunk low. Let us, all of us together, aspire to the depths, grasp for the ground, hitch our wagon to a rock, and look the other way when opportunity knocks." Asimov figured that the shw's pipularity was because it "cracks the old undemocratic folly of success for the few; because it points the way to comfortable attainment of failure for everybody."
Or maybe because it was a cool, enigmatic story about which people liked to argue. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
ShareI only present to you this 1968 ad because Thelma and Larry look like I feel at the moment:
They look slightly queasy. I AM slightly queasy. And tired. I'm working on this week's "Letter" column and I'm halfway through, but it's late and it'll go out tomorrow, hence Thelma and Larry, Houston's "Noontime Surprise Package." Why, you never know what you'll get from these scamps! Will it be a sullen stare? A blank look? Whatever it is, you know it'll include disembodied heads, wrapped like a present!
I wish ads still looked like this.
ShareThis week's All Access newsletter is about hoping that the radio industry stops thinking that there's only one way to do "talk radio":
I spent a lot of the holiday season listening to talk radio. Oh, I do listen all the time, but when I was off from work, it was different. I was just listening the way "real people" do, popping it on when I got into the car, and listening to it instead of the iPod when I went running. I tried approaching it not as a guy who writes about talk radio or one who used to program talk stations, but just as someone looking to be entertained.
It wasn't as entertaining as I'd hoped. In fact, I was disappointed, because, despite a large number of options, everything seemed to fall into a few categories. It was too easy to predict what I was going to hear. I knew what the conservatives were going to say, I knew what the liberals were going to say. There were no surprises. Everyone was playing the hits. And that's fine, but after a while, I wanted to hear something else. I do care about politics, yes, but I didn't want to hear that stuff when I was trying to just take my mind off the daily routine. But my options were a bunch of angry folks debating politics, or "guy talk" from the "this is how Howard Stern did it, right?" perspective.
I went back to the iPod.
If there's something I'd like to hear from talk radio this year (other than "we're going to start hiring people again instead of laying everyone off"), it would be talk for more than just the political junkies or the guys who get their world view from Maxim magazine. One of the biggest problems I have with talk radio is that the industry defines it in narrow niches. If you're not doing issues talk, you're doing "guy talk." And if you're not doing either of those, why, you must be doing an advice show or some weekend specialty show, because everyone knows that there are no other forms of talk radio. (Yes, I know, there's sports talk. Try living in a city where you aren't a fan of the local teams. My football team's playing for the NFC championship and all I hear around here is Laker talk)
But "talk radio" shouldn't define the format any more than "music radio" defines, you know, music radio. What's the format of your local Kiss or Jack or Mix or whatever? You wouldn't say "Music." Music radio includes Top 40 and Rhythmic and Urban and Jazz and Alternative and Country and any number of other genres. Talk radio doesn't get treated like that, but it should. Whenever I hear that a market doesn't have a need for another FM talk station because "we already have one of those," it shows me that people still think a talk station is a talk station is a talk station. And in some markets, that may be true, because every talk show in town is some shouty guy in a suit and tie railing about politics.
So maybe, as talk migrates to FM and streaming takes hold and there are more frequencies to fill, we'll see more stations trying new ideas. I'm encouraged by the increase in sports radio on FM, but that's only a start. There's room for people talking about pretty much anything; just look at all the morning shows on music radio that play little or no music. A lot of people listen to talk radio, but a lot of people don't, and they perceive "talk radio" as being for old angry guys. But they WOULD listen if you give them something that gives them what they want, not necessarily a different political viewpoint but different topical focus altogether. There's a huge market out there to tap. Who knows? You might get people to switch from their iPods for a few hours a day. It's worth a shot, anyway.
I'm dreaming, of course. I'd love for the FM dial to be loaded with smart, funny people offering a wide range of topics and styles and entertainment. But I'm aware that nobody is going to spend the money to do it right anytime soon. I don't expect miracles. But if you're someone who, a few years down the road, might end up in charge with the next generation of radio management, I wouldn't mind if you printed this out and kept it around for future reference.
In the meantime, if you're doing a show and you want to expand your topical horizons, what better source will you find for that than All Access News-Talk-Sports and the Talk Topics show prep column? (How's THAT for a segue?) This week, you'll find topics like the effect of the economy on beer sales, a real triple-dog dare, the amazing Obama car, why bio-diesel may not have been such a great idea for school buses in Minnesota, proof that parking cops hate you, a girl who can't stop laughing, the "cash for clunkers" proposal, a challenge to a pooper scooper law, a very special toilet seat, a radio in the oven, pay cuts vs. forced unpaid vacation weeks, more retail and newspaper bankruptcies, the Fattest City in America (not Philly!), why not to cut in front of a line at Wal-Mart, the debate over micropayments for news content on the Web, and so much more, like the plane crash and the economy and all the other "real news." Also on the site are "10 Questions With..." KRLD-FM (105.3 The Fan)/Dallas afternoon "Ben and Skin" co-host Jeff "Skin" Wade and the rest of All Access with news, columns, music charts, job listings, and everything else you've come to expect from the industry's top website, all free.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare for a historic event to which I will be paying rapt attention in a few days. It's going to be emotional. Especially if the Eagles defense contains Fitzgerald and Boldin and... What? The inaugural? Oh, right, that, too.
ShareOne of the things I like about browsing through old TV Guides is just looking at the listings and remembering watching those shows when I was a kid. Here's a typical Saturday morning in 1968, August 31 to be exact. The listings are for Houston; I didn't grow up there, but the shows are mostly the same:
Early Saturday mornings always started out with the farm shows. I remember getting up really early on Saturdays -- about 6 or so -- and turning on the big black-and-white Capeheart console TV (with the record player on top!). New York TV had "The Modern Farmer" at that hour; I don't remember anything about the show except the title. Same for "RFD-TV," the name of which lives on as the channel for Imus and "Big Joe's Polka Show."
"Captain Kangaroo" was a staple:
...but I grew out of the Cap'n and Mr. Green Jeans and Tom Terrific very quickly, so by 1968 I was probably watching some local show, maybe Carol Corbett or someone like that, until something more interesting came on. Popeye was a no-go; I never cottoned to him, because it was always the same (Brutus/Bluto kidnaps Olive, Popeye is in peril until chomping some spinach, Popeye saves the day, the end) and because the whole enterprise was disturbing, from the characters' mutated appearance to Popeye's unintelligible muttering. And, let's face it, when Popeye's "nephews" looked exactly like him, it raised serious questions of parentage. Here's one where Popeye and Olive meet the TV industry:
By 1968, Saturday morning TV was already in decline, as the weak round of early shows indicates. "Super 6" was a superhero parody by DePatie-Freling, made by a lot of the old Warner Bros. crew, but it wasn't all that funny. It had a secondary series within the show, "The Brothers Matzoriley," which involved a three-headed stereotype festival. You can see that nightmare, with the "Super 6" opening and theme (by Gary Lewis!) right here:
And then there was "Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles":
Thus began the rapid decline of Hanna-Barbera. But there may be no more 1960's animation than that.
Never liked Casper much, either, although I watched it:
That's the opening to ABC's "New Casper Cartoon Show," which is what the listings are for (this clip dates back a few years before 1968, judging by the ABC intro and Chocks commercial). Casper was too kid-like for me, even at 8.
"Super President" was not Barack Obama. It was also not a Robert Smigel parody. It was another DePatie-Freling mess. There's little trace of it even on the Internet. We're not missing much.
"The Herculoids" involved, well, kinda space stuff, science fiction, created by Alex Toth, who designed Space Ghost, the Super Friends, and (Harvey) Birdman.
The Fantastic Four version here, also designed by Alex Toth for Hanna-Barbera, was the only Fantastic Four with which I was ever acquainted. I never read the comic book, didn't see the movies, never saw the other cartoon versions. Wasn't into that kind of thing. Frankly, I don't even remember this one very well:
I would have watched "The Flintstones" or "Spider-Man" over "Shazzan" back then. This was "Shazzan":
Yeah, I'm not really into that flying camel Middle Eastern jazz. But I did watch this:
Yes, it's that song. You know it, too.
"Young Samson and Goliath"? I don't remember it at all:
I'm not even sure what the hell is going on there.
The "Space Ghost" back then was the Gary Owens, serious version, which I do remember watching:
I prefer George Lowe's version, myself:
I vaguely remember watching "Journey to the Center of the Earth" a few times, but I wasn't really into that, nor was I into "Birdman" (the pre-Harvey one) or "Moby Dick" or "King Kong." I wanted funny. Funny came later in the morning, with "George of the Jungle":
"The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show"... not so much. Same for "Superman/Aquaman"; I was OK with Superman, but Aquaman was lame even before Vincent Chase played him.
"Cool McCool"!:
Yeah, it was lame. And having his voice be a Jack Benny imitation didn't fit the concept at all. But it was created by Bob Kane, who did Batman but also created "Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse." That's a resume.
I did watch the Beatles cartoon. Everybody did:
By 1968, we knew the Beatles were... different. But the cartoon versions stayed the same.
After that, there was only one choice. It wasn't "Johnny Quest." Late Saturday morning, I stayed with ABC for Bugs and Roadrunner and friends, then "American Bandstand." On August 31, 1968, on the Beaumont station, it was bubble gum time with the Ohio Express and the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, while on the Lufkin station, they were celebrating the 11th anniversary of the show (on the network). In studio: The American Breed!
It's interesting that the Houston station didn't carry Dick Clark; they had a long-running local teen dance show hosted by Larry Kane (not the Philadelphia news anchor). That meant it also didn't air "Happening '68," another Dick Clark series. Paul Revere and the Raiders were featured. Here's a battle of the cover bands from that show:
And then it was NBC's Baseball Game of the Week, or time to go up to the Preakness Valley Swim Club to play basketball and eat French Fries and Freez-Pops all afternoon while listening to a ball game on the transistor radio.
Good times, good times.
ShareWe ventured out tonight because old pal Greg did his standup at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa, and just before his set, some guy came out with a few sheets of note paper listing some new jokes he wanted to try.
Turned out that Ray Romano is appearing at one of the inaugural balls, and he had to work out some material for it. The stuff was funny, although he seemed unsure (at one point, thanking the audience for laughing but dismissing the gag as not working). And it's always odd when a standup uses notes, but at least he had an excuse.
So it was a celebrity-studded evening for us, relatively speaking. But we're safely home now, lest we turn into pumpkins at the stroke of 10.
ShareLeave it to the Eagles to ruin a perfectly good weekend.
Okay, it wasn't totally perfect. There was that nagging cold and headache that lingered for much of Saturday and early Sunday. And there was work, which I don't mind that much but takes time. But after the quality time with Fran and the comedy night and the minor victories of getting both MacSpeech Dictate and Windows 7 beta to work on the MacBook Pro, Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid had to go and ruin it all by once again failing to close the deal. McNabb didn't puke on the field this time; in fact, he made some nice plays in the second half, including the long one that Jackson juggled into the end zone, but in the end, the anemic first half and the last, failed drive killed them. And the Arizona Cardinals and their fans, 99% of whom became fans in the last two weeks, are heading to Tampa.
And the Eagles aren't, which liberates me from caring until next season. Plus, the Sixers are on a tear, Villanova is still in the top 25, and the Phillies are still World F'ing Champions. So I can live with this.
No, actually, it still hurts. But that's what I get for being an Eagles fan.
ShareLet's look at a Monday night 43 years ago, from the Cleveland TV Guide:
Prime time started at 7:30, and with it, a tough choice: "The Monkees" or "Gilligan's Island"? I don't remember "Iron Horse," but at that age I think I was watching "The Monkees":
This is a clip from that episode:
There isn't a clip of that "Gilligan" episode on the Net, except for a poorly-done mashup of clips with "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five. By season 3, the show was even lamer than it had earlier been. Meanwhile, "The Monkees" was new, fresh, and a total early-Beatles ripoff. Perfect.
8:00: "I Dream of Jeannie" over "Run, Buddy, Run"; I remember watching "Jeannie" first-run well, and I also remember "Buddy," but I don't remember watching much of its short run. But it had Jack Sheldon!:
After that, it was easy. No way for "Roger Miller" or "Rat Patrol" or "The Road West," whatever that was, or "Felony Squad"; it was Lucy (even the ultra-lame version of the 60's -- hey, it DID have Mr. Mooney!) and Andy (even the lame color episodes). "Peyton Place" was off limits, so it was all about Mr. French and company:
I'll admit this: I didn't really know what was going on with this show, why there was no mother, why some fat British guy was living with them, none of that. I didn't like the show at all.
And by 10:00, I was laying in bed while my parents watched the "10 O'Clock News" in their room, and I listened to the headlines and Stewart Klein's reviews and the sad "Honor Roll" music when they scrolled through the day's war dead. Weird thing to remember, but that's what comes to mind.
ShareI'm a little numb tonight after spending the whole day taking calls and e-mails from people who'd been let go in the Clear Channel bloodbath today, or people letting me know about others who were fired. We're way past the point of cutting fat and muscle; Clear Channel is now sawing clear through bone. And, sadly, this probably isn't the last wave of cuts. It's what you get when someone pays way, way too much for something, then realizes he can't afford the payments. The buyout was pure ego, and by forcing it to happen when the partners wanted to pull out, the company's at the mercy of equity partners who don't want to own the company. They don't care what happens to the radio stations; they just want to reduce costs to as close to zero as possible. And if it means 1,850 people lose their jobs on a single day, and the product is diminished to a noticeable extent, that's irrelevant to them.
And that's not isolated to them, either. But I'll probably revisit all of this in Thursday's column, so I'll hold fire for now while I think of a good way to adapt it to "The Letter" form. Also, I just want to go soak my head after all this.
Was there something else in the news today? Really? You don't say....
ShareDid you see "Lost" tonight? Wasn't it incredible? I liked the part when... um... you know... the guy... like, the fat guy goes, he goes, like...
All right, I didn't see it. I've never seen it. I don't watch "Lost" and I don't feel like I've been missing anything. But I don't feel resentment towards those who never miss an episode and diligently try to figure out the clues as to what it all means, even though by the sound of things it appears that the producers aren't totally sure of that, either. It's kind of like being perpetually in the middle of a season of "24," when you realize that the season wasn't totally mapped out and the writers have painted themselves into a corner and thus start forgetting old characters or plot lines. The viewers sometimes take the plot more seriously than the people in charge, much as Eagles fans devastated by the loss to Arizona had to sit there in shock watching Correll Buckhalter and Asante Samuel celebrate with the Cardinals -- the fans took it harder than the players, because the fans cared more.
So I have no idea what happened tonight. (It's still going on on the east coast; it hasn't started yet locally) No spoilers here, because I don't know anything about who's who or what's what. I couldn't even make anything up, because other than the fat guy (Jorge Garcia, who I remember better from "Becker," of all shows) and Terry O'Quinn and Evangeline Lilly, I couldn't pick anyone from the show out of a lineup, not even the guy who went to my college and whose name I seriously don't know without looking up, which I would do if I cared. I hope the show tonight is everything the fans want it to be. I'll probably be watching "What's My Line?" reruns or maybe a "House" on the DVR. Shows that require a decoder ring to follow are too much for me.
ShareThis week's All Access newsletter is self-explanatory. And, yes, I know, I told you I don't watch "Lost," and that's still true. I heard the opening dialogue here in a clip on Deminski and Doyle's show and it was too perfect to pass up:
"The only way to save the island, John, is to get your people back here, the ones that left."
"How do I do that?"
"You"re going to have to die, John."
I heard that exchange from this week's episode of "Lost" and it reminded me of radio, especially after this week's events. Let"s see, the island is radio, the people who need to return are the people who have been let go, and... all right, that "die" part is a little harsh, but you get the idea.
Tuesday's layoff festival brought to mind a lot of issues, each of which could occupy a full column. But I don't really want this thing to become too soaked in misery, so I'll summarize what I've been thinking about the layoffs and the industry and get it all out of the way so I can go back to Happy Fun Radio Party next week.
(Sure, that'll happen.)
First, as I've said before, what's happening now isn"t just the result of mismanagement or increased competition. It all goes back to when radio went from being a business to being an investment. When the focus moved from sustainable growth to maximizing quarterly profits and making investors happy at any cost, a day like Tuesday became inevitable. No business grows forever, and no business could support the kind of inflated prices the investors paid for stations and groups in the last decade or so. The bubble had to burst, and when it did, and revenues shrank while the debt payments remained, the investors were going to call all the shots.
And they are. That's why the cuts seemed to be independent, in some cases, of any critical analysis of the actual value of the employees and the stations and the business. It wasn"t important whether you ultimately brought more value to the company than you were being paid; it didn't matter if you offered to take a pay cut. The choice for the investors was clear, your salary vs. zero. Zero won.
At some point, having exhausted the possibility of cutting costs to the bone, radio will end up back in the hands of people who want to operate the business as radio rather than as an ATM. Until then, we'll have to deal with the influence of people who really just want to get their investments back. While we wait, I'm hopeful that they'll come to understand a few things that got lost along the way:
1. Some of the cuts are hurting the product. Squeezing the value of 1,850 salaries for this quarter and the next won't get you through the following quarters. And you can't cut forever. You have to at some point consider what you need to do to maintain the product, to maintain viability for the day that the economy starts to rebuild and advertising revives. Making the product less palatable in a more competitive environment isn't a good long-term plan. Of course, the investors have to care about the long-term for this to be important to them.
2. Do not underestimate the importance of news. Yes, you can get news online and on TV and even, believe it or not, in a newspaper (you know, those big pieces of paper with pictures and big words). That's not the point. A strong news department can define a talk station in a way that marketing can never do. How do you get the image as THE place to turn when something big happens" You can't do it by totally outsourcing. And if you have that image already, you don't want to reduce your staff to the point where a big local news story breaks and you can't deliver.
And for the folks who find themselves out of a job, a few reminders:
1. Now would be a good time to make sure you contact everyone in your network. It's always a good time to do that, early and often. This is not the time to be shy or embarrassed. While "you haven't worked in radio until you've been fired at least once" might be an overstatement, it... no, come to think of it, that's not an overstatement. Let people know you"re available. There's no shame in getting fired by a radio station.
2. Why, yes, this IS a bad time to find a new job, in any industry, but especially in radio. And the competition for the jobs that are out there is fierce. On that cheery note, it should also be stated that there ARE going to be jobs -- maybe not with that company, but someplace -- and somebody's gotta get them. Might as well be you. Just be prepared for it to take a while -- maybe months, maybe years -- and decide now if you"d be willing to move to a new place or take a lower salary, or both, to stay in the game. Meanwhile....
3. Ask yourself how much you love what you've been doing. If the answer is "a lot," keep going for it. If you hesitate, rethink that. In either case, prepare Plan B, either for temporary income or for a new career.
4. Have faith, in yourself if not in radio.
I'm going to stop it right there for now, because the column's too long as it is and because this will, most likely, come up again. Also, as bad as it was and as scary as it may be for everybody in the industry, most of you are still employed. Whether you"re working or looking or secure or not, All Access is here for you with pretty much everything you need to get by in the business, from show prep in the News-Talk-Sports section's Talk Topics column -- let's dispense with the samples this week because we"re in epic word-count territory here -- to job listings and the latest industry news, plus the Industry Directory (answering questions like "who's the PD at that station?" or "what's her e-mail address?") and lots more. This week's "10 Questions With..." interview is with KRLD-FM (105.3 The Fan)/Dallas' Ben Rogers of the afternoon Ben and Skin Show, so go and read that, too.
Next week, I hope we can talk about something else. Hope... seems like I heard that word someplace else this week. Whatever. Beats the alternative.
ShareAfter a week like this, I got nothing but...
...a YouTube dump!
Bugs Bunny in Turkish! (Check out Elmer's voice):
Kowalski Sausage!:
Crusader Rabbit!:
Mid-1960s WBZ-Boston TV spots!:
Lloyd Thaxton! Marty Allen! Dean Jones! Stu Gilliam! Meredith MacRae! All in "Funny You Should Ask"!:
A 1967 "American Bandstand" Rate-a-Record! The Wordd vs. Frankie Laine!:
And the best one -- Clay Cole twists like a man with severe sexual dysfunction in a clip from one of my favorite horrible bad embarrassing movies, "Twist Around the Clock"!:
How do you top THAT? Can't.
ShareAnother YouTube dump, with a little bit of a British accent:
"The Avengers," BEFORE it was like you remember; MacNee was second-billed to Ian Hendry at this stage (1961)!:
A 1962 ad for the Studebaker Lark Daytona! From "Mister Ed"!:
Channel 13 New York on its opening night (9/16/62) as a noncommercial public TV station, introduced by Edward R. Murrow himself (with cigarette) and that owl logo that scared me as a small child over his shoulder!:
Working at the BBC in 1962, in a musical, "mod" manner!:
A BBC continuity announcement about programming dealing with the Kennedy Assassination from that day:
BBC2 1966 weather, the beginning of "Late Night Lineup" with guest panelists Spencer Davis plus Paul Jones of Manfred Mann, and the closedown!:
I have no idea why any of this fascinates me, but... it does. All of it.
ShareAah, whatever. Not into anything today. Here's some "Kiddie A-Go-Go" for you, from 1967 Chicago:
Enjoy.
ShareMay 13, 1962:
The show itself was a classic Nat Hiken comedy, and, yes, I can still sing the theme song, which, of course, refers to New York's international airport as Idlewild. But check out how RFK got tacked onto the show for National Police Week. Nice thought, but kind of a comedy buzzkill.
There are other Car 54 episodes on YouTube, but not this one.
1964, and Sivad, the "Monster of Ceremonies" on WHBQ-TV Memphis' "Fantastic Features," hosts a rundown of shows in a special pitch to advertisers. Note the distinct southern accent obscured partly by fake fangs and an attempt to do a Dracula-type delivery. (And "CAr 54" is mentioned -- it's Thursday nights at 6!) Bobby Vinton shows up singing "Roses are Red," and George Klein's in it, too, hosting "Talent Party" interviewing Pete Fountain. An Elvis Presley special gets featured, with the show hitting a 45 rating and 76 share. Some of the clips in this, like the ones from "Playhouse," are probably the only video left of shows that thousands of people watched every day 45 years ago:
And while we're at it, here's M.T. Graves, Charlie Baxter hosting horror movies on WCKT-TV Miami in the 60's:
ShareNo time tonight, so here's some hockey violence for your entertainment.
The Rangers and Maple Leafs -- Eddie Shack -- in a 1959 hockey fight:
An out-of-control 1964 Black Hawks-Leafs fight with too many memorable players (fined $20 each). And Eddie Shack!:
And a WHA fight -- Bobby Hull and the Winnipeg Jets vs. the Chicago Cougars. No Eddie Shack:
Finally, a junior hockey game breaks out into a brawl... in warmups!:
Admit it, this is what you want from a hockey game.
ShareWhat would I have been watching on a random Wednesday in 1968? This is a Houston TV Guide from March 20, 1968, so we'll have to figure in Central Time. Here we go:
Prime time started at 6:30 Central. Before that, it was cartoons and Mike Douglas. On this evening, 6:30 was not going to be "The Virginian" -- I was not a fan of westerns. I don't think I ever watched "The Virginian." I don't even know what the premise was. I guess it was about a guy from Virginia. Or a virgin gunslinger.
No, for me, it was a tossup between this:
And this:
Watch the avengers-4x02 - The Gravediggers.avi in Entertainment Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Okay, the second isn't the actual episode listed here, but Diana Rigg beats Linda Thorson any day. I remember watching both "Lost in Space" and "The Avengers." Today, I prefer the latter and cringe at the former, but when I was 8, robots still had an attraction. Not Mr. Smith, though. He always creeped me out.
No contest at 7:30. The Clampetts, always. Can't embed 'em, but click here for part one of the 1962 pilot, with different music covering up the "Ballad of Jed Clampett" (public domain video, not public domain music).
8:00: I never liked Bob Hope specials. This show wouldn't have swayed me -- an 8 year old isn't looking for Lou Rawls and Arnold Palmer, and I was a little young for Jill St. John. Bob Hope just struck me as corny. It was only later in life that I realized how he was unfunny, too. (Well, okay, he could be amusing in the 30s and 40s, but the specials just weren't funny) Instead, I watched one of the Greatest TV Shows Ever:
As I've explained before, I'm not kidding. Surreality at its best. Plus, Arnold Ziffel!
I do remember watching "He and She." I know today that it's considered a lost gem and a few years ahead of its time, but all I remember from it was Jack Cassidy being oily and Hamilton Camp and Kenneth Mars being goofy. On this night, they repeated the pilot, which had Charles Lane guesting, and Charles Lane was always welcome.
9:00: Jack Benny or Jonathan Winters? Probably would have gone with Jack, primarily because he had Johnny and Lucy (as a stripper?) and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Ben Blue, I could do without -- the pantomime stuff never did anything for me. But I loved Jack Benny. Plus, a cameo from Don Drysdale!
It's also interesting that as late as 1968, some stations were picking up Carson in progress. I know that when arson joined the show, it started at 11:15 and a lot of stations joined it at 11:30, so many that Carson eventually refused to come on at the earlier time and Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson co-hosted the first fifteen minutes so Carson's monologue wouldn't be preempted. By 1968, it ran 11:30-1. His guest that night was S.I. Hayakawa, who later became a Senator and who was famous at the time for yanking the wires from speakers on a van at a student strike rally at San Francisco State.
But by then, I'd be asleep. Not even Regis Philbin on the Joey Bishop show could keep me up.
Oh, and on channel 39 late at night -- that "Fun" with Anita Martini reminded me that she was a pioneering female sportscaster, the first to gain access to a men's pro sports locker room. But that came seven years later.
ShareThis week's mercifully short All Access newsletter is about the fair-weather folks who tend to populate the radio business, and every other business:
How's your network these days? Not the one that provides your top-of-the-hour news, but the one with your friends and acquaintances and business associates. I bring this up because of some things I hear from people out there on both sides of the employment situation. People who are unemployed complain that they can't get calls returned or e-mails answered. Those on the other side say that they're getting calls from people who need help now but who, when they were riding high, never returned calls. Yesterday's I'm-not-taking-that-call is today's BFF, and vice versa.
Of course, it's annoying and hypocritical for people to be buddy-buddy with you one day and absent the next. But it's human nature, and it's the way things have always been in radio. I've been there. When I was a major market PD, everyone was a pal. The moment I got fired, the invisible wall went up and a lot of those pals stopped taking my calls. And when I was back in the game, the pals came back, and -- surprise! -- they wanted jobs, or show clearances, or something else.
The point, I suppose, is that you need to maintain relationships in good times and bad, understanding that some folks are only going to be around when you don't need them (or when they need you, which tends to be the same time). There are more tools with which to keep yourself networked, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and in a world where connections are everything, it's smart to make those connections BEFORE you need them. Do your best to take and return calls, answer e-mail, and don't be that person who only gets in touch when you need something. You might find that the guy whose call you blew off when you were employed will remember that when you're not.
Oh, and if you DO get one of those calls from someone who may not have done you right in the past, take it anyway. If they friend you on Facebook, confirm it. You never know who will come through for YOU someday. And life's too short to hold grudges for too long.
(Of course, intentions are one thing, and reality is another, which is my way of issuing a blanket mea culpa for being way, way behind on answering my e-mail and calls. I get a lot of e-mail, and I get behind because... no, there's no excuse. I will do my best to catch up. Really. Stop looking at me like that)
While you're waiting for me to respond to that e-mail from last August, you might want to do some show prep, and that's when you need All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics column ("Trying To Come Up With A Better Name Since 1999"). This week's pile of topics includes such hits as the Great Zombie Invasion of Austin, the Mysterious Odor of St. Louis, the Mysterious Odor of South Carolina, the Not-So-Mysterious Odor of Rod Blagojevich, bad friends, car chases, various stimuli, deadly orange missiles, human billboards, donated kidneys, missing cookies, shrinking postal service, layoffs, recalls, and the Bacon Explosion, plus many stories about the economy, in case you're feeling particularly emo, and we'll be watching the Super Bowl in case enything remotely topic-worthy happens. There's also "10 Questions With..." WSKY/Gainesville host/producer/APD/Philly guy Jay Anderson and the rest of All Access with industry news, columns, charts, job listings, and more, and, as always, it's free.
Now, I'm going to get right to those e-mails and phone messages I've been meaning to answer since... hey, is that another car chase on TV? Excuse me.
ShareIt's Friday. Here's a word from our sponsors:
The Boss' Wife for Atlantic Transmissions!:
Hey, where'd everybody go? They've gone to Betson's!:
Bamberger's, WCAU-TV as a CBS O&O, and James Karen, the Pathmark Guy, plus Deborah Knapp before she married a Congressman and moved to Texas!:
We save money at Two Guys... naturally!:
A frightening Julie Newmar for Korvettes!:
Gimbels, with a cassette Walkman for $99.99!:
ShareIs there anything more entertaining than former Four Aces singer Al Albert and a 3 year old singing "Goody Goody"? You be the judge, and Lord help you:
BONUS: Little Christopher, age 5, singing "I'm Henry the 8th, I Am":
They don't make television like this anymore. That's a good thing.
ShareThis page contains all entries posted to PMSimon.com in January 2009. They are listed from oldest to newest.
December 2008 is the previous archive.
February 2009 is the next archive.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
