The Heat is On

As I sat here to write this, I glanced up at the thermometer readout; Noon and 84 degrees already! Yup that cool snap we had last week with “The Wedge” is over!! “The Wedge” by the way is a phenomenon where a low pressure center gets trapped between the Appalachian Mountains and the Bermuda High. It brings cooler winds from the north to northeast, cloudy skies and a little rain to the Carolinas.

This past week, I’ve been taking advantage of “The Wedge” to get out of the house for a brisk walk up and down my street every day. Today might be a little more of a challenge. With me getting all these steps in, my Fitbit thinks that I’m some kind of stud and wants me to double my daily goal of steps. I’m not falling for it; I know that the sweat factor is gonna double anyway.

Oh yeah – there is one more thing. With the heat, the mosquitoes are out. My neighborhood mosquitoes are bad boys; I can’t out-walk them. I can outrun them, but not for more than half a block before my arthritis kicks in.

Arthritis is one of the main reasons I’m trying to get serious about getting more exercise. My doctor tells me that now I’ve retired, I no longer have an excuse not to do ½ hour every other day. Did I mention that she was a star basketball player for the University of South Carolina and is a member of the SC Athletic Hall of Fame? She is not gonna take any excuse from me, so I’d better get with the program.

I think I’m beginning to see the positive effects of the walking. My hips start hurting farther down the path than they used to. Once the pain level gets lower, then I’ll respond to the plaintive cries of my Fitbit and increase my goal. Don’t get too excited, Mr. Fitbit, I ain’t gonna double it like you want. At my age, moderation is the key. And it won’t get cooler for a long time.

I know you are thinking that I should join a gym and exercise inside. But not just yet; I have a membership in a gym but going to the gym is listed as a “high risk” activity during the coronavirus age by our state health department. So I’ll wait for a vaccine or herd immunity, thank you very much.

The onset of the perspiration season is going to make me make a couple of changes. I’ve been walking in the mid to late afternoon after completing the projects I’ve set up for the day. I think that will have to change to mornings or mid day at the latest.

The other thing that will have to change is my walking attire. It’s been cool enough to walk in the t-shirt and blue jeans that have been my pandemic attire for the past few months. I’d just pop on my WUSC-FM cap and pop out the front door. But I’m beginning to come back just a little too “dewy” to keep doing that much longer. So I’ll just pop off the jeans and don a pair of my old exercise shorts from my days teaching aerobics at the YMCA. I’ll be the one out there rocking the 80s and 90s exercise fashion. Please don’t laugh.

If things get much warmer, and they will, I just might bring back another hot afternoon tradition from my youth. I might drag the hose off the reel in my front yard, attach the sprinkler and play in the spray a while. If you happen to drive by, there is nothing to see here, keep moving. Oh MY!

Never Say Never

Sean Connery stated in 1971 that he would never again play the role of James Bond. But in 1983 he played Bond again at the age of 52 in the movie “Never Say Never Again.” I guess, that should have been a warning to me to never say that I would never do something. There is a parallel saying that no longer applies to me; “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Oh yes, while we are doing old sayings, I’ll add one more; “Half a loaf is better than none.”

From the very beginning I’ve believed that live radio was the only way to fly, and my on air career has been mostly that. I guess the thing I loved the most about live radio was being “out there on the ragged edge of disaster” as one of my old flight instructors was fond of saying. Live radio is still my strongest favorite broadcasting medium. There was no “do-over” in live radio. When you say something, it is out there, and nothing can bring it back. If you were late for work, everybody knew it. If you flubbed a word, everybody heard it.

My first radio programs, back in 1963 on WUSC-AM were pre recorded as that was how the new DJs got trained. But they were “live to tape” and never edited. Well, I must admit that I retaped my first show over several times but I soon learned to let minor flubs pass as it was too painful to record a two hour show over again because of a mistake in the last announcement. Besides, there was not enough studio time available. We usually had a three hour time slot to do a two hour show. So live to tape it was.

When I completed my training and sat down at the console for my first live show the butterflies in my stomach were as big as “Mothra” in the old Japanese monster movies. But the rush of the experience was so strong that I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was hooked!

Some of my favorite stories, often told in conversations with other old DJs revolve around things that happened in live radio. Like the time that the AP news copy said “snot” instead of “snow” or the time the Hells Angels came past my radio booth down at Doug Broome’s Drive In to request “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf. As usual, the conversations turned to the changes in the radio business, the rise in automation and the evil of all evils; voice tracking.

When I became involved in online radio some 13 years ago all I did was live shows. But I recorded each and every show I did as I did them. As a result my “air check” library takes up nearly a terabyte of disk space on my backup and network drives. A couple of years after I started I got a request from another online station for copies of my Monday evening shows and that began my syndicated show. It was all good. Live, live to tape and syndication in one big package.

A short while later, one of the stations asked if I could produce a show exclusively for them and I took on recording shows again for the first time in 40 years. I agreed to it with the stipulation of doing it “live to tape” and I would not edit out the mistakes. To my surprise, it felt almost like I was doing it live, something that would have been impossible due to other commitments and the differences in time zones. The one thing that I could no longer do was take live requests and play their songs immediately. We old school DJs love doing that. I still take requests on these shows but tell the listener that I’ll play their song the next week.

But there was this big bugaboo – a “no no” that I still would not do; Voice Tracking. Voice tracking is the process of recording DJ patter that would be placed between songs by an automation system. Voice tracking replaced live DJs decades ago on many stations because it was cheaper and the bean counters were always looking to improve the bottom line.

I could always tell early voice tracked stations because the announcements were always “dry” and fit neatly between the end of a song and the beginning of the next with no overlap. Eventually they figured out a way to overlap the announcer and the music. But, when recording the voice track the announcer could not hear the music so there was no timing with or interacting with the song ending. It was all too neat and too artificial to me.

Finally, voice tracking systems allowed the DJ to hear the music that would be playing under the announcement as he or she recorded the track. So now it is not as apparent as it used to be.

I still felt that voice tracking was not for me and I continued to say never.

A few months ago, a friend of mine purchased a rural AM radio station that was about to go dark and leave a community without any radio service at all. I was all in; I asked him if there was anything I could do to help keep this 70 year old radio station on the air. His response was to ask me if I could do a weekend shift for him. I was anticipating that there was a process where I could log into the station and download the commercials and other production elements and do the show live. To my surprise there was no infrastructure at the station that could accomplish that but he offered me their voice tracking solution.

So there it was. It was voice tracking or nothing. I was faced with my arch enemy. Reluctantly I agreed to it because I really believe that community should have its own radio voice.

I am so glad that my first show over there was not recorded because I was pretty awful. I was stiff and unsteady and unable to make the VT software do what I wanted it to do. Slowly but surely I became more familiar with the software’s limitations and developed ways to work with it better. I began to take on more shows over there filling in for the DJs that could not do their shows on a given day or week. I was back to being a part timer, my first gig in radio.

A couple of weeks ago, the boss asked if I could take on his afternoon drive slot and let him take over the weekends. By that time I had become pretty comfortable with the system and found that it was possible to voice track a three hour show in less than an hour. So I agreed. I’m not completely at ease with the restrictions of voice tracking but I’m learning more how to work around them every day.

So this old dog has learned a new trick. Now if I can just get the override levels to my liking, I’ll be a happy guy. Oh MY! (Woof Woof!)

What do you think?

The unofficial start of summer is upon us. Memorial Day is tomorrow and all over the country people can start wearing white. Everywhere but here in the Deep South, where we wear white all year. Down here, we start wearing seersucker this weekend. Just to be different.

But this year, with Coronavirus, things are a bit different. At least I hope that people are maintaining social distancing. I know, restrictions are being loosened but the virus is still amongst us and is still deadly to at risk folks. Just ask the folks in eldercare, Montgomery Alabama and Rio de Janeiro.

Folks I know that live on the coast of South Carolina are reporting heavy traffic and I am seeing posts of beaches that look pretty crowded, even taking into account that long lenses make people appear to be closer together than they really are.

But I’ve noticed something this Memorial Day Weekend that makes my heart sing. I don’t know if it is because of the slower pace of life in COVID-19 is giving folks more time to ponder the meaning of Memorial Day or what. But I’m seeing a lot of folks discuss the real meaning of Memorial Day.

Let me preface what I am going to say by stating that I highly honor the veterans of this great country, and those who are currently serving in the armed forces. I served in the Navy from 1963 through 1969. I believe these groups of heroes deserve their day. But Memorial Day is not that day.

The Wikipedia definition of Memorial Day sums it up nicely; “Memorial Day (previously, but now seldom, called Decoration Day) is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who had died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The holiday is now observed on the last Monday of May, having been observed on May 30 from 1868 to 1970.”

Back in 1964 Memorial Day was celebrated on Saturday May 30th as this was before the day was normalized to the last Monday of May. I remember getting up early that day and donning my Naval ROTC uniform to march in the Memorial Day Parade. It was a clear warm day and I knew that I was going to drench my second set of Khaki’s that week, having worn my other khaki uniform the Thursday before; drill day. So instead of carrying my uniform over to the cleaners that day, I waited until after the Memorial Day parade to carry them both over.

I distinctly remember thinking of those sailors who died in the North Atlantic from U-boat torpedoes or in the South Pacific Kamikaze attacks as I marched. I remember thinking of our soldiers who died in North Africa, Italy and Europe. Stories my uncle told me about the guys he knew who died while serving under George S Patton in those bloody campaigns. I remember thinking that this was THEIR day, the day we remembered THEM.

That Memorial Day was my second parade in a Navy uniform in Columbia, The first was on November 11, 1963 a Monday. That day I was proud to honor the living veterans we had amongst us. That day I thought about my Aunts and Uncles who wore the uniform during WWII and Korea. Vietnam was still mostly in the future.

The day we honor our active servicemen is Armed Forces Day. In the United States, Armed Forces Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in May. It falls near the end of Armed Forces Week, which begins on the second Saturday of May. First observed on May 20, 1950, the day was created on August 31, 1949 to honor Americans serving in the five U.S. military branches – the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. THIS is the day we should be honoring our brave service men and women who are actively protecting our country. You may say that this holiday is not as prominent as the other two. I say back that it is up to us to make it so. Give our servicemen and women THEIR day.

Never while marching in Memorial Day or Veteran’s day parades did I think of being honored but rather honoring others. I would have been uncomfortable with that thought. I have asked active service people over the years and they all felt the same; that each group deserves their own day.

I’m glad to see this year that others apparently feel the same way. I saw a Meme on Facebook a couple of days ago that showed a Veteran standing at the Vietnam Wall on the National Mall in Washington. He has his hand on the wall, and there is a ghostly image on the other side of the wall holding his hand up to the Vet’s hand. On his side of the wall there was a caption saying “Memorial Day is his day!” the caption on the Vet’s side of the was said “Veteran’s Day is his day!” The Meme would have been perfect if it showed active service men and women observing this with the caption “Armed Forces Day is their day!” Oh MY!

Really, 2020, REALLY?!?

First a 100 year Pandemic, then killer hornets and now Tropical Storm Arthur is going to threaten the North Carolina Coast! And we are still two weeks from Hurricane Season! I just knew that I should have liked and forwarded that Facebook Message that I got in January!

I mean, what’s up with 2020 anyway? I’m ready to ask for a refund on this bad boy already. I picked a great time to retire from my IT gig last December. In two days it will have been five months since I turned in my keyfob and parking pass. I still don’t have any idea what retired life is like. And if this is it! I’m going to look for a job! I didn’t sign up for stir crazy. Just plain crazy is ok but cabin fever is not cutting it.

I know, I don’t have any reason to complain. A lot of folks out there have it much worse than I do. I don’t have to worry about not working and having to pay the mortgage. The house is paid for and the monthly retirements checks are coming in like clockwork. But still, I feel cheated out of my retirement.

I had envisioned weeks filled with my radio shows, lunches with friends, maybe walks along the river and trips to places that I have been postponing for the last few busy years.

Radio has been the saving grace so far this retirement. Two big changes one positive and one negative have occurred.

The negative one is that it has been 10 weeks since I did my last live show on WUSC-FM on March 9th the first week of Spring Break. I was already to come in and do a show the following week on the 16th despite the fact that the UofSC extended spring break in order to keep a live voice on the air. But the university made the decision to move to on-line courses for the remainder of the semester and closed down campus for a deep cleaning. So I temporarily moved the show to my online station Our Generation Radio. My listeners who are on Facebook have made the move with me. But there are a number of regular listeners on WUSC-FM who are not on Facebook who have not discovered our temporary home.

The positive change; is picking up a new gig on KLYC-AM Crusin’ 1260 in McMinnville Oregon. I didn’t have time to do a full time five day per week show there, so I have become their weekend help with shows on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The station’s other jocks are a wild and crazy bunch and the camaraderie with them almost makes up for the one with the other jocks at WUSC-FM which has been moved to online instead of face to face. I still miss those in-studio handoffs, though!

One of the fun things about doing these remote shows on distant stations is to become part of the communities in which they are located. McMinnville is in Yamhill County, a mainly rural setting south of Portland north northwest of the State Capital of Salem. I’m getting to know my way around the area which includes a stretch of I-5 the western most major interstate, that is the analog of I-95 on the east coast. Like South Carolina, place names have unique pronunciations; my favorite so far is Wilamina. That rhymes with Myna as in Myna Birds not “mee nah” like most women who have the name pronounce it. The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum is a big local attraction there at the McMinnville Airport. Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose” is housed there.

KLYC is dedicated to being a positive force in the community life of Yamhill County, much like many of the old stations that we all grew up with back in the day. They even have a gardening and agriculture show which airs just prior to my Saturday morning show there. I really enjoy hearing them talk about the growing seasons and when it is time to plant and fertilize. I can tell you that the timing of the seasons is really different than here in SC. Every time I listen to the end of the “To The Root Of It” show I am reminded of the old “Bob Bailey” agricultural show that we aired on WIS-TV at 6:45 AM each weekday morning back in the 60s and 70s. I have kidded with the managers and other DJs there that we need a “Swap and Shop” show. I wonder if Dottie Lloyd is still available.

One of the other things that interesting to me is the different approaches to the pandemic. Every community where my shows air has initiated “stay at home” orders and all but one are beginning to relax them now. But it is hard to track the differences with all of them. So on many of my shows, I don’t really get into the lockdowns; instead I concentrate on the music and feel good things that are happening.

The future may be uncertain, but the main constant in my shows is the oldies. For my audiences and for me, they represent happier times filled with sock hops, crusin’ and hamburgers, fries and shakes at the local drive in restaurant. Why am I all of a sudden craving a vanilla root beer float from A&W? Oh MY!

A Radio DJ’s Covid Enhanced Vivid Dream

As the pandemic plays out, I see a lot of people reporting vivid dreams. I for one have had quite a few of these in the past few weeks. The most recurring one is that I’m wandering around the Horseshoe on the UofSC campus looking for a final exam. And of course, I am not prepared for it.

I’ve had this dream before, many times but in the age of the Coronavirus it has stepped up its game. Instead of being in the warmth of a spring day, it is in the middle of winter and I’m struggling with a hat, scarf, gloves and a London Fog Trench coat. I keep dropping my books on the brick pathway and have to take off my gloves so I can pick them up. When I bend over, my hat falls off and my scarf slips off my neck and piles up on the bricks. You get the picture, it takes me forever to get it all together and once I do, I can only take a few steps before I have to repeat the process.

The class in question is usually my History 101 class which was taught by Dr. Coolidge in the big auditorium on the first floor of Davis College. There were over 100 students in that class and I always sat near the back of that cavernous room. The reason for that was that I was habitually late for class. I had just started working the All-Night Satellite at WCOS and had just enough time to get off work at 7 AM, get home and wolf down some breakfast before the 9 AM class started. I think this is the reason my psyche picked on this particular class. I have yet to make it to that final exam in that dream.

There is one recurring dream of which I have been anticipating the “COVID-19” episode. I call it “THAT DREAM”.

“THAT DREAM” is the one that is talked about by all the old school radio DJs that I know. We often talk about it in gathering such as the Slightly Legendary Old Broadcasters (SLOB) breakfasts. We all have similar versions. We are on the air live at one of our old stations. In my case, I’m at the Western Electric Board in the Master Control Room of WCOS on the second floor of the Cornell Arms Apartment Building on the Corner of Pendleton and Sumter Streets in Columbia SC. I’m new, so my boss Woody Windham is sitting in the production control room watching me through the glass. All of a sudden, the song on the air is ending and I have nothing queued up; no jingle, no commercial cart and no record picked out to play next. I’m forced to open up the microphone and ad-lib while I search for the commercial cart. Alas, it is not in the easily reachable wire rack in front of me, and I’m forced to kick back the air check to reach the carousel rack behind the cart machines. As I do so, my headphones are ripped off my head as the short cord reaches its limit. At the same time, at the other end of the headphone cord the plug pulls out of the jack and it all falls to the linoleum tile with a huge crash. I can tell that the crash was heard loudly on the air because the VU meter on the board pegged at full volume. Without the headphones I’m deaf to what is on the air, and I can’t easily get connected because I just accidentally kicked the loose headphone under the audio board as I located the cart and jammed it in the player and started it. With the mic off now, I can find a record, cue it up but I have to do a cold announcement to start it because I still can’t hear anything with my headphones on the floor.

With the music finally playing I can now retrieve the Tripp headphones off the floor and put them back on. At that time I notice the expression on Woody’s face as he face-palms wondering how did he ever hire such a clutz.

So you can imagine just how much I was anticipating the COVID enhanced version of this dream. It finally happened on Friday night and it was not a disappointment. I had applied for a combination on-air / engineering job at WIS Radio which was noted for its smooth professional jocks with a no – nonsense approach to their shows. They were satisfied with my engineering experience and decided that I would do a live audition for the on-air side of the job. I was sent out to their remote broadcast booth in a restaurant somewhere in Irmo to do a show. When I opened the door to the booth, I was greeted by an old rotary pot grey monster of a board that looked something like the old Collins Board I had used in the past. I say “something like” because none of the controls were where I remembered them and nothing was labeled. So I had just a couple of minutes to figure out what was what. The cart machines had openings only a tall as a CD player, so I couldn’t play the commercials. The turntables were older than the ones that I had at WCOS and it looked like the tone arms would destroy any record that was played on them. The microphone was not on a boom but instead was hand held and resembled a Shure SM 58. Yikes, I would need to operate the console with one hand and hold the mic with the other.

The management of the restaurant was super happy to see me and wanted to know if I needed anything. So I ordered a hot dog with mustard, onion and chili, a large Coke and a slice of strawberry pie. The food was delivered just as I started the show with a record on the right turntable. I got tied up paying the waitress and the song ran out as she left the booth. I grabbed an album and slapped it down on the left turntable, right on top of the whole strawberry pie the waitress had left on it as the song on the right turntable faded out. I grabbed the microphone in my left hand which was now coated with strawberries and whipped cream. What a sticky mess. I flipped on the microphone switch just as the wind screen on the microphone popped off and I was staring at the naked guts of the still working Shure in my other hand.

Needless to say the show proceeded to go downhill from there and pretty soon there was a line of cars filled with people who came down to see my on air struggle in person. As the show finally mercifully came to an end, I could see the station’s program manager and the owner of the restaurant approaching the booth. I just knew that any chance I had of working there was gone. But they were both beaming; the restaurant had the best night ever in the history of their business because of all the people coming by to see the disaster in the making. The program director told me that the ratings were out of the roof and that he wanted me to do the show full time in addition to my full time engineering duties. And one more thing, I was not to fix or replace any of the equipment in the booth, they wanted the show to be the same disaster every weeknight from then on; thus perpetuating my agony. Can you say “Groundhog Day?”

See what I mean about the COVID version of “THAT DREAM” did not disappoint. To set the record straight, I never had to apply for the Chief Engineer’s job at WIS-Radio, I was promoted from the engineering staff at WIS-TV. And I never had to audition for on the air over there, that came to me from the “other duties as required” clause of my job description. When the program director at WIS Radio found out I had air experience he asked me to fill in from time to time when the DJs on the staff couldn’t do their shows. There was never a remote booth at a restaurant somewhere in Irmo and the equipment in the WIS-Radio master control room on the banks of the Saluda River always behaved for me. If not, I knew where I kept my screwdrivers on the workbench in the next room. Oh MY!

Week 8

Tomorrow morning will be the 8th week since my last live show on WUSC-FM on March 9th. The station remains locked down on automation due to the COVID-19 closure of the University of South Carolina. That date is significant to me because it marks the beginning of my social distancing. Aside from trips to get groceries and household supplies or to pick up take-out food orders, and one trip to Lowes to pick up some flowers, the cars have been sitting in the driveway wondering what happened.

Two months of missing lunches with friends, or visiting the folks at the office have taken their toll. I still don’t know how it feels to be retired because I know this is not normal. But I’m getting a little stir crazy.

One of the annual events I missed this year was DJ’ing the annual British Car Club show. This event shares the infield at the old Columbia Speedway with Tartan Day South, the premiere Scottish Games event in the state. I thoroughly enjoyed arriving shortly after dawn and setting my gear up and spinning tunes into the wind. Since the event lasted 6 hours, there were times when I left the computer in Auto-DJ mode and walked over to the porta-potties or over to the food tent for lunch.

There is a unique sound to music being played over a PA system in open air. One of the most striking aspects of that is when you are at some distance from the speakers; the music takes on an ethereal feel, fading in and out as if you were listening to a distant AM station with the skip varying. I loved that, because then I could see how folks were interacting with the music. I was not surprised if I caught a sexagenarian with a bandanna and a white beard singing along. I am always surprised when I see a young 20-something mom dancing with her baby in her arms and not missing a word of the lyrics of a song that has to be 40 years older than she is.

This morning as I was walking into my studio/office to write this blog, I caught that distinctive sound. “What!” I thought, “Somebody is throwing a party in the middle of COVID-19?” When the wind blew exactly the right way I could determine that the music and the language was Spanish, not English. And it all was much too loud to be a family gathering. Curiosity got the most of me, so I fired up the GMC to find out what was going on. I quickly determined that the source was not in the neighborhood so I ventured out to Garners Ferry Road. Sure enough that happy sound was coming from a parking lot church service from the store front church a mile away from the house. There were more cars in that parking lot than the one in front of the Lowes down the street.

My Yamaha 300 watt P/A system with a pair of Peavey PR-12 speakers covers a football field filled with thousands of people nicely with the volume turned up only a quarter of the way. In fact with all the outdoor shows that I have done I’ve never had to turn up that amplifier more than a third. But at even full volume, I doubt that it could throw sound a mile like this one was doing. I couldn’t get close enough to the storefront to see what they were using. It was definitely in the rock concert class. By using the store front as a backdrop the set up created a perfect concert shell aimed directly at my house.

I just realized that the last two paragraphs describing a parking lot church service speak volumes about just how isolated I am these days. I’m not complaining, mind you, I can count my blessings in that being retired I’m not losing income like so many of my friends and neighbors. The only comment I will make about the loosening of restrictions is that because I’m in the at-risk demographic, I’m actually going to have to increase my restrictions to stay safe; masks in public and increased hand sanitation. To me, being an adult is more than being able to do what I want and go where I want, it is also about being responsible.

These next few weeks will be key. The curves are showing signs of flattening but the rate of new infections is still growing. By the way, I am not an epidemiologist or a statistician but I think just looking at the raw total infection rates is misleading. Instead of looking at the total infections, I believe that we should be looking at the rates of infections weighted by the population. Here is what I mean; According to the DHEC Coronavirus web site; Richland County in SC has the highest number of cases in the state at 946, but the rate per 100,000 population is 227.54. Clarendon County has 218 total cases but their rate per 100,000 is 646.02. Richland is actually 8th behind Clarendon, Lee, Kershaw, Saluda, Williamsburg, Florence and Sumter Counties. DHEC switched to ordering their county results to those weighted by populations a couple of weeks ago. This is all based on relatively little testing and DHEC believes the number of cases is considerably higher. The day to day totals are also affected by the fact that not all testing facilities are submitting case numbers to DHEC daily thus skewing the daily numbers. My bottom line is that we just don’t know and I’m a little skeptical of both extremes of the issue.

So, I’ll be holed up in my home studio, doing social distancing radio on all the stations I’m on, all the while being grateful that I can do that. Oh MY!

Headset Hair

When I first got into radio at WUSC-AM at the University of South Carolina I was also on a Naval ROTC Scholarship. Back then, hair length restrictions were pretty strict so I sported a flat top with closely shaved sides. As a result I had little trouble donning and doffing those old Trimm headsets that were the rage in the early 60s.

I was still in the Navy Reserves most of the time I was at WCOS so it stayed short there too. In fact, the barber shop in the Cornell Arms Apartment building was the same one that I used when I first came to Columbia. Willie Saylor, the proprietor and sole barber only knew one way to cut hair; short! So even when I began using those big old over the ear stereo headphones I still remained free of hirsute entanglements.

During my time at WIS-TV I became a little shaggier but I had already set my hair pattern in that I could not stand to have hair over my ears. I think that was a side effect of getting hair caught in headphones as I put them on and off during a show. It was never a clump of hair that would get caught. It was always a single strand. Ouch!! All I can say is that I could never be a girl and have to tweeze my eyebrows! The very thought of it makes me twitch.

By the time the late 70s rolled around I was the Chief Engineer of WIS-Radio and I was occasionally filling in for one of the live DJs, I was a Captain in the Group Staff of the Civil Air Patrol and trimming up more like the 60s than the early 70s. The rage in all the radio studios at the time was the Sennheiser MD 421 microphones paired with their HD-414 lightweight headphones. Those orange padded headphones were really light and could be worn with the longest hair without tangling. They were perfect for AM radio, easy to use and bright sounding. With shorter hair again, I never had a problem getting hung up with those headphones.

In fact my only problem with those headphones was with the jocks that liked to run their headphone volume just below fire engine siren level. The HD-414 headphones were of an “on the ear” design instead of the heavier “over the ear” design that blocked the sound escaping from around the pads. This combination quite often resulted in a sharp feedback squeal that set everyone’s teeth on edge. When one of the DJs insisted that I should do something about that. I handed him a pair of Koss headphones that must have weighed 4 pounds. I was not going to mess with the frequency response of the station just so he could run his headphones loud.

I must confess to the fact that I tend to run my own headphone volume louder than I should, not thunderstorm loud but loud enough. The thing that saves me the most is that the headset volume on the Wheatstone / AudioArts Air 1 console in my home studios has a volume limited to only freight train level. Unlike their D-75 console in the studios at WUSC-FM that could melt down a good pair of headphones. Somewhere a little over a quarter up is plenty.

I have always had fine hair. If it wasn’t for Brylcreem, I would never been able to control my wild hair back in my teen-aged years. Through my senior year of high school I sported a pompadour style that required a lavish application of the stuff. I definitely wasn’t a “little dab will do ya” kind of guy. During my early radio days, I was a “Butch Wax” man but somehow never had so much on that it stuck to the headbands of the Trimm headphones.

Now that I’m longer in the tooth, I’m wearing my “fine” hair a little longer with no hair care products. The hair line is a little farther up my forehead than it used to be, but headphone bands still cross my head in the hair zone. I’ve noticed that as I have gotten a little grayer, the lighter hair is thicker and wilder than my brown hair. In fact sometimes I look in the mirror to shave, I remind myself of the picture of Nick Nolte taken after a night of carousing.

The last time that I’ve had a professional haircut was in late January, before the “stay at home” orders and the curfews rolled in during the Coronavirus Crisis. Up until then, headphones were not a big issue, with just a little matted clump of headphone hair on the top of the head. I’d pat it down with a wet hand and I was good to go. But when it gets straggly, I sometimes catch a hair in the padding of the headband. That will get your attention, I can tell you. Fortunately my “in house” barber does a great job of keeping the mop under control.

So tomorrow morning my trustworthy Sennheiser HD 380 pro headphones will be sitting comfortably atop my Coronavirus styled hair and I’ll be rocking and rolling. Oh - just in case you hear a short burst of feedback, I am still in the habit of hanging my headphones on the microphone when I don’t have them on my ears. You know; old school style. No, the engineer in me doesn’t like that much but the DJ in me loves it. Oh MY!

Radio in the Coronavirus Age

Less traffic, clearer skies, porpoises in the canals of Venice and old shipwrecks visible in the clearer waters of the great lakes are some of the reported changes due to the shelter in place orders worldwide. I’ve also been seeing a lot of evidence of a resurgence of radio listenership and a sudden spike in on-line radio; new listeners and new stations popping up all over the world. It’s not just anecdotal either, the BBC and others who track listener data have reported this as well.

Unfortunately it is coming at a time when most of the consolidated broadcast corporations have reduced their live presenters in favor of automation as cost cutting measures in the economic downturn. But, local stations are stepping it up. And they are being creative about it. Many are finding ways to do radio from home. Something the online broadcasters have been doing for years. The best part of it is that the corporate broadcasters who have local air talent are beginning to follow suit.

A good example of the latter is my fellow Columbia broadcaster Teddy Heffner. He recently moved his daily sportscast to a new station when the one he had been on for years was sold. After a short hiatus he started a slot on WCOS –AM, the same station where I started my commercial radio career back in 1965. When COVID-19 struck, the station cut his show off for safety reasons. To my joyous surprise, they worked out a way to do his shows from home. Now he is back on the air every morning. One of the reasons this could be done is that more cost effective technology which was perfected by the on line radio stations is here now. All that was needed was the demand and now that is here.

WXRY-FM here in Columbia is the quintessential example of local radio. They have always promoted local artists and indeed have a weekly show that highlights indie artists live. When the Coronavirus hit, Steve Varholy the owner of the station reached out to the local radio personalities for help during this time. He felt that the more local voices he could get on the air the better it would be for the community oriented station. I’m glad to report that I’m now doing the daily 4:40 and 5:40 PM newscasts there from the Main Street Newsdesk. And I can do it from my home studios in Southeast Columbia maintaining social distancing. Steve has been a pioneer of using new technology in remote radio broadcasting.

One of my favorite local station stories is a small town radio station in McMinnville, Oregon. The station has been around a long time, 70 plus years. My buddy Wes Simpson bought the station when it was about to go dark. Wes is putting his money where his mouth is, he is adding an FM translator and putting a lot of personal effort into the station.

The first thing Wes did when he took over the operation of the station was to reach out to some of the online broadcasters he has been working with for years. Now I’m the weekend DJ there with shows on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. All thanks to the technology that makes it all possible. I even talked my buddy Stu Wright who until recently was on WORG-FM in Orangeburg into doing the midday shift over there. Stu was really missing being on the radio and now he is in hog heaven.

But this is the thing about local radio. KCLA is the only radio station in Yamhill County Oregon and in the short time Wes has taken it over, the station is making a huge difference! A couple of weeks ago we started a KLYC Cares campaign to match able bodied young folks with the older citizens of the community who need to shelter in place. The young volunteers are running errands like grocery shopping and picking up prescriptions for folks who have no business being out of their homes. We are all talking about KLYC Cares in our shows and the campaign is taking off like wildfire. Just this last Friday, the local newspaper, The News-Register ran a story about KLYC Cares and our already busy contact line has gotten even more jammed. That is a good thing.

We also run a very popular daily community interest program called “KLYC In Touch” that discusses local issues in depth. And being in an agricultural region in Oregon, we have a weekly agricultural and gardening show called “To the Root Of It.” All we need now is a “Swap & Shop” show and a police blotter and we will be back to the way radio was back in the heyday! Heck, I even enjoy the commercials from the local restaurants and shops. BTW – the restaurants have NOT changed their spots from when they were full service instead of take out only. They are telling us to keep them running. They want to keep their customer base for when social distancing becomes just a memory.

I have noticed a definite upturn in the listenership for my online shows as well. All are now featuring public service announcements about the COVID-19 pandemic. The Monday morning Backbeat Show that normally runs on WUSC-FM is more oriented to the local audience with updates and news from the University of South Carolina for the students and the local community. These days the show sounds more like 50’s and 60’s radio than ever before. If she were still alive, I would bring Dottie Lloyd’s “Swap & Shop” segment back just for old time’s sake. Oh MY!

What a strange Easter

This morning, I’m “sheltering in place” quietly, remembering some very different Easters from the past. One of the earliest was getting up to serve the 6 AM Mass at St. Matthews. My brother Gene and I riding our old school Schwinn fat tire bicycles down Birkenhead, right on Bayview, merging onto Blanding and parking them in the bike rack behind the church. Now this was the old church. The one that was a chapel moved from Camp Blanding to the church property. By the time the new church was built, we had advanced to the “prime time” 8 AM Mass and could sleep in.

During my college years, I always came home for Easter with my family. Easter was also “spring break” for us but this was before everyone flocked to the beaches. Now, it seems that flocking to the beaches is not such a good idea even with spring break being separate from Easter weekend. Our big Easter gathering was usually at our house or at an aunt’s home. They were huge thirty or more cousins, aunts and uncles devouring ham and “pot luck” fixin’s and swapping stories of each of our adventures.

In the fall of 1965 I began my commercial radio career as a weekend announcer at WCOS and that would have meant that I would be working the Easter of 1966 but I got lucky; that winter I was promoted to the Allnight Satellite show working overnights Sunday night through Friday night. So I was able to drive home on Holy Saturday afternoon and then back to Columbia after the gathering on Easter Sunday. I arrived in Columbia and went directly to the station around 9 PM and took a short nap on the couch in the closed reception area of the station. I somehow managed to get through the show that night but I can’t vouch for the quality of the show. I completely missed the Easter gatherings during the time I was doing the 8PM - 1AM Nightbeat show from Doug Broome’s

The same was mostly true for the time I was at WIS-TV as I worked the prime time evening shift and had Sunday’s off. There was no time to get to Jacksonville after signing the station off at 1 AM. It wasn’t until when I moved out to WIS Radio that we could make it back home for the Easter Weekend. By then the gathering was in its largest phase with nieces and nephews being added to the noisy mix.

So, I’m sitting here trying to remember if I ever had to work on Easter Sunday morning. This has to be an anomaly for someone who worked so long in broadcasting but I don’t think I ever worked on the air on Easter Sunday morning. Thanksgiving, yes – Christmas, yes, Fourth of July, yes but not Easter. Wow! How did I escape that?

Wait a minute, you say; aren’t you on the air on KLYC this Easter? Actually I am but then I’m not. Through the magic of a thing called voice tracking, I recorded my Sunday morning KLYC show last Thursday afternoon.

OMG, did I really say something nice about voice tracking. I did, I really did. This way I get to enjoy playing some oldies without being in the studio.

That brings me to this “shelter in place” time that we are living through. Being older and “at risk” to the COVID-19 virus has taken away my live show on WUSC-FM for the duration. But being truly fortunate to have a fully capable internet connected home studio I can continue to do shows. So my WUSC-FM show is temporarily airing live on my online station WOGR-DB on Mondays. This is at a time when many radio presenters have been laid off or furloughed until the crisis is over.

Home studio capability has also given me a chance to help out a friend and fellow broadcaster, Steve Varholy at WXRY-FM. For the next few weeks I am doing the 4:40 and 5:40 PM newscasts weekdays from the “Main Street Newsdesk.” Reading the news on the radio is something that I have not done since 1979 at WIS Radio. I’m glad to report that it is like learning to ride a bicycle. You never forget how.

My “lockdown experience” is pretty different than for most folks. Each day is unique, which is a pretty good thing. Most senior residence facilities have huge calendars on the walls and service providers always tell the residents what the day and date are. Now that I’m retired and don’t go anywhere during this quarantine period, I would probably need something like that to keep me oriented to the day of the week. But my on air and recording schedule is doing a pretty good job of keeping me pointed in the right direction.

To my broadcast brothers and sisters I say; these are strange times that have followed a strange time when our business consolidated and contracted. Computers and automation have replaced many of you on the air and the future looks even more uncertain. But like the other unexpected side effects of COVID-19; less traffic, clearer skies and porpoises in the canals of Venice, the need for that local live voice on the radio is being pointed out. The world may be different after the crisis is done. It may look different, like doing radio from home, but it could bring back some of the good old days. Happy Easter Everyone! Oh MY!

The Lonely Radio Presenter

This week, I am beginning my fourth week of social distancing as we weather the Covid-19 pandemic. Like most of you, I’ve been spending way too much time on social media. But that is not all bad; several Facebook pages aimed at old school radio on the air DJs have really been popping and some of the most frequent memes talk about social distancing not being such a strange thing to old school radio presenters.

The trend of many live radio shows these days is to have a team. You know: “The Morning Team on Rockin’-100” or “The Afternoon Billy Bob and Benny Show.” My apologies if there is really a team with either of these names. But back in the day, teams were a rarity. The norm was a single soul, alone in the control room surrounded by records, cart machines, telephones, microphones and equipment that did gosh knows what. Except for the few of us who were lucky enough to have remote shows from the local drive in restaurant, that is what our lives were like.

Here is the place where your faithful blogger gives the perfect example; Take the movie “American Graffiti.” In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss as Curt Henderson and Ron Howard as Steve Bolander spot a blond in a white T-Bird played by Suzanne Somers. Not unexpectedly Curt decides that he needs to hook up with The Blonde and he employs the social media of the day. According to the plot in Wikipedia: “Curt drives to the radio station to ask the disc jockey "Wolfman Jack", who is omnipresent on the car radios, to read an on air message for her. Inside the station, Curt encounters an employee manning a console of record and cassette players, who tells him The Wolfman doesn't work at the station, and that the shows are pre-taped for replay at multiple stations. The employee accepts the message from Curt and promises to try to have The Wolfman air it. As he's leaving the station, Curt sees the employee talking into the microphone and hears the voice of The Wolfman on the air, so Curt realizes that despite the employee's earlier denials, he really is The Wolfman.” That sense of isolation of the most connected character in the film is what it was like for the average radio DJ. That scene hits home for us Old School guys. We’ve been socially distancing all of our careers.

That is probably why most of us lived for the studio request line. Yes, we talked to thousands of listeners every show but the only real time feedback we got back then was when listeners called. Those connections often grew into lifetime friendships.

But don’t feel bad for the voice alone in the night. Where else could you get paid for playing records and talking to people? This was the life and I for one enjoy looking back and enjoying the memories. When I play a song on the radio today my memory is flooded by young faces and voices from the past. No – I don’t live in the past but I am grateful for the rich memories.

So, I was searching my memory for the time that matches the current situation the closest. The one that sticks out is the curfew that was imposed on most southern cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 in Memphis Tennessee.

I was doing the Doug Broome’s Nightbeat Show on WCOS-AM from a cinder block radio booth in the parking lot of Doug’s Drive in Restaurant on Two Notch Road near Beltline. The news broke about his being shot just as the show began at 8 PM and then during the 8:30 news, Mike Rast announced that Dr King had died. We didn’t have cell phones back in the day but I noticed a line forming at the pay phone on the brick wall of the restaurant near the door where the car hops skated out of the kitchen with trays laden with hamburgers, fries and chocolate shakes.

The crowd at the teletrays quickly thinned out and by 9 PM, all who were left were the few die hard customers that were there every night. By 10 PM even they were gone. At 11 PM the manager closed the restaurant and I was left as the only one left on the property, indeed aside from the street and traffic lights, mine was the only light shining within sight. And that, my friends, was the loneliest time on the air in my entire career.

The next day I was called into the station early for a meeting with the station management and Doug Broome. The decision was made to move the show back to the studios in The Cornell Arms Building. But since the relationship was a cash and carry one, I was to drive up to the location of Doug’s on Main and Confederate Streets and bring back the nightly fee for the show and place it under the door of our accountant. Around that time, the Mayor of Columbia declared a 10 PM to 6 AM curfew.

That meant that in addition to driving from my apartment to and from the station, I also needed to drive the couple of miles to and from Doug’s . Concerned about the curfew, we called the police chief to make sure that we would not be stopped in our daily rounds. The solution was two-fold; we were told to make ID Cards from station letterhead and we were to put magnetic signs on our cars that said “WCOS News” on them. Fortunately I carried one of those signs in the back seat of my car already to assist when we covered news on the fly.

Driving the deserted streets of Columbia was downright spooky. There was almost no other traffic on the streets. Once or twice I’d spot a pair of headlights blocks away and sure enough a police car would rush up to mine to investigate. That always resulted in a short conversation and a good night from the local constabulary. After the first couple of nights, when the beat cops got to recognize my car at a distance they would flash their lights and wave. Those were different days indeed.

So during these days of social isolation, I’m doing all my shows from my home studios. In some cases, the shows are online instead of being on air. Like the curfew days of the 60s the main uncertainty is how long will this isolation continue. Until then like the old DJ patter went; “I’ll be keepin’ on keepin’ on!” Be safe everyone. Oh MY!

Radio Listenership Is Up!

I saw a piece from the BBC, that reported that since the spread of the Covid-19 virus that radio listenership in the UK and the US was up and that the automated music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora were down a little bit.

This news does not surprise this old school broadcaster one bit, not even worth raising one eyebrow, much less both. And, although I have nothing but a couple of anecdotal data points to draw this from; the increase in listenership is outside of radio’s “prime times” the morning and afternoon drive time slots.

My take on why this is happening is that people are starved for a mix of information and entertainment. The fresher and more local the information is, the better. And the entertainment needs to be more upbeat to provide a respite from the seriousness of the news. Add to that a personal connection with a presenter who has his or her finger on the pulse of the community. What can do that better than live local radio!

Now, the typical corporate radio programmer might disagree about the drive time. My point is, that in this time of social distancing and shelter in place orders there are fewer people in their cars during the peak drive times of the day. More are listening from their homes and more are listening to online stations that tend to have more live shows than the terrestrial stations do these days with many local live shows being suspended in the name of public safety.

Again this is anecdotal data, but some stations that have provided capability for their DJs to do live shows from home are reporting stronger than normal numbers and stronger audience reaction than normal. The other big change is that instead of the studio phone line, the feedback is coming from social media, Twitter and Facebook.

Even stations that do not have the capability to provide live DJ interaction but have the capability to do voice tracking are doing better, as long as that voice tracking is done at the last minute instead of days earlier. This way, the information that is on the air is pretty much up to the minute.

One thing I believe is that the demeanor of the on air presenter is key to being successful during these times. Facebook and Twitter has been run amok with distressing news and angry reaction to it. More than a few of my FB friends have disappeared from the service because they have been overwhelmed by the bad news and vitriol. I’m not saying that we should ignore the gravity of the information but we need to balance it with good news. One thing that I am doing in my periodic updates from the data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center is to include the number of people that have survived Covid-19. At the time of this writing - 11 am Eastern on March 29, 2020, 145,696 people have recovered, 2,612 in the US alone. I also scour my resources for “feel good” stories to go along with my “feel good” music.

I have no idea if this uptick in radio listening will continue after Covid-19 has run its course. I hope that it reverses the trend of fewer live presenters and more automation by corporate radio back to more live and local. If that happens, I’ll be a happy guy and I doubt that I will be alone in that sentiment.

There is a significant positive personal side effect to this approach for me. Although tomorrow will be the third week in a row that I’ll not be broadcasting my oldies show on WUSC-FM due to the station suspending live shows, I’ve found that I seem to me more at ease with the isolation than I probably would be otherwise. I truly miss the interaction with the student DJs there and my audience over the phone but I am not as stir crazy as I think I would be, knowing how social my nature is.

Among the factors in this are my online shows on multiple stations around the world, even though most of them are pre-recorded. My daily shows on Crusin’ KLYC 1260 out in Oregon helped out too. It will be interesting to see how I do next week now that we’ve brought on a new DJ out there and I am reverting to my weekend only shows there. But honestly, I could not have sustained that much time on the air there more than a week or so longer without giving up some of my other on air activity.

I’ve been asked many times why can’t I broadcast on WUSC-FM from my home studio like I do my other shows. One of WUSC-FM’s main guiding principles is to provide an in studio platform for the student DJs, to educate the DJ as well as the audience. So providing a way for a DJ to do a show remotely is correctly not in their list of priorities. Besides, I think I’m the only DJ currently on the air there that has a home studio capable of doing such a broadcast. Providing that capability is much more complicated than just throwing a switch; it is not fair to ask them to provide the effort and expense for just one show a week.

But there is one thing that I can do for the folks who listen to the Backbeat show there every Monday. For the duration of the social distancing event, I will continue to broadcast my WUSC-FM show on http://ourgenerationradio.com 10AM until noon Eastern time and as usual I’ll be taking requests but instead of over the phone I’ll be taking them via my Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/rick.wrigley Oh MY!

Social Distancing on the Radio

I don’t know how many times I’ve said “holy cow” or something similar to that this week but I can’t count them on my fingers and toes. At the same time, I realize how lucky I am in that I’m retired and pursuing my retirement activity in broadcasting without significant financial worries.

Broadcasting can be a lot safer from my home studio rather than sitting in a workspace that is serially shared by a number of other DJs the way it used to be. Some of my fellow broadcasters have lost their show times on local radio stations due to access to their studios being restricted to “essential personnel” who ride heard on the stations’ automation systems.

That’s a big difference from the way it used to be before automation systems when a live body in the air chair was required if you were to stay on the air. As much as I love live radio and wish there were more of it, I remember the down side also.

One of those memories was of the winter of 1967 when the bug hit the DJs at WCOS pretty hard. Most of our part timers were college students and they went down first. But not before contaminating the equipment in the control room, so the bug hit the full time staff pretty much all at the same time. I am pretty sure that it was a flu bug because the symptoms came on pretty fast, for me during a 5 hour on air shift. If it were a cold, it would have taken a couple of days. I’m going with that self diagnosis because I was young and immortal back then and did not see a doctor. Yeah, the WCOS Good Guy became the WCOS Tough Guys that week, or more precisely we became the WCOS Hoarse Guys. Not a single one of us had any voice left. But the show must go on, sick or not. One of my fellow DJs even brought a pillow from home that he laid on the desk in front of the audio console to put his head on while the records played. I used my winter coat. Somehow, we got through that.

So far only one of my retirement radio gigs has been affected by COVID-19; my Monday morning Backbeat show on WUSC-FM. The campus of the UofSC had been locked down and in person classes have been replaced by online classes for the rest of the semester. Live shows on WUSC-FM have been suspended until further notice and the robots have finally taken over the station. At this time, I have no idea as to when we will resume live broadcasting.

All of my other radio broadcasts (live and pre-recorded) are continuing normally since they all originate from my home studio through the magic of the internet. I have even picked up some extra hours on KLYC in McMinnVille Oregon in the interim while we train a new DJ over there. The local staffs of the stations I am on in Poprad Slovakia and Skegness UK have vacated the main studios to remotely control their broadcast day from their homes as I do for OurGenerationRadio.com. So far most of my other DJs have been able to maintain their show schedules.

I need to point out that it is easier for online broadcasters to weather this period of social distancing than it is for the terrestrial broadcasters because the tools that control the stream are already internet enabled due to the nature of streaming media. Most over the air radio stations have encapsulated their broadcast equipment with private networks for security reasons. There have been several dramatic instances of what can happen if someone hacks into their network, some have resulted in fines for the stations and jail time for the hackers.

In the past week or so, many of my old broadcasting friends have asked why don’t I broadcast my WUSC-FM show from home. This need for security is the main reason. As far as I know, I am the only DJ on the air there that has the setup and technology to go live remotely and it is not fair to ask the station to build out the infrastructure to do that for only me. There is also an expense to that and the fact that the IT technicians who would need to be on site to accomplish the task are not there and have other pressing tasks to accomplish remotely needs to be considered as well.

Doing these online shows and KLYC have helped me to not become quite at stir crazy as I would be otherwise. And for that I’m grateful.

At this time we have no idea as to when the UofSC leadership will relax the campus lock down and give the live DJs access to the station. But there is one thing that I can do for the folks who listen to the oldies every Monday. For the duration of the social distancing event, I will be broadcasting my WUSC-FM show on http://ourgenerationradio.com 10AM until noon Eastern time and as usual I’ll be taking requests but instead of over the phone I’ll be taking them via my facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/rick.wrigley Oh MY!

Beware The Ides of March

This has been one heck of a week; change to Daylight Saving Time, a full moon, Friday the 13th, COVID-19 and now today is the day that Julius Caesar got the point, the Ides of March! Holy Cow!

And as if to pile it on, the University of South Carolina has closed their campus to enable social distancing and that means that WUSC-FM has switched off all live radio shows and gone to a completely automated schedule. So instead of preparing for tomorrow’s Backbeat Show today I guess I’ll watch some March Madness on TV this afternoon. Wait, What! Oh Never Mind.

It’s been said often that when God closes a door, he opens a widow. And my window is that I’ll be filling in on the 10AM – 1PM (Pacific Time) on Cruisin’ KLYC 1260 in McMinnville, Oregon and KLYC.us on the internet! KLYC is an oldies station so all is right in the world.

Well, that is not completely true. All is right if you don’t consider toilet paper or as my Brit friends call it “bog roll.” During our regular Saturday afternoon grocery run we found absolutely no TP in our regular grocery store. They normally have hundreds of packages but the cupboard was bare yesterday. I wasn’t too concerned because there was several days supply in the house but some more would have to be found before next week’s shopping trip. We got a tip from a worker at the local Target that they expected a shipment overnight last night and a quick trip there this morning resulted in a score. We’re good for the next week and a half at least.

What’s up with the TP shortage anyway? There is absolutely no reason for the current run on TP. COVID-19 doesn’t create an increase in the demand. But some idiot on the Internet can! Some socially distanced dude (or dude-ette) thought it would be funny to post something about a TP shortage and got a viral response. Many more knock off posts followed and sure enough, it wasn’t funny any-more. Hopefully we’ll all regain our sanity and start working through our hoards before the cat shreds the family fortune while everyone is out looking for more.

Of course I have absolutely no proof of all this but I do have one sobering thought about this mess. In addition to the TP post, I see a lot of posts questioning the veracity of the COVID-19 crisis, calling it a hoax and denigrating the entire social distancing reaction to the spread of the virus. I’ll just say this, if I were an enemy of the free world and wanted to disrupt western culture, creating an artificial shortage and sewing doubt in medical science would be sure fire attack vectors.

But I digress.

Tomorrow will be one of a handful of Mondays where I’ll not be spinning oldies on local Columbia radio in over ten years. I missed one that fell on a Christmas day a few years ago, one when I was sick, one when the Russell House staff forgot to leave my access on during a time when the Student Union was closed and three in 2018 when I was in Scotland. That gives me a grand total of six shows missed out of 530 weeks on the air since January 4, 2010! I’ll take that 1.1%, but it still feels strange.

I saw a meme on one of the group pages for radio broadcasters on Facebook yesterday that stated that radio personalities were the original practitioners of social distancing. We do it every day. It’s true, it may sound like we are out there in a crowd having a party all day long but in reality we sit isolated in our control rooms with only electronic connections with our listeners; radio and telephones and these days the Internet. As a result we love “remote” broadcasts like the old “Nightbeat Show” sitting in a booth right there next to the first row of tele-trays at a drive in restaurant. Old school DJs also love taking requests and dedications over the phone for the same reason; that two way human contact.

So, my earworm for today is The Ides of March’s 1970 hit “Vehicle.” Did you know that the band began in Berwyn, Illinois (a near western suburb of Chicago) on October 16, 1964, as a four-piece band called "The Shon-Dels." They changed their name in 1966, to The Ides of March, a name suggested by bass player Bob Bergland after he read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in high school. And now we are back to Caesar getting the point! Oh MY!

Ridin’ The Radio Range

One of the duties of old AM radio engineers was to perform something called field intensity measurements on directional radio stations.

A quick explanation of directional AM radio is in order. Directional AM radio stations have two or more towers. These extra towers may be energized part time or full time in order to “channel” the signal in one or more directions. The need for directional stations was to protect other stations on the same frequency that were licensed before the directional station was built. The majority of these stations were directional at night only because AM radio signals would travel farther at night than in the day. Many non-directional stations had to protect these earlier stations by reducing their power at night.

An example of a non directional station in Columbia, SC is WCOS which operated at 1,000 watts daytime and 250 watts nighttime while I worked there. WIS Radio (Now WVOC) was a directional station that operated at 5,000 watts both day and night but at nighttime the signal was channeled to the east-southeast (105 degrees) by the three towers.

Broadcast Engineers (now called Broadcast Technicians) who worked at directional stations had a few more tasks than their brethren who worked at stations with only one tower. One of those tasks was to perform weekly field intensity measurements at designated monitor points. Each Friday afternoon, I’d put the station into the directional pattern and joke with Gracie, our station receptionist as I stepped out of the front door of station with my trusty Field Strength meter tucked under my arm like a lunchbox that I was going out to “ride the radio range.”

The week that I began working at WIS Radio, our brown and tan Potomac meter similar to the one shown on this page arrived to replace the old black and grey one that the station had been using for years. For the first few months, I took both meters out and took readings from both of them to make sure that the new one was reading the same as the old one. I never got rid of the old one because I wanted a stand-by in case the new one failed. I needn’t have worried.

WIS had four monitor points, two on either side of the Saluda River so it took me about 90 minutes to drive to each of those points, fire up the meter take the reading, record it on the log and calculate the percentage difference from the reading it was supposed to be. That took only a couple of minutes at each monitor point. Because there was only one bridge across the river near the station it took me about 45 minutes longer than it would have otherwise as I needed to backtrack my path to cross the river via I-20 which at the time meant that I had to drive all the way down to I-26 to get to it. At the time there was no exit to I-20 from Bush River Road, the main drag near where the station was located on WIS Lane.

I should note here that the FCC required these weekly tests be performed at least one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset, so that the daytime radio propagation conditions existed. Some of my fellow Broadcast Engineers caught grief from station management about needing to set the station to nighttime pattern for these readings but I was fortunate that I never had that problem; my management took these things seriously. Now, the DJ that was on the air was a different story. When I put the station on the directional pattern, I would walk into the studio and note it on the transmitter log, which he kept at other times. Without fail he would bellyache to me that I was costing him listeners. My response was just as savage. I told him that it was not a problem, that he had no listeners anyway. It was all in good fun and part of our friendship.

I dearly loved the quiet time driving my bright red Karmann-Ghia around Richland and Lexington counties between monitor points. Those were good times for me to mull over a problem that I was having with a piece of equipment or to plan in my head the next project I was going to take on at the station.

My number 4 monitor point was just off of Highway 378 a block off of I-22. It was in front of a mom and pop Lawn and Garden Equipment Shop. The owner was a man in his late 60s who had a gruff countenance and a heart of gold. I looked forward to that stop every week, as I was taking the reading, he would head out of the shop with a couple of ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola and we would sit in the rocking chairs in front of the store and share a five minute conversation about any and everything.

A month before I left WIS Radio, when I made my “radio range ride” the shop was closed and he was not there. The next week was the same. Two weeks later both he and his wife were at the store but he was confined to a wheel chair after having a serious stroke. He had come in that afternoon to tell me good bye and that he was going to sell the store. To this day, if I am out driving in the countryside away from the hustle and bustle of the city, I can still see him in my mind’s eye sitting in that rocking chair wearing his denim overalls and white t-shirt, working on that green tinted bottle of Coca-Cola and mopping the heat off his forehead with his bright red bandana. Oh MY!

Radio Springs Into March

It’s hard to believe that it’s already March around here. It’s time for the radio sales guys to wake themselves from their post holiday slumber and start rousting the stations advertiser base for new commercials. The record promoters are beginning to sniff around with new songs for the spring. Well, that’s the way it used to be.

January and February were easy months for radio DJs back in the day. The program logs were sparsely populated with commercials since the sponsors blew their advertising budgets on the Christmas season and many of their customers were bound up in their homes under piles of blankets, venturing out for groceries and work only. It was not unusual to see a program log sporting commercials only from the ship-owners who sponsored the programs. Good examples of these sponsors from my past were the Taylor Street Pharmacy, and Doug Broome’s Drive In Restaurants.

Station owners were always a little nervous during January and February because the income from sponsors barely kept the stations in the black, and in fact sometimes the stations ran in the red during the first part of the year.

March was when it all began to change. The pace of sales went up. The new Spring song releases came in and we all geared up with the first promotional activity for the year; usually station contests to get the audience re-engaged. I must say, that at WCOS, Woody our program director was genius in that he installed the “Instant Request” as a year round feature. At first it was the “Instant 60 Request” and later when we shrunk the “Top 60 in Dixie” to “The Fun 40” it became the “Fun 40 Request.”

Either way it worked the same; We would play a “sweeper” that announced that it was time to make an instant request, we would choose a caller from the bank of blinking lights on the phone, put them on the air live, talk to them a bit and then ask them what song from the playlist they would like to hear. When then said the song, we would drop in cold a stinger that said “Here it comes!” and immediately play the record. We used the same stinger for both the Instant 60 and the Fun 40 requests. It was a classic.

Over the years, I’ve been asked many times just how we did that. Don’t get your hopes up… I’m not going to spill the beans. I think some mystery and magic from the old days should be maintained. But I will share this. Doing “Instant Requests” was the most nerve wracking thing I ever did on the air. It required a good knowledge of where a song was on the top 40. But most of all, because it was live and there was no delay you were at the mercy of the caller to behave and not curse on the radio. I was lucky, that never happened to me, but I’ve heard some of my fellow DJs get bombed by a caller.

So because of the “Instant Request” we had a head start on the other stations getting the audience re-engaged for the contest season.

Once we got the contests running again, and we could see the phone lines filling up every time we came out of a record we knew the well was primed.

BTW, we also know that many of you out there dialed our phone number Alpine-2-2177 on your rotary phones, all but the last 7 which you would hold with your finger until you heard either a contest or the “Instant Request” come on the air. We also knew that for some reason – the listeners who were also in the Alpine exchange had an advantage over those in the Sunset exchange, those on the UofSC 777 exchange or the other exchanges in town. So we would occasionally put all the incoming lines on hold and release them a few seconds after the request/contest began to level the playing field a little.

The other audience engaging thing that we did was the station promoted concerts. These eventually became the “Woody with the Goodies Hoparoonies!” as Woody took over the responsibility and the risks of promoting them personally. During the summer months, it seems as if we had one of these every month in venues all around the city such as the Township Auditorium, the Shriner’s Club and one or more of the buildings out at the State Fair Grounds. I loved these “Hoparoonies” because I got to meet so many of the rock and roll artists of the day either backstage or in the studios.

Once I began doing the “Nightbeat Show” in the evening out at Doug Broome’s I missed most of the shows because I was on the air during the performances. But I got to see much of the audiences as they would come by after the concert for a burger, fries and shake. Oh!… also they would drop off a request for a song by the artist who was in town that evening.

One more thing about March aside from the “Ides of March” is the fact that Daylight Saving Time begins in March. We “spring forward” next Sunday. The grogginess that I feel from the time change was offset by being able to stay on the daytime transmitter an hour later in the evening. I loved the reach that the higher daytime power gave the station. The only thing more magical than that was late in the evening when “skip” conditions formed up and I would occasionally hear from listeners from all over the eastern half of the country. I’ll never forget that night when Mike Rast called me out at Doug Broome’s to pass on a request from a listener in Peterborough, Ontario just across the lake from Rochester, New York. I don’t remember what it was they wanted to hear but you had better believe that I played their song and gave Peterborough a shout out!

Speaking of skip; last week KLYC, the station in Oregon where I do a show on Saturdays, received a message from a guy listening to the station in northern Sweden. How cool is that!?! Oh MY!

Analog vs. Digital Clocks In the Radio Studio

In 2018, viral stories spread across the internet that in the UK, they were removing all the analog clocks from classrooms because today’s students could not read them anymore. As it turns out this story was mostly false. According to Snopes - What's True: UK sources suggested that schools there could minimize disruptions during standardized examinations by replacing analog clocks with digital versions in examination halls, because some students had difficulty estimating time remaining from the former. What's False: Schools throughout the UK are not replacing analog clocks with digital versions in all classrooms because modern students cannot tell time.

Left: Analog clock on my studio wall. My personal take on this is that at least for me, doing a radio show with a digital clock is more difficult than doing one with an analog clock. That is why I have a big old analog clock in my home studio.

Probably the biggest reason that I like analog is that I am an old school DJ who announces the time regularly is a part of my banter. My old boss, Woody Windham used to bang at us “TTBB” all the time. “TTBB” stood for Time, Temp – Boom Boom. One of the first to push TTBB was Rick Sklar the legendary program director at WABC in New York City. Rick was so adamant that his DJs “TTBB” that every song in the playlist had two copies on the carts they used, one cart with the iconic chime at the end and one that did not. The operating engineers at WABC alternated playing songs with the chime and songs without. When there was no chime the DJ announced that WABC Temperature was XX Degrees. Woody did not do that at WCOS since we played the songs off the 45 RPM records, but there was a button on the desk of the mixing console that rang a doorbell chime next to a small microphone mounted on the wall of the studio. I’m a little surprised that Milton, our engineer never had to replace that button that was pretty much worn down by all the WCOS chime time announcements.

I admit that digital time is easier to read in the first half of each hour than analog. But in the second half of the hour if we wanted to say 23 minutes before 10 instead of we would have to subtract 37 from 60 to come up with the time. That took work for the already overloaded brain DJ brain to do in an instant.

In school we learned to read analog time so well that a glance at the analog clock in the second half hour told us the number of minutes before the hour almost as quickly as the number of minutes after the hour in the first half hour. We got it directly off the clock with no calculating required.

Most of the studios of old had Western Electric analog clocks with sweep hands for the seconds. These clocks received a pulse over a telephone line that reset the clock at the beginning of each hour. Once we got used to the idiosyncrasies of each clock we pretty much knew how many seconds before or after the top of the hour on that particular clock the reset would occur. The most accurate of those old clocks I worked with was at WUSC-AM which reset at ½ second before each hour, giving me just enough time to turn the “pot” up for the Mutual Radio news on the top of the hour. The worst one was at WIS-TV where we had to fade to black from the station ID slide and punch NBC up on the switcher at 2 ½ seconds before the hour. At least at WIS when switching in a local station break we knew that NBC would be dark for exactly 75 seconds so we could verify the time when we switched out of the network by noting the time that the network started the blackout.

By the way, the local stations had to be careful to start their breaks on time too. Because there was no internet to send messages with, NBC and the other networks would often communicate last minute changes via showing slates containing the messages on the network feed after a moment of “black” during the local breaks. So, if you were the switcher at the local station you also had to remember any message that is being shown while switching in the film, videotape or worse case the slide/audio tape announcements that comprised the local break. Oh, and remember; “Never flop a mirror on the air – use your fader bar!”

Just to tell you that an old dog can learn new tricks. When I started doing my oldie show on WUSC-FM, I walked into a studio that did not have an analog clock. There is a digital clock built into the face of the AudioDesigns D-75 mixing console in the main control room. So immediately I needed to up my digital clock skills since TTBB is so ingrained in me and I felt silly telling everyone that it is 11:48 or whatever the time said at the moment.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the clock in the console was not very accurate. This past week it was nearly three minutes off compared with the time on my computers. Having clocks that don’t agree is at the least confusing to a busy DJ so years ago I developed the habit of placing an old station envelope to hide the inaccurate clock. John, our station engineer came to the rescue by putting up a large digital clock display on the monitor where the Automation Display and the RDS and logging application reside.

I still wanted an analog clock display somewhere in front of me and fortunately my music source SAM Broadcaster has an analog clock window. So I put it up and now I’m all happy and smiles. Well, mostly, that analog clock display is a little hard to read with these older eyes.

One last comment about the analog clock in my home studio; it is a radio controlled clock that is constantly updated by WWV the US official time source out in Ft. Collins Colorado. It is also battery operated and I can always tell when the batteries need changing when I cross check the clock with internet Network Time Protocol (NTP) before each show. I fear that as the frequencies (2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz) that WWV uses become noisier that I will eventually have to switch to a more expensive clock that reads NTP over my local Wi-Fi network.

So tomorrow, I will be TTBB’ing my way through the Backbeat Show on WUSC-FM. If you hear me stumble a bit with the time and it’s the second half hour, you will know that I had to “do the math”. No matter, it keeps me on my toes. Oh MY!

The Day Broadway Almost Ended My Radio Career

I can tell the story now because the statute of limitations has run its course many times over.

During the 50s and 60s popular music was heavily influenced by Broadway. Who can forget the music from the musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar that invaded the top 40? But there were so many more offerings. “Funny Girl”, “Fiddler On The Roof” and “Hello Dolly” all spun off top 40 songs in 1964. A decade before songs from “My Fair Lady” and a decade before that “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific” all made their way to the radio.

The Broadway play that may have had the biggest influence on the pop music back in the 60s was “West Side Story!” The 1957 recording of a Broadway production of the musical West Side Story was recorded 3 days after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. The recording was released in October 1957 in both mono and stereo formats. In 1962, the album reached #5 on Billboard's Pop Album chart. It certified gold by the RIAA on January 12, 1962. “West Side Story” was made into a movie in 1961 and the soundtrack album released as a Columbia Masterworks album in October of ‘61. Five of the albums songs: “I Feel Pretty”, “Maria”, “America”, “Tonight” and “Somewhere” would become pop hits by the time the decade ended.

I had seen the movie as a high school student and like so many red blooded American boys of the day had become smitten with Natalie Wood in the role of Maria in my sophomore year.

So you can imagine my joy when I walked into WUSC’s immense library of 33 1/3 records and saw that bright red album cover adorned with the black drawing of a fire escape on the wall of a New York tenement. Yes! I finally had a copy of that Columbia Masterworks LP to play on the radio.

I need to take a small diversion here to bring in the snake in the grass of this story. There are certain words in the English language that were banned by the FCC as being obscene. George Carlin did a routine called “Seven dirty words that you can’t say on the radio” that pretty much summed up the forbidden utterances. I’m not going to list them here but you can look up “Seven dirty words” on Wikipedia if you want the gory details. There were others but these seven words are still on the FCC list of things that can get a radio station in trouble with the FCC. If the FCC finds a station in violation of its rules, it has the authority to revoke a station license, impose a fine or issue an admonishment or warning. Just ask Howard Stern if you don’t believe me. The last I heard the standard fine is $60,000 per violation today. So you get the idea that this is pretty serious business.

The third element to this story was my own naiveté. I had seen the movie out at the Lowes Normandy Drive in while on a double date and did not note anything untoward. Perhaps, the fact that it was a double date and I might have been distracted just a bit also came into play.

So I was almost brimming with glee that sunny afternoon during a live show in early 1964 as I grabbed the album out of the pile of records that I had retrieved from the library for my show. I queued up “I Feel Pretty”, the second track on side 2 of the album. I was ready to go. When the song before it ended I announced it and then began playing it on the radio.

Something was very wrong; instead of hearing Maria singing, I heard a gang of boys getting ready for a rumble. Sure enough, I had the record on the wrong side, I had queued up the second track of side 1 not side 2. The song that was playing was “The Jet Song” by the male ensemble that played the street gang in the movie. For a second I panicked I had not heard the song since the movie and was worried about the lyrics. Wait a minute, this is a soundtrack from a movie of a Broadway play, there was no way there would be a problem. I would just correct the song title after the record ended. That was a big honkin’ mistake. As I opened my microphone over the last four words of the song, to my horror, I heard “The whole (f-bomb) street!” I was totally speechless. This was live radio; there was no delay, no way to avoid getting the offending words on the air. What the audience heard at the ending of “The Jets Song” was a couple of seconds of silence; what we call “dead air” in the business and then a sloppy spin up of the next tune.

The station’s music director happened to be in the other room at the time and he walked into the studio to tell me how special that was. There was no marking on the album warning us not to play that particular track. He asked me to make sure that song could never be played again and I took out my pocket knife and carved three “X”s across that track. I spent the rest of the show waiting for a knock on the control room door to let me know that there guys from the FCC wearing sunglasses and trench coats that wanted to have a word with me. I didn’t sleep much that night either.

Some 15 years later, while driving around with the regional FCC field engineer taking intensity measurements of the directional AM where I was working at the time, I told him my “Jets Song” story. He told me that under those circumstances, it they had a complaint that I probably would have gotten a warning. Oh and one more thing, I needed to have my towers repainted. Oh MY!