"Stand by for news!"
I "worked with" Paul Harvey for nine years at WHO Radio in Des Moines. His morning news broadcast from Chicago (and much more recently, from a recording studio in Arizona) aired during the Van & Bonnie show in the 7am hour. His mid-day report stretched 15 minutes, beginning at noon, six days a week, and the station also subscribed to his popular "The Rest of the Story" broadcast, which aired during the show I directed on weekday afternoons, "Drive Time Des Moines".The hosts of that show, Sue Danielson and Jerry Reno, and I would sometimes tune in and try to guess the celebrity Harvey was profiling, but most of the time that five minutes served as a bathroom break for each of us (Jesus, I really blog a lot about my radio bathroom breaks) or a chance for the three of us and sportscaster Jim Zabel to talk about other topics more interesting. (For all his skills, Harvey was usually less intriguing to me than the conversation about life and work going on between those three colleagues of mine in the studio.) When ABC Radio Networks gave Harvey a new 10-year contract in 2000, upon the broadcaster's 80th birthday, I think the rest of us all felt that momentary surge of job security, especially the septuagenarian Zabel (another great candidate for the Radio Hall of Fame, incidently).
Upon Harvey's death yesterday in Phoenix, superblogger Ken Levine is calling him the best pitchman in broadcast history, but then Levine never heard Zabel sell Des Moines on taking a taxi cab to the State Fair. Actually, the distinction of best pitchman, for my money, was another dead Chicagoan who started his career in St. Louis-- Harry Caray. But there's little doubt besides that Paul Harvey was fascinating to listen to, for that delivery and unforgettable staccato cadence alone.
After working for almost a decade at the technical board of a 50,000 watt radio station, you become very sensitive to extended pauses in on-air performance. If I'm tuned in to this day, two seconds of dead air on my radio causes the hair on my arms to stand at attention, and there was nobody that caused that sensation more for me while I was working than Paul Harvey. ["...And that famous automaker who grew up the son of the inventor of bicyclists was..." (pause) (my reach for the mousepad)... John... Chrysler. And now, you know the rest of the story."] I think there was only one time, not paying attention, that I cut him off prematurely, and let me tell you, doing that will really cause the station's phones to light up. "The Rest of the Story" segment was loaded into the computer system as just one 5-minute cut, though, so backing up the recording was not an option. I lived in fear that during the ROTS the electricity would go out or that I would bump the computer mouse by mistake. As I recall, on that one occasion I cut him off, I just started answering the calls and making up an ending. "Who was the great television star whose first job was as a door-to-door salesman for ladies shoes? Well, that was Andy Griffith, of course."
Now, Harvey's politics were another matter all together. More apt to side with the afflicting than the afflicted, Harvey certainly owes much of his longevity to the fact that he never posed a threat as a news commentator to his corporate employers or sponsors. (I'm sure Wal-Mart loved him as much as he loved them.) Better and more courageous broadcasters than Harvey had shorter careers so let's be careful not to make longevity the final measure of professional success. Harvey was an ardent backer of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and an influential voice across the Midwest in support of Joe McCarthy during the early '50s.
But what's a little sinister Red-hunting almost 60 years later? It says a lot about the broadcasting talent of the man that he could reel off a seven-decade career like that. Most politically-conservative commentators find themselves embarrassingly out-of-date or wholly-discredited for their ideas after just one or two. I can say that I, along with almost every other radio listener, learned a lot about broadcasting and life from Paul Harvey over the years, except for who that TV star was that sold ladies shoes.
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There's a media pile-on over steroids every year right about the time that Spring Training begins, but baseball is going to outlast us all. This mid-week article written by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist illustrates why. No, I'm not referring to the content of the article, which is rather repetitious and silly-- another baseball superstar being pushed into a position of social responsibility he shouldn't be expected to fill. I'm referring instead, and only to the dateline published in bold at the very beginning of the column. For as long as the journalists of the traditional media, the loudest arbiters of sporting ethics, are given all-expense trips to Florida to cover the sport in February, you're going to be reading and hearing about the game of baseball.
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What's the right age to tell a highway he's adopted?
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A recent study reveals that Utah is the country's largest per-capita consumer of online pornography, and also-- to the surprise of many perhaps-- the results of the study seem to indicate a positive correlation between Christianism and porn.
Atheists and agnostics, are you going to let these people show you up like this?
posted by CM @ 11:09 AM
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