The Dick Gibson Show (40 page)

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “there is no astrology, there’s no black magic and no white, no ESP, no UFO’s. Mars is uninhabited. The dead are dead and buried. Meat won’t kill you and Krebiozen won’t cure you and we’ll all be out of the picture before the forests disappear or the water dries up. Your handwriting doesn’t indicate your character and there is no God. All there is—” He looks over at Pepper Steep’s sister asleep in her chair and wants to cry. He wishes he had something with which to cover her to keep her warm, something to put over her shoulders. Somehow Jack Patterson’s fart still hangs in the air—“are the strange displacements of the ordinary.”

Part III

1

From an address at the annual “Annals of Broadcasting” Dinner:

Mr. Irwin Schlueter, Chief of the American Radio Institute’s Division of Research and Development, suggested that the technological development which most influenced the character of radio broadcasting in the United States in the decades of the fifties and sixties was television, that it produced an impact on the medium at least as powerful as the impact of the talkies on the silent films of the twenties, but that after television the next most powerful influence, and in the long run an influence which could outstrip even the influence of television, had been a series of “gadgets” developed in the sixties—none of them, from an engineering standpoint, spectacular in themselves, and some of which were merely the application of principles known for years.

It’s almost [Mr. Schlueter said] like observing the piecemeal development of the wheel. I say “development” because almost certainly the wheel was never “invented,” but was instead a slow, cumulative serendipity.

Tape, of course, has liberated the radio man from his studio and given him a mobility he never had before. Miniaturization has contributed further to this process. The ongoing evolution of the cassette with its terrific convenience has provided additional acceleration of the trend, and “solid-state,” or the so-called instant-on, because of the reporter’s new ability to begin his on- the-spot broadcast without waiting for tubes to warm up, has had even more far-reaching effects on field radio, and has given the radio man not only mobility but time, and not only time but the potential to make of himself a peripatetic broadcasting station.

But if these gadgets have exercised an influence on the broadcaster, think of the enormous consequences for the listener. Consider instant-on itself. In the thirty-five to forty-three seconds it used to take to “build a sound,” the listener’s mood—this has been repeatedly demonstrated in psychological testing— becomes one of honed impatience. He wishes, say, to hear a particular program and turns on his radio. There is solid scientific evidence that by the time the radio has warmed up, a small antipathy has developed in the listener, an aggression which has first to be overcome before receptivity can be properly exploited. Thus the broadcaster’s burden is a double one: he must sell his listener
before
he sells him. By eliminating “dead time,” solid- state obviates this. Indeed, further studies have shown that by instantly responding to his will, solid-state actually predisposes a listener to accept a program. The average listener is not a scientist, of course, but even if he understands the basic principles of electronics he does not consciously think of them when he turns on his radio. For him there is only the subliminal impression—solid-state increases this—that there is a continuous entertainment or dialogue going on in the world which he may bring in or exclude instantly, as though by magic. This gives him a sense of power. It is no accident that the operating manuals accompanying new radios designate the various knobs and dials under the pseudo-generic label “controls.”

Where solid-state has thus far had its greatest effect is in the area of car radio, where, depending upon the time of day, the listenership may sometimes be as high as 84 percent. Try to imagine what conflict there could be in a driver’s mind when, on the one hand, he was pushed along through space at a mile a minute while on the other he was stymied by a cold car radio. He might have traveled as much as a mile, or even further, before bringing in the first clear signal of a broadcast. Was he in time or wasn’t he? For the listener in the car the time lag meant not impatience or hostility, but confusion—an emotion more difficult of placation than even those others, and more dangerous, too, when you consider that this man was “at the controls” of a murderous, powerful machine. With the highway development program what it is today, and with cars every year given greater and greater horsepower, the discrepancy between speed and its tube-radio opposite could only have become greater, and the burden of the programmers—who have to keep all sorts of audiences in mind—heavier. Undoubtedly, highway safety would suffer. Nor do I make a callous joke when I say that it is not the radio man’s first duty to kill off his market. Radio is a business dependent upon revenues from advertising. Advertising is dependent upon sales. Humanitarian considerations aside, when a man dies in a crash you have not lost simply a good customer—and make no mistake; he
is
a good customer; he’s driving a car,
advertised on radio,
for which he buys gas,
advertised on radio,
to or from a home which he has bought with a bank loan,
advertised on radio,
and furnished with a thousand things,
all advertised on radio
—but the good customer’s family as well. There is inevitably a period of mourning, and mourning—I don’t care what religion you’re talking about—means one thing and one thing only:
abstinence.
And abstinence, humanitarian considerations aside, is bad for business. Solid-state does away with all this.

Yet it is one of the peculiar paradoxes of our age that while reducing the time lag between broadcast and reception has had an unparalleled effect in shaping broadcasting, there has been, collaterally, a development which goes in an opposite direction altogether, and is, as of this moment, the single most important event in the entire history of radio.

I am speaking, of course, of the so-called tape delay, the small, inexpensive instrument which by utilizing extra gears and blind- alley loopings forces the recording tape through false waystations so that by the time it is played a six-second interval has been created in which the broadcaster can cut or, in more sophisticated models, edit offensive statements before they go out over the air. What this has meant for programming is only now beginning to be realized. Unquestionably, however, its greatest effect has been in the area of the audience- participation principle— specifically the telephone talk show. Without the six-second delay tape, or something very much like it, this kind of programming would be impossible. Most of the American public, of course, is decent and responsible and have no need of instrumentation to monitor them. Nevertheless fail-safe equipment will be a necessary adjunct of the telephone talk landscape as long as we live in a society part of whose vocal instincts, emboldened by the cloak of anonymity, are vicious and disturbed and exhibitionist. It’s inconceivable that a sponsor could continue to support a show which did not have the safety valve provided by a system like tape delay. This despite the fact that advertisers have known—known from the beginning—the incredible attractiveness of audience-participation programming.

Indeed, the self-entertainment principle has always played a major role in our industry, in local as well as network programming. At its most oblique level it manifested itself in the presence of the studio audience itself, its laughter, its spontaneous and sometimes not-so-spontaneous applause. One of the old- time host’s key phrases,
perhaps the single most classic sentence in radio,
so deep-seated in our culture and consciousness that whenever it is uttered today it takes on the dimensions of a joke, was “Keep those cards and letters coming in.” What was this if not a direct appeal to the audience-participation instinct? But there is a whole history of shows which flourished entirely on the strength of their dependence upon the audience, an audience which provided not only a presence at the entertainment, but was in fact the entertainment
itself.
One need only point to the success of the
Major Bowes Amateur Hour,
whose origins date almost to the beginning of radio. I don’t think I have to remind anyone here tonight that “The Amateur Hour” is still with us in its adapted TV format, or that CBS’s
Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour
has had the longest continuous run in television.

But there have been many such programs—everything from “man on the street” shows and quiz programs to good old
Mr. Anthony,
where people with problems could come to seek help. There was
Candid Microphone,
and most of you will remember
Bride and Groom,
where real couples actually got married on the air. Nor should I omit from this list the famous
Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club,
which when it recently went off the air at Don’s retirement was the longest continuous program in the history of broadcasting, not just in America but in
the entire world!
There was Arthur Godfrey’s
Talent Scouts,
a hit on radio long before it ever went on television, and there was and still is
Art Linkletter’s House Party,
the very name of which conveys my theme. Further, the dominance of daytime TV’s popular game shows must seek its origins in radio programs like Art’s. Many of these programs have been responsible for some of the biggest billings in the industry.

I am not here tonight to stir up nostalgic memories or to enunciate glorious names from the putative Golden Age of Radio, however. Suffice it to say that industry executives and advertisers have always been aware of the rich possibilities of participation programming. The development of magnetic tape—and before that of wire—led naturally to news interviews, press conferences and the like, the whole “voices in the news” syndrome being still another instance of audience participation. With McLuhan and his celebrated “global village” concept we get only the articulation of a principle which the industry has understood instinctively—that the listener needs to become a
communicant.
The elaborate production radio of the thirties and forties—your “Big Broadcasts,” et cetera—were never the
natural
function of radio, but arose merely as substitute, pro tern arrangements, groping and expensive, a settling for less by shoveling on more. And isn’t it a fact that in the so-called Golden Age of Radio your biggest shows—
Amos ’n’ ‘Andy, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, Henry Aldrich, Jack Benny,
and every single soap opera that was ever on the radio—by attempting to portray the ordinary lives of ordinary people with whom listeners could identify, was making an effort to get around the audience-participation principle? Is it too far-fetched to suggest that
Allen’s Alley
was the comic prototype of today’s telephone talk program?

I think we ought not to proceed—in a deeper sense this is not a digression—without first acknowledging that we in radio owe much to a great engineer with a great idea. Probably, shamefully, most of us do not even know his name—I know
I
didn’t—despite the fact that many of us here tonight owe our professional lives to him. I refer, of course, to Brandon Sline, the developer of the tape delay. When I knew I was to address you I cast about in my mind for a suitable topic. When I looked around me at the not inconsiderable achievements of radio in our own age, I naturally came in the course of my deliberations to consider the tape delay, and determined to have on the dais with me the man chiefly responsible for it. It wasn’t easy tracking him down; indeed, it took considerable research just to discover his name. Thus our debts go often unpaid because we are simply unaware of them. Working in his own spare time in his own home on a means of providing the broadcaster with what he thought of as a margin for error, this man, unaffiliated with any network, a staff engineer—I had almost said an
ordinary
staff engineer—at WSNO, Rutledge, Vermont, invented a simple device which has become a contribution more sweeping and more telling than any since Marconi’s. Yes,
since Marconi’s.
For with just this device and the ordinary house telephone, he has made every home in America its own potential broadcasting station, and every American his own potential star. I’m going to ask him to stand. Brandon? That’s right. That’s right. Applaud him you well may. Brandon Sline, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Brandon. You know, ladies and gentlemen, as we were all applauding Brandon it occurred to me that he, the tinkerer engineer, though a professional, working on his equipment in his own workshop as he did, encompasses the best principles of amateurism, and that it is fitting indeed that his device gives voice to amateurs.

It isn’t for me so much as for psychologists to explain the public’s urge to communicate directly. Be that as it may, the instinct seems to be the deepest one in entertainment; I don’t think I need point out to you that “ham” radio existed before commercial radio. At the same time that this urge is basic, however, it is also dangerous. Just as an agency like the FCC must regulate and oversee our industry, so must there be machinery to regulate and oversee the public when it is given
its
voice. It would be instructive, but depressing, I’m afraid, to play for you some of the excisions that have been recorded and preserved from even a single program. You would think we lived in Pandora’s box. A friend of mine who works one of these shows has said that if he had a dollar for each time he has had to black out the word “kike” or “nigger” or some even less fragrant obscenity, he wouldn’t have to work again for the rest of his life. He claims to have heard more filth than any member of the vice squad in the wickedest streets of New York City. It seems a pity that a minority should have it in its power to distress and frustrate the good listener for even the few seconds of silence that follows an unacceptable remark. Have we developed solid-state and instant-on only to have our radios go dead on us in the middle of what is often the most interesting part of a conversation? Aren’t we likely to re- create the same psychological blocks we have been at such great pains to propitiate?