On the Air

A few weeks ago, I asked someone about a building I had seen that I thought looked like an old radio station, probably due to the tall tower standing next to it. The next time I went by it, I took a closer look at the side of the building and spotted the call letters. I looked up the letters online and spent several enjoyable hours reading about the history of the station, which has been a part of daily life for Southern Californians for decades.

Something about the building, surrounded by nondescript structures in an industrial area, made me think of the radio station in American Graffiti, visited by one of the film's main characters, in search of answers to large questions on the eve of his entry into adulthood. When I looked at the building, obviously of an older vintage than everything else around it, I could see it in my mind's eye as it must once have been, a solitary outpost surrounded by fields and orange groves, an intimate presence in tens of thousands of homes daily while itself maintaining a lonely vigil outside of town.

When I was growing up (not in Southern California, but I suspect the same was probably true everywhere), the radio was a friendly presence, dispensing the great variety of pop, rock, folk, jazz, and country music that provided the background of my growing up years. I didn't know the difference between a "corporate" playlist and an independent one made up by the radio station's personnel--all I knew was that music was the pulse of the times, the soundtrack of our lives that was shared by everyone, something that not only entertained us but connected us all.

In the small towns I grew up in, the radio stations played great music and a great variety of it. That's what I usually miss with most of the stations I hear today: their carefully crafted playlists and endless commercials often lack soul and offer instead a bland predictability. It was nice to turn on the radio, have no idea what the DJ was going to play but feel assured you would hear some favorites, and listen to someone talking who sounded like a real human. There are stations today where you can still get this, but they seem harder to find, and I know of very few that exhibit the kind of footloose and relaxed approach to programming that I used to enjoy. If there's a station on which you might hear music from both Bobbie Gentry and Ray Charles these days, I'd like to know where it is.

It was entertaining to read the reminiscences of the Southern California radio engineer who wrote down his memories of his station. He made it sound like a real adventure to be a part of a broadcast team, especially in the early and middle decades of the 20th century. I didn't realize, for one thing, how many physical hazards existed in the day-to-day running of a station, from high voltage areas, to fire dangers, to hazardous chemical waste. Nostalgia can be a dangerous emotion, but I do think something has been lost in the modern era of audience tracking and marketing studies, a certain flying by-the-seat-of-the pants quality that used to be a bit more apparent when you switched on the dial.

I would have liked to work in a radio station in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. It would have been nice to be in on the industry in its pioneering years when it was easier to be adventurous and try new things without considering shareholders and profit margins quite so much. There was an unmediated connection between the broadcaster and the audience members, a genuine intimacy that is tough to match these days, though I think a lot of the college stations do a pretty good job. Why would Curt have gone to Wolfman Jack for advice on love if he hadn't considered him almost as a friend?

I know some people enjoy the syndicated radio shows in which listeners phone in their personal stories and requests, but it always seems too much like "reality TV" to me--even if it isn't--because of the way it's packaged. Give me a lonely caffeine-addicted DJ in a rumpled shirt with a little pizzazz to his personality and an ear for a good song any day over a slickly coordinated corporate playlist and canned patter that might just as easily have been phoned in from Mars for all I know. I still look to radio for entertainment, even though I often come away disappointed. If only there were more of those independent voices still out there.