Imagine my surprise to read a story in the paper that the Padres are really going all out this year for the baseball fans of San Diego. They announced that no longer will they brazenly charge $9 for an imported beer at Petco Park. Henceforth the price will be only $8.50! How's that for taking care of cash strapped Americans who enjoy our country's national pass time? (Domestic beers like Bud will remain a thrifty $6.50.) These baseball big shot bazillionaires really DO care about the little guy. I wonder if other teams are planning similar stimulus packages?
Looks like another year of catching most of the games on the radio for this corespondent. But, that's okay. Radio and baseball were made for each other. A good play-by-play announcer and capable color man can often make a game far more exciting than it really is via the audio picture that they paint.
Someone once told me that radio was the only medium that "worked from the inside out". The intimacy created by a gifted radio broadcaster conveys information in such a personal way that the listener internalizes it in the same way he or she receives and stores information shared with a close friend in a private conversation. A carefully crafted live ad for a restaurant might well cause a listener to file away knowledge regarding the eatery for several days before acting on it. Then, all of a sudden, it jumps out on a Friday night something like this: "I know! Let's check out that new Italian place on Chesapeake Avenue....I hear that it's great."
Useful information from a "good friend" recalled at just the right time. It has always been radio's gift and it worked for years.
Lately, in the turmoil of consolidation, the folks in charge of radio have forgotten the magic. They have tossed out the freaks and ego maniacs who provided the talent that made it work. It is now an industry of researchers and accountants who have managed to kill the golden goose in an attempt to figure out how it was laying all those precious eggs. Morons are in charge at the asylum.
As a kid just getting into the radio game, I used to listen to Arthur Godfrey. Not because I liked his show but because there was NOBODY better at selling products than "the old redhead". NOBODY. He had the ability to segue into a commercial and be out of it before you even knew you'd been sold something. He was your friend telling you about something wonderful he had discovered. Before Godfrey, few knew much of anything about Lipton Tea. He put them on the map.
Stories abound about what a bastard he was to his staff and others, but there was no denying when he was in front of a microphone----he was your best friend. A major talent.
Rush Limbaugh has over twenty million listeners and is a gifted broadcaster. He has carved a niche with listeners who, like me, appreciate his refreshing common sense take on the incredible load of crap that the political establishment wants us to swallow. I applaud him for that. But, Rush never seems to be talking just to me. He always seems to be speaking to an auditorium full of "you people" which means he never quite connects on a personal level. Maybe that's by design. All I know is that he is leaving out the intimate part of our most intimate medium.
Paul Harvey had the "one-on-one" intimacy polished to perfection. PERFECTION! He, like Godfrey, was a master of the medium of radio. He was scary good. And, now he too is gone.
I know that nothing lasts forever. The Pony Express is history and the village smithy is a thing of the past. Maybe radio as a viable medium is headed for the barn.
This much is certain: Radio today is being run by a cadre of buffoons not unlike the man who bought a fine restaurant, fired the chef, cut the portions and then wondered why he had no customers.
"And now you know...the rest of the story."
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