My Radio Story

Holding out hope for broadcast radio

By Chuck Ayers

Back in the 1950’s, occasional visitors to my East L. A. childhood home wouldn’t necessarily have notice a dark wooden box standing on four short legs in our dinky living room. The flip-top stand-alone radio was strategically placed against the white wall between our shadeless floor lamp and the hallway door. Just a wooden box about the size of a Maytag clothe washer but covered with a worn mahogany finish.

This was our family’s very own Sears Silvertone A. M. radio console with 78-RPM record player on top. A fifties entertainment center for sure. I loved this dusty old thing.

Facing out from the front panel, between two cloth-covered speakers, was a dimly illuminated square faced dial centered over four control knobs. Down below under the radio controls, in an open storage space intended for 78-RPM records, instead, sat an ancient set of seldom read World Book encyclopedias.

Nonetheless, twisting “clockwise” the plastic “On-off” knob of the front panel of our “Silvertone radio,” would barely illuminate the numbered dial. However, suddenly, like a Genie coming alive deep within the bowels of the radio chassis, came expanding heat and sputtering broadcast static. Warm orange glows were visible from the backside along with crackling sounds from the expanding RCA crystalline vacuum tubes. An unintended and welcomed source of warmth for a skinny kid to stand against on a chilly early Southern California morning.

Finally then, the radio speakers would begin revving up into a crescendo of tinny crackling chatter and then percolate in to voice and music like DNA morphing in to human life.

This electro-magical device was our family’s “Low-Tech” entertainment center. No cables to connect. No dish on the roof. No remote to fight over. Just a low fidelity squawking radio. “The preceding was transcribed.”

Most evening hours, after dinner and with the radio turned on almost to full volume, I often would be sitting on the hardwood floor, legs crossed, and listening intently at the foot of the radio cabinet. All the while flipping through worn pages of the World Book encyclopedia.

As I pondered primeval history while sitting like a Yogi on scuffed hardwood, our radio was offering astounding dramas to the interested ear. Gripping dramas like the “Lone Ranger,” who often handed out “Silver Bullets” to bewildered town-folks. Then, later we would listen to Sergeant Joe Friday, of the LAPD, draw us into a puzzling but true crime seam. A radio crime drama only Dragnet could masterfully solve.

It was 1952 and General Eisenhower had recently returned from Europe to run for President. Singing in the Rain” and High Noon were showing at the motion picture show. Hank Williams had a big country hit on the radio, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive."

During that same year, almost as note-worthy but most likely not, I was attending second grade at Montebello Park Elementary School. Just east of Los Angeles. “Baby-Booming” was in peak season. Classrooms were so full, I had to attend an afternoon session in order to share the same classroom space with an early morning group of second graders. So, one of the benefits of going to school later at Noontime was having uncontested morning access to the Silvertone radio. What a “fortuitous” moment for a bespectacled little Eight-year-old boy.

My favorite program decades ago at those early morning hours and reverberating out of the tiny speakers of our Sears Radio were Don McNeill and his Breakfast Club music merry-makers. “Coming to you live from Chicago,” the radio announcer perceptively pointed out to the radio listener. I often wondered to myself back then, “Where is Chicago from here.” “Is it north of Fresno?” The only thing I knew back then was, “it was a long ways away and sometimes snowed there.” Nonetheless, my day started with the happy folks of the Breakfast Club. The live music and singing were upbeat and fun. I really loved “the chatty” and “whimsical” Aunt Fanny.

From almost any room in our smallish East Los Angeles home, on any given weekday morn, you could easily hear our radio when they announced “First Call to Breakfast.”

Radio for me, in those “long ago days,” was sometimes a welcomed companion when playmates my age were not at home. So, What was to follow must have been a premonition of events to come and possibly a prophecy for my own radio aspirations.

Early one Sunday morning back in 1953, I rode along with my Dad to visit radio station KFOX in nearby Long Beach and primarily just as a casual spectator. It was one of those things like: My Dad probably asked, “do you want to go along with me Charles?”

I replied something like, “Oh, I guess so. Do I have to comb my hair?”

We drove there with the intent to observe and listen to our church’s evangelist deliver his Sunday morning Radio admonitions.

While mindlessly ignoring the preacher’s presentation, I marveled at the huge bullet shaped black and silver RCA microphone sitting on the broadcast desk as if it were a Genie in a bottle ready to grant a wish. In the next room, behind our preacher was a spacious Glassed in control room. Above gray racks of revolving reel-to-reel tape recorders hung a large white face clocks hanging on the wall impervious to glancing anxious eyes. Hundreds of knobs and dials, it seemed, were being twisted and observed by a muted man wearing large black headphones gesturing some kind of indiscernible sign language. I’m sure I thought there was something here for me. Well, maybe.

As I continued to listen to radio into my teen years I noticed how radio time and again quickly changed. As the 50’s and 60’s sped by, radio went from staged drama, captivating adventure, and entertaining live music, over to playing more recorded music and supplemented by reading live local and national news. As I grew older, my radio listening preference moved in the same direction.

With these early radio experiences, I subconsciously launched into my career as a “Radio Critic.” While driving the freeways of L. A, in my late teen and early adult years, I shared my critiques with the car radio as it sang happily and talked.

As time past and while becoming older, I settled into my career I trained for but something just didn’t seem right. Even though my college education and career had gone in another direction, I secretly day-dreamed I could be a serious Radio announcer or Disk Jockey.” Could I really do that? Would my family go along with me?

So, sometimes I thought to myself, there must be a good reason to leave the “humdrum” career I had been pursuing and eagerly enter the glamorous radio profession. Or, so I thought.

Well, the “good reason” came to me in the worst way. I shortly discovered I had an eye disease known as Retinitis Pigmentosa, a gradual degradation of the retina. By 1972, I was “Legally Blind.”

So then, with some serious thought and lots of help from vocational rehab, I soon turned bad luck into an opportunity. Hey! There was a really cool plan. Why not become a blind Disk Jockey.” “What a really great promotional “Hook.” I was totally captivated with radio so why not use this as a good excuse to move into something I would possibly enjoy.

So, I did just that. After reading numerous books on broadcasting, completing a radio correspondence course, and obtaining my Third-class radio license I was set to shop around for a radio position. Then quickly coming by good luck was my first broadcast job. It was offered to me in 1973 at an Oldies station KIOE in Honolulu, Hawaii. I thought this would be great. Working in radio and living in “Paradise.” “How could life be sweeter?” However, paradise is only great and sweet when you earn lots of cash. I didn’t. And to make things worse, about eight months after I took the Hawaii job, the entire announcer staff was fired by an overly ambitious program director.

My nest radio “opportunity” was a “middle of the road” station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I presently live. KXXO, “Radio 13” was all the Numerological bad luck the radio dial number implied. It not only had poor listener ratings and very low compensation and benefits but it had mostly a dysfunctional ownership and management. After about six months on the job, I suddenly discovered, I really didn’t fit into this style of radio Culture.

However, the skills I learned from working in radio, did lead me in to advertising, marketing, and audio production. Then later, the ownership of my own advertising agency.

Even after my short career as a “Radio Announcer,” I still remained a fanatical radio listener and continued to be a “Closet Radio Critic.” Spouting my critiques to anyone standing near a radio but, mostly to the radio itself.

Meanwhile, Top Forty music in the Mid-seventies switched from A. M. to Stereo F. M. As FM went all music, this left A. M. radio with little or nothing to do. Well, sort of.

In the early Eighties many A. M. stations dropped music then filled its time with more news, talk, and sports.

ABC and NBC both introduced satellite “Linked” talk formats feeding to network A. M. affiliates. ABC produced such daily shows as Michael Jackson (the British accented L. A. liberal talk show host. Also there was the soft-spoken Dr. Toni Grant one of the earlier talk radio advice psychologist. From NBC’s “Talk Net” came Sally Jessie Rafael and Bruce Williams. Then came Larry King and his patented style of interview on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

In New York City, WNBC A. M. radio, music and personality, switched call letters to WFAN. Morphing in to an all sports oriented broadcast franchise and recreating the revival of the off-again, on-again career of Don Imus. In Chicago, WLS dropped Fred Winston and his “creative” mix of music news and wit and replaced him with the garrulous but whining Don Wade and Roma.

Finally, their came the self-promoting, liberal bashing Rush Limbaugh and followed by a parade of a new generation of talk radio hosts. All springing up from a Pandora’s box of Bill and Hillary detractors.

Thus, creating, pardon my opinion, the “conservative radio Talk Show” prototype.

Broadly speaking and with some exceptions, Radio from the early 90’s up in to recent times has drifted from a family entertaining medium to something equivalent to a “broadcast Drive by shooting.”

Once again, this is just my amateur radio critic’s opinion.

So, how could this be? How did A. M. radio with it’s rich history of being wonderfully entertaining and informative begin to spiral down into a Muck of partisan rants. Again, I hope there are exceptions here and there to my humble presupposition. I still hold out hope for A. M. radio.

Then we have this FCC deregulation thing. With the recent deregulation of limited ownership in broadcasting and the subsequent consolidation of many radio stations into two or three large corporate conglomerates. Corporations formatting almost all radio broadcasts with a one size fit all program templates. Certainly to reduce costs and limit overhead. Thus eliminating many local and talented radio hosts and all being replaced by a national satellite feed. As a result, local produced radio programs have become just another artifact to be viewed under a glassed in museum display. And, as a consequence of broadcast deregulation, local programming has quickly faded away. Diversity of local social and historical culture is sadly being lost.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not waxing Nostalgic. I certainly do not wish to return to those “old Days of Yesteryear.” I am not, necessarily an Old Time Radio fan. I am just a radio fan who thinks good entertaining radio can still be produced. And, of course, I am still a self-certified radio critic with only 60 plus years of dedicated radio listening. Certainly willing to encourage wholesome and locally created programs.

Without a doubt better things could and should happen to enhance and make A. M. radio informative, fun, and viable again. Radio that could be “more user friendly.” Radio that won’t challenge your personal opinion or intelligent. But a broadcast medium that will bring a smile of satisfaction and make anybody proud to be a listener.