Radio Announcer Quotes

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

I despise my own past and that of others. I despise resignation, patience, professional heroism and all the obligatory sentiments. I also despise the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, radio announcers' voices, aerodynamics, the Boy Scouts, the smell of naphtha, the news, and drunks. I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street. I hope for vibrant love, the impossible, the chimerical. I dread knowing precisely my own limitations.

I'm Chip Martin," he announced in a deep voice, the voice of a radio deejay. Before I could respond, he added, "I'd shake your hand, but I think you should hold on damn tight to that towel till you can get some clothes on.

Looking for consciousness in the brain is like looking Inside a radio for the announcer.

There was something about her mouth that made me feel possibilities...the way a train ticket holds possibilities, the way a boat docked at sunset does, the way a voice on the radio announcing victory does. A mouth can have that it can seem brave, and bold. Finite and infinite. After a war, you need both of those things. "Why don't you kiss me, she said. "Celebrate a new world." And so I did. I could not forget that kiss. I still cannot. I put my fingertips to her face. Indeed,changed that day, but the change in life was no smaller or less significant. The moment took my sorrow and made it swarm the streets in victory, shouting in joy and rightness, and from that I have never quite recovered.

so I told him jokes. “Do you know why radio announcers have tiny hands?” “Huh?” “Wee paws for station identification,” I would whoop.

NPR faded from the radio in a string of announcements of corporate supporters, replaced by a Christian station that alternated pabulum preaching and punchy music. He switched to shit-kicker airwaves and listened to songs about staying home, going home, being home and the errors of leaving home.

Looking for consciousness in the brain is like looking inside a radio for the announcer

I was a proper snob in college, as only an old Wise Child alumnus and future lifetime English-major can be, and I didn’t want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as "arduous" is as early as fifty-five for men and fifty for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than six hundred Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, writers, musicians, and on and on and on.

Sell them their dreams,' a woman radio announcer urged a convention of display men in 1923. 'Sell them what they longed for and hoped for and almost despaired of having. Sell them hats by splashing sunlight across them. Sell them dreams – dreams of country clubs and proms and visions of what might happen if only. After all, people don’t buy things to have things. They buy things to work for them. They buy hope – hope of what your merchandise will do for them. Sell them this hope and you won’t have to worry about selling them goods.

Skip Caray was my favorite announcer as I grew up listening to the Braves on TBS and on the radio. One night, listening to a game that was headed into extra-innings, the broadcast was just breaking away to commercial when Skip said, 'Free baseball in Atlanta!' One of the best lines I’ve ever heard.

Zachary notified the local newspapers and all pertinent radio and television stations. He called a press conference at the home of his client, Jennifer Tracey, to announce the filing of a major multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major religious institution. The dye had been cast. A long, tough road lay ahead. For Zachary, Jennifer, Kenny, and Jake, there was no turning back.

Oh, Haifa. City of glistering grime, smog hovering over foamy sea. Of blocky apartment buildings facing the coast, topped with white water tanks crowded together like flocks of squat storks. Of palm trees and pine trees and electric wires, twisting green and black toward the chalky beachfront and rows of factory smokestacks. The way you put it once, Laith, your voice warped to mimic a radio announcer: 'Welcome to Haifa: you may die an early and also agonizing carcinogenic death, but at least you'll have a killer view from your hospital room.

In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors’ waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich.

In both runs, Curtain Time attempted to play to the same sizable audience that had made The First Nighter Program a radio powerhouse. It had a theater setting, announcements that the curtain was “about to go up,” and the same fare, generally bubbly boy-girl romances. There was an usher in the later run, who called out “Tickets, please, thank you, sir,” and escorted “theatergoers” to their imaginary seats in “seventh row center, seats seven and eight.” The announcer, Myron Wallace, became famous decades later as the tough TV reporter on 60 Minutes.

But he survived, that radio announcer. His ship and five others out of the flotilla of ten came through, a bit radioactive, but otherwise unharmed. And I understand that the first thing that happened to him when he reported back to his office after treatment was a reprimand for the use of overcolloquial language which had given offense to a number of listeners by its neglect of the Third Commandment.

It was a roaring spring morning with green in the sky, the air spiced with sand sagebrush and aromatic sumac. NPR faded from the radio in a string of announcements of corporate supporters, replaced by a Christian station that alternated pabulum preaching and punchy music. He switched to shit-kicker airwaves and listened to songs about staying home, going home, being home and the errors of leaving home.

Alex was right in front of the mantel now, bent forward, his nose mere inches from a picture of me. "Oh,God. Don't look at that!" It was from the year-end recital of my one and only year of ballet class. I was six: twig legs, a huge gap where my two front teeth had recently been, and a bumblebee costume. Nonna had done her best, but there was only so much she could do with yellow and black spandex and a bee butt. Dad had found one of those headbands with springy antennai attached. I'd loved the antennae. The more enthusiastic my jetes, the more they bounced. Of course, I'd also jeted my flat-chested little self out of the top of my costume so many times that, during the actual recital itself,I'd barely moved at all, victim to the overwhelming modesty of the six-year-old. Now, looking at the little girl I'd been, I wished someone had told her not to worry so much, that within a year, that smooth, skinny, little bare shoulder would have turned into the bane of her existence. That she was absolutely perfect. "Nice stripes," Alex said casually, straightening up. That stung. It should't have-it was just a photo-but it did. I don't know what I'd expected him to say about the picture. It wasn't that. But then, I didn't expect the wide grin that spread across his face when he got a good look at mine, either. "Those," he announced, pointing to a photo of my mulleted dad leaning against the painted hood of his Mustang "are nice stripes. That-" he pointed to the me-bee- "Is seriously cute." "You're insane," I muttered, insanely pleased. "Yeah,well, tell me something I don't know." He took the bottle and plate from me. "I like knowing you have a little vanity in there somewhere." He stood, hands full, looking expectant and completely beautiful. The reality of the situation hadn't really been all that real before. Now, as I started up the stairs to my bedroom, Alex Bainbridge in tow, it hit me. I was leading a boy, this boy, into my very personal space. Then he started singing. "You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you. You're sooo vain....!" He had a pretty good voice. It was a truly excellent AM radio song. And just like that, I was officially In Deep

Only then, after all these things had been accomplished within the first couple of hours of the coup, could the messages, which had been drawn up and filed, be sent out by radio, telephone and telegraph to the commanders of the Home Army in other cities and to the top generals commanding the troops at the front and in the occupied zones, announcing that Hitler was dead and that a new anti-Nazi government had been formed in Berlin. The revolt would have to be over—and achieved—within twenty-four hours and the new government firmly installed. Otherwise the vacillating generals might have second thoughts. Goering and Himmler might be able to rally them, and a civil war would ensue. In that case the fronts would cave in and the very chaos and collapse which the plotters wished to prevent would become inevitable.

At the time of the 1 996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: "Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize." U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.

Reporting tonight’s news on April 9, 1940, German troops invade Denmark and Norway,” the radio announcer said. Emil shook his head. “Hitler’s a madman. They shouldn’t prat about. Someone should just kill him.” He turned to stare at Peter. “Why haven’t your people turned against him? Some people don’t have the courage, I guess.” Peter clenched his fists, but he held them tightly to his sides, his nails digging into his skin. He glared at Emil and Maude. “It’s not about courage. It’s about power. When someone controls everything you do, it can be a prison even if you aren’t confined.

She looked over at the clock. The afternoon update would come on soon. She never missed it. She told herself she wanted to know what was happening out there, but the truth was more simple. What she really wanted to hear was news of one person: David Vale. But that report never came, and it probably wouldn’t. There were two ways out of the tombs in Antarctica—through the ice entrance there in Antarctica or via the portal to Gibraltar. Her father had closed the Gibraltar exit permanently, and the Immari army was waiting in Antarctica. They would never let David live. Kate tried to push the thought away as the radio announcer came on.

Anne Frank kept a diary from June 12, 1942, to August 1, 1944. Initially, she wrote it strictly for herself. Then, one day in 1944, Gerrit Bolkestein, a member of the Dutch government in exile, announced in a radio broadcast from London that after the war he hoped to collect eyewitness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under the German occupation, which could be made available to the public. As an example, he specifically mentioned letters and diaries. Impressed by this speech, Anne Frank decided that when the war was over she would publish a book based on her diary. She began rewriting and editing her diary, improving on the text, omitting passages she didn’t think were interesting enough and adding others from memory.

1973 was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, the year Richard Nixon announced he was not a crook, the year Edward G. Robinson and Noel Coward died. It was Devin Jones’s lost year. I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin with literary aspirations. I possessed three pairs of bluejeans, four pairs of Jockey shorts, a clunker Ford (with a good radio), occasional suicidal ideations, and a broken heart.

After these walk-ons, she would banter with announcer Ken Niles and perhaps indulge in more stargazing. In her memoir, radio actress Mary Jane Higby recalls working the show. The “underpaid radio actors” soon took to calling themselves “the Gay Ad-Libbers.” They “would circle the microphone, trying to simulate people having a marvelous time. ‘What fun to be here!’ they would cry. ‘My, doesn’t Myrna Loy look gorgeous! Whoops, there’s Bette Davis!

The Martin and Lewis Show was developed by NBC in the wake of the stinging CBS talent raids that lured Jack Benny and others to the younger network. NBC announced a talent hunt: the network was searching for rising young performers for radio and television. Soon thereafter a network executive caught the nightclub act of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who had been performing together for several years and had developed some name recognition within the industry while remaining largely unknown to the general public.

In his low-key, taciturn, winning way, Lindbergh told the airfield crowds and the radio listeners who he was and what he’d done, and by the time he climbed back aboard his plane to take off for his next stop, he could have announced that, following the von Ribbentrop White House dinner, the First Lady would be inviting Adolf Hitler and his girlfriend to spend the Fourth of July weekend as vacation guests in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House and still have been cheered by his countrymen as democracy’s savior.

When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall. After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing.

Wrote the veteran Congressman DP Mishra: “…Soon after, I heard Nehru’s voice on All India Radio at Nagpur, committing the Government of India to the holding of plebiscite in Kashmir. As from my talk with Patel, I had received the impression that the signature of the Maharaja had finally settled the Kashmir issue. I was surprised by Nehru’s announcement. When I visited Delhi next, I pointedly asked Patel whether the decision to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet. He sighed and shook his head. It was evident that Nehru had acted on Mountbatten’s advice, and had ignored his colleagues.” It seems

can’t listen to this!” I smacked the radio off. “I know it’s horrific,” Mom said. “But you’re old enough. We live a life of privilege in Seattle. That doesn’t mean we can literally switch off these women, whose only fault was being born in the Congo during a civil war. We need to bear witness.” She turned the radio back on. I crumpled in my seat and fumed. “The war in Congo rages on with no end in sight,” the announcer said. “And now comes word of a new campaign by the soldiers, to find the women they have already raped and re-rape them.” “Holy Christ on a cross!” Mom said. “I draw the line at re-raping.” And she turned off NPR.

The BBC announcer’s voice changed. “The news,” he said, “has just been received that Japanese aircraft have raided Pearl Harbor, the American naval base in Hawaii. The announcement of the attack was made in a brief statement by President Roosevelt. Naval and military targets on the principal Hawaiian island of Oahu have also been attacked. No further details are yet available.” At first, there was confusion. “I was thoroughly startled,” Harriman said, “and I repeated the words, ‘The Japanese have raided Pearl Harbor.’ ” “No, no,” countered Churchill aide Tommy Thompson. “He said Pearl River.” U.S. ambassador John Winant, also present, glanced toward Churchill. “We looked at one another incredulously,” Winant wrote. Churchill, his depression suddenly lifted, slammed the top of the radio down and leapt to his feet. His on-duty private secretary, John Martin, entered the room, announcing that the Admiralty was on the phone. As Churchill headed for the door, he said, “We shall declare war on Japan.” Winant followed, perturbed. “Good God,” he said, “you can’t declare war on a radio announcement.” (Later Winant wrote, “There is nothing half-hearted or unpositive about Churchill—certainly not when he is on the move.”) Churchill stopped. His voice quiet, he said, “What shall I do?” Winant set off to call Roosevelt to learn more. “And I shall talk with him too,” Churchill said. Once Roosevelt was on the line, Winant told him that he had a friend with him who also wanted to speak. “You will know who it is, as soon as you hear his voice.

those manufacturing companies: America! With our pocket money we bought flat packets of chewing gum, beautifully wrapped, that included a picture of a movie star – we collected those – and it all smelled strange and rosy: America! On short-wave radio an army station crackled into the room, with an announcer who might start talking right over a swing band: America! Lionel Hampton came to the Netherlands in September 1953 and his saxophonist lay on his back onstage and carried on playing. Hampton abandoned his vibraphone to play drums for a while and to do an improvised dance to ‘Hey-Ba-Ba-Re-Bop’. De Gelderlander, our provincial newspaper, wrote: ‘How vast must be the emptiness of those hearts that have lost any longing for values more exalted than those of Negro moaning.’ But

Count all these sufferings from here to the end of the endless sky which is no sky and see how many you can add together to make a figure to impress the Boss of Dead Souls in the Meat Manufactory in city City CITY everyone of them in pain and born to die, milling in the streets at 2 A M underneath those imponderable skies”—their enormous endlessness, the sweep of the Mexican plateau away from the Moon—living but to die, the sad song of it I hear sometimes on my roof in the Tejado district, rooftop cell, with candles, waiting for my Nirvana or my Tristessa—neither come, at noon I hear “La Paloma” being played on mental radios in the fallways between the tenement windows—the crazy kid next door sings, the dream is taking place right now, the music is so sad, the French horns ache, the high whiney violins and the deberratarra-rabaratarara of the Indian Spanish announcer. Living but to die, here we wait on this shelf, and up in heaven is all that gold open caramel, ope my door—Diamond Sutra is the sky.

happening. He went into a restaurant and sat down. A radio was blaring out the latest composition in dissarythm, the new quarter-tone dance music in which chorded woodwinds provided background patterns for the mad melodies pounded on tuned tomtoms. Between each number and the next a frenetic announcer extolled the virtues of a product. Munching a sandwich, Roger listened appreciatively to the dissarhythm and managed not to hear the commercials. Most intelligent people of the nineties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loudspeaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then-infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully-cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses. For that reason a good part of the newscast which followed the dissarhythm program went, as it were, into one

If talking pictures could be said to have a father, it was Lee De Forest, a brilliant but erratic inventor of electrical devices of all types. (He had 216 patents.) In 1907, while searching for ways to boost telephone signals, De Forest invented something called the thermionic triode detector. De Forest’s patent described it as “a System for Amplifying Feeble Electric Currents” and it would play a pivotal role in the development of broadcast radio and much else involving the delivery of sound, but the real developments would come from others. De Forest, unfortunately, was forever distracted by business problems. Several companies he founded went bankrupt, twice he was swindled by his backers, and constantly he was in court fighting over money or patents. For these reasons, he didn’t follow through on his invention. Meanwhile, other hopeful inventors demonstrated various sound-and-image systems—Cinematophone, Cameraphone, Synchroscope—but in every case the only really original thing about them was their name. All produced sounds that were faint or muddy, or required impossibly perfect timing on the part of the projectionist. Getting a projector and sound system to run in perfect tandem was basically impossible. Moving pictures were filmed with hand-cranked cameras, which introduced a slight variability in speed that no sound system could adjust to. Projectionists also commonly repaired damaged film by cutting out a few frames and resplicing what remained, which clearly would throw out any recording. Even perfect film sometimes skipped or momentarily stuttered in the projector. All these things confounded synchronization. De Forest came up with the idea of imprinting the sound directly onto the film. That meant that no matter what happened with the film, sound and image would always be perfectly aligned. Failing to find backers in America, he moved to Berlin in the early 1920s and there developed a system that he called Phonofilm. De Forest made his first Phonofilm movie in 1921 and by 1923 he was back in America giving public demonstrations. He filmed Calvin Coolidge making a speech, Eddie Cantor singing, George Bernard Shaw pontificating, and DeWolf Hopper reciting “Casey at the Bat.” By any measure, these were the first talking pictures. However, no Hollywood studio would invest in them. The sound quality still wasn’t ideal, and the recording system couldn’t quite cope with multiple voices and movement of a type necessary for any meaningful dramatic presentation. One invention De Forest couldn’t make use of was his own triode detector tube, because the patents now resided with Western Electric, a subsidiary of AT&T. Western Electric had been using the triode to develop public address systems for conveying speeches to large crowds or announcements to fans at baseball stadiums and the like. But in the 1920s it occurred to some forgotten engineer at the company that the triode detector could be used to project sound in theaters as well. The upshot was that in 1925 Warner Bros. bought the system from Western Electric and dubbed it Vitaphone. By the time of The Jazz Singer, it had already featured in theatrical presentations several times. Indeed, the Roxy on its opening night in March 1927 played a Vitaphone feature of songs from Carmen sung by Giovanni Martinelli. “His voice burst from the screen with splendid synchronization with the movements of his lips,” marveled the critic Mordaunt Hall in the Times. “It rang through the great theatre as if he had himself been on the stage.

CAST: Barry Fitzgerald as Judge Bernard Fitz of the Vincent County District Court. Bill Green as Sheriff McGrath, “Vincent County’s own little Hitler,” a frequent antagonist of the kind-hearted judge. Barbara Fuller as Susan, the judge’s lovely young niece. Leo Cleary as the bailiff. Dawn Bender as little Mary Margaret McAllister. WRITER-PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: Carlton E. Morse. ANNOUNCER: Frank Martin. ORCHESTRA: Opie Cates. This show bore many of the trademarks that writer Carlton E. Morse had established on One Man’s Family: stories containing-the breath of life, realistic conflicts, and a character who, as Time put it, was “surefire for cornfed philosophizing.” Before his election to the bench, Judge Fitz had been the barber of a small (pop. 3,543) community in the county. At times, when his legal career tried his patience, he longed again for that simpler life. He was staunchly Irish (what else, with Barry Fitzgerald in the lead?) and could be painfully sentimental. One reviewer noted that “he criticizes the law as much as he enforces it, and slyly finds a loophole when he thinks a culprit needs a helping of simple kindness.” The sheriff, on the other hand, had a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” mentality.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' comming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms", not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember abouut the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I sais they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio goin full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

The last refuge of the Self, perhaps, is “physical continuity.” Despite the body’s mercurial nature, it feels like a badge of identity we have carried since the time of our earliest childhood memories. A thought experiment dreamed up in the 1980s by British philosopher Derek Parfit illustrates how important—yet deceiving—this sense of physical continuity is to us.15 He invites us to imagine a future in which the limitations of conventional space travel—of transporting the frail human body to another planet at relatively slow speeds—have been solved by beaming radio waves encoding all the data needed to assemble the passenger to their chosen destination. You step into a machine resembling a photo booth, called a teletransporter, which logs every atom in your body then sends the information at the speed of light to a replicator on Mars, say. This rebuilds your body atom by atom using local stocks of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and so on. Unfortunately, the high energies needed to scan your body with the required precision vaporize it—but that’s okay because the replicator on Mars faithfully reproduces the structure of your brain nerve by nerve, synapse by synapse. You step into the teletransporter, press the green button, and an instant later materialize on Mars and can continue your existence where you left off. The person who steps out of the machine at the other end not only looks just like you, but etched into his or her brain are all your personality traits and memories, right down to the memory of eating breakfast that morning and your last thought before you pressed the green button. If you are a fan of Star Trek, you may be perfectly happy to use this new mode of space travel, since this is more or less what the USS Enterprise’s transporter does when it beams its crew down to alien planets and back up again. But now Parfit asks us to imagine that a few years after you first use the teletransporter comes the announcement that it has been upgraded in such a way that your original body can be scanned without destroying it. You decide to give it a go. You pay the fare, step into the booth, and press the button. Nothing seems to happen, apart from a slight tingling sensation, but you wait patiently and sure enough, forty-five minutes later, an image of your new self pops up on the video link and you spend the next few minutes having a surreal conversation with yourself on Mars. Then comes some bad news. A technician cheerfully informs you that there have been some teething problems with the upgraded teletransporter. The scanning process has irreparably damaged your internal organs, so whereas your replica on Mars is absolutely fine and will carry on your life where you left off, this body here on Earth will die within a few hours. Would you care to accompany her to the mortuary? Now how do you feel? There is no difference in outcome between this scenario and what happened in the old scanner—there will still be one surviving “you”—but now it somehow feels as though it’s the real you facing the horror of imminent annihilation. Parfit nevertheless uses this thought experiment to argue that the only criterion that can rationally be used to judge whether a person has survived is not the physical continuity of a body but “psychological continuity”—having the same memories and personality traits as the most recent version of yourself. Buddhists

Roger snapped on the large, battery-powered radio. He rolled the dial around, but all he got was static. Finally, he heard a signal, and he tuned it in. A badly modulated voice droned through the interference. It sounded as if it were a war correspondent sending a signal from very far away. Steve clicked off the TV set so that they would better be able to hear the announcer: “. . . Reports that communications with Detroit have been knocked out along with Atlanta, Boston and certain sections of Philadelphia and New York City . . .” “Philly . . .” Roger said almost to himself. “I know WGON is out by now,” Steve said with animation. “It was a madhouse back there . . . people are crazy . . . if they’d just organize. It’s total confusion. I don’t believe it’s gotten this bad. I don’t believe they can’t handle it.” He looked around the room proudly. “Look at us. Look at what we were able to do today.” A few feet away, still in a slumped position by the pyramid of cartons, Peter’s eyes blinked open. He had been listening to what he wanted to hear, and now this statement by the kid really made him take notice. His eyes moved slightly to the side so that he could watch Stephen. The young man was gesturing wildly with his hands, going on and on about their exploits as a team. The other two didn’t realize Peter was awake. Roger nodded his head, but it didn’t seem as if he were really listening to Steve’s ramblings. “We knocked the shit out of ’em, and they never touched us,” Steve exclaimed. “Not really,” he said in a quieter tone. The rumbling voice erupted from the other side of the room. “They touched us good, Flyboy. We’re lucky to get out with our asses. You don’t forget that!

The fight spilled out into the press. Allen blasted the censors. “They are a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Their conferences are meetings of men who can do nothing but collectively agree that nothing can be done.” The thin-skinned network reacted again, cutting Allen off in the middle of a barb. Now other comics joined the fray. That week Red Skelton said on his show that he’d have to be careful not to ad-lib something that might wound the dignity of some NBC vice president. “Did you hear they cut Fred Allen off on Sunday?” That’s as far as he got—the network cut him off. But Skelton went right on talking, for the studio audience. “You know what NBC means, don’t you? Nothing but cuts. Nothing but confusion. Nobody certain.” When the network put him back on the air, Skelton said, “Well, we have now joined the parade of stars.” Bob Hope, on his program, was cut off the air for this joke: “Vegas is the only town in the world where you can get tanned and faded at the same time. Of course, Fred Allen can be faded anytime.” Allen told the press that NBC had a vice president who was in charge of “program ends.” When a show ran overtime, this individual wrote down the time he had saved by cutting it off: eventually he amassed enough time for a two-week vacation. Dennis Day took the last shot. “I’m listening to the radio,” he said to his girlfriend Mildred on his Wednesday night NBC sitcom. “I don’t hear anything,” said Mildred. “I know,” said Dennis: “Fred Allen’s on.” On that note, the network gave up the fight, announcing that its comedians were free to say whatever they wanted. It didn’t matter, said Radio Life: “They all were anyway.” Allen took a major ratings dive in 1948. Some

John Doerr, the legendary venture capitalist who backed Netscape, Google, and Amazon, doesn’t remember the exact day anymore; all he remembers is that it was shortly before Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 9, 2007, to announce that Apple had reinvented the mobile phone. Doerr will never forget, though, the moment he first laid eyes on that phone. He and Jobs, his friend and neighbor, were watching a soccer match that Jobs’s daughter was playing in at a school near their homes in Palo Alto. As play dragged on, Jobs told Doerr that he wanted to show him something. “Steve reached into the top pocket of his jeans and pulled out the first iPhone,” Doerr recalled for me, “and he said, ‘John, this device nearly broke the company. It is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.’ So I asked for the specs. Steve said that it had five radios in different bands, it had so much processing power, so much RAM [random access memory], and so many gigabits of flash memory. I had never heard of so much flash memory in such a small device. He also said it had no buttons—it would use software to do everything—and that in one device ‘we will have the world’s best media player, world’s best telephone, and world’s best way to get to the Web—all three in one.’” Doerr immediately volunteered to start a fund that would support creation of applications for this device by third-party developers, but Jobs wasn’t interested at the time. He didn’t want outsiders messing with his elegant phone. Apple would do the apps. A year later, though, he changed his mind; that fund was launched, and the mobile phone app industry exploded. The moment that Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone turns out to have been a pivotal junction in the history of technology—and the world.

In Uganda, I wrote a questionaire that I had my research assistants give; on it, I asked about the embalasassa, a speckled lizard said to be poisonous and to have been sent by Prime minsister Milton Obote to kill Baganda in the late 1960s. It is not poisonous and was no more common in the 1960s than it had been in previous decades, as Makerere University science professors announced on the radio and stated in print… I wrote the question, What is the difference between basimamoto and embalasassa? Anyone who knows anything about the Bantu language—myself included—would know the answer was contained in the question: humans and reptiles are different living things and belong to different noun classes… A few of my informants corrected my ignorance… but many, many more ignored the translation in my question and moved beyond it to address the history of the constructs of firemen and poisonous lizards without the slightest hesitation. They disregarded language to engage in a discussion of events… My point is not about the truth of the embalasassa story… but rather that the labeling of one thing as ‘true’ and the other as ‘fictive’ or ‘metaphorical’—all the usual polite academic terms for false—may eclipse all the intricate ways in which people use social truths to talk about the past. Moreover, chronological contradictions may foreground the fuzziness of certain ideas and policies, and that fuzziness may be more accurate than any exact historical reconstruction… Whether the story of the poisionous embalasassa was real was hardly the issue; there was a real, harmless lizard and there was a real time when people in and around Kampala feared the embalasassa. They feared it in part because of beliefs about lizards, but mainly what frightened people was their fear of their government and the lengths to which it would go to harm them. The confusions and the misunderstandings show what is important; knowledge about the actual lizard would not.

The Israeli border police guarding the central region near the Jordanian border had been told to take all measures necessary to keep order that evening. The local colonel, Issachar Shadmi, decided that this meant setting a curfew for Palestinian Arab villages, from five p.m. to six a.m. The news of the curfew was broadcast over the radio the same day it went into force. The border police unit commanders in the region were informed of the order by their commanding officer, Major Shmuel Malinki. Malinki implied that, in the event of anyone breaking the curfew, the police could shoot to kill. Several platoons were charged with informing villagers in person. At the village of Kfar Kassem (or Kafr Qasim), close to the border with the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, a platoon arrived to announce the news—but too late in the day. They were told that many of the village’s agricultural workers were already out at work, mostly picking olives. After five p.m., the villagers returned as expected: a mixed crowd of men and women, boys and girls, riding on bicycles, wagons, and trucks. Even though he knew these civilians would not have heard about the curfew through no fault of their own, the unit commander Lieutenant Gabriel Dahan determined that they were in violation of it and therefore should be shot. Out of all the unit commanders given this order, Dahan was the only one to enforce it.16 As each small group of villagers arrived, the border police opened fire. Forty-three civilians were killed and thirteen injured. The dead were mostly children aged between eight and seventeen: twenty-three of them, plus fourteen men and six women. It was said that one nine-year-old girl was shot twenty-eight times. Another little girl watched as her eleven-year-old cousin was shot. He was dragged indoors and died in his grandfather’s arms, blood pouring from the bullet wound in his chest. Laborers were ordered off their trucks in small groups, lined up, and executed. There were clashes between Arabs and border police that evening in which six more Arabs were killed. The order to kill had not come from the top. It was traced back conclusively only as far as Major Malinki. When Ben-Gurion heard about the massacre, he was furious, telling his cabinet that the officers who had shot civilians should be hanged in Kfar Kassem’s town square.17 Yet the Israeli government covered the incident up with a press blackout lasting two months.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

I was getting my knife sharpened at the cutlery shop in the mall,” he said. It was where he originally bought the knife. The store had a policy of keeping your purchase razor sharp, so he occasionally brought it back in for a free sharpening. “Anyway, it was that day that I met this Asian male. He was alone and really nice looking, so I struck up a conversation with him. Well, I offered him fifty bucks to come home with me and let me take some photos. I told him that there was liquor at my place and indicated that I was sexually attracted to him. He was eager and cooperative so we took the bus to my apartment. Once there, I gave him some money and he posed for several photos. I offered him the rum and Coke Halcion-laced solution and he drank it down quickly. We continued to drink until he passed out, and then I made love to him for the rest of the afternoon and early evening. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up it was late. I checked on the guy. He was out cold, still breathing heavily from the Halcion. I was out of beer and walked around the corner for another six-pack but after I got to the tavern, I started drinking and before I knew it, it was closing time. I grabbed my six-pack and began walking home. As I neared my apartment, I noted a lot of commotion, people milling about, police officers, and a fire engine. I decided to see what was going on, so I came closer. I was surprised to see they were all standing around the Asian guy from my apartment. He was standing there naked, speaking in some kind of Asian dialect. At first, I panicked and kept walking, but I could see that he was so messed up on the Halcion and booze that he didn’t know who or where he was. “I don’t really know why, Pat, but I strode into the middle of everyone and announced he was my lover. I said that we lived together at Oxford and had been drinking heavily all day, and added that this was not the first time he left the apartment naked while intoxicated. I explained that I had gone out to buy some more beer and showed them the six-pack. I asked them to give him a break and let me take him back home. The firemen seemed to buy the story and drove off, but the police began to ask more questions and insisted that I take them to my apartment to discuss the matter further. I was nervous but felt confident; besides, I had no other choice. One cop took him by the arm and he followed, almost zombie-like. “I led them to my apartment and once inside, I showed them the photos I had taken, and his clothes neatly folded on the arm of my couch. The cops kept trying to question the guy but he was still talking gibberish and could not answer any of their questions, so I told them his name was Chuck Moung and gave them a phony date of birth. I handed them my identification and they wrote everything down in their little notebooks. They seemed perturbed and talked about writing us some tickets for disorderly conduct or something. One of them said they should take us both in for all the trouble we had given them. “As they were discussing what to do, another call came over their radio. It must have been important because they decided to give us a warning and advised me to keep my drunken partner inside. I was relieved. I had fooled the authorities and it gave me a tremendous feeling. I felt powerful, in control, almost invincible. After the officers left, I gave the guy another Halcion-filled drink and he soon passed out. I was still nervous about the narrow escape with the cops, so I strangled him and disposed of his body.

It is interesting to note that in announcing the formation of the National Broadcasting Company, the Radio Corporation of America published a newspaper advertisement on September 14, 1926 which contained the following significant statements: Any use of radio transmission which causes the public to feel that the quality of programs is not the highest, that the use of radio is not the broadest and best use in the public interest, that it is used for political advantage or selfish power will be detrimental to the public interest in radio and, therefore, to the Radio Corporation of America. The purpose of the (National Broadcasting) Company will be to provide the best programs available for broadcasting in the United States. In order that the National Broadcasting Company may be advised as to the best type of program, that discrimination may be avoided, the the public may be assured that the broadcasting is being done in the fairest and best way, always allowing for human frailties and human performance, it has created an Advisory Council.

The cast in 1938–39: Bob Hope, madcap Jerry Colonna, announcer Bill Goodwin, and bandleader Skinnay Ennis. Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman as high-society crazies Brenda and Cobina. Judy Garland, resident songstress, 1939; Frances Langford for many years thereafter. Barbara Jo Allen as Vera Vague by 1943. Stan Kenton as maestro, 1943, when Skinnay Ennis went into the Army; Desi Arnaz Orchestra, 1946; Les Brown beginning in 1947. Singers of the late 1940s: Gloria Jean, Doris Day. Trudy Erwin as the Pepsodent Girl, whose weekly lament, “Dear Miriam, poor Miriam, neglected using Irium,” warned women what might happen to teeth without Pepsodent and its super ingredient, Irium.

The studio was connected by a picture window to master control, which was connected in the same way to the announce booth and the editing booth beyond that. She could see the length of the little station and into the hallway, too. And thus she was inducted into the visibility and invisibility of radio, the intimacy and the isolation.

He studied everything on the air, “listened to radio until it was coming out of my ears, getting the feel of it.” This was a brand new ball game: “it wouldn’t do any good to roll your eyes or clap your hands” to capture an audience. He decided to rope in the studio audience and let them laugh—on microphone—at his gags. This was unknown territory: before Cantor, studio audiences were sternly warned to make no noise of any kind while the shows were on the air. No laughter was permitted: even a muffled cough would bring an usher with a finger to his lips. This policy changed forever when Cantor and announcer Jimmy Wallington went down into the audience, snatched the hats off their wives’ heads, and chased each other around the stage while the audience shrieked hysterically. After the broadcast, John Reber of J. Walter Thompson called with the excited news that Cantor had “just invented audience participation.

The final word was her daughter’s, in a frank and touching memoir, Knock Wood. Yes, there were disagreements; there were plenty of generation-gap misunderstandings. At the bottom of it was a girl who desperately needed the approval of a father who felt stripped when he had to speak as himself, with no dummy on his lap to make light of things. The book is a love story on both sides: in the end Candice Bergen has placed Charlie McCarthy in an open, healthy spotlight, as a vital piece of her personal history. Bergen did little in television. He was a radio man, even though his art was primarily visual. With Charlie and Mortimer, he emceed the 1956 CBS audience show Do You Trust Your Wife?, and he made numerous guest appearances on TV variety shows of the ’50s. He grew old and gray. Charlie, of course, was eternally young. In September 1978 Bergen announced his retirement: he would do a few more shows, then give his dummy to the Smithsonian. Charlie had been his companion for 56 years. A week later he appeared with Andy Williams at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He died in his sleep after this performance, Oct. 1, 1978.

Sanborn customers threatened to boycott the product. The Chicago Tribune pronounced the show “vomitous,” and of course congressmen hemmed and hawed. The result, according to Time, was that a “thoroughly alarmed” NBC and J. Walter Thompson apologized publicly and “announced that they would never do it again.” Mae West became an instant persona non grata in radio: at NBC it was forbidden to utter her name on the air, an unwritten ban that was still in effect 12 years later.

Jack Webb had been active in radio for several years before Dragnet propelled him to national prominence. He had arrived at KGO, the ABC outlet in San Francisco, an unknown novice in 1945. Soon he was working as a staff announcer and disc jockey. His morning show, The Coffee Club, revealed his lifelong interest in jazz music, and in 1946 he was featured on a limited ABC-West network in the quarter-hour docudrama One out of Seven. His Jack Webb Show, also 1946, was a bizarre comedy series unlike anything else he ever attempted. His major break arrived with Pat Novak: for 26 weeks Webb played a waterfront detective in a series so hard-boiled it became high camp. He moved to Hollywood, abandoning Novak just as that series was hitting its peak. Mutual immediately slipped him into a Novak sound-alike, Johnny Modero: Pier 23, for the summer of 1947. He played leads and bit parts on such series as Escape, The Whistler, and This Is Your FBI. He began a film career: in He Walked by Night (1948), Webb played a crime lab cop. The film’s technical adviser was Sergeant Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles police. Webb and Wynn shared a belief that pure investigative procedure was dramatic enough without the melodrama of the private eye. The seeds of Dragnet were sown on a movie set.

you” the listener into the shoes of some embattled hero. You are alone and unarmed in the green hell of the Caribbean jungle, you are being trailed by a pack of fiercely hungry dogs and a mad hunter armed for the kill.… “Escape with us now to ancient Egypt,” the announcer would invite: escape to a raft, and a group of men marooned in the vast South Pacific; escape with us now to occupied France. You are alone: this was a recurring Escape theme

GRANBY’S GREEN ACRES, situation comedy. BROADCAST HISTORY: July 3–Aug. 21, 1950, CBS. 30m, Mondays at 9:30. CAST: Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet as John and Martha Granby, ex-bank teller and wife who moved to the country to become farmers. Louise Erickson as Janice, their daughter. Parley Baer as Eb, the hired hand. ANNOUNCER: Bob LeMond MUSIC: Opie Cates. WRITER-PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: Jay Sommers. Granby’s Green Acres grew out of characters played by Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet on the Lucille Ball series My Favorite Husband. The names were changed, but the basic characters remained the same.

The pairing of Dick Haymes (who had made his name as a popular singer) and George Fenneman (one of radio’s smoothest announcers) as actors in an adventure series was unusual. As Crane, Haymes played a pilot whose seat-of-the-pants operation included one old DC-4, appropriately named “the Flying Eight-Ball.” The opening signature gave ample evidence of content: Flight 743 calling La Guardia Field … Is that you, Crane? What’re you bringing in, tea, teak, or teepee poles? I got a tradewind tan, a tall tale about a tribal treasure, a tropical tramp, and a torrid Tahitian tomato. You know me—I fly anything!

The radio announced that western Poland would be “Jew free” by December 1942. The occupation government in Holland pledged to deport all Jews by June of the following year.

Others who found their way to the air via Atwater-Kent were Frances Alda, Josef Hoffman, Louise Homer, and Albert Spalding. Fees to the Met alone ran $25,000 a year. By 1930 Frances Alda was the regular soloist. That year, the first that reliable ratings were compiled, Atwater-Kent had a 31.0, finishing third behind Amos ’n’ Andy and The Rudy Vallee Hour. An offshoot of sorts was Atwater-Kent Auditions, the first talent scout show, heard in 1927 and culminating in December that year. Local competitions were initiated around the country: the five winners from each division (male and female) competed for $5,000 prizes in the finale. Donald Novis and Thomas L. Thomas came out of Atwater-Kent Auditions, but Kenny Baker—who also went on to a notable radio career—never got past the local level. Graham McNamee announced the show.

Nobody knew why the market was down that day. But it didn’t stop everyone from having a theory. “Worries over Spain’s role in the EU brought the market down today,” said a woman on the radio. “The market had an off day today, due to uncertainty in oil futures,” announced a man on television. “Market Slightly Down as Health Care Details Come into Focus” wrote a newspaper writer. The truth was no one knew why the market was down. It started the day, just … down. It stayed down most of the day. It had an up moment for a little bit around lunch, but was still, just, down. Why

The show was one of radio’s most consistent until 1950, when Harold Peary announced that he was quitting his starring role. Rumor had it that Peary had held out for more money. His series was still carrying a rating in the midteens—certainly no disgrace at any time, and highly respectable in radio’s final years, when the once-lofty Hope, Bergen, Benny, and Fibber powerhouses were doing little better themselves. Peary admitted he was bored: he had slowly tired of the role and was frustrated that his onceremarkable versatility had been eclipsed under a blanket of Gildersleeve typecasting. People forgot that he had been a singer, he said, and that he had been one of the best of the old Chicago dialect men in the days before he moved with Fibber McGee and Molly to Hollywood. This might have killed most shows, but NBC and Kraft had on tap one Willard Waterman, who had once been denied acting jobs on McGee because his voice sounded so much like Peary’s. Waterman and Peary had traveled similar routes on their climb through radio. Waterman had arrived in Chicago around 1936 and had played many of the same bit parts that Peary would do the following year. While Peary was establishing himself on McGee, Waterman was working The First Nighter Program, Ma Perkins, and The Story of Mary Marlin. Like Peary, Waterman was a prolific and versatile talent, doing up to 40 parts in a week.

Wilson, “whose strange past is darkly troubled” (Radio Life), and Ray Brandon, a bitter ex-con on parole. By the early 1950s, the Bauer family had become the serial’s center: Bill and Bertha (Bert), their 11-year-old son, Michael, and Meta Bauer, Bill’s sister. Three decades later, the TV serial was still focused on the Bauer brothers and their careers in law and medicine. The Ruthledges and the Kranskys were fading memories, and the “guiding light” of the title was little more than symbolic. In its heyday, it was one of Phillips’s prime showpieces. She produced it independently, sold it to sponsors, and offered it to the network as a complete package. Phillips paid her own casts, announcers, production crews, and advisers (two doctors and a lawyer on retainer) and still earned $5,000 a week. She dared to depart from formula, even to the extent of occasionally turning over whole shows to Ruthledge sermons. Her organist, Bernice Yanocek, worked her other shows as well, and the music was sometimes incorporated into the storylines, as being played by Mary Ruthledge in her father’s church. A few episodes exist from the prime years. Of equal interest is an R-rated cast record, produced for Phillips when the show was moving to New York and the story was changing direction. It’s typical racy backstage stuff, full of lines like “When your bowels are in a bind, try new Duz with the hair-trigger formula.” It shows what uninhibited fun these radio people had together.

The Helen Hayes Theater was considered prestige drama, but it was heard sporadically and never built the reputation or the audiences of the great theaters of the air. Appearances with Orson Welles’s Mercury troupe in 1939 confirmed her belief that, “next to the stage, radio is the best medium for drama.” Her Lipton Tea series, beginning the following year, was her best and longest forum. She supervised the entire production, playing the leads, helping with casting and sound effects, and even participating in the tea commercials. But it became the first casualty of World War II when, three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Lipton announced its cancellation in anticipation of tea shortages from India.

HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, western adventure. BROADCAST HISTORY: (Originated on TV: Sept. 14, 1957–Sept. 21, 1963, CBS.) Radio: Nov. 23, 1958–Nov. 27, 1960, CBS. 30m, Sundays at 6. Multiple sponsorship. CAST: John Dehner as Paladin, soldier of fortune, western knight errant, gunfighter. Ben Wright as Heyboy, the Oriental who worked at the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, where Paladin lived. Virginia Gregg as Missy Wong, Heyboy’s girlfriend. Virginia Gregg also in many leading dramatic roles. Supporting players from Hollywood’s Radio Row, most of the same personnel listed for Gunsmoke. ANNOUNCER: Hugh Douglas. PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: Frank Paris. CREATORS-WRITERS: Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe. WRITERS: Gene Roddenberry, John Dawson, Marian Clark, etc. SOUND EFFECTS: Ray Kemper, Tom Hanley. Have Gun, Will Travel was an oddity: the only significant radio show that originated on television. Beginning as a TV series for Richard Boone, Have Gun leaped immediately into the top ten and gained such an enthusiastic following that CBS decided to add it to the fading radio chain.

no newspaper article or radio announcement would tell them that Germany was to blame. That was not what the people were meant to believe, although they must have known, in their hearts, what the truth of the matter was. Or perhaps they didn’t; they might know, or only want to know, what they were fed by the regime.

One of the things which offends us about radio and TV commercials is that it is often perfectly evident from the tone of voice that the announcer is “putting on,” playing a role, saying something he doesn’t feel. This is an example of incongruence. On the other hand each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person himself, not with a polite or professional front. It is this quality of congruence which we sense which research has found to be associated with successful therapy. The more genuine and congruent the therapist in the relationship, the more probability there is that change in personality in the client will occur.

At 1:11 a.m. on Sunday, August 13, the East German radio service interrupted their Night-time Melodies show for a special announcement: “The government of the States of the Warsaw Pact appeal to the parliament and government of the GDR and suggest that they ensure that the subversion against the countries of the Socialist Bloc is effectively barred and a reliable guard is set up around the whole area of Berlin.” The message was clear, but many in the West didn’t hear it, as tuning into East German radio programs for enjoyment was unheard of. The

Not adult, but on the crisp cusp of it, burgeoning with masculinity. It shocked us. We hadn’t heard a male voice in days except for Al Green’s over the radio and that white man at the gas station a half day’s drive back. It was like a predator had suddenly announced its presence in our new safe haven.

The wind and breaking waves are drowned by a dull symphony of locker doors and hidden stores swaying and banging in the surging waters within Rose-Noëlle’s hull—gush-ding-thump-bump-claptack-thump-crack-slosh-ding-ting-glump-bumpbump. . . . The noises create what we call audio mirages. Voices spring from our subconscious, lulling us into daydreams and slumber in which the clamor of our prison becomes background conversations, soft sweet singing, announcers on the radio, the beat of reggae.

Avalanche As if they weren’t suffering enough, on the morning of 29 October an avalanche suddenly cascaded down the steep rocky slopes above them and engulfed the fuselage as the survivors slept. They remained entombed in the tiny space for three days until they managed to poke a hole in the roof of the fuselage with a metal pole. By the time they got out, eight more people had died under the snow. Three more were to die in the following weeks. Hiking out After they had heard the radio news about the search being called off, many passengers knew that they would have to get themselves out of the mountains if they were to survive. The avalanche expressed that fact even more plainly. During the flight they had heard the co-pilot announce that they had passed Curicó. That meant that the Chilean countryside ought to be just a few kilometres away to the west. Probably just over the high peak they were on. Several survivors made brief scouting missions, but their weakened state and the altitude combined to make it gruelling work. There was no way that all of them would be able to walk over and out of the mountains.

A memorial on the crash site. Behind the memorial is the mountain that Parrado and Canessa climbed for the final push to reach rescue. That evening, as Parrado gathered firewood, Canessa looked up and saw a man on a horse on the other side of the river. Parrado dropped his sticks and, although he was utterly exhausted, he galloped down to the water’s edge. The world knew first For the fourteen people still at the crash site it was the most joyous radio broadcast they ever heard: the national news announced that Parrado and Canessa had successfully found help and rescue teams were on their way. Parrado guided two helicopters back to the site and by the morning of 23 December 1972 the fourteen remaining passengers of Flight 571 had been plucked from the mountain.

It was okay, Travis, when the world couldn’t see us consuming and consuming. Or hear us. Or taste some of our wares. But communication by cinema, satellite, radio, television tape, these have been like a light coming on slowly, being turned up like on a rheostat control in a dark cellar where all of mankind used to live. Now it is blinding bright, cruelly bright. And they can all look over into our corner and see us gorging ourselves and playing with our bright pretty toys. And so they want theirs now. Just like ours, God help them. And what is the only thing we can say? ‘Sorry. You’re a little too late. We used it all up, all except what we need to keep our toys in repair and running and to replace them when they wear out. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ What comes after that? Barbarism, an interregnum, a new dark ages, and another start a thousand years from now with a few million people on the planet? Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don’t dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and the shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well, materially, as we once did. And now, as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might manage it. But no one else.

February 12: Walter Winchell announces on his radio program that Marilyn has become the “sweetheart of the left intelligentsia which includes among its members, Communist militants.

On November 8, 1960, Abigail ‘Dear Abby’ Van Buren printed a letter from ‘Jeanette,’ reading: Dear Abby: If you are interested in teenagers, you will print this story. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it doesn’t matter because it served its purpose for me: A fellow and his date pulled into their favourite ‘lovers lane’ to listen to the radio and do a little necking. The music was interrupted by an announcer who said there was an escaped convict in the area who had served time for rape and robbery. He was described as having a hook instead of a right hand. The couple became frightened and drove away. When the boy took his girl home, he went around to open the car door for her. Then he saw—a hook on the door handle! I don’t think I will ever park to make out as long as I live. I hope this does the same for other kids. (qtd. in Brunvand, 1981: 48-9)

The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as fifty-five for men and fifty for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than six hundred Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on.

In 1898, Tesla announced his latest invention: a way to remotely control machines with radio technology. Skepticism was widely expressed and quickly diffused thanks to his Madison Square Garden demonstration of remotely driving a small metal boat through an indoor pond. Many spectators believed that he was

enter your mind, in which case a two-stage inference chain is assembled, governed by two probabilistic parameters, P(False alarm) and P(Prank call). Later, when the possibility of an earthquake enters consideration, the parameter P(False alarm) undergoes a partial explication; a fragment of knowledge is brought over from the remote frame of earthquake experiences and is appended to the link Burglary → Alarm as an alternative cause or explanation. The catchall hypothesis All other causes shrinks (to exclude earthquakes), and its parameters are readjusted. The radio announcement strengthens your suspicion in the earthquake hypothesis and permits you to properly readjust your decisions without elaborating the mechanics of the pressure transducer used in the alarm system. The remote possibility of having forgotten to push the reset button will

On Friday morning, September 1, the young butcher’s lad came and told us: There has been a radio announcement, we already held Danzig and the Corridor, the war with Poland was under way, England and France remained neutral,” Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary on September 3. “I said to Eva [that] a morphine injection or something similar was the best thing for us; our life was over.”1

CONCERT CHECKLIST 1. Secure a date on the calendar. Be sure it is listed on the official school calendar to protect it. 2. Reserve a performance venue for the concert and for final rehearsals. 3. Have tickets printed if they are to be used. 4. Plan the printed program and get it to the printer by the deadline date. 5. Plan the publicity. The following types of publicity can be utilized to draw a sizable concert audience: Radio releases Television releases Newspaper releases Online listings School announcements Notices to other schools and/or organizations in the area Posters for public placement 6. Send complimentary tickets to: Civic leaders Board of Education Superintendent People who have helped in some way Key supporters Key people to stimulate their interest 7. Have the president of the choir send personal letters of invitation to people that are special to the music program (newspaper editor, Board of Education, Superintendent, civic club presidents, supporters etc.). 8. Appoint a stage manager. He should be someone who can control the stage lighting, pull curtains, shut off air circulation fans that are noisy, and see that the stage is ready for the concert. 9. Arrange for ushers. 10. Check wearing apparel. Be sure that all singers have the correct accessories (same type and color of shoes, no gaudy jewelry for girls, etc.). 11. Post on bulletin board and tell students the time they will meet for a pre-concert warm-up. High school students will perform best if they meet together at least forty-five minutes before the concert.

In 2009 I was sitting about thirty feet away from Barack Obama at the launch of Desoto Solar as he announced massive funding for the "Smart Grid". I had no idea that I would later become a victim of the "Smart Grid". Yes, they knew in 2009 that these devices were harming people and continued to fund the program.

Promotional or "promo" records were free records sent to radio or television stations (and others) to announce a new release that would be coming soon from the record company. They were identified by the label (often plain white in colour) and were marked “Promotional”, “Audition” or "Demonstration". Most promo labels also state “Not for Sale.

Our Wordy World OVER THE LAST few decades we have been inundated by a torrent of words. Wherever we go we are surrounded by words: words softly whispered, loudly proclaimed, or angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung; words on records, in books, on walls, or in the sky; words in many sounds, many colors, or many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, or glanced at; words which flicker off and on, move slowly, dance, jump, or wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of our existence. It has not always been this way. There was a time not too long ago without radios and televisions, stop signs, yield signs, merge signs, bumper stickers, and the ever-present announcements indicating price increases or special sales. There was a time without the advertisements which now cover whole cities with words.

Marconi dreamed of a system for harnessing the intangible forces of the ether. Evidence that he did not dream in vain may be found in every radio and television set in the world. It may interest you to know that Marconi’s “friends” had him taken into custody, and examined in a psychopathic hospital, when he announced he had discovered a principle through which he could send messages through the air, without the aid of wires or other direct physical means of communication. The dreamers of today fare better.

would listen to the radio on Sundays as the announcer read the comics aloud, and he would follow along on his own until he had

Look at The King’s Speech. For one thing, you can look at it: no lens caps left on there. What’s more, the story is simple. The world’s most important man can’t speak properly, so he gets taught to speak properly. But then disaster strikes! It looks like he might not be able to speak properly after all. Finally, in a triumphant climax, he speaks properly. It’s a feelgood ending for everybody, apart from the 450,000 Britons killed in the war he just announced on the radio.

At 5.30 a.m. Washington time, the Moscow News radio channel announced Gagarin’s successful landing and recovery. An alert journalist called NASA’s launch centre in Florida to ask if America could catch up. Press officer John ‘Shorty’ Powers was trying to catch a few hours’ rest in his cramped office cot. He and many other NASA staffers were working 16-hour days in the lead-up to astronaut Alan Shepard’s first flight in a Mercury capsule. When the phone at his side rang in the pre-dawn silence, he was irritable and unprepared. ‘Hey, what is this!’ he yelled into the phone. ‘We’re all asleep down here!’ Next morning the headlines read: ‘SOVIETS PUT MAN IN SPACE. SPOKESMAN SAYS US ASLEEP.

the middle of the day, about noon, the radio announced Poland's proclamation denying Germany's ultimatum. Hitler had prepared some provocation on the German-Polish border, wherein they faked an attack by Poles against Germans. Hitler wanted to make sure that the war broke out on that day, September 1. When I think of it now, 50 years later, it reminds me of the fact that our younger generation often ask: "Where were you when you heard that President Kennedy was shot?" People of my generation think of September 1, 1939 and ask one another this same question. Of course, my generation also asks: "Where were you during the war?" and "Where were you at the end of the war?

It was really disturbing to see Lieutenant Kazi Bayzidul Islam in 10 East Bengal. He was a former officer of 32 Punjab, the unit that carried out the genocide in Dacca on the night of March 25/26. Islam served the Pakistanis loyally throughout the liberation war. After the gruesome killings on March 25/26, Islam was the person who read the Bengali announcements on the radio to the population in Dacca. 32 Punjab was moved to the Rajshahi area sometime after March and two of its companies including the battalion headquarters were in Chapai Nawabganj. This unit fought against us in the battle of Chapai Nawabganj. Now, Islam and we freedom fighters were in the same army! I found this absurd and a cruel joke to say the least. What could be bigger collaboration than participating or assisting in the killing of Bengalis in Dacca on March 25? Who cleared him? Islam never revealed how he was cleared but it was not hard to guess. If the Director General of Razakars could be the Secretary in the Prime Minister's Secretariat, Islam was no aberration.

Each passenger was given a boarding card that was also a radio receiver, and all the announcements about particular shuttle or spaceship flights were made only to those passengers who had the corresponding receiver-cards.

Mildred Elizabeth Sisk later named Mildred Elizabeth Gillars was born in Portland, Maine on November 29, 1900. In 1929, Gillars left the United States for France, where she worked as an artist's model in Paris. During World War II she was employed as a radio announcer with RRG, Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaftm, the official German State Radio Station. In 1941, the US State Department advised American nationals to return to the United States however, she voluntarily stayed in Germany because her fiancé, Paul Karlson, said he would never marry her if she returned to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Karlson, was killed in action on the Eastern Front. She remained in Germany broadcasting propaganda to the US forces in Europe and became known as Axis Sally. From Christmas Eve in 1942, until the end of the war she broadcast the Home Sweet Home Hour from Berlin. During these broadcasts she talked about the infidelity of soldiers' wives and sweethearts, while they were fighting in Europe. Midge-at-the-Mike broadcast American songs and GI's Letter-box and Medical Reports was directed towards the United States in which Gillars used information on wounded and captured US airmen, with the intent of causing fear and anxiety for their families.

Shepard waited for another stop in the countdown—this time it was to wait for some clouds to pass over the launch area—and he announced his problem over the closed radio circuit. He said he wanted to relieve his bladder. Finally they told him to go ahead and “do it in the suit.” And he did. Because his seat, or couch, was angled back slightly, the flood headed north, toward his head, carrying consternation with it. The flood set off a suit thermometer, and the Freon flow jumped from 30 to 45. On swept the flood until it hit his left lower chest sensor, which was being used to record his electrocardiogram, and it knocked that sensor out partially, and the doctors were nonplused. The news of the flood rushed through the worlds of the Life Science specialists and the suit technicians, like the destruction of Krakatoa, west of Java. There was no stopping it now. The wave rolled on, over rubber, wire, rib, flesh, and ten thousand baffled nerve endings, finally pooling in the valley up the middle of Shepard’s back. Gradually it cooled, and he could feel a cool lake of urine in the valley. In any case, the discomfort in his bladder was gone and everything was still. They had not scratched the flight because of the dam break. He had not fucked up.

Until he had run for Governor three years before, W. (for Wilbert) Lee O’Daniel had never had the slightest connection with politics—not as a candidate, not as a campaign worker, not even as a voter; he had never cast a ballot. He was a flour salesman and a radio announcer. He had turned to radio—in 1927—to sell more flour. At the time, newly arrived in Texas, he was the thirty-seven-year-old sales manager for a Fort Worth company that manufactured Light Crust Flour. An unemployed country-and-western band asked him to sponsor it on a local radio station. The Light Crust Doughboys were not notably successful until one day the regular announcer was unable to appear, and O’Daniel substituted for him; finding that he liked the job, he decided to keep it.

But in the years leading to this moment, it had begun to spread on talk radio and cable television that the white share of the population was shrinking. In the summer of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau announced its projection that, by 2042, for the first time in American history, whites would no longer be the majority in a country that had known of no other configuration, no other way to be.

Laidback Luke mentioned that he had his own record label, Mixmash Records, and if Tim continued to evolve at this pace, it was not impossible that he would one day release a song by Avici. Now attention was coming from England as well. The DJ and radio host Pete Tong had played the hottest house music on his BBC radio show since the early 90s and in April 2008 he announced a competition for young producers. Tim sent his song ‘Manman’, which to his great surprise was voted the winner by the listeners.

Anand was on tour in a distant village when the shattering news of the Chinese invasion was announced. Within hours, there was an astonishing metamorphosis in the prevailing atmosphere. Except for the lone troubled voice that came from the radio, there was a numbed silence all around. Every citizen was in the grip of an indescribable mixture of anger, anguish, a sense of disappointment, and above all, a feeling of unity with every other Indian. Just when Anand was about to leave, a lad of about ten came forward. He put his hand in his shirt pocket and produced a twenty-five paise coin. He held it out tentatively and stammered, "This is my contribution to defeat China..." Anand accepted the coin and hugged the boy. He controlled his emotion with some difficulty. The gesture electrified the atmosphere. For the first time faces brightened somewhat. "Why not raise a fund in the village?", said the Sarpanch. "Yes!" interjected the villagers. "We must give and give and give until it hurts! Each a little more than he can afford to." God! Does this country need the threat of external aggression to unite it internally? wondered Anand, as his car turned into the highway.

Curt Gowdy, the Red Sox radio and television announcer, who sounds like everybody’s brother-in-law, delivered a brief sermon, taking the two words pride and champion as his text.

At the major market level, competition among radio stations is fierce. Battling program directors create format narratives that sometimes instruct announcers to chime like puppets during tailored and precise talk segments. Marionettes don’t win Oscars, but when you are hired as a talent, you are expected to be able to implement this level of precision.

At the major market level, competition among radio stations is fierce. Battling program directors create format narratives that sometimes instruct announcers to chime like puppets during tailored and precise talk segments. Marionettes don’t win Oscars, but when you are hired as a talent, you are expected to be able to implement this level of precision.

Then writing letters doesn’t help you to feel less lonely either. It doesn’t make any difference; afterwards you still hear your own footsteps in the empty at. The radio announcers boosting dog food, baking powder or what have you, and then suddenly falling silent after wishing you good-bye ‘till tomorrow morning at 6 o’clock’. And now it’s only two o’clock.