The Dick Summer Connection – May 13, 2007

“The nip and tuck to save a buck” movement has just about destroyed radio’s “Huddle Effect.” The “Huddle Effect” is the feeling you got that made you hide your radio under your pillow so you could listen way past your bedtime. I call it the “Huddle Effect” because it’s a lot like a football huddle. The guy in charge calls the other guys on the team into a tight circle for protection against “the other guys”… for encouragement… and to figure out what you’re going to do next.You’ve heard the results of “the nip and tuck to save a buck” movement on your favorite radio station. Most stations have dumped their news departments, and except for some morning guys, they’ve ditched any “personalities” who were making more than rock bottom market wages, and most of all, they’ve automated or voice tracked their evening and overnight shows. That’s because evening and over- night shows don’t make money. And that’s really too bad. Because night time is the best time to “huddle” on the radio. But because of “nip and tuck to save a buck,” there’s hardly any “huddle” left.

I was one of those hide-the-radio-under-the-pillow-late-at-night-kids, back when Louie-Louie was a “Pick to Click.” The guys who called the huddles then were the likes of Murray “The K” Kauffman, Alan Freed, Jack Carney, Dick Biondi, Tom Clay, Jean Shepard, Arnie Ginsburg, Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers, Art Ford, Bruce Bradley, Al “Jazzbeaux” Collins, “Wolfman Jack,” and William B. Williams. Those guys played the hits, of course, but they also called the huddles. They gave you the feeling that while you were in their huddle, you were ok…because they knew all the moves. They patted you on the butt when you did well, and they cheered you up when you goofed. And they were on at night…because that’s when “the Kids” listened.The Guys Running Radio didn’t really understand the impact these D.J.s were having on the “Louie-Louie Generation.” The G.R.R. knew that most of the audience after 8pm were “kids,” and they didn’t like that. They wanted to sell cars and beer to grownups. But they figured that “the Kids” were better than nothing. They didn’t have a clue that it was “the Kids” who would save radio from the impact of tv. And then, of course, those kids would grow up to be… us…the “Louie-Louie Generation.” As Proud PodCast Participant “Angela from Brooklyn” so wonderfully put it…”so much magic came from that little box.” That magic wasn’t just the music. It was also the “huddle.”

The transistor turned the radio into everybody’s friendly little box. It was both a little box and a relatively little business. Westinghouse was considered a radio giant, but to put that word “giant” into perspective, a Westinghouse executive told me once that “the company made ten times as much money making locomotives as it does in the broadcasting business.” Well, radio really is big business these days. And big business is all about the big picture…the big bucks. Everything else gets nip and tucked.

All kinds of big business are doing the nip and tuck to save a buck. Proctor and Gamble nipped about a quarter inch off the width of toilet paper rolls last August. My Lady Wonder Wench says Land’s End is saving money by making their clothes a little less than full size, which means she can’t tuck them in where they’re supposed to tuck. And I just heard from a buddy of mine who runs a highly successful group of Midwest radio stations for a large corporation. He was just ordered to “cut four $18,000 a year D.J.s to save a few bucks,” while the CEO and other company biggies are pocketing 8 figure salaries. Nip and tuck. Big business…big picture.

But “Louie-Louie Generation” “guys and dolls” who are former radio-under-the-pillow-late-at-night-kids like to remember much smaller radio pictures. The ones that poured out of the huddle in that magic box just for us. And those of us who got to actually LIVE in the magic box for a while have memories of things that our kids can’t possibly imagine could ever happen on the radio.

Some of mine were the snowy WBZ Christmas Eve remote broadcasts from Boston Common; sitting in a studio in the middle of the RCA Building in New York, talking to the world (including all the girls in Brooklyn who had turned me down for dates in high school) on the NBC radio network; “Make It Or Break It” from the drive-in parking lot at WIBC; “Softly As I Leave You” for a listener who didn’t want the audience to know that she was dying the night I played it for her; a live phone call from a listener that ended abruptly as a wave swept his beach home away in a hurricane; the notorious “password”; the all powerful “Nurdle of Brooklynite”; Irving the Second…Super Plant Supreme; small stories on WNEW…poems in the middle of the night for my Lady Wonder Wench…hundreds of miles away… when I wasn’t supposed to love her; “Silent Night” played by a scruffy, unknown, blind kid with a beaten up old guitar who dropped by my show un-announced…Jose Feliciano.

We are the lucky ones…those of us who actually LIVED in the magic box…in the middle of the night…calling the huddles…before the nips and tucks.

Dick’s Details Quiz – All the answers are in the current PodCast at www.dicksummer.com  

1- How can bubble gum be turned into fuel to run Hollywood ?

2- From which Brooklyn Language word do we get the first part of the word “Trophy?”

3- Pilots say “Any landing you can walk away from is called a good landing.” What do pilots say is an “excellent landing”?

Scoring:

3 right – “Boss Jock.”

2 right – All Night D.J.

1 right – “Liner Card Reader”.

0 right – Nip and Tuck-er.

Lots of people say radio is dead. They’ve said that before. They were wrong then, and I’d like to think they’re wrong again…I am, after all, grimly determined to be an optimist. But this time…I don’t know. “The Kids” these days are doing other things. And as for yesterday’s “kids”…us…the “Louie-Louie Generation”…well, please remember…no matter what… you’re always welcome at the “Good Night” PodCast. There’s no nip and tuck to save some bucks. And you are always welcome in our “huddle.” If you’d just like to drop a line, my e-mail is:  Dick@DickSummer.com

 

 

 

 

2 Responses to “The Dick Summer Connection – May 13, 2007”

  1. Bill Neftleberg says:

    Whats terrible about the state of radio today is that in the period you spoke of kids had an imagination and listening under the covers and painting a mental picture, were almost second nature to us, we dreamed and conceived our whole lives in those moments. Listening to the voices of those Radio giants was almost a religious experience to many of us. Kids today need pictures, they watch Television with unbelievable special effects, computer games that glorify death and destruction in graphic detail. It makes me wonder about our future as a people. I consider myself blessed to have had the role models I did because it gave me a sense of humanity that “the nip and tuck to save a buck” guys of this world seem to have somehow forgotten.

  2. Mike Walsh says:

    How sad and true about the state of radio today. I used to think that
    I had missed out on the golden age of radio, as I’m one of the “louie-
    louie” generation, however, when I remeber how great radio used to be
    compared to what is offered today, I do consider myself lucky! By the
    way, Dick, I didn’t have to “hide the radio” under my pillow. I used
    a crystal radio!

    Hey, by the way, Irving the second isn’t still with us is he?