Dick Summer Connection

THIS JUST IN: My thanks to Pete Falconi and his staff at WODS-FM in Boston. Pete has just added the the “Good Night” PodProgram that goes with this blog to the WODS-FM Station Web Page. WODS-FM is one of the nation’s top radio stations. Having spent a lot of years with my lady Wonder Wench in Boston, this is very special news to me. Thanks, Pete.

I was one of those hide- the-radio-under-the-pillow-at-night kids. I’m from Brooklyn, so it was mostly WNEW in New York for me. That was such a gathering of mind picture painters… Art Ford, William B. Williams, Gene Klavan, Dee Finch, Teddy Brown, Jim Lowe, and Jazzbeaux Collins. Over at WOR it was Jean Shepard, and it was Bill Cullen at WNBC. As Proud PodProgram Participant “Angela From Brooklyn” so wonderfully put it…”So much magic from just that little box.” But the magic has been leaking out of the box for some time now. Even New York Mets play-by-play radio word wizard Gary Cohen has gone to cable tv.

If you follow radio stuff, you know that Media Monster Clear Channel has been sold in a something like twenty billion dollar deal. That’s B as in Billion. Those guys are brilliant business people…and they’re media murderers. They’re not the only ones of course, but they’re the King Kongs. They got into radio-tv when the time was right, squeezed every golden egg out of the goose, and now they’re cutting and running just before the Thanksgiving hatchet falls. That’s the Wall- Street- Big- Picture perspective.

Those of us who are former radio-under-the-pillow-kids remember much smaller pictures. The ones that poured out of the magic box… just for us. And those of us who got to live in the magic box for a while have such amazing memories. For me, the Christmas Eve WBZ bonfire on Boston Common; the WNBC 1976 tall ships broadcast from the top of the World Trade Towers; “Make it or Break It” from the drive-in parking lot at WIBC; Phillis Diller guesting with me on WISH-TV and WCPO-TV…. And a few of us who lived in the box have even more personal memories…”Softly As I Leave You” for a listener who didn’t want the audience to know she was literally dying as 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; small stories…poems… in the middle of the night for Wonder Wench…half hidden in the static… hundreds of miles away… when I wasn’t supposed to love her; “Silent Night” played by the scruffy, unknown, blind kid with the guitar who dropped by my show unannounced at 5AM…he became well known as Jose Feliciano. We lucky ones who lived in the box have such memories.

The kind of radio and tv we knew is almost over now. “To everything there is a season” says The Book. That’s ok, because that’s the way it has to be. You’re already making new memories with me on this blog, and on the “Good Night” PodProgram that goes with it. New artists who would have been ignored in “the old days” are getting their share of the spotlight on You Tube, and I Tunes, and that’s good. Ordinary people with just a microphone plugged into a computer are becoming international stars, just talking about the reality of their everyday lives. That’s mostly good too. Camera phones connected to the Internet are covering almost every inch of the planet for all news cable networks. And that’s not only good, it’s awesome.

The Clear Channel Monster falls. The magic box is in splinters. But “To Everything There Is A Season. In just a few weeks, I’ll let you know if I’ll “never say never” again.

The Dick’s Details Quiz – (Click here to find the answers to these questions in the current “Good Night” PodProgram.)

1- Johnson is the most popular surname in the United States. But where does Smith beat Johnson for popularity ?

2- Why did Albert Einstein’s hair always look like he stuck a wet toe in a hot socket ?

3- What “trash talk” do you hear from 80% of American Men ?

4- Statistics claim that 6,000 American teenagers lose their virginity every day. Why is that impossible ?

Scoring:

4 right – Bingo.

3 right – Checkers.

2 right – Scissors Cuts Paper.

1 right – Tick Tack Toe.

Nun Right – Whack…right on the fingers with a ruler.

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