Carlos Fuentes: Beneath the Mask

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Lars

I honestly didn’t know much about Carlos Fuentes, who died yesterday at age 83, when I agreed to work on a radio documentary about him. It was 1984, I was out of a job (having just been purged from NPR) and spending most of my time alternately on my couch in Arlington watching MTV or, when I felt particularly active, playing miniature golf. So when Bob Malesky called to ask for my help on his Fuentes project it wasn’t hard for me to clear my calendar.

Some context may be in order: NPR had committed to producing a thirteen-part series to be called Faces, Mirrors, Masks: Twentieth Century Latin American Fiction. The list included all the usual suspects: Marquez, Fuentes, Borges … and some not-so-usuals: Clarice Lispector, Elena Poniatowska, and Miguel Angel Asturias, for starters. Because Nipper had gutted its arts department in the 1983 financial meltdown, all the actual production work was done by a stellar lineup of independent producers around the country.

Since Bob and I were in DC we did our mixing at NPR headquarters on M Street. It was close to deadline for the programs to be sent to distribution and I thought it odd there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. Jo Ellyn Rackleff is listed as “Series Executive Producer” in most catalogs but I never saw her. Supposedly Frieda Werden was Series Producer, but she was busy doing two shows of her own — Poniatowska and Lispector — and we didn’t see much of her either. Mostly we spent our time down in the studio trying to whip the Fuentes program into shape.

Bob Malesky recalls:

I had an interview with him that went two hours and ranged over the course of his life and work. I’ll never forget his artistry, his blazing intelligence, and his warmth. …

It was a joy to produce, too. I remember we dramatized a scene from “The Death of Artemio Cruz.” I got the amazing Richard Bauer from Arena Stage to act the role, but I also needed SFX, specifically the breathing of a dying man. Lars Hoel had a bad cold that day, so I recruited him. He lay down on the table in studio 3, we lowered the Neumann to within an inch or two of his mouth and just let him rasp. Those were the fun days of radio production.

They were fun [cue Springsteen "Glory Days," fade in warm, bring up full at post] and that’s almost as sad as the passing of such a great man. For just as we’ll never see the like of Fuentes again, it is equally doubtful that NPR will ever commission, much less distribute,  another series as ambitious, as highly-produced and as necessary as FMM.

What’s more, NPR seems to have forgotten Faces, Mirrors, Masks ever existed. It’s not mentioned on their web site tribute to Fuentes. You can’t find the programs to buy or even to listen to anywhere. Not in the NPR Shop, not in the Wireless catalog, not even on Audible. Gone, expunged.

Shades of 1984, indeed.

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Site Mainteneance

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Lars

We’re trying a new audio plug-in, one that will make it possible to listen on mobile devices as well as computers. Here’s a snippet from one of Tokyo Rose’s World War II broadcasts … let’s see if I can hear it on my iPad.

Tokyo Rose Broadcast

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Herb and Charlie’s Big Day

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Lars

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster. The iconic German airship, filled with volatile hydrogen, exploded in flames while mooring at Lakehurst, New Jersey on the evening of May 6, 1937. Thirty-six people died.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the news report that brought that tragedy so vividly into homes and workplaces across the country the following day. Many of us who’ve listened to Herb Morrison choking back sobs as he describes the unfolding horror may have assumed it was originally a live broadcast. Not so. (All Things Considered made the same mistake on its 60th anniversary report in 1997.)

Herb and engineer Charlie Nehlsen were sent by WLS in Chicago on a promotional junket for American Airlines to capture the event for later broadcast. In those pre-magnetic tape days the recorder used 16-inch transcription disks, actually cutting grooves into the wax surface. It had to be absolutely level and isolated from any vibrations. In fact the explosion caused the cutter head to jump out of the groove and Nehlsen quickly had to reset it. All in all a remarkable intersection of technology and history.

Herb and Charlie flew back to Chicago with the disks and got their amazing audio on the air locally that night or next morning (accounts vary). Because WLS was an NBC affiliate, portions of the recording were heard on the Blue network the next day — despite the industry’s ban on using recorded material in any news broadcast.

There’s much more information from research done by Dr. Michael Biel of Morehead State University … including the interesting conclusion that the recording we’re used to was actually a bit fast! Dr. Biel says Herb Morrison had a deep, “smooth and easy” voice. You can read all about it here.

And here’s the audio, courtesy of the National Archives:

Hindenburg

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Bored With Technology

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Lars

An early adopter is defined as someone who starts using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available. For as long as I can remember that’s been one of my defining characteristics. Some people are wary of new technology — “Oh, I’ll wait ‘til they get the kinks out.” Not me. I’m more like — “Ooo … shiny! How much?”

I’ll admit that along the way I’ve made some poor choices, especially involving computers. Does anyone remember NuBus slots? Jaz drives? USB to SCSI removable storage devices? The 20th Anniversary Mac? Cheap, flaky, analog to digital video encoders? I’ve had them all.

Likewise my non-computer choices haven’t always been prescient. Digital recorder with no replaceable batteries? Cumbersome electrostatic headphones? Analog cassette recorder with proprietary noise reduction system? Yes, yes, and yes.

The point is that I’ve always felt the benefits of embracing a new gadget, with all its faults and its sometimes steep learning curve, outweigh the potential disadvantages. As a tool-using species we only move forward, creating better and more useful implements. Why not learn how to use them sooner rather than later?

I’ve never understood the person who looks helplessly at his or her new laptop and admits “I’m a computer illiterate.” Well, let’s see … you’ve had the past thirty-five years or so to get on the bandwagon. Where were you? Hiding? Hoping it would go away? Waiting ‘til they removed every last kink?

That opinion may not have changed, but my gut reaction to shiny new things has, shall we say, lessened a great deal. I’ve gone from “Ooo” to “Meh.”

Part of it has to do with innovation versus marketing. Truly innovative technologies are few and far between. Consider digital audio (1976) and digital video (1986) recording. These inventions changed everything, from telecommunications all the way to society itself. It’s like the discovery of electricity. Who wouldn’t be excited?

On the other hand marketing is about repackaging existing tech to make it appear new. For example — iPhone? Innovation. iPad? Marketing. iPod? Well, some innovation but mostly marketing.

In fact there’s so much marketing going on in the hope of capturing your tech dollar that it’s hard to keep up with it all. What’s on Engadget today? Let’s see, a laptop with Intel’s “Ivy Bridge” processor. Marketing. WiFi-based earphones. Marketing. New HTC smartphone with dual-core processor. Marketing.

Another example: many radio journalists use Avid’s Pro Tools software to produce their work. The latest versions of this ubiquitous program have some significant advantages over their forebears … mainly, the ability to run without dedicated hardware. That’s great. But does the program itself work better? Edit faster? Not so much. And yet, Avid’s marketing would make you feel like a Luddite if you fail to upgrade.

So be it. I’m bored with all the marketing. Mind you, not bored enough to go back to the typewriter. Or to revert to analog tape recording. But please — wake me up when there’s some innovation going on.

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Happy Birthday, Marion

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Lars

Today at 11:00 am there’s a KUOM staff meeting at a fancy restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota. It wouldn’t make sense to hold it at the radio station because, strictly speaking, the KUOM I knew hasn’t really existed since 1993. That’s when it became “Radio K,” run by the U of M students. (So many radio stations I used to work for are gone — so long, WCAL — but that’s another story.)

The meeting’s really a celebration in honor of Marion Watson’s 90th birthday. Who’s she? Let me quote from the Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame web site:

Marion English Watson’s pioneering efforts in radio and in civil rights opened up new career opportunities for women and minorities in broadcasting. Her radio career began at WLB (now KUOM) in 1940 while she was a University of Minnesota student. She acted, directed, operated the sound equipment, wrote scripts, and became president of the WLB Radio Guild.  After serving as a Signal Corps code-breaker during World War II, she taught speech at the University of Minnesota and continued to do radio on a free-lance and volunteer basis.  Very active in the civil rights movement, she served as Legislative Chair for the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, Co-Legislative Chair of the Minnesota Council for Civil and Human Rights, and on the Minnesota Indian Affairs Commission and later the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. She became Program Director/Station Manager of KUOM in 1969, one of only three female public radio station managers in the country at the time, and the only one at a Big Ten school. Always a strong advocate for civil rights, she pioneered programming for American Indians, Hispanics, African Americans, and women. She stepped down as Station Manager in 1988 but served as KUOM’s Development Director until 1992.

Inducted October 11, 2008

Of course, when I worked there as chief announcer (1975 – 1978), I knew nothing of any of this. Marion was just The Boss. Very tolerant of my youthful ways, she once questioned my (ahem) casual style of dress by suggesting I’d be at a loss if I suddenly had to cover a press conference at the State Capitol. I said I had a coat and tie hanging in my office. Of course that wasn’t true but Marion never actually checked.

Marion was always running off to meetings … she served on the board of MPIRG, and this was also a time when the radio station was under attack by Minnesota Public Radio, whose constant attempts to wrest the station from the Board of Regents had to be dealt with. KUOM’s own staff meetings were attended by a horde of civil servants … there were over a dozen of us, I recall. Since KUOM was only on the air from 10:30 am until local sunset, I once pointed out that everyone in the room could take a half-hour air shift and still have people left over. This (and my habit of falling asleep behind sunglasses) didn’t endear me to the senior staff.

Marion Watson is an amazing woman. I admired and respected her (still do) and I regret not getting to know her better. I wish Marion a happy and joyous 90th birthday. It was an honor to have worked with her.

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Sunday Recap

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Lars

Last Sunday NPR’s Weekend Edition chose to mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster with a story that was, in a word, underwhelming.

In my last post I pointed out that broadcasters have a love/hate relationship with anniversaries. Whether it commemorates a person or an event, any story pegged to an important date faces an uphill battle from the get-go … usually because it’s been done before (on the 10th or the 25th or even the 35th year). Naturally listener expectations are high to hear something new. Add to that the inevitable production dilemma: how over the top do you want to go?

On the plus side, you know that date is coming far in advance and you can take as long as you need to put something together.

It’s true that NPR had sprinkled Titanic stories throughout its various programs in the week leading up to the big day. Under the “Special Series” rubric listeners could hear about the tragedy on Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation — even Planet Money — and also read Titanic-related blog postings on NPR.org.

So it may be that Weekend Sunday figured the heavy lifting had already been done. Or they may have decided to focus on a memorial event for its news value. Whatever the reasoning, the result was … a two-way.

In NPR-speak, a two-way is a host interview. It’s one of the easiest radio segments to produce. A staffer sets up an interview time with the guest, the host goes into the studio, the engineer gets the guest on the line, the interview is recorded. The segment producer edits the interview to time and writes the host intro. Done.

You can hear the result here.

Because it was being aired on The Day, this two-way did receive an unusually lavish host intro:

Early this morning, in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, a cruise ship floated over the spot where the Titanic, the unsinkable ship, broke apart and plunged to the bottom of the sea. The ship was there to mark the moment, one hundred years ago today, that the luxury liner sank on its maiden voyage, killing more than fifteen hundred people.

The disaster shocked and outraged people around the world and even today the story of the Titanic and its passengers — some very privileged, many very ordinary — still has a powerful grip on the imagination.

[sfx: music, waves, ship’s horn, voices under]

Think of all the books and movies about the tragedy. Even the phrases that have become part of everyday conversations: “women and children first.”

[clip: “For the time being… …only women and children.”]

“And the band played on.”

[clip: “All right boys… …no panic.” music under]

And this phrase, to describe any hopeless endeavor: “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Today the tragedy is being remembered around the world — in Belfast, where the ship was built; in Southampton, where the ship departed on its transatlantic voyage; and in Nova Scotia, where some of the victims are buried. It’s also being remembered at sea, and that is where we reached Lester Reingold. He’s a freelance writer with a long-standing interest in the Titanic, and he joins us from the Azamara Journey, a cruise ship that travelled to the very spot where the Titanic sank. Lester Reingold, welcome to the program.

That’s a 1:32 intro for a two-way that runs 3:06.

There are several problems with this intro. The biggest is that’s it’s trying to set up an interview with a guy aboard a cruise ship while at the same time attempting to tie a big, verbose bow on the entire Titanic backstory.

The first graf references a cruise ship, an unsinkable ship, a ship, and a luxury liner. This is confusing and vague, and fails to give the listener an adequate picture of what’s going on.

The movie clip segment is a bit pro forma, with the expected audio from the film dutifully illustrating the expression before it. (Too bad there’s no dialogue in the scene from “A Night To Remember” in which a passenger tries frantically to lash several deck chairs together into a makeshift raft.)

By the way, who uses “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” in everyday conversation? Just asking.

Finally, after the listener has forgotten all about the cruise ship and that other ship or whatever, back we go to the actual point of the intro. And a long strange trip it’s been.

The two-way itself is okay, though I’m not a fan of host Rachel Martin’s vocalizations while the guest is speaking. It’s fine to be sensitive (2:35 “…and those, those whole families were wiped out.” “Oh, my.”) but this is not new information. It’s not like it’s breaking news. For me, Martin’s other “hmms” and “huhs” and “wows” are simply distracting. Others may disagree, finding this okay on a more “relaxed” weekend show as opposed to, say, a hard news program like All Things Considered.

So what did we take away? The ship blew its whistle and someone read the list of names, some passengers dressed in period costumes, and the person being interviewed still has a lot to learn about the subject.

Sorry to be so critical, especially of a show I dearly love. But this was not what I was hoping to hear.

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An Unsinkable Anniversary

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Lars

Broadcasters love anniversaries, and tomorrow’s is a beauty … the 100th anniversary of—well, you know. You must know. It’s been everywhere, in every conceivable medium, with the possible exception of skywriting.

NPR has been wallowing in this anniversary with an entire series devoted to various aspects of the tragedy. Morning Edition did a profile of the bandleader, “leading the ship’s seven musicians in song as they sank into the North Atlantic.” Planet Money asked an economist to explain why many passengers reacted as calmly as they did. All Things Considered reviewed some of the gazillion tie-in books being published this month. And so on.

But tomorrow is the big day. And “first show up” is my old favorite, Weekend Edition Sunday. It’s the one NPR program with a track record of tackling big subjects (and big anniversaries) with intelligence, great journalism, superb radio craftsmanship and the proper amount of time. To cite just one example, former Senior Producer Bob Malesky’s 1993 story on the 25th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination was a masterpiece. Sadly the audio seems to have disappeared from NPR’s website.

Anniversaries are hard. You want to sound fresh without ignoring the obvious. You want to engage the listener without indulging in sentimentality. You want to pay tribute to history without crossing the line into pedantry. You want to flex your production muscles but avoid sounding over-produced.

Not everyone can do it. Malesky could, with his fine sensibility for history and natural ear for radio. So can WESUN’s present Senior Producer, Ned Wharton. I’m eager to hear what he’s come up with.

Find your NPR Station here.

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Radiolab Deconstructed

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Lars

We here at ROTD love Radiolab. It’s award-winning (Peabody, 2010). It’s hugely popular. Host and producer Jad Abumrad won a MacArthur Genius Award in 2011. The other host is our brainy pal Robert Krulwich, no slouch himself in the awards department.

Radiolab pushes boundaries. It makes science journalism entertaining. It’s where “sound illuminates ideas.”

Radiolab is also labor-intensive. You don’t get one a week — more like every couple of weeks. That’s because it’s so highly produced, with music and effects and recordings done in the studio combined with location sound, all meticulously edited and processed and mixed, the result often the audio equivalent of a Robert Rauschenberg collage.

The Radiolab formula, if such a protean show can be said to have one, is simple: keep it moving. Attention spans are short. People are easily bored. So — no long interviews, no tedious narrations. Keep it conversational. Use lots of quick cuts and audio surprises, with information snuck in so deftly you almost don’t even know it’s there until too late.

Over the past ten years Radiolab has sparked its share of fawning criticism. Jonathan Liu, writing in the New York Observer, says “To listen to enough Radiolab is to see that scientists haven’t simply replaced the theologians, the metaphysicians and the social critics as posers and answerers of the biggest questions. They’ve also become, in a time of gene-splicing and hadron-colliding and psychopharmacology, our true avatars of creative expression, the last radical artists left.”

Not all listeners are in love, however. Willa, commenting on WGBH’s web site, says “This format just does not work for me too bad, because each time Ive tried to listen, the subject matter was interesting. I find the vocal sound effects, the repeating one another, the chitchat, etc. not “illuminating” at all, but annoying. I would prefer a serious explanation of these topics, and will look elsewhere for it.”

Ira Glass, he of This American Life, disagrees: “I wish more broadcast journalism had such human narrators at its center. I think that would help fact-based journalism survive.” As opposed to journalism that is fiction-based, presumably.

Radiolab does break the rules of radio journalism, and that can be annoying to some of us, especially to those (like me) who make a living teaching those rules to the next generation of journalists. Even so, I think the real question is not “why does Radiolab break the rules?” but rather “do the rules deserve to be broken?” And also: “does it work?” Let’s find out. Continue reading →

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Peter Bergman

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Lars

“Rocky Rococo, at your cervix.”

“Looseners, the all-weather breakfast cereal!”

“Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!”

“Danger – you haven’t seen the last of me!”
“No, but the first of you turns my stomach.”

“Who is he talking to and how does he make his voice do that?”

“Hey fella, how about bending a couple in the doo-dah room, if you catch my meaning!”
“If ya get my drift!”

These lines and many of their cousins are baked into my memory in the same rough area as the words to the Good ‘n’ Plenty commercial and the theme to Gilligan’s Island. They emerge from my mouth, often unbidden, in certain circumstances (driving along the Interstate: “Antelope Freeway, 1/2 mile… Antelope Freeway, 1/4 mile… Antelope Freeway, 1/8 mile…”) and fewer and fewer of my colleagues have any idea what I’m referring to.

It’s Firesign Theater, of course, and all of this is prompted by the recent death of Peter Bergman, one of its founding members. Bergman and his fellows — Phil Austin, David Ossman and Phil Proctor — began honing their peculiar brand of surrealism-laced humor on the radio. Bergman hosted “Radio Free oZ” on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning July 24, 1966. Austin was the show’s producer, Ossman the director, and Proctor “was a frequent guest,” according to the NY Times obit.

I can just imagine what those programs must have sounded like — four crazy guys, let loose at night on a non-commercial, alternative radio station in L.A. … in the Sixties. (If any air checks of those shows exist — please send me copies.) The four friends not only honed their writing on the radio, they learned the use of audio and stereo production to tell a story. A very strange story.

Firesign is best listened to, not explained. Here’s a sample:

Don't Crush That Dwarf

Yes I admit hearing it for the first time in a darkened dorm room, my mind possibly a wee bit altered. So did many of my contemporaries, who also have the line “…and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut” baked into their memories.

So goodbye to another radio pioneer, one who went off the dial in a spectacular way.

Postscript: I never met Peter Bergman but David Ossman and I worked together at NPR in Washington, DC in the early 1980s. He was the host and co-producer of “The Sunday Show,” which vanished without a trace during the financial crisis of 1983. Sadly, when I greeted David ten years later, after Firesign’s 25th anniversary show at New York’s Beacon Theater, he seemed to have forgotten me. Ah well, as George Tirebiter might say when told ”This is no movie, this is real” —

“Which reel?”

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Another Site We Like

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Lars

Stumbling around the Interwebs looking for articles on radio’s role in the Arab Spring uprisings, I came across Radio Survivor. It’s been around since 2009 and has many of the same goals as ROTD:

Radio Survivor attempts to shed light on the ongoing importance of radio: from the airwaves (FM, AM, Short-wave, HD, satellite) to online. We are proponents for the relevance of radio as a participatory communications medium. As both fans and producers, we write about the problems and prospects of radio.

We embrace college radio stations in crisis. We defend radio pirates. And we care about the on-going survival of our favorite radio stations.

We are obsessed with the future of radio and are charmed by radio historians, radio dramatists, radio bloggers, and anyone else who cares about radio as deeply as we do.

It’s not all warm and cuddly … a recent post took NPR’s Fresh Air to task for refusing to let host Dave Davies say the complete name of Nick Flynn’s best-selling memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The book is about to be made into a movie and Davies was interviewing its author and the film’s director. Yet he said “BS” for “Bullshit” in the intro.

I’m with Radio Survivor on this one. At best this kind of bowdlerism is naive. At worst it has a cloying, tongue-in-cheek, “oh we’re being bad today but not really” quality that’s particularly offensive.

Good job calling that out. Tough love, indeed.

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