It’s Super Bowl Week, and I’m thinking back to the first time I attended the big game, and an event afterward that had me worried I was going to die. At the end of January 1988, I’d been the morning man at WCXR/Washington for just over a year. It had been an amazing 12 months […]
I was supposed to do two hours with Stu Shostak on his live podcast yesterday, but ended up talking with him for nearly three hours about a wide assortment of topics. In addition to some highlights (and lowlights) of my radio career, we discussed Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, the Bill Of Rights, the […]
Radio consultant extraordinaire Fred Jacobs muses about the necessity of traffic reports on the radio at a time when you can get better real-time information on demand from Google Maps, Waze, and other apps: Traffic is not only becoming endangered content, it is also a tune-out threat, especially for stations known for playing music. A […]
Susan Barton has a profile of Terry Gross in today’s NY Times Magazine: Over the years, Gross has done some 13,000 interviews, and the sheer range of people she has spoken to, coupled with her intelligence and empathy, has given her the status of national interviewer. Think of it as a symbolic role, like the poet laureate […]
Early in my career, I voiced and produced a lot of commercials. Not for ad agencies, but inside the radio station. I did spots for night clubs, department stores, restaurants, car dealers, and anything else that came down the pike. Radio stations didn’t charge the client for this service (which gives you an idea how […]
Perry Simon has an invaluable piece of advice for podcasters: get to the point. You’ll hear hosts introduce themselves, then just… well, they talk about their week, what they had for dinner, something that happened the other day, anything but what will be the ultimate topic or guest. Or they’ll introduce the guest, go off […]