FM (6 page)
Crown of Creation
For most of the sixties, it was much easier to get a job at an FM station than at a successful AM one. FM was still viewed as AAA ball, not the big leagues, even in larger markets. Most operators of duopolies were looking to keep costs low, so hiring an inexperienced disc jockey who was thrilled just to have a job was preferable to paying a high ticket for an AM has-been. It’s how I got my first professional job.
A few months into my apprenticeship at WALI, I still wanted to be an actor. Through the Adelphi University theater group, I’d become friends with a tall, slender man named Robert Wynn Jackson. A native of Virginia’s Tidewater region, he came north on a music scholarship and directed many of the light operas and musical comedies we staged. Bob was an unconventional combination of black, Jewish, and gay. His extensive knowledge of classical music won him the Sunday afternoon slot on WALI. He crafted a highly produced show opening that painted an aural picture of Robert Wynn Jackson as conductor, complete with white tie and tails, the audience bursting into applause as he mounted the podium. He tapped his baton and began to conduct works by the great masters. Of course, he was merely playing records, but his creation was so vivid that one could imagine him extravagantly decked out—a rapier-slim black Bernstein, passionately leading a magnificent symphony orchestra.
Ted Webb served as general manager of WALI to supplement his income while working professionally as chief announcer at WLIR, which, like Adelphi University, was also based in Garden City, New York. A part-timer had left WLIR in a pay dispute so Webb left a note for Jackson that the station had an opening for an announcer trained in the great works. Robert was intrigued by the possibility of taking his program to the next level and asked me if I’d like to tag along with him. I suspect his real reason for asking was that I had access to a car and he didn’t, but I was happy to go along. Although he assumed the audition was strictly pro forma and that he’d already gotten the job, I think he wanted company for reassurance, too. Part of him had to be nervous, considering the grandiose future a
real
FM station might promise. We were also curious to see what a professional station looked like, certain that any commercial facility would make our campus station seem dreary by comparison.
Broadcasting from the opulent Garden City Hotel, the high tone of WLIR’s programming conjured images of stately men in dinner jackets dining and dancing with elegantly gowned women. In reality, although the aging dowager of a hotel glittered with a prestigious address, the station itself was in the subbasement, along with the linen service, freight elevators, and boiler rooms. As Jackson and I cautiously stepped down the rickety, rusting stairs, we felt like we were descending into Hades. Is this what big-time radio was all about? After searching the winding maze of dank hallways that smelled of bleach and stale urine, we happened upon a solid steel door, trussed with triple locks like a typical New York apartment. Here, in the bowels of the building, was the big time—WLIR.
The open door revealed a mousy secretary who looked like she had just been released from a convent, dark blond hair pulled back in a bun and thick oversize glasses.
“I’m Robert Wynn Jackson, here to take the classical announcer’s position. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are?” he asked, extending his long bony fingers in her direction. She recoiled as if he’d pulled a knife on her. She stammered out her greetings and gestured us in. “We’re looking for Mr. Webb,” my friend continued. “Perhaps he’s in another part of the complex.”
“You’re looking at the complex. He’s in the next room . . . on the air. I’ll get him.” She quickly ran off, relieved to be away from what seemed to be her worst nightmare. Jackson was elegantly formal in his approach to strangers, and ultimately very graceful, but upon meeting him, few were prepared for a six-foot-six black man who weighed a scant hundred and forty pounds and spoke with an effeminate drawl. We sat ourselves down on a tattered loveseat and waited for Webb.
In 1959, John Reiger was able to purchase an FM license for WLIR at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars. At the time, there were fewer than a thousand FM stations in the nation, although receivers were selling at the rate of four hundred thousand per year. It was a brave move, since the odds of making a profit on an FM-only operation were roughly one in a hundred. Still, Reiger had foresight. He envisioned WLIR as a high-class item, a luxury appealing to affluent Long Islanders who could appreciate the finer things. His programming consisted of a sophisticated mix of standards in the morning with commuter news and information, followed by a complete original-cast Broadway show album at 10 a.m. Lunchtime fare featured the suave, masculine personality of Bunny Roberts, who mainly appealed to lonely, stay-at-home wives. Afterward, Reiger’s wife, Dore, interviewed local celebrities. At 5 p.m., there was cocktail music, mostly treacly piano instrumentals served up for returning suburban breadwinners. Dinner music held forth from six until nine, featuring Percy Faith, Mantovani, and the lush orchestral sounds that tony suburbanites might enjoy with their evening repast. Classical music closed the day from nine until sign-off. By keeping his rates low (often less than ten dollars per sixty-second commercial) and trading local merchants airtime for their wares (mainly cars, meals, and clothing), Reiger was able to eke out a living. Obviously, he paid his disc jockeys very little, often asking them to double as salesmen after their air shift. His methods were typical of many FM owners at the time.
I suppose my initial experience at WALI should have prepared me for what I was to see while waiting near the reception desk. The room was long and narrow with three sets of protruding perpendicular industrial steel shelves. These were stuffed with decrepit record albums, their covers held together by colored masking tape. The prerequisite metal filing cabinets lined the wall behind the tiny reception desk. Another black metal desk with aluminum legs sat parallel to the wall, cluttered with tapes and newer LPs awaiting categorization. The whole area was covered with a ratty red carpet that was as worn and threadbare as Bob Cratchit’s topcoat. There was one high window in the entire subterranean room, and any daylight that might have filtered into the window well was blocked by a puny air conditioner. There were three doors off the main room: one to the air studio, another to the announcer’s booth, and the third to a private office occupied by Reiger. At least the owner’s office seemed better appointed than the rest of the shabby accommodations. The overall impression made WALI look like a penthouse suite on Park Avenue. I could only imagine that the penurious furnishings of the office were sacrifices made to grace the broadcast facility with the latest technology. That illusion would be shattered later.
As Ted Webb emerged from the studio to greet us, I could tell that he had no clue as to whom he’d invited to audition. Since his hours consulting WALI were limited, I doubted that he had ever heard Jackson’s weekend show. He only knew that it was the sole classical program on the station and that WLIR needed an announcer well versed in the great masters. Since he was on the air at the time, Webb hurriedly ushered us into the announcer’s booth, a small dark room off the main studio. He handed Jackson a sheaf of papers consisting of a job application and some pages of music introduction for his audition.
Robert began to practice reading the copy aloud. To say his approach was disastrous would be an understatement. Although he knew all the proper pronunciations, he embellished the dry script with his over-the-top improvisational flourishes, ones that worked to great effect (and our amusement) at WALI. He had style, but not the kind they were looking for. He turned to me for advice.
“Well, Bob,” I said, “if you really want my opinion, I’d tone it down a little. This is FM, so they’re looking for a deep voice. Measured tones. Slow and formal. Like this.” I proceeded to read a paragraph.
“But my man, that’s not me. They brought me in for my uniqueness. My flair.” He patted my shoulder and I knew what he meant. When he referred to men as “having the flair,” it signified that they were gay, whether they realized it or not.
“Suit yourself, Bob. But I’m not sure that’s what they have in mind.” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by insinuating that Webb hadn’t heard his show, but had merely invited the classical host in for an audition. So Robert proceeded to read it his way. Predictably, as Ted listened from the main studio, he was absolutely horrified by what he saw and heard. Intent upon his script, Robert never picked up on this.
As gracefully as possible, Webb escorted us from the announcer’s booth toward the exit, thanking Jackson for reading and asking if he could speak to me privately. Uh-oh, I thought. Was I about to be chided for bringing in a man who had wasted their time? As I followed him into the studio I was already preparing the answer, that I was merely along for the ride. I’d met Ted on numerous occasions at WALI and respected him a great deal. He was the ultimate pro on the air: a great voice with a completely straight-ahead delivery. There was no quirkiness or sense of humor in his presentation and certainly no
flair.
I selfishly hoped this little embarrassment wouldn’t hurt me at WALI.
“Neer, I heard you reading with your friend in there. You sounded very good. Do you want to tape an audition?”
“Well, thanks, Ted. But I don’t really know much about classical music. I couldn’t pronounce all those names.”
“First of all, the shift we’re talking about isn’t all classical. It’s Broadway show tunes, Sinatra, even some chicken rock. There’s only an hour of classical and I’ll help you with the names.” He then pronounced “Rachmaninoff” and “Prokofiev” for me. I recognized Tchaikovsky, but Eugene Joachim (OY-gum YO-kim) was beyond me. The copy wasn’t difficult otherwise, and I sailed through it.
Webb was beaming. “That was terrific. I’ve got to run this by the owner, but frankly, I don’t think he’ll have a problem. Are you free Saturday morning?”
That was like asking me if I wanted to make love to Julie Christie. I couldn’t believe that my little good deed of giving a friend a ride would pan out as a job offer at a real radio station. But my adrenaline rush was tempered by the realization that I’d have to tell Robert that I’d gotten the job and he hadn’t.
As I thanked Ted, I saw Jackson in the reception area perched on the seedy loveseat, looking nonplussed. Was this worth endangering our friendship? Would he think I deliberately engineered this to steal his job?
To his everlasting credit, he was gracious and kind. He congratulated me from the heart. It was apparent that he felt real joy at my good fortune more than disappointment at his own rejection. The short car ride back to the dorm was filled with his suggestions for the show, all of which were well meaning but 180 degrees away from what WLIR wanted.
As we got out of the car, he sniffed haughtily, “I’m not sure the world is ready for me and my flair yet. But they will be, Dick Neer. They will be.”
God, I hated being called that name and Jackson knew it, deliberately tweaking me to affirm our friendship. I had no doubts that someday, in some way, Robert’s talents would be appreciated, although at the time my mind was swimming with the whirl of events that had overcome me in the last few hours. I was going to be on a
real
radio station, even if it was only FM.
FM: No Static at All
AM radio ruled the airwaves for the first six decades of the twentieth century, based on the timeworn business principle of arriving
first,
not necessarily with the
best.
Commercial AM broadcasts began in earnest in the twenties and became solidly entrenched in the public consciousness as the Great Depression neared. Edwin Howard Armstrong was an inventor who pioneered the use of radio transmissions in the First World War and held many of the early patents for AM (amplitude modulation).
But Armstrong was not content with the static and spotty reception that plagued radio in those days. He set about at his own expense to find a better way to transmit words and music in higher fidelity. By 1933, after laboring long hours in a basement laboratory, he came up with frequency modulation, or FM. Upon demonstrating the clear superiority of FM, he expected David Sarnoff’s RCA to exercise the right of first refusal on his work he’d given them and begin laying the groundwork for the conversion from AM to FM.
Sarnoff was a longtime friend; in fact, the “General,” as he was called, introduced Armstrong to the woman who would later become his wife. But Sarnoff was under the misconception that the inventor had been working on a way to improve AM reception. The General had no intention of junking the massive investment that RCA had in AM transmitters and receivers. He also wanted his company to concentrate its technical resources on television, which he correctly saw as the more powerful of the new media.
What followed was thirty years of legal wrangling, which perplexed and frustrated Armstrong and everyone else who had witnessed demonstrations of FM’s clarity and frequency response. At first, the battle was joined over spectrum allocation, or where FM should be located on the dial. Originally, it was granted space at 42–50 MHz and roughly a half-million receivers designed to capture those signals were sold to audio enthusiasts. But RCA fought FM every step of the way, even when the FCC declared that television sound would be FM and dedicated channel 1 to the band. After the Second World War, and after extensive lobbying by RCA using misleading technical data, Washington abruptly switched the frequencies to 88–108 MHz, the area it occupies today. Massive damage was done to FM’s cause. Overnight, transmitters and receivers were obsolete, and consumers were reluctant to plunge ahead, fearing that more changes would stick them with more worthless equipment. Also, advances in AM technology had improved its sound to acceptable levels, especially to nonaudiophiles who were content with the status quo.
By 1954, Armstrong was a bitter and beaten man. He’d suffered a stroke and when his wife refused to give up their retirement money to continue the legal battle with RCA, an ugly domestic incident ensued. He realized that his obsession with FM had now cost him the thing most dear to him, and after writing a poignant letter of apology to his wife, he finally gave up the fight, leaping to his death from a thirteenth-story window. His estate settled with RCA for a million dollars, essentially what they’d offered over a decade earlier. FM was left without a champion, although Armstrong’s widow continued lawsuits against lesser opponents and eventually won them all.
The next major obstacle facing FM was the dawn of the television era. Consumers were faced with the option of buying improved radio technology at a time when the medium’s future was in doubt, or investing in television, obviously the next big thing. To further simplify the decision, manufacturers threw their efforts into television, leaving FM an orphan, abandoned in favor of the newer toy.
By the mid-fifties, vast improvements were developing in phonograph technology. Thirty-three-and-a-third rpm albums, better phonographic cartridges, and improved speakers were reaching the mass market. When ears were awakened to the sparkling potential of near-perfect sound reproduction, AM radios didn’t sound so good anymore. Stereo albums were widely released for the first time, and high-end users began purchasing component systems with separate turntables, amplifiers, and speakers. And when consumers heard FM for the first time, they were blown away by its advantages over the muddy AM sound. FM receiver sales grew exponentially and FM converters for the car allowed one to take home-listening preferences on the road until AM/FM car radios became available in 1963. A system for FM stereo was approved in 1961, and the race was officially met.
Still, broadcast fare consisted mostly of the exact same thing you could hear on AM, albeit with increased clarity. With many big-city, network-affiliated stations, FM was “bonused” to advertisers, as an extra incentive to reach a slightly wider audience. Companies saw no advantage in spending money on additional facilities and staff for FM when there was no money to be made. Those who did offer separate programming operated on a shoestring budget, hoping only to break even.
The picture changed in 1964 when the FCC declared that in markets of more than 250,000 listeners, owners of AM-FM duopolies had to provide original programming on FM for at least half the broadcast day. The commission did so under pressure. The AM spectrum was cluttered with over four thousand stations, and there was simply no more bandwidth to accommodate the increasing number of license applications. Since the airwaves were ostensibly owned by the public, if operators were to serve the public interest, more diversity of programming was needed. If FM could be made commercially viable, then formats appealing to more heterogeneous tastes might be carved out.
Amazingly (by today’s sensibilities), broadcasters fought the decision tooth and nail. Witness the rights fees paid for cellular telephone bandwidth recently, and compare it to 1964, when untapped gold mines were available with the FM frequencies that companies already owned. Gordon McLendon and Todd Storz, the radio innovators who were given credit for inventing Top Forty, resisted the order mightily and suffered the consequences. The new technology was repulsed rather than embraced.
Some of this distaste was based on principle: Broadcasters resented the FCC’s incursion into programming. They had always been wary of Washington proscribing how they should serve their audiences, anticipating that so-called public service segments would be unprofitable requirements that detracted from their main goals. But perhaps the real reason lay in the simple law of supply and demand. The cash cow AM stations might be devalued by an influx of FM outlets, especially if it meant new competitors who would eat into AM profit shares. Many companies petitioned the commission for waivers, but the only thing that accomplished was to postpone the start date of the new dictum from July 1, 1965, to January 1, 1967.
Again, imagine the businessman of today, faced with a deadline for introducing a new product, realizing that his competitors were under the same time constraints. One would think that enterprising broadcasters would race to get there first, establishing their product in the audience’s consciousness before their rivals. But most companies lingered until the very last minute and even
then
their attitude was similar to the mom-and-pop operators: Put out a cut-rate product showcasing their AM talent in prime listening hours, while consigning the rest of the day to cheaply produced filler. After all, weren’t all the good format ideas already taken?
The answer might lay in the antiformat: free-form radio. A revolutionary idea, but by 1966 America was ready for a revolution.