December 24, 2006

Just in time to contribute to the Christmas Joy: Reason #194 I envy the comic talent of Lore Sjöberg. His latest “Alt Text” piece for Wired.com is The “Scrooge/Christmas Carol” Take-Off to End All “Scrooge/Christmas Carol” Take-Offs. Literally. And written entirely in email form. Apparently, the G in Gmail actually stands for “Ghost”. Who knew?

Have I ever told you my radio stories, featuring the semi-legendary L.A. AM DJ who I ‘sidekicked’ for while in college? This was back in the 70s, and I must proclaim that “Sweet” Dick Whittington (on KFI, KLAC, KABC, but mostly on suburban-based KGIL) pioneered and perfected a lot of the ‘schtick’ that most of the Big Time Personalities from Stern and Imus on down have been doing wrong ever since. (Among other things, he was the Absolute Master of being outrageous without being offensive – otherwise how could he have gotten away with calling himself “Sweet Dick” 30-40 years ago?) And one of those things he did right was developing his “Producer/Engineer/Screener/Assistant” as an on-the-air sidekick – rarely done in Major Markets in those days because of AFTRA rules about who gets to talk on the radio, and which made me (and my several predecessors and successors) the lowest-paid Personality on L.A. Radio. But it was an incredible apprenticeship, if one I never successfully turned into a career.
Since several of this blog’s 17 readers (up from 7 in the last year) have, at one time or another, worked in the broadcast radio biz too, I think it’s important to recognize that on December 24th, 1906 – exactly one hundred years ago, a Canadian inventor named Richard Fessenden did the first known radio broadcast, literally ‘to all the ships at sea’, and notably including the playing if phonograph records. Thankfully, the BBC has recognized this achievement with a radio ‘programme’ of their own (available online until Wednesday, Dec. 27), because Clear Channel doesn’t care.

Pictures: L- “Sweet” Dick Whittington, R- “Sweet” Dick Fessenden