I'm a fan of Old Time Radio. Gunsmoke, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Jack Benny Program are three of the best shows ever done. Currently I'm listening to the Tales of the Texas Rangers. Not many of the actors sound like they're from Texas and few of them even sound like they've ever visited Texas -- or else a lot of folk in Texas have New England and New York accents! -- but it's fun, well-paced and gets me to sleep at night. Gunsmoke is so well written, acted, and produced that it keeps me up.

It turns out that there's New Time Radio. Stacy Keach, whose father was a director and actor in many OTR programs, hosts a radio version of the Twilight Zone. I haven't heard it yet, but if you like OTR you might be interested in this one.

I've always loved radio. As a boy listened to a small transistor radio late at night. I have great memories of colorful disc jockeys such as John "Records" Landecker and "Uncle" Larry Lujack on WLS Chicago. Even though I grew up in Nebraska, I could hear the "boogie check" at night all the way from Chicago because of the 50,000 watt signal of WLS and early in the morning, I could catch Uncle Lar and Little Tommy telling "Animal Stories" until the sun came up and burned away the signal. This probably sounds bizarre (because it probably is bizarre) but one of the highlights of my brief and very undistinguished radio career was working at a station that had the same "jingle package" as WLS. There were some great stations in my home towns of Omaha and Lincoln, KOIL, WOW, KFAB, and KLMS. KOIL was one of the first "Top 40" stations in America and host of great announcers passed through its doors on their way to bigger markets. A lot of us listened to Dave Wingert's morning show on WOW (where Johnny Carson once worked). I can still hear Dom (whatever his last name was on KLNG) calling the play-by-play for the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, "Archibald stops, he pops, it's good!" (Nate Archibald led the NBA in scoring that year even though he was only 6 feet tall). On Saturday after afternoons, there were about 6 stations broadcasting the University of Nebraska football games. We had to choose between Joe Patrick, Don Gill, or Lyle Bremser. Like most folk, our family listened to KFAB's Lyle Bremser.

I've always respected the power of radio to capture the imagination. I can still remember television programs from my childhood (e.g., Batman and the Monkees) but they didn't capture the imagination the way radio did. They didn't create imaginary worlds with the vividness or color (our television was black and white until 1974!) that, at its best, radio could and did. Television is too explicit. It shows too much and tells too much. It spells everything out on the assumption that viewers are morons. For the most part it always has and continues to do. So when I criticize contemporary radio, it's not for lack of affection for the medium and its potential and it is not as there aren't still a few good shows on the radio (though few of them are local anymore - we're in a time warp; it's 1940 all over again and most of the programming comes from networks headquartered in far away places again). Whatever one makes of his politics, Rush Limbaugh produces a great, funny, radio show. Laura Ingraham has a funny and intelligent show. The White Horse Inn guys do good radio (so far all talk shows) and there are some good shows on NPR.

The commercial stations seem bent on driving listeners away. Perhaps Arbitron has changed the way it measures ratings? Once upon a time the goal used to be to attract listeners and keep them for a long as possible. Indeed the better stations worked hard to get listeners (who might also be Arbitron households) to listen from one quarter hour to the next. Now, on Saturdays, many stations sell time to advertisers for lengthy "infomercials" without regard to ratings, but judging by the ratings of our local stations, you probably wouldn't know that since you aren't listening. So why advertisers buy time by the hour I don't know.

On Saturdays, NPR is about the only thing I can stand. Car Talk, This American Life, Wait Wait (I listened to the BBC original for a couple of years in the 90s in the UK; it was better), and Prairie Home Companion are good shows. I mostly ignore Garrison Keillor's political comments, though he's pretty good at making fun of stuffy, self-important public radio types. Tom and Ray and great entertainers. I don't care much about cars but I listen because they're obviously having a lot of fun. This American Life tells compelling stories (preachers, pay attention).

My biggest complaint is that so few folk in radio respect the medium or the audience any longer. When I started in radio as a teenager, Don Crawley and Scott Campell and others taught me to respect the intelligence of the audience and to capitalize on it, to find ways to capture their imagination, to paint pictures. Of course, the bottom line was always ratings and advertising dollars, but the way we were supposed to succeed was by entertaining and informing.  

It's not just commercial radio that has become insulting. NPR has always had a leftist cultural, political, and social bent, but it seems to be more pronounced now. I think I shall have to abandon Weekend Edition until Scott Simon lightens up (this morning's monologue on why immigrants should be allowed to be president was moronic. Did the founding fathers know nothing about overcoming hardship in order to get to the New World? I don't think any of them got here on a jumbo jet). Frankly I'm waiting for Daniel Schorr to quit before I listen again. If I hear one more time about how some current event reminds him of the time when Nixon was mean to him I think spontaneous combustion is a real possibility. Why does NPR assume that all their listeners are social, economic, and political liberals? Why do they deliberately alienate a potential audience?

Finally, few segments of the broadcasting world are as insulting to listeners as religious broadcasters. I've been a religious broadcaster and I've worked at religious stations. I've "aired" tapes of Kenneth Hagin wheedling money out of gullible old ladies by promising them coins like those put on Jesus' eyes and bowls like those used at the last supper. In the recent Luther movie the Tetzel character reminded me of most hucksterish religious broadcasters. Apart from the White Horse Inn, I don't listen to Christian radio much. It brings back bad memories of being forced, by a station manager who looked a lot like a mafia don, to play records by Doug Oldham.

As people of the Word, of all the radio and internet broadcasters it would seem that Christians would be most attuned to possibilities of radio, but most of them don't seem to "get it." They don't seem to be communicating with or telling stories to image-bearers but they seem to treat radio as if it were television without pictures. They seem mainly to understand only affective approaches, but in aural communication emotion used indiscriminately is wearying to the flesh.

There are alternatives and one of them is Ken Myers' Mars Hill Audio.

Stay tuned radio rangers for more exciting adventures.