One of the things I miss most is local radio programming. Walt Bodine centered his entire shows to what was happening right here. Monthly, he alternated between the Mayors of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas as guests on his shows. One elected official commented to Walt that he had not thought of what would really concern the citizens of his area. The official may have been thinking global but his constituents were thinking local. As I pointed out, he was quick to focus his attention on what was happening here. Jane Flynn, the President of the Kansas City Historical Society, was one such example.
Walt also had a segment called Wild Life in the City. Often times we forget that we have wild critters living with us. For example; deer, owls, skunks, pigeons, foxes, and squirrels, to name just a few that share living space with us. Every month Walt had Animal experts come in and field questions about these critters. In my travels as a Delivery driver, I had come across foxes, and deer in the city, even wild turkey’s. Did you know that they can fly?
If there were riots, or some disturbance, Walt would use these occasions to reach out to the local population. After Martin Luther King was killed, Walt was talking to the people, when the Hyatt disaster occurred, He was calling for people to give blood. Calling for order. Only local programing can inform, soothe, and bring back peace and tranquility.
Marshall Saper also aided the community. In the early ’90’s, KCMO was advertising a scary ad, “Real Men Don’t use Porn” was the theme. In their ads, they implied that a whole lot of sin was going on. They had a poster with a small child, dressed shabbily, who had a look on her face as if she had been through Hell with sexual abuse. And under her picture was the phrase, “Real men don’t use Porn.” This ad aired at nearly every advertising break. Finally, I called Saper. I told him about the ad, and wondered who was behind it? I discovered that Saper never listened to these ads until I pointed it out to him. The next day, we discovered who was responsible for these ads. Playboy made a joke of it, because there were only two cities involved in this campaign, Kansas City, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The picture of the little girl was a picture of the daughter of the man in charge of the campaign here. The aim of the campaign was to stop the renting of adult videos, and other sexual novelties. Ed Meese was also a sponsor of this program. You recall, Ronald Regan’s Attorney General. But with a little light shown on the sources, the ad went away.
Very interesting article. The broadcasters were not listening to what they were saying. And really to have the Reagan inner circle people behind the ad and then to think what they did to the stability of average people and people who were in state run hospitals…and to think their big focus was porn.
Not that child trafficking is not an issue but they could have done a whole lot more good propping up unions and raising the standard of living of families rather than knocking them down. But the destruction of the Middle Class was covered by the low hanging fruit issue of children in porn. OH THEY WERE HELPING KIDS by helping them not be abused….but they were causing so many others to be abused directly by their policies they fought for. Talk about a pathological removal from reality.
Our radio station….one of them….was actually in a city 45 miles away from the city of license and we had little to do with it. Our transmitter was in the city of license but as a way to consolidate workers we were all 45 miles away in a bigger town where the other 5 stations were. So we were removed from our radio “home”. Our boss at the radio station thought having a Radiothon of local people on microphone from the city of license for a weekend would be a wonderful idea for a way to meet the FCC requirement of Public Service and a way to get good the good graces of the city of license people. And I was the one that had to host it because I was the morning DJ. So I started at 5am Saturday and was on the air until 7pm I think. I was totally brain dead after talking with all of these people about topics I knew nothing about really because I lived 45 miles away from the little town where all these guests were from.
Then the next day, Sunday, basically the same thing. What a mindnumbing weekend that was to talk about community issues non stop. We had Paul Harvey on from 12 – 12:17pm and at that time I closed the door to the studio and turned the monitor way down and just shut my eyes for the time he was on…sitting alone…..just to get some rest. This was at a time way before trump when Republicans across the street were not infected with the Q Anon disease. They were all talking about the children’s community center the city needed….they talked about the city needing to do this and that. The stuff that ideologically Republicans oppose to their core but because it is local these people supported. The stuff that should provide them an overwhelming amount of guilt had they thought anything through. COGNATIVE DISSOCIATION.
During other times I had a Community Service show taped for playback Sunday morning at 6am where people would come on and I would talk to them…a 15 minute discussion with just me and them on what they were doing. Events going on like fairs and school issues were common or community groups and how to take part in their events were the themes mostly. then the election came around. We had a very hard core Conservative in the community who was an outspoken businessman who decided to run for the US House for our district. I started off by introducing him and basically he began to yell and get mad at any topic we changed to. Now we are in my news studio which was 7 feet by 4 feet….just big enough to have an audio mixer board on a desk in front of me and I pushed a second chair in this small room for the guest…..and here he is sitting shoulder to shoulder with me yelling about how Democrats are ruining this and that. Had I confronted him he would have pulled his ads from the station….I have another story of this happening…so he just screamed thinking he was Rush Limbaugh and I sat there right next to him thinking he was insane hoping his being on the radio would project his insanity to whomever was listening and they would not support him. Alas he won the District and carried for a few more terms as was easily forecast for our very Conservative region. He would have been a solid trumper had he been elected today.
So the thing about local radio is the same about local politics. You get people who are truly…weird…different…unconnected with reality and at times you get people who really care about the guy that lives next to them. Local radio is like a box of chocolates….to quote a philosopher from a previous place in time. And then those local people go to national politics…FAILING UP….and then we get the insane in national positions. And it all started at the local level on a local radio station at 6am.
Very interesting article. The broadcasters were not listening to what they were saying. And really to have the Reagan inner circle people behind the ad and then to think what they did to the stability of average people and people who were in state run hospitals…and to think their big focus was porn.
Not that child trafficking is not an issue but they could have done a whole lot more good propping up unions and raising the standard of living of families rather than knocking them down. But the destruction of the Middle Class was covered by the low hanging fruit issue of children in porn. OH THEY WERE HELPING KIDS by helping them not be abused….but they were causing so many others to be abused directly by their policies they fought for. Talk about a pathological removal from reality.
Our radio station….one of them….was actually in a city 45 miles away from the city of license and we had little to do with it. Our transmitter was in the city of license but as a way to consolidate workers we were all 45 miles away in a bigger town where the other 5 stations were. So we were removed from our radio “home”. Our boss at the radio station thought having a Radiothon of local people on microphone from the city of license for a weekend would be a wonderful idea for a way to meet the FCC requirement of Public Service and a way to get good the good graces of the city of license people. And I was the one that had to host it because I was the morning DJ. So I started at 5am Saturday and was on the air until 7pm I think. I was totally brain dead after talking with all of these people about topics I knew nothing about really because I lived 45 miles away from the little town where all these guests were from.
Then the next day, Sunday, basically the same thing. What a mindnumbing weekend that was to talk about community issues non stop. We had Paul Harvey on from 12 – 12:17pm and at that time I closed the door to the studio and turned the monitor way down and just shut my eyes for the time he was on…sitting alone…..just to get some rest. This was at a time way before trump when Republicans across the street were not infected with the Q Anon disease. They were all talking about the children’s community center the city needed….they talked about the city needing to do this and that. The stuff that ideologically Republicans oppose to their core but because it is local these people supported. The stuff that should provide them an overwhelming amount of guilt had they thought anything through. COGNATIVE DISSOCIATION.
During other times I had a Community Service show taped for playback Sunday morning at 6am where people would come on and I would talk to them…a 15 minute discussion with just me and them on what they were doing. Events going on like fairs and school issues were common or community groups and how to take part in their events were the themes mostly. then the election came around. We had a very hard core Conservative in the community who was an outspoken businessman who decided to run for the US House for our district. I started off by introducing him and basically he began to yell and get mad at any topic we changed to. Now we are in my news studio which was 7 feet by 4 feet….just big enough to have an audio mixer board on a desk in front of me and I pushed a second chair in this small room for the guest…..and here he is sitting shoulder to shoulder with me yelling about how Democrats are ruining this and that. Had I confronted him he would have pulled his ads from the station….I have another story of this happening…so he just screamed thinking he was Rush Limbaugh and I sat there right next to him thinking he was insane hoping his being on the radio would project his insanity to whomever was listening and they would not support him. Alas he won the District and carried for a few more terms as was easily forecast for our very Conservative region. He would have been a solid trumper had he been elected today.
So the thing about local radio is the same about local politics. You get people who are truly…weird…different…unconnected with reality and at times you get people who really care about the guy that lives next to them. Local radio is like a box of chocolates….to quote a philosopher from a previous place in time. And then those local people go to national politics…FAILING UP….and then we get the insane in national positions. And it all started at the local level on a local radio station at 6am.