[NJARC] What is a "Radio?"

[amagoun]

Since the NJARC seems to represent largely radio preservationists
focusing on "hardware," to pursue this idea you will need the radio
preservationists of "software," ie broadcast content from the 30s to
the... well, it's hard to know where contemporary stations draw the
line.  But the content of the NJARC station ought to be more than
playing the same top 40 you can hear on a variety of commercial AM,
satellite, and internet stations.  It ought to recreate the delivery of
those songs, the tube or transistor systems of transmission and
reception, and the commercial content that framed them back in the day.
To pull this off, I'm thinking we should discuss this with people who
run the NJ Radio Museum in Dover, www.njrm.org/, who seem to be or know
a number of ex-DJs, and people like Dave Zwengler of North Brunswick,
who's an effective mimic of men from the Golden Age of Radio.

Whether they could incorporate the variety of ads as well as patter that
listeners would remember from the past is a good question, as is
obtaining rights, which probably extend beyond BMI and ASCAP.  But that
would be the point of a non-profit station dedicated to preservation of
a dead form.  Could a group assemble enough live and prerecorded or
streamed material from DJs, those records incorporating the songs and
ads of the 1960s, and the explosion of CDs containing the Golden Age to
fit the on-air requirements of the FCC?  Do it be done while filtering,
for the 30s through the 50s, the less-fondly remembered references?  I'm
thinking not only of Amos 'n' Andy, but the variety of slurs directed at
Asians and Hispanics, as well as females, that make finding a script
from that era worth reviving for radio theatre so difficult.  Lest one
of our many white males make a comment about political correctness, this
is little different from the reason no one wears blackface anymore; and
you try explaining the historical nature of such programming to the
members of those groups who tune in.

So before going further, the discussion might do some calculations about
broadcast time required at different power and regulation levels, and
how much of that could be done with canned as opposed to live material,
week in, week out.

Best,
Alex

ps. Incidentally, visitors to the blog below will find an illustrated
review of sorts of the War of the Worlds broadcast last October.
--
Alexander B. Magoun, Ph.D.
Executive Director
David Sarnoff Library
201 Washington Road, CN 5300
Princeton, NJ 08543-5300

609-734-2636
amagoun at davidsarnoff.org
(f) 609-734-2339
www.davidsarnoff.org
www.davidsarnoff.blogspot.com