I'll see you on the radio (sort of)
This week's column.
When I was a youngster growing up in northeast Greensboro, one of life’s simplest pleasures was waiting till the sun set on long, lazy summer days and tuning into Atlanta Braves games on the radio.
At night the signal from WSB in Atlanta would come in loudly, if not always that clearly, fading in and out as it bounced along the eddies of the ionosphere. But I still could make out most of the action.
I could hear the ball meet the bat amid the snap, crackle and pop of the AM static. And I would hang with anticipation as a long drive chased an outfielder back, back, way back ...
But the games were only part of my fascination.
I envied Ernie Johnson and Milo Hamilton for having the best jobs in the known universe. Imagine, watching baseball every day and getting paid for it. Lucky devils.
I also envied them being on radio, where baseball is more interesting and there’s still a place for the imagination to add mental pictures to the play-by-play man’s descriptions.
I’d cover imaginary games on my own “broadcasts,” which I’d tape on a portable cassette player for an always-loyal audience of one: me. To represent the crack of the bat I’d strike the edge of my oak dresser with a No. 2 pencil. The crowd noise I’d crib from recordings of Braves games.
Now, here I am decades later, headed back to the future.
The editorial staff at the News & Record this week will begin posting a monthly podcast on local and state issues.
For the uninitiated, a podcast technically is defined as “a series of digital media files” distributed on the Internet.
They can consist of sound with pictures or sound alone. In our case, they’ll just be sound. You can click on them and listen to them on our Web site, www.news-record.com. Or you can download them onto your iPod or MP3 player.
The bottom line: audio podcasting is pretty much Internet radio — without the transmission tower.
Our first editorial podcast should be up by the end of the week and it will feature editorial board members Doug Clark, Elma Sabo and yours truly. Also joining us will be guest commentators Ed Cone and Charles Davenport Jr., who are both regular columnists for the News & Record, and Andrew Brod, an economist with UNCG’s Bryan School of Business and Economics.
Among the features on our premiere “show”:
-- “Summary Judgment”: a fast-paced series of thumbs up or thumbs down to local news events and news makers.
-- a news roundtable discussion;
-- and Brod’s observations on topical developments in the business world and their impact on the state and the Triad.
In the podcasts that follow, there’ll be occasional interviews with guest news makers. There’ll also be listener feedback, as we get it.
We’ll probably expand to include on-air commentaries, perhaps some from audience members. But, no, this won’t be a call-in show. At least not yet.
It won’t be a long program either, with a typical podcast lasting about 15 minutes.
If you’re interested in one segment of the podcast but not all of it, no problem. You’ll have the choice to click on and listen to as many or as few segments as you choose.
Why a podcast?
We see it as a chance to extend the reach of the ideas marketplace beyond the printed page, with the added dimension of on-air dialogue and debate, not quite live, but recorded as it happens.
As a practical matter, a podcast also is one of many things we can do that don’t require space on the printed page.
Finally, it allows some local news makers to make their cases in their own voices, to you and to us.
We’re not quite sure this will be a big ratings hit. Imus and Limbaugh probably can rest easy. But we are intrigued by the possibilities. And we hope to have a good time.
Incidentally, that makeshift “studio” in my bedroom wasn’t my only youthful brush with radio. While in high school, I had a chance to do real radio on the old WCOG, a Top 40 AM station on Tower Road where Greensboro radio legend Dusty Dunn was spinning records.
I was part of a Greensboro Youth Council show called “Gap” that aired Sunday evenings and spotlighted the music and biographies of the top rock and R&B acts of the time, including Led Zeppelin, Edgar Winter and Curtis Mayfield.
Our ringleader was a Grimsley High student named David Earnhardt, who went on to become a documentary filmmaker. (His latest, “Uncounted,” screened recently at the Carolina Theatre.)
So, this trip into the future of Webcasts seems in many ways like a trip to the past. But not to worry. None of us intends to try to sing.
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