(Colin McEnroe lost his long-running, weekdaily, afternoon drive talk show last week in Hartford, Connecticut last week. He says goodbye...)
~
A few years ago, I was invited to give a little speech out in Litchfield at the house of two artist friends.
I think it had something to do with MoveOn.org.
Afterwards, people from the audience came up to ask me about myself. I had been doing a left-leaning radio show in Connecticut for more than a decade. They were left-leaning Connecticut Democrats. My radio studio was about 15 miles away — as the Abercrombie finch flies — from where we were standing.
From their questions, you would have thought I had been doing puppet shows in Antarctica all those years.
"Just my name."
"Where can we hear it?"
"On WTIC."
"What's that?"
"The biggest and oldest radio station in Connecticut."
"Where is it on the dial?"
"1080 AM."
A pause. I knew this pause. I had lived through it a dozen times before with similar audiences and random people at cocktail parties. It was the pause I would have provoked if I had told the same people that I was the regional distributor for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and that I had a nice cold case in the car that I wanted to give them to take home and serve at their next party.
And I knew what they were going to say next.
"It does," I said, smiling weakly. "They all do."
But I knew what they meant. One's Volvo, after all, might not receive AM.
If they had any kind of mental picture of AM radio, it was as an American Moron Game Refuge, thousands of acres of red-faced knuckle-dragging blowhards, spitting in the merlot and lifting their legs on anything that smacked of civilization.
When I got in my car to go home, I looked up and said to the living god that made me: "I am soooooo screwed, aren't I?"
You see, those people represented a big chunk of the radio audience I should have been able to reach. They were well-read, left-of-center, culturally engaged. They lived in the path of WTIC's booming 50,000-watt signal.
And the obstacle I faced in reaching those people was bigger than simply doing a show that they would like and getting them to listen to it. It was bigger than putting my face on an electronic billboard they might drive by on the interstate. The problem was that these people literally did not believe that amplitude modulation broadcasting could be received in their cars.
This was cause for sorrow, not only because I needed them for, um, ratings, but also because I wanted them to meet their neighbors. I wanted them to meet Lillian, the older lady who did puppet shows and went alone during the day to movies, which she then breathlessly reviewed on the air, punctuated by her signature laugh, which involved actually saying "ha-ha," as opposed to laughing. I wanted them to meet JP the Doomsday Economist, who had dolefully and methodically predicted the end of the world on my show for more than 10 years using a complex formula of economic indicators, End Times beliefs and an apocalyptic vision that involved Tom Brokaw. (JP is looking crazy like a fox these days.)
Some of the others are harder to explain, like Tom from West Hartford who would speak briefly and then ask if he could put "Samantha" on the line, immediately switching to a drag queen voice and a lurid anecdote often involving a Jacuzzi and some "hawt" politician like Joe Lieberman or George Bush. "Locutus," a self-described alien death god," whose daily call was a mélange of Limbaugh talking points and otherworldly threats of violence. Doris from Southington, a smoky-voiced, "lay Episcopal theologian," not immune to the charms of the cocktail. JC, an enormous (I met him) Puerto Rican "psycho-killer cabdriver," with a gift for comical hysteria. Nadine, who claimed, repeatedly, in her musically sultry voice, that she was sexually aroused by hearing Bill Curry talk about property tax reform.
Those were some of the colorful ones, but a lot of my callers were just regular folks with something on their minds. I know I go on too much about Walt Whitman, but there is something of Whitman's spirit in talk radio — AM talk radio! — when it's done right. The jumble of voices and the parti-colored parade of styles and uncontainable raucousness of the people shouting in from the bleachers seem like America at its liveliest.
When I lost my show last week, I suddenly heard from a lot of friends I didn't really know existed. I heard about a commuter van that ran from Middletown to Windsor, full of insurance workers who would tune me in for the ride home and argue my points during the commercials. I heard from husbands and wives who would listen to the show on their separate ways home each night and then continue the conversation into dinner. I heard from people who had listened the whole 16 years, people whose kids were subjected to my ravings every day in their car seats and are now in college. I heard from people who dragged the radio around while they painted and gardened and wrapped presents.
I heard from a woman who discussed the show with her husband every evening until this year, when he died. She didn't think she could stand to listen again, but then she did, and it felt like a little continuity.
I heard, in short, from Whitman's America. Crazy, hilarious, loud, passionate, earthy. AM radio is more of a bazaar than a salon. Products are hawked and the weather pondered and the traffic decried and the prevailing winds of life measured and discussed. Its heart is primal, and its mind is fey.
I also heard from a lot of people who cried on the last day. Can you imagine that? Crying over an AM radio show? You won't catch me doing that.
~
Colin McEnroe is a well known Connecticut personality, as a witty and opinionated radio talk show host, columnist, author, social commentator, and playwright. Colin hosts a weekday afternoon drive talk show on WTIC-AM, the largest radio station in Connecticut. His books include "Swimming Chickens" and "Lose Weight Through Great Sex With Celebrities (the Elvis Way)," two humor collections published by Doubleday. His most recent memoir, "My Father's Footprints," published in July, 2003 by Warner Books, has received widespread acclaim.
I am going to go look for those books...they sound good.
Thanks for this story..it was a good one.
Posted by: sparky | January 05, 2009 at 05:46 AM
Sounds like a good show for the 7:00 pm time slot on KIRO! There I go, showing my demographic.
Posted by: AprilMayJune | January 05, 2009 at 07:52 PM