LITTLE ROCK — I've had this part-time job talking on the radio for a little more than a year now, so I guess it's all right to write about it. Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us. But since no one's given me any indication that I won't be doing it for the foreseeable future, maybe a little shameless selfpromotion is in order.
So, in case you haven't heard, I'm on the air on The Show With No Name with Tommy Smith and David Bazzel (103.7 the Buzz) starting around 7 a.m. Thursday mornings. Danny-Joe Crofford is the show's producer.
I'm part of a rotation of guys who fill the third-man-in-the-booth, emergencybullpen-backup-host role for the guys. On Mondays, they've got the venerable sportswriter Harry King, on Tuesdays (at least during football season) former Razorback All American Bruce James, on Wednesdays political consultant/ bon vivant Bill Vickery, and on Fridays KATV sports director Steve Sullivan.
In a way, I'm surprised to find myself in this sort of company. One of the reasons people become writers is to be able to express themselves without subjecting themselves to public speaking. Like a lot of people who end up doing what I do for a living, I'm genuinely shy-I spent most of my time in school in the back of the class with a baseball cap pulled over my eyes.
I'm not good in crowds or at cocktailparties. I have been described as a Seinfeldian "no talker," a characterization I don't dispute. I kind of like playing golf alone. I don't need a whole lot of external validation. (Which, considering I work for a newspaper, is probably a very good thing.)
I'm the sort of person for whom social media programs like Facebook and Twitter are ideal-I can comment on my friends' ongoing dramas or not, virtually eavesdrop and maintain the illusion of connection with hundreds of folks. In real life, I've got a few friends whose company I deeply enjoy, a lot of people I'm happy to see and nobody from whom I'm hiding. And that's the way I like it-I don't need or want to be the center of attention.
While I used to occasionally appear on Tommy's show when he was on another station, I never distinguished myself as a guest. In fact, I stopped going on his show because I was convinced I was a horrible guest-I never felt like Igot used to the speed of the game.
I could do other radio programs, where the host would ask me questions and I could respond in my characteristically measured, qualified way. I can conduct an interview. But if you've ever heard one of Tommy Smith's broadcasts, maybe you know what I mean-you're breaking into a decades-long conversation between Tommy and his listeners.
It's a kind of free-association game that has its own mythology, recurring characters, codes and points of reference. Maybe it doesn't take that long to catch on as a listener, but to actually contribute to the show requires both a good ear and a kind of verbal confidence that doesn't come naturally to most of us.
I'm not being modest. I think I do all right, and that I'm getting better. I'm a writer who sometimes goes on the radio. I've got a sense of humor and I know a lot of stuff that's not relevant to anything. I get it. But I don't have real radiotalking talent, not like Tommy or Vickery or Rex Nelson have. Those guys are really good. (And Bazzel's got a shrewd talent as well, a gift that's not ostentatious but is very real. He's the opposite of a loose cannon, even if he has some odd ideas about the Confederacy.)
It's funny, because my first "media" job was a radio job-I had an FCC license (in those days you had to have a license to be on the radio) and did alittle fill-on on-air work in high school. (My law school roommate, by the way, was Marty Johnson, who started doing on-air work at 16, was one of the heavy hitters at the top-rated KEEL-71 AM at 17 and was named KEEL's music director at 20.)
At one time I considered a "career" as a disc jockey-for a while I even did college radio for a college I didn't attend. I was in a band with the program director of Centenary College's station and he let me have a show. I had two turntables and a cart machine, and I believe I was the first person in Louisiana to play a Van Halen cut on the radio.
(It was their cover of Chicago bluesman John Brim's extended double entendre "Ice Cream Man." I slit open the cellophane on the station's advance copy and put it on because I recognized the song. I regret I didn't choose "Jamie's Cryin'" or at least their version of "You Really Got Me.")
Even after I got my first newspaper job, as the sports editor of The Jennings (La.) Daily News, I had a side gig doing a Wednesday evening blues show on KJEF-AM. (The guy who followed me on-air was Phil Phillips, who wrote and had the original hit with "Sea of Love.")
So I've done some radio over theyears, and some TV too. I used to occasionally show up on Hardball with Chris Matthews, who told me off the air that it didn't really matter what you said on television so long as you said it like you believed it. (I was even the local host of a telethon once-not the one made famous by Jerry Lewis, but for cerebral palsy.) Matthews seemed like a good guy to me, and he was kidding, but his advice is sound. TV honors the confident personality and forceful presentation, while radio is a more personal-and more insidious-experience. Words, isolated from pictures, have a chance on the radio. And I'm basically a word guy.
In any case, I hope they let me
hang around for another year or so. I'm getting the knack of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It's a good and probably healthy thing for me to do, to blurt and tease and play. If it sounds like we're having a good time on the air, it's because we are.
It may sound like you're portraying a character, but if you're any good at all there's something true in that character, something close to what you are. I've found the only way for me to be on the radio is to be myself on the radio.
Perspective, Pages 78 on 08/30/2009