Excerpt
The Radio Funny Book is more than just a book of fluffs and bloopers, its a close up of the funny things that happen not only on the air, but, off the air in Americas more than 12,000 radio stations - radio stations that reach about 9 out of 10 of the American people every week..
The stories are not only humorous, but, many are heartwarming and uplifting. Theres the story of a man in Buffalo who was fired, but refused to leave. Theres the story of a southern politician whose radio station call letters made him the butt of local jokes. Theres a couple of red faced sportscasters. One got the teams mixed up. Another didnt know where he was.
Some of the very biggest successes in radio nearly had their careers ended before they really got started by being fired.
The embarrassing slips that affect radio announcers are not limited to those who are just starting out, but, many show up in the resumes of the most gifted and experienced. Read about radios greatest newscaster losing it on his long running nationwide evening broadcast. .
For real radio fans, theres a test to let you know just how much you know about it. And, if youre an aspiring announcer, theres a decades old audition to find out if you have what it takes to be a radio star.
The Funny Book also touches on some radio history that escapes most learned radio chronicles: a female comedian who was banned from radio for reading her lines with too much feeling. Los Angeles is the #1 radio market in the U.S. now. Find out what it was like in radios first decade.
Those high powered border stations along the Rio Grande were home not only to high powered preachers and quacks with miracle cures, they carried a steady dose of audacious commercials for all kinds of products - most of questionable value.. Some of that advertising is recalled in the Funny Book. And, the book shows that kind of advertising was not only coming from south of the border, there was a lot coming from right here in the U.S. The ads are funny now in this more sophisticated age.
Theres a long overdue debunking of one of radios oldest stories. Its about time.
The Radio Funny Book has been written to be a fun read. I think theres some laughs in it for radio people, past, present, and future, and for an even more important group of people: the people who listen and the advertisers who pay for what we radio people have to say and what we have to play.
Ill promise you the book is not preachy. It is not as negative or critical as too many of my contemporaries are inclined to be. It is not artificially uplifting. It is not a puff ,piece. It was fun to write and I hope youll find it fun to read..
Your Author Bob Doll 2005
|