The Case for Old-School Radio
We live in a world of sound.
Sound is everywhere. It is prolific. And much of that sound, is not the kind of communal sound that a recent guest on my radio show, Professor Alex Fisher, spoke about. He talked at length about the sound of bells heard once upon a time, organizing sonic information and space in public places, and sometimes, even, through civic authority.
Today’s sound is more of a curated list. We curate the sounds we want to hear — we can choose our playlist.
I began to wonder whether old-school radio still has a place in a world where so many of us listen to our music, our podcasts, and our live streaming.
Talk radio today can also be full of many sound bites, music, different speakers moving in and out, interludes, interruptions. An average show can often feel very polished, and perhaps, radio has evolved into something closer to the modern podcast.
I have no doubt that this is an expression of our times. Sound is everywhere.
When I relaunched The Blue Hour on CiTR 101.9 FM this past spring, my goal was to bring back an old form of radio that I think may have been lost to the decades.
In archival radio interviews from the mid-twentieth century, I found Studs Terkel, whose show was often a simple conversation between two individuals.
In a 1959 interview with writer Dorothy Parker, it is easy to hear that the conversation was not polished. There was room for error. No sound disruptions. Just two people, speaking.
And so, when I relaunched The Blue Hour, I aimed to do exactly this.
I begin each episode with words, and end each show with words. There is no recognizable jingle announcing that the radio program has begun. There are no sound disruptions during conversations with guests.
Even as I interviewed professors from the UBC School of Music, when it could have been a natural moment to play pieces of opera, examples of polyrhythm, or a Francophone folk song, I deliberately avoided this.
Instead, I let the absence of other sounds carry the interview forward, each professor describing music without listeners actually hearing it.
Old-school radio perhaps once enabled us to imagine rather than to simply hear.
In the absence of these other sounds, we may have ‘heard more.’
Maybe there is something to be said for just listening to an old-fashioned conversation between two people. Words exchanged, laughter, emotion, all in the mix.
The kind of conversation we often have at a café, our eyes meeting, our lips moving, as we sit and converse and listen.