Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: white deejays, radio executives, soul stations, New York, Clear Channel, Cousin Brucie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's not a bit of dead air in this well-written and researched history of radio and its pivotal role in the emergence of American youth culture. Washington Post columnist Fisher (After the Wall: Germany, the Germans and the Burdens of History) traces the evolution of radio from the 1950s, when the spread and popularity of television made it almost extinct, to its rise to become "the sound track of American life" and "the mere act of listening made you feel like a part of a secret society." Built around narratives compiled from nearly 100 interviews, Fisher knits together a compelling story detailing how radio helped penetrate race barriers, created a "shared pop culture" and was the "birthing room of the counterculture." Fisher shows readers how the personalities of radio shaped our popular culture, from visionaries like marketing genius Todd Storz to radio artists Cousin Brucie of New York and Jean Shepherd, who was a precursor to Garrison Keillor and Ira Glass. He follows radio's decline from a medium driven by freedom and passion to one comprising wastelands of unmanned stations, prefab formats and narrow niche markets. Fisher does more than take a nostalgic look backward at what we've lost. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Douglas Brinkley
Ear-splitting static was the curse of AM radio in its formative decades. A far-off bolt of lightning or stiff wind would cause a wallop of staccato crackles, pops and buzzes to emanate out of your home box. Determined to get the static out of radio, David Sarnoff, one of the founders of both RCA and NBC, put his technical mastermind, Edwin Armstrong of Columbia University, on the case. True to form, Armstrong solved the static problem in 1933 with frequency modulation -- a way to increase the bandwidth of the radio signal and suppress interference from other energy currents. "By shifting radio to very high frequencies and adding circuits that separated the FM signal from most sources of interference, you could broadcast music and voice with far superior sound fidelity," Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher writes in Something in the Air. "The only disadvantage Armstrong could see was that FM signals carried only fifty miles or so. Because FM signals don't bounce off the ionosphere as AM signals do, they fall off the Earth as the planet curves."

The birth of FM made it clear that radio, far from being a fad, had limitless possibilities for reinvention. Today, radio has become such an omnipresent backdrop to our daily lives that it's taken for granted, like electricity or tap water or convenience stores. But as Fisher makes clear in this elegantly written and deeply researched study of how radio has shaped American culture, the medium is always amorphous, changing to fit the zeitgeist of every year's consumer needs. Armstrong, for example, may have created FM, but few during the Great Depression owned radios capable of receiving the waves. Sarnoff decided to shelve the idea and let folks live with chronic AM static. But Armstrong wouldn't throw in the towel. In 1940, he convinced the Federal Communications Commission to award licenses for FM stations. Unfortunately, Armstrong became mired in a tangle of lawsuits, with everybody involved with AM denying him licenses lest his creation overtake the fuzzier AM stations. Worse, "his patents on FM expired in 1950," at which point every bad-faith entrepreneur in the radio industry started exploiting his technological innovations for personal profit. Tormented and financially ruined, Armstrong, the pioneer of FM, committed suicide in 1954 by jumping out of the 13th-floor window of his Manhattan apartment.

With such melodramatic stories, Fisher entertainingly retells the frenetic history of radio in America. He offers wonderful anecdotes about such high-profile shock jocks as Don Imus, Glenn Beck, Rick Dees, Tom Leykis and Howard Stern, among others. As it turns out, weirdness seems to follow radio around like a flaming cloak. These pied pipers never fail to surprise and outrage, giving talk radio a clear-cut edge over television's duller, more packaged programming. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, "The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

The FM station that truly pioneered wild-eyed irreverence was WBAI in New York. With Bob Fass as deejay, WBAI became the voice of the '60s counterculture. His show was called "Radio Unnameable," and a parade of cutting-edge artists would show up at his midnight microphone to jostle and coo with the hip deejay. Bob Dylan, for example, used to appear, performing comic monologues and creating such gonzo characters as Rumple Billy Burp, Elvis Bickel and Frog Rugster. Sometimes he would simply pull out his guitar and launch into a folk ballad. One memorable evening, Dylan played a "Dear Abby"-like advice counselor: A high school student called in wanting Dylan to endorse his hippie hair, but, to the surprise of many, Dylan admonished the caller to listen to his elders and stop playing the dime-store rebel. On another occasion, Dylan implored taxi drivers to deliver free food to the WBAI studio, and he asked women on air to describe their figures in what Fisher calls "glorious detail." Fass's show had become a beacon of both community activism and late-night fun.

What makes Something in the Air so charming is Fisher's upbeat belief in the redeeming power of radio. He is, essentially, anti-TV. You get the feeling Fisher would like to pull out a Magnum and blast away at every TV screen he encounters, as Elvis Presley once did. When Fisher was 12 years old, he tells us, he used to sleep with his cream-colored plastic box transistor radio under his pillow. Metaphorically speaking, he's never stopped. At times, the reader feels that Fisher has drawn an Alamo-like line in the sand, offering a loaded choice between radio (white hat) or television (black hat). "American radio -- like the pop culture it has helped to create, like the country it speaks to -- is ever-adapting," he insists. "As it ages, radio absorbs the new, co-opts the rebellious, and reinvents itself every step of the way." Cases in point: XM and Sirius. Even Dylan now has his own weekly XM show. As his beloved medium adapts, Fisher is out there listening, making sense of the airwaves that remain such a potent part of our lives.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Random House (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375509070
• ISBN-13: 978-0375509070
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #307,423 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Radio Lives On, and On, January 9, 2007

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

There was a Golden Age of radio, with Gothic-design cabinets pumping out live music and radio drama. Radio had branched out from crystal sets used by hobbyists into a mass medium like no other seen before, and in America it was the first source of a national pop culture. The Golden Age passed as television took over. Television was predicted to be the death of radio, as have subsequent technologies, but radio has continued to be resilient. In _Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation_, Marc Fisher, a newspaper writer who has a weekly column on radio, covers how radio brought forth rock-and-roll, Top Forty playlists, disk jockeys, midnight raconteurs, FM, national talk and phone-in shows, National Public Radio, and shock jocks. Radio never died, and is not dead, but much of Fisher's book reads like a eulogy; his beloved era of listening to his transistor radio illicitly under the pillow is long gone. The story of the influence of past days, and the way radio was repeatedly reshaped in the classical effort to balance artistry and budgets, makes a framework for many funny and poignant anecdotes. This is an excellent history of a small part of modern times, a part that was enormously influential in making current American society.

The story starts with someone you have probably never heard of, Todd Storz, who realized that radio stations had the best ratings when favorite tunes were played over and over. So from his Omaha station he dropped the homemaker show, the soap operas, the Bible show, and the rest, and started introducing the songs played on _Your Hit Parade_, the weekly show that was supposed to be based on the most popular songs in the nation. Storz let the disk jockeys select the tunes, with a strong preference for current popularity, and Top Forty radio was born, not because there was anything scientific about picking forty top hits, but because forty was the approximate number of records a deejay could play in a standard three hour shift. The style of deejay patter was fast, fun, and frenetic; the deejay's job was to hook listeners and make them wonder what was coming up next. Storz ushered in the era of deejay publicity stunts, staying awake for days, sitting atop flagpoles, and so on. There was no charity drive involved, no protest, just renegade behavior for its own sake, and the sake of split-second fame; young people loved it, and loved that it mystified the elders. There are still those who can exploit the mesmerizing hold a solitary radio voice can have on listeners; Garrison Keillor, of course, is the best known current performer.

Top Forty drifted after the Beatles broke up and FM stations started playing rock a new way. Intensive research has yielded stations that present the same format of music blandly over the nation. Computers made possible completely automated shows without any local talent. The infamous Clear Channel has bought up so many local stations and fed them routine programming that it has been hard for locals to get control even in an emergency. In 2002, a train derailment sent toxic ammonia fumes through Minot, North Dakota. It would have been handy to have radio issue emergency bulletins, but Clear Channel had control of all six local stations, each running automatic satellite feeds, and police had no one to contact to make the warnings happen. Computers might have revived radio's niche markets, because there are huge audiences for jazz, authentic bluegrass, zydeco, and so on. There were such stations broadcasting via the internet, but commercial broadcasters, who didn't have to pay royalties to music publishers, pressured for new rules that would require royalties from internet stations, and such stations were eventually silenced. The same broadcasters rallied against small-coverage, low-power FM stations, but the "radio for the people" movement may ease doubts "... about the desire people have to hear one another, or about radio's capacity to forge those bonds." The book ends with a look at a throwback, station WLNG of Sag Harbor, Long Island, a labor of love harking back to the 1950s, before standardization. It has been led for decades by a guy who used to play radio announcer as a kid. The locals love it, and the deejays stick around for years and years. It's a cheerful and upbeat ending for the book. Fisher points out that Edmund Burke said that for a society to work, its people must recognize what it is they have in common. Radio used to do so, and maybe it can do it again.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Past, present, and future of an intimate medium, February 4, 2007

By	R. Nelson "shrinkman02" (Beverly, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ever get a book so good you read it all in one sitting? This book is that good, and not just for radio fans like myself (I have been a college station DJ for 26 years and am active on radio messageboards on the Net). When TV came along many thought it was death knell for radio, but the wireless adapted into pop/rock radio, talk stations, and various other formats. Radio was everywhere--when we woke up and had breakfast, during our commutes and at work, and during leisure time, providing us with music and information.

Fisher's book covers everyone from Cousin Brucie Morrow to Lee Abrams
and Tom Donuhue; talk hosts like Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and Tom
Leykis; the storyteller Jean "A Christmas Story" Shepherd; Bob Fass of
WBAI and his pals Abbie and Arlo ("Alice's Restaurant" developed on
Fass's show) and it comes into the present where terrestrial radio
gets competition from the likes of mp3 players and satellite radio,
and revised ownership rules have resulted in job cutbacks/consolidation
and a more homogenized, less local product.

From the transistor radio you listened to under the pillow of your
bed to streamcasts on the Net, Fisher covers it all, and extremely
well. Excelsior!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Baby boomers in particular will enjoy this remarkable account of the evolution of radio in America., April 9, 2007

By	Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Oh how I miss the radio I grew up with! Like most people these days I have become extremely disenchanted with most of commercial radio. I lament the fact that the consolidation of broadcast media has left many towns with almost no local radio programming at all. I wonder how this sad state of affairs came to be. "Something In The Air" traces the evolution of this venerable medium from its inception in the early 1920's until today. Marc Fisher does an outstanding job of guiding his readers through all of the twists and turns that radio has taken over the past 75 years. He not only documents what happened but he also does a fine job of explaining the reasons why all of these changes took place.
In the early days of radio, networks dominated the airwaves. In most cities, there were only a few hours each day devoted to local programming. Most of the rest of the broadcast day was filled by an assortment of programming from NBC and CBS. Over the next three decades listeners were treated to a wide variety of network programming including musical shows, variety shows, news and sports broadcasts, soap operas and situation comedies. Particular radio programs became appointment listening. For most folks in this country radio was largely a shared experience.
All of this began to change in he early 1950's when the new medium of television began to gain a mass audience. Most radio performers could see the handwriting on the wall and quickly jumped over to television.
Suddenly there was a huge void of programming on the radio dial. Enter one Todd Stortz of Omaha, NE who had a new vision for radio. Indeed it was Todd Stortz who came up with the concept of Top 40 radio. I was fascinated by Marc Fisher's account of how this format was conceived and promoted by Stortz. Although I have been a radio buff all of my life this is a story I had really never heard. It is fascinating reading! For the next three decades it would be the Top 40 sound that would dominate the airwaves. This is the radio most baby boomers like myself grew up with. Radio had become much more of a local proposition. It seems that we all had our favorite disc jockeys and most of the kids I knew relished the wide variety of music on the radio in those days. It was an exciting time to be a teen! But the reality was that the radio audience had begun to fragment. Even before Top 40 began to fade in the mid to late 1970's listeners were casting about for new and different programming on the radio. Marc Fisher goes on to document the evolution of talk radio, public radio, album-oriented rock, the emergence of "shock" jocks and a whole host of other formats that have been attempted over the years. Towards the end of the book, Fisher also discusses innovative new offerings such as satellite and HD radio. Unfortunately, it seems like the radio audience is more fragmented than ever and Fisher points his finger directly at consultants and the aforementioned media consolidation as the main culprits.
Today radio is dominated by the likes of media giants Clear Channel, Cumulus, Infinity and Citadel who combined own more than half of the radio stations in this country. A large portion of local programming has been replaced by dreary syndicated offerings. Many of us wonder what will become of it all. Is radio even worth listening to anymore? Yet for all of its flaws and all of our complaining we still do listen. The average adult in this country tunes in for about three hours each day. Marc Fisher speculates what the future might be for radio. With so many alternatives now available to each of us it is hard to imagine that radio will ever again be the shared experience that so many people long for. I found "Something In The Air" to be one of the more entertaining books I have read in recent months. It is a book that should appeal to people of all ages. This one is extremely well written and very informative to boot. Highly recommended!