Cinamon Bear

I hope you don't think less of me because of it, but I really liked the music for Cinnamon bear. It sounded like a slow Irish folk song on strings to me it was my favorite part of the whole show. athe rest of the show was superbly cheesy and childish. Naturally, and as usual, i rather enjoyed it. Especially the idea of soda pop power aeroplanes. With current gas prices, I'd much rather buy a Fanta to fuel my car than spending a fortune on gas. Also, I must say that i was a little confused by the bear's threat to molt the stork in a place he wouldn't expect.

The Billy goats gruff ws pretty good, I don't think I have every heard or read the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I like how they all sold each other out at the drop of a hat. It turned out to be planned at the end, but i still think they sold out. The music for this one was terrible.

Review Questions

219 - By 1954, what percentage of American households owned a television?

56%

220 - What happened to sales of radio advertising and radio sets in the 1950s and 60s?

Continuingly increased

220 - What happened to the number of AM radio stations between 1948 and 1960.

more than doubled

220 - Douglas says "Radio structured people's days." Is that still true? If not, has some other mass medium or external force taken the place of radio in this respect?

yes, judging by how many people i see a day with an ipod or playing their cd player in their car. Now that people can choose their music, they do

221 - How did the programming of individual radio stations change in the mid 1950s?

they focused their programming on one demographic and genre

221 - How did the invention of the transistor affect radio listening habits?

increased portability and amount of daily listening (out of home listening)

221/222 - What is Segmentation? Breakout listening?

segmentation: markets within markets (American youth in American Market)
breakout listening: concentration on lyrics and music while turning way from societal and older norms of pop culture

225/226 - When were transistors invented? At what point did transistor radios become commonly affordable and what was one factor in driving the price of these units down?

1947, in 1961 Japanese competition brought the cost and size down

226 - Roughly when did it become more common than not for a car to have a radio? What useful feature did car radios usually have that home units did not?

1963, they had push button channel selection rather than a dial

227 - Douglas mentions that Top 40 stations were partially driven by a "baby sitting" mentality -- catering to teen and pre-teen audiences. The segregation of the audience strikes me as one of the truly important threads in the chapter. No longer are families gathering to listen as a collected unit; the proliferation of radio sets means each family member can tune in to his or her favored brand of programming. Listening becomes more of a private experience, or at least on shared with a peer group rather than a family group. What are your thoughts on this? How extreme has this trend become? Is this trend as true of television as it is of radio?

I think radio listening is much more private now, people are way more defensive of their music than their tv shows. you can sit and watch a tv show that you don't like, but sometimes it is almost unbearable to listen to music that you don't like

232 - Douglas notes that while listeners did not have to sustain dimensional listening in the same way that they did while listening to baseball or radio dramas, the music they listened to often told stories or painted pictures of exotic places. What percentage of today's music do you think reaches for this same effect? If today's music is not occupied with telling stories or describing locations/events, then what is a common goal that you have observed?

much of today's has told the same story so many times over that many artists have turned to writing about nothing, which was effective, until everyone did that too. now musicians that can do a combination of the two in a creative way are popping up. but for the most part it's just the same crap over and over again.

234 - Were you surprised by the restrictions on African American radio drama performances mentioned by Douglas as still being in effect in 1943? Why (not)?

Nope. It was Black encroachment on white bussiness during avery racist time, go figure.

239~ - Why does Douglas suppose so many white DJs wanted to sound "black?" What did these impersonations accomplish?

this was spurned on by breakout listening and a desire from the young to separate from the old? these impersonations fused cultures and somewhat lightened racism.

243 - How does Douglas characterize the notion of "soul?"

she paints it as a huge ethos, but i think it it is more like other words, "cool,hip, or groovy" , unless you're talking about James Brown, cause he's got soul


250 - Why did ASCAP essentially align itself against rock music, R&B, and blues?

t limit the popularity of black culture

* - The Top 40 format has been almost universally villified, yet it still has many devotees -- people who like to watch music climb and fall on the charts. How much is the spirit of Top 40 still alive in today's radio market? Do you see "indie" music as an antithesis to Top 40? (If so, explain.)

nope, now it is hip to like different music. these indie groups are just as popular as the radio pop stuff and the don't have to be on the radio to do it, and now with ipods and satellite radio, you don't need to rely on any set number of stations. i don't know who still listenes to the pop stations, everyone i know doesn't, and most are proud of it. eventually advertisers will realize that and pull their money out, and that will truly be it.

Sports

I don't know how I feel about the anouncer for the Lewis/Baer boxing match. What i do know is that there is no way what he was saying would fly today. It seemed very odd to me that the announcer of a boxing match would openly criticize the principles of the event and the people attending. The anouncer viewed the whoole event with such disdain and condescension that I wouldn't be surprised if he got in some big trouble with Buick afterwards. I especially liked his analysis of our civilized society that flocks in droves to watch one guy beat the piss out of another guy. his comments about cavemen and women were priceless. I sat here and laughed because I couldn't believe that this guy was saying all this crazy stuff. I especially liked his analysis of the 15,000 women in the audience as cavewomen watching there men fight over them with rocks. Then he started refering to Joe Lewis as the Jungleman, was that necessary. And then, as if this announcer hadn't completely destroyed anyones excitment and interest in the fight, he brought the forshadowing of World War II. He very harshly mentions that Americans are more interested in a boxing match than the chances of a great war in Europe. What surprised me most about this radio clip is that the sponsor allowed him to make all these comments. I was expecting the announcer of a boxing match to be pro boxing and talk up the event. This guy sounded like he dind't care at all about the fight. He even mentioned the depression and how things in the US were better under Calvin Coolidge. "Two chickens in every garage."

The fight itself was pretty cool. I found myself Imagining the whole thing. And lewis really beat the hell out of Baer.

199 - Which two sports does Douglas most clearly associate with radio in the early days of sports broadcasting?

Baseball and Boxing

201 - In what year did the first broadcast of a baseball game take place? What eagerly awaited boxing match that took place in New York was broadcast the same year?

1921,the Dempsey-Carpentier fight

203 - What was skillful about the way McNamee handled baseball announcing?

He put emotion and excitment into his play-by-play that kept the listener interested and involved in the game that they were imagining in there heads

204 - In the 20s and 30s what was unusual (at least to modern thinking) about where the radio personalities broadcast from in the baseball parks of America? What was one advantage of their unconventional placement?

THey sat in the box seats. Rather than hearing the wash of crowd noise that we know, you could hear the individual fans, the players and the vendors.

204 - Douglas notes that the sounds of the public event were intertwined with the linstener's immediate environment to forever cement the public and the private worlds into one associative memory. Do you think television ever accomplishes this form of bonded memory?

Not nearly the way radio had. The only thing I can think of that Television kind of does that with is the Superbowl, or maybe the NCAA final four.

204/205 - How were broadcasts of boxing matches different from broadcasts of baseball games?

They were more in volved in advertising

WWII Broadcasting

What I found most interesting about the reading was censorship. During the war journalists had to report on the war that supposedly everyone wanted to know everything about, but they couldn't really say anything about the war, unless it was cleared by someone first. This is a really tuff subject. I understand that they couldn't report on military stategy or reveal in depth detail due to security reasons, but what could they really say?
I agree with government censorship for security in the field, but not to shape the opinions of its citizens. In the news I don't think that advertising should play a role censorship, but at the same time people aren't going to pay for what they don't agree with. (unless they're making some fat cash)
I like Fly's suggestion to eliminate sponsorship in news casts, but that will never happen.

I do not think that news reporting should be filled with the reporter's opinions. I feel that the news should be reported as facts and interpretation left to the listener. It is for that reason that i don't feel that Brown was a victim of censordhip. However, I do feel that Brown had every right to voice his opinions, but they should be voiced on an independent show that is seperate from the dry, factual reporting of the news. All I'm saying is that before you can throw in your opinion, there has to be the option of getting the news without the commentary. If it is understood from the beginning that you are hearing either fact or opinion, then I'm fine with that, but it is ideal for the listener to hear the facts first. I don't think news should be censored or opinionated, just facvtual, whether or not that's possible, who knows?
OH, THE HUMANITY!!!!

I really liked the listenings this week. I've been a big WWII buff for a bit so I found them very interesting. The news bulletins were great and it was awesome to hear how they reported on D-Day. Had I been sitting in restaurant in 1944 and heard that, I would have been captivated with interest, as I'm sure people were.

London after dark was cool because it was live. You kept listening and expecting at any moment to hear planes, and bombs, and hoping that Murrow wouldn't be hit, but they din't really deliver. It was an excellent portrayal of the suspense there must have been in London. But it also showed the people of London tried to forget the war by dancing and eating at fancy restaurants with famous French cooks. Kind of bizarre.

The FDR speches were very well done. I've nver really sat and listened to anything like those before. He seemed to be an excellent speaker and I understand how people thought him to be such a great president. He almost sounds like a father explaining things to children when he talks. I don't know how I feel about his national service act, sounds kind of like forced labor. People should be free to not support the war if they don't want to. However, it was interesting to hear how the entire country was involved in one cause (or expected to be). I wonder if anything will umite the country like that again?