Death by a Thousand Cuts

 

Taylor Swift has a cool breakup song by this name, Death by a Thousand Cuts, which sort of applies to an industry I spent decades in: radio and TV broadcasting. Many of my colleagues, past and present, will disagree and preach about how vital radio and TV broadcasting still is. But it’s dying a slow death because of the rise of streaming and social media.

In the past few days, two more of my friends have been summarily dismissed from their jobs, being told, ‘Your position has been eliminated.” Pat is a real radio pro with decades of experience. He was doing the morning show on a Country radio station in Madison, Wisconsin. And JB, a consummate professional who worked for years in that same building for that same company, wearing many hats, was shown the door last week– also after decades of work for that company – and literally escorted out of the building.

Cruel. Brutal. Harsh. Heartless.

Scores of my friends have met a similar fate.

The firing of top-shelf radio entertainers and informers has been going on since 2008, the year I was thrown under the bus. My friend Glen and I and several of our colleagues were fired on the same day in November of 2008 during “The Great Recession.” Glen and I represented two of the highest salaries in the company. Both of us were shareholders and partners in the corporation; both of us had held many top management positions within the company and its affiliated stations across the Midwest.

The company’s bottom line instantly looked better, with our paychecks now a thing of the past.

A state-of-the-art broadcast facility built in 2006 at a cost of millions of dollars was the new home office for the company for which I’d worked for literally decades.. The building was home to seven radio stations. The entire second floor of the massive structure was devoted to brand new studios and programming offices. Dozens of professional broadcasters were engaged in the daily activities of preparing and delivering entertainment and information to thousands and thousands of listeners.

Those hallways and offices and studios must be pretty empty now.

The same axe-wielding has also been going on with television professionals. Craig’s List and similar operations, along with the dawning of the social media age, deeply damaged radio and TV -and print media -by decimating advertising sales. Streaming and social media have become juggernauts in dissemination of entertainment and information, once the exclusive province of print and heritage mainstream broadcasting.

And as Pat and JB join Glen and me among the ranks of those many professionals who’ve been summarily dismissed in the past 17 years, I can’t help but call it a part of broadcasting’s death by a thousand cuts.

A day is coming, not that far down the road, when they’ll turn off the lights and shut down the transmitters forever.

Rest In Peace, Mike.

 

He walked into my office at WMKC-FM in Oshkosh, dressed neatly, hair combed, shoes shined, carrying his resume and an audition tape. T. Michael Sullivan, hometown Edina, MN, BS from Swarthmore College.

I invited him to take a seat while I read his resume in silence. The radio station had just decided to add a new overnight shift, and I was looking for a DJ to fill that slot. The graveyard shift. 12 midnight until 5:30 AM. I was the Program Director. It was the early '70's.

Mike sat quietly as I read through his resume. Finally, I set the resume down and looked him in the eye. “You’re hired,” I said. “Really??” “Yes.” “But you haven’t even listened to my audition tape.” “I didn’t need to. You’re hired.”

At this point, he probably wondered what kind of lunatic outfit he’d applied at. Who hires a radio announcer without even listening to their audition tape? He had a quizzical look on his face. I said, “It says here that you were born on May 31^st in 1949. Is that correct?” “Yes.” “So was I. You’re hired.”

So began a long friendship that continued for decades. I told Mike I couldn’t possibly go wrong by hiring someone born on the same day as me.

This past Monday, Mike Sullivan passed away after a brief battle with leukemia. I was saddened and stunned as I read the obit and then watched a brief news clip from an Eau Claire TV station eulogizing Mike as a local legend.

Mike and I broadcast dozens of sports events together. We became roommates when Jerry Burke moved out of our apartment to take his dream job as a news anchor at Channel 2 in Green Bay. Mike moved in with me.

Mike stepped into Jerry’s job as News Director at the radio station. That meant we were doing the station’s morning show together, every weekday from 5:30 to 9 AM. And we did all the station’s live sports broadcasting.

In the photo above, you see Mike talking and me keeping score and making color comments. It started the other way around, with me doing the play-by-play and Mike doing the commentary. But Mike’s talent for sports announcing so exceeded mine, that I knew after only a few broadcasts that he should do the majority of the talking – the play-by-play – and I’d chime in with observations.

Mike became a legendary sports broadcaster in Eau Claire, where he’d moved to be closer to his girlfriend, Kris, who became Mike’s wife. Mike honored me by asking me to be best man at his wedding. During the three years we lived and worked together at WMKC-FM, we had a ball.

But it was clear that he was madly in love with Kris, and the long commute between Oshkosh and Eau Claire to visit her became too much to deal with. He applied for a job at WBIZ AM/FM in Eau Claire and was hired immediately.

For nearly five decades, Mike broadcast just about every high school and college sports event in that area: football, basketball, hockey, baseball – you name it, and if it was a sports event, he was there to broadcast it live. He was fantastically talented. He could easily have moved to a career doing national network sports broadcasting, but he loved high school and college sports too much to make the move.  

He was elected to the Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame a few years ago. He’s in every high school and college Hall of Fame in the Chippewa Valley. The press box at Hobbs Ice Arena in Eau Claire is now the Mike Sullivan Press Box. Mike did literally hundreds of live hockey games there.

Rest in Peace, T. Michael Sullivan. You were truly one of the great ones.

We Deserve Better Election Coverage

The first thing we have to do is get rid of the Electoral College and run the Presidential election like every other election in the United States: the candidate with the most votes wins. Period.

Second, we have to stop putting people like Steve Kornacki (above) on the air. Nothing personal, Steve, but that rolled-up sleeves, electronic billboard, breathless excitement about who’s polling better may be visually appealing to the 20-something television news producers who create this stuff. But it’s a huge disservice to Americans. It’s not a horse race; it’s not a sporting contest; it’s not a Las Vegas-style gambling odds display. It’s an election for our highest political office.

Third, we have to actually balance our coverage of the candidates. As someone much wiser than me said, “If Candidate X says it’s raining, and Candidate Y says it’s sunny, your job as a journalist is not to report ‘both sides.’ Your job is to look out the window and find out.”

An example of this false balance/false equivalence reporting we’re plagued with now is the old joke about a theoretical New York Times headline for a story regarding the Flat Earth Society: “Opinions Vary On The Shape Of The Earth.”

And by balance, I don’t mean every political story about Candidate X has to run the same amount of time for Candidate Y. And not everything any candidate says, or Tweets, or posts is worthy of coverage. Let the adults in the newsroom – not the consultants or the ad salespeople – use their judgment about what’s news and what isn’t.

I’m not suggesting we turn the clock back to 1980, but Walter Cronkite really was pretty good at balancing stories and reporting election results.

Nowadays, it seems news organizations use polls the way drunks use lampposts: more for support than illumination. Polls don’t mean anything any more. Sampling errors are baked into the America of the 21^st century.

Do we really need stories like this? Do our candidates have to be “exciting?”

Oh, and one more thing.

Could we please refrain from using cutesy terms like “Veepstakes” when we’re covering elections which will determine who will literally be a heartbeat away from the highest office in our country?

Thanks.

I feel better now.

And you damn kids stay off my lawn!!!

Chance Encounter In Westport

 

The first thing I noticed was the car. An Audi A8 with New York plates. Expensive car, but then in Westport, Connecticut, you see quite a few exotic and expensive cars. A lot of very wealthy people live in Westport. I mean, there are not a lot of small communities that have a Tiffany’s store on their main drag.

I had taken my wife to a doctor appointment at a clinic in Westport. It was a pleasant, mild summer afternoon, but still too hot to park in the sun and sit there for an hour, so I backed into a parking slot in the shade.

The Audi sedan had pulled into a handicap slot. It was in direct sunlight. I had all the windows down and the sunroof open in our car, to better enjoy the breeze. The expensive Audi was directly across from me, idling, windows up. I was reading a book on my trusty Kindle.

Several minutes later I looked up again at the Audi, still idling, but just as I happened to glance up, the driver turned the engine off and lowered the windows. I heard jazz coming from the Audi, soft, but audible. Small combo, great tenor sax player.

A few more minutes passed. I looked up from my Kindle again when I heard the Audi start up. I saw the backup lights go on. The driver slowly backed into a slot right next to me, in the shade. Now I could hear the jazz more clearly. “Sounds like Sonny Rollins,” I thought to myself.

I could see the driver of the Audi now. A middle-aged woman. There was somebody in the passenger’s seat, but I couldn't see that person. I could hear the music clearly from what had to be a premium sound system in the expensive sedan. It wasn’t blasting; just loud enough for the people in the Audi to hear it, and, given the proximity to me, both cars with windows down, I could hear it, too.

It must have been a CD or something; the music just went from one track to another with a few seconds of silence in between. So, it wasn’t a radio station; maybe it was one of those satellite stations that features one particular artist. But as much of a jazz sax virtuoso as Sonny Rollins is, I didn’t think he’d be “mainstream” enough for a satellite channel that plays nothing but Sonny Rollins cuts. I wasn’t absolutely sure the sax player was Rollins, but if not, it sure sounded like him.

From time to time, the woman who was the driver would make a short comment about the music. She’d say things like, “Oh, that was a nice phrase,” and, “Wow- where did you get the idea for that passage?” She had to be talking to the passenger that I couldn’t see, and if he was responding to her, I couldn’t hear him well enough to understand. Soft-spoken.

After ten or fifteen minutes of this impromptu concert, I saw my wife come out of the clinic, so I started the car and drove ahead to pick her up. Sometimes she uses a rollator to help mobility (I use one all the time) and as I was folding it up and putting it into the back end of our SUV, I noticed the people who were in the Audi had gotten out and were walking toward the clinic entrance. It was an elderly gentleman being assisted by the driver.

I made eye contact with both of them and smiled. “I loved your music – I couldn’t help but hear it,” I said. “Are you Sonny Rollins?” I asked. The lady flashed a thousand-watt smile and said, “You know his music?” I told her that I loved jazz and that decades ago I’d done a jazz show on radio. “Where?” she asked. “Wisconsin, back in the ‘70’s.”

She turned to face the elderly gentleman, now, obviously Sonny Rollins, and said, “He knows who you are. He likes your music. He used to do a jazz show on the radio.” While he’d been expressionless, suddenly he looked at me and smiled. It was clear to me that this woman must have been much more than just a chauffeur, she must be his caregiver.

The woman and I exchanged a few more bits of conversation. She’d been playing the music through her phone to the Audi’s sound system. Sonny stood mute. The woman pulled up a photo on her phone, showed it to me, and said, “Here he is, back in the ‘70’s.” I told her again how much I enjoyed his music and was so glad to have this chance to meet him.

“May I shake his hand,” I asked. “Sure,” she said, then turned to Sonny and said, “He wants to shake your hand.” He smiled and stuck his hand out and we shook hands. I told him what a pleasure it was to meet him. He nodded briefly and smiled again, very softly saying "thank you." Then he looked toward the path that led to the door of the clinic. I knew that was my cue to end the encounter.

They walked toward the door, the woman helping him every step of the way. She turned and asked, “Do you guys come here regularly? I mean, we could meet up and have lunch or something -talk jazz. He'd enjoy that.” I shook my head as my wife said, “Not really, we're here only once in a while.” The woman said, “Well I’m so glad that there are still people who enjoy his music,” and then we said our goodbyes. They went into the clinic; we went home.

 

Five-time Grammy award winner Sonny Rollins is 93 years old. He retired from playing several years ago. He is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world. He played with essentially every great jazz musician and made more than 60 LP’s.

Ugh! COVID Strikes!

 

Damn. The dreaded pink T-line. We had both tested positive, after several days of thinking it was just a bad cold. I mean, we’ve been SO careful to avoid COVID for nearly four years: triple-vaxxed, triple-boosted; masks when necessary; untold numbers of Lysol spray cans and bottles of hand sanitizer used over the years. Avoiding crowds.

By the time I finally broke out the COVID home test kits, after several days of denial, we were outside the window for Paxlovid, so we decided to just tough it out. Since the cold symptoms started, we hadn’t gone anywhere or seen anyone, so we were spared the embarrassment of calling people and telling them we’d tested positive.

As near as we can figure, Toni brought it home from a physical therapy session in a gym-like setting. It was the only time in the three or four days prior to the onset of symptoms that either of us had been away from our apartment.

We both figure that our triple-vaxxed, triple-boosted status is what kept us out of the hospital. As far as we’re concerned, the vaccinations did their job. From what I’ve seen, a lot of folks don’t understand that the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID. It helps mitigate the worst effects of the virus, which we’re convinced is exactly what it did for us.

My guess is that my case was mild, and Toni’s was moderate. While she pounded Tylenol, I was overdosing myself with DayQuil. I think I consumed a hundred or more orange liquid-gel Day-Quil capsules over the course of my bout. We both had nasty, nasty coughs, stuffy heads, runny noses, chills, and muscle aches. Toni lost her sense of taste. It wasn’t stay-in-bed-sick; it was just annoyingly miserable. We quarantined ourselves in our apartment and binge-watched TV.

One afternoon when Toni and I were both dozing, my friend and former on-air partner Sly called to share a funny story. We started recounting some of our outrageous on-air adventures, which resulted in a laughing spell that turned into a coughing spell. I said to Sly (who had a bout of COVID a few months ago) between fits of coughing, “I have to hang up! You’re killing me with these stories!!”

Since Toni and I have both had serious cases of pneumonia requiring hospitalization in the past, we were concerned that if the COVID started to affect our oxygen saturation, we’d head to the ER immediately. I also have asthma, controlled by daily medication, so I’ve used a home pulse/ox meter for years. We monitored our oxygen sats every few hours, and at no point did either of us dip below the mid-90’s.

I started to feel better after a week or so, but Toni’s case hung on.

On the tenth day after the symptoms started, I finally tested negative. Toni was still positive, but three days later, she took another home test and it was negative. We were finally out of the woods. We both still coughed intermittently, and weren’t back to full strength, but the worst of it was finally behind us.

Now, a couple weeks later, we’re back to normal. And you can bet that if the CDC says it’s time for another booster, we’ll be among the first in line to get it.

I Am Radioactive (And I Can Prove It)

 

Yesterday I spent much of my time waiting around and doing nothing, in a bleak room labeled “Nuclear Medicine Patient Lounge” or some such. As my 75^th year is almost upon me, and because of an abundance of crappy hearts among most of my siblings, my docs decided it would be a good time to really get to know my heart.

A blip on a routine annual EKG at my primary care doctor’s office a month ago piqued the interest of some algorithm, earning me a referral to a cardiac doc. One of the battery of tests I was then subjected to was yesterday’s Nuclear Cardiac Stress Test, which involves a lot of steps, including the injection of some radioactive fluid into the blood stream. The little nukes apparently know their job is to migrate to the left ventricle of the heart, and once there, some huge machine into which you’re stuffed takes pictures of your heart for the docs to interpret.

Prior to the test, I was warned that I should avoid getting too close to children under the age of 12 for a period of three days after the test. There’d still be some radioactivity coursing through my veins, enough to warrant keeping a safe distance from the grandkids.

However, I had no idea how serious this nuclear medicine stuff is until my four-and-a-half-hour odyssey was nearly complete. There were four of us old guys in the morning session, and we took turns getting injected with the isotopes, spending our time in the giant machine that takes the pictures, drinking lots of fluids, and sitting in the dreary patient lounge in between.

It was pretty much 45 minutes of boredom followed by 15 minutes of intense medical stuff, hour after hour. But then, just before the final hour, the genial guy who was our Nuclear Medicine guide came into the lounge with a serious look. He handed each of us a sheet to take with us and said it was imperative that we take the sheet with us any time we left our home in the next three days.

He told us if we should happen to be pulled over by a cop, we’d trip their radiation monitor and would need to show the card explaining that we’re not terrorists carrying nuclear material, just “nuclear medicine patients.” He further explained that Homeland Security has radiation monitors at undisclosed locations around every city of any size, and that if we happened to pass near one, we’d trip the monitor and would likely be tracked down and questioned within an hour. All we’d have to do is show the card to explain why we tripped the monitor.

As it turns out, one of our fearsome foursome was a man who’d just retired from one of those three-letter acronym outfits that’s part of the U.S. Government. I won’t name it, because HIPPA and all that. We’d all introduced ourselves at the beginning, and knowing who this gentleman had worked for meant we all looked at him after our genial guide handed out the cards and gave his little spiel.

He told us more and more law enforcement agencies are being equipped with radiation monitors, and that Homeland Security has radiation monitors in secret locations all over the place, just as our guide had mentioned. After he confirmed and amplified what our guide had said, he emphasized how important it was to keep the card on our person and be ready to show it to a law enforcement officer immediately upon request.

“Unless, of course, you want to spend about two or three intense hours being ruthlessly interrogated by some people who are deadly serious about their profession,” he added. The other three of us sat in stunned silence for a moment afterward.

Message received.

We live in interesting times.

Nobody Gets Flat Tires Any More... Do They?

 The view from atop a flatbed tow-truck

Twenty years ago, I would have yelled out a string of lusty cuss-words, got out the lug wrench and jack, and changed the tire. As the song says, “But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.”

 

This past Friday was a challenging day for many reasons. My bride had to endure a common but bothersome medical procedure, the kind for which you must do “bowel prep.” Which means starting late Thursday afternoon she had to start drinking a gallon of that horrible concoction and couldn't stray more than a few steps from the bathroom for the next 16 hours.

 

This meant a night of very little and highly disturbed sleep for both of us. Such is life.

 

With bleary eyes we left our apartment at oh-dark-thirty Friday morning to the Endoscopy Center of Fairfield, just a quick jaunt down the coast. Everything was fine, and by mid-morning we were headed back home. I suggested to my tired wife that she just crawl back into bed and take a nice, long nap. I hung out in the living room and caught up on some of the streaming shows I like.

 

Early afternoon arrived and I heard Toni stirring. She came out to the living room with a worried look. When she woke up, her right eye hurt and she had a blind spot in the center of her vision. Not good. She called her eye doctor, down the coast in the tony hamlet of Westport, home to scores of hedge fund billionaires and all manner of famous people. “We can’t get you in. Our first appointment is next Friday.” “But it’s an emergency!” “Our next open appointment is next Friday.”

 

That was the end of that conversation.

 

I suggested she call my eye doctor’s office in downtown Bridgeport. They gave her some sort of insurance runaround. Some mindless BS about “not recognizing her policy.” For the love of Pete, it’s the tiny company called MEDICARE!!!!

 

I called them back and bullied my way to the office manager, reminded her that I’d been a client for the past three years, described my wife’s medical emergency, and she said, “Oh my, that doesn’t sound good. Let’s get her in right away.” Now, that’s customer service. I gave her Toni’s Medicare number. She said, “I see you live in Black Rock – I can slot Toni in at 3 o’clock as an emergency so that gives you plenty of time to get here.”

 

Sidebar: the government says we live in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, but the neighborhood in which we reside, along the coast of Long Island Sound, is called Black Rock because of, among other things, Black Rock Harbor, a coastal haven for ships of all sizes. Black Rock was a separate city (or “town,” as they call the municipalities around here) until Bridgeport gobbled it up in the 1960’s. Locals still call it Black Rock, best known now not for the huge harbor and marina, but for the scores of really good restaurants and entertainment venues.

 

Back to the tale of the flat tire.

 

I’d barely ended the conversation with Millie at my eye doctor’s office when she called back and said they had a cancellation at 2:45 – did we think we could make that appointment on short notice? Sure.

 

We piled into our trusty new road warrior, a Chevy Equinox, and headed to downtown Bridgeport. We were tired and scared, but grateful that my eye doctor was accommodating and understanding. I made the turn off North Avenue onto Main Street. As I turned into the eye doctor’s parking lot, I managed to miss the entrance by a few feet and rammed perforce into the curb. The right front tire took a massive hit.

 

Toni was startled and I said a few things which I won’t report here, hoping all would be OK.

 

It wasn’t. As she got out of the car to go into the office, she looked down at the right front tire and reported that it was going down rapidly. In the next breath, she said, “It’s flat.” More expletives issued from my mouth. I told her to go in and deal with her eye, and I’d deal with the mess I’d created.

 

Just then, the information center on the dashboard issued a warning about the right front tire (you can see it in the photo at the top of the post) followed shortly by a message from OnStar: “Low air pressure has been detected in one or more tires on your Chevrolet Equinox - Passenger Side Front (1PSI).” One PSI. Probably because the tire pressure monitor system doesn’t report ZERO PSI.

 

I got out of the car to inspect. Why, I don’t know. I knew what had happened. I smashed it into the curb so hard that no tire could have survived the impact. After still more profanities, I called my guys at the Firestone Tire Store; they recommended Mid-Town towing and said they’d deal with the flat as soon as we got there.  Meantime, I called our daughter and after filling her in about what was going on, asked her if she might be available for some taxi service, since the situation was still sort of fluid. Of course, she would.

 

I’d put Mid-Town towing on alert, explaining that we couldn’t do anything until my wife completed her eye doctor appointment. They told me to give them a holler when we were ready to go. Shortly thereafter, Toni came out, with news that after a battery of tests and looking into blinding lights on some fancy machine, the doctor said she’d somehow scratched her eyeball. She’d given Toni a couple vials of medical eyedrops and said the situation should resolve itself in a couple days; nothing to worry about; call me if you don’t note improvement tomorrow.

 

Spoiler alert: her vision was back to normal the next morning and the pain was gone.

 

Much relieved, I called Mid-Town Towing, and ten minutes later they were there with a big flatbed tow-truck. “Call dispatch and give them your credit card info, and if everything’s OK, I’ll have you drive up onto here and we’ll have you over to Firestone on King’s Highway in Fairfield in short order.” Everything was OK with dispatch, so we drove up onto the flatbed, the driver strapped the car down, and we were on our way.

 

The Firestone guys swung into action immediately after we arrived. Usually on an All-Wheel Drive vehicle like ours, you can’t just replace one tire. You have to put four new tires on, lest the AWD computer be confused, or some such. But the tech said because the tires were new – less than four thousand miles on them – we could get by with just replacing the right front tire with an exact size match, and all would be well with the AWD computer. (Dr. Google agreed, as I found out, later.)

 

Four o’clock on a busy Friday afternoon and those guys had us on our way home in a little less than an hour. We ate a quick dinner and were in bed at 8 o’clock, too tired to do anything else.

 

At granddaughter Lola’s 5^th birthday party, the next day, my friend Amy from our son-in-law’s side of the family sidled up to me and said, “Run into any good curbs lately?” She’d seen my post on Facebook about the incident and gave me some good-natured ribbing about it. “Sounds like a blog post should be done,” said someone else.

 

All’s well that ends well