place your bets

I just got an email from United Airways soliciting me use miles to bid for various things, including the chance to be a "Radio Personality." The winner will receive the chance to learn from "longtime host of Dining with Arline, Arline Wolff." The show is carried on CRN, "known as “The Voice of Television," which is heard in over 24 million homes."

While on your VocationVacations® Dream Job Holiday as a Radio Personality, Arline will mentor you in some or all of the following activities:

* Marketing yourself to radio stations to get an “in”
* Acquiring interesting, intriguing and engaging guests for a show
* How to write and research for a show
* Write actual commercials that will air
* Plan an interesting and varied program to keep the audience interested
* Learn the process for conducting in-depth interviews
* Learn how to be a good on-air listener
* Understand the art of “timing”
* Attend the production of a Dining with Arline show

Hmm. I wonder how much someone will bid to "be a Radio Personality." I'm sensing a funding source here...

Macho Men

One of the best things I heard on the radio in the last year was the BBC's MACHO MEN two-part series. It's an unusual approach - two presenters, one female, from Mexico, and one male, from Nigeria, work together to explore the stereotypes and realities of Macho Men in their respective cultures. The male presenter is himself a bit of a macho man, and has to come to terms with the way he and his friends treat women. The resulting stories are very personal, but they also explore quite bit about each culture. I don't know that I've heard these "presenters" anywhere else on the BBC, but I would be interested to know how these very personal projects changed the way they were seen (or heard) by the audience. It's great readio - check it out - you can stream it or get a podcast.

The First Line

How should a radio piece begin? Do you give the news? Introduce the main character? Or grab the listener by the ear and tug? I was grabbed recently by the first line of a piece on WNYC’s Studio 360. The show from September 29th was partly of a ‘best of’ -- as many previous guests received MacArthur Genius Grants this year. The piece here on Shahzia Sikander has a wild first line. I’m not going to write it here yet. Go listen to it. You’ll have to wait out the mundane, even off-putting introduction.



Okay, are you done? Here it is.

“I recently almost left a cheek smear on a 450 -year-old piece of art. But really, I had to. It was the only way I could get close enough.”

The reason why I love this is that I instantly get two vivid images – one of some woman with her face pressed against the glass of a tiny painting, and in the other, I see a painting clearly in my mind’s eye, as if I’m the one smearing MY cheek against the glass. And, actually, I also see the smear after the fact.

Sonic Bed Project

London artist Kaffee Matthews designs furniture with feeling. Her Sonic Bed, which has been presented in London and Shanghai, allows one or more museum goers to recline in an enclosed space and experience music and sounds. Sometimes the artist is even on hand to change the settings herself. Matthews has also created Sonic Armchairs along the same lines - one was commissioned for an exhibition called Don't Worry at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Matthews works with a group called Music for Bodies. Their mission, according to their website, is to "make new 3D music and physical interfaces for enjoying it directly through your body rather than just your ears." Sounds good, feels good.

Hearing Voices on the BBC

I listen to the BBC a lot here in Berlin. It's actually one of the highlights of living here for me. The channel is so varied, from new pop music to documentaries about the concept of Infinity. And, they are one of the few regular creators of radio documentaries. Last week, I heard one (or sort of heard one) that confused me, and made me think

Sometimes when I mishear things, it inspires me to think about what the lyrics or sound or style could have been - and then sometimes I realize that I come up with the same thing I would have heard if I'd actually been listening. And that's sort of what happened with this BBC piece last week. I was vaguely listening in the kitchen while I was doing the dishes, and I heard lots of dropouts and clicks, and I thought there was something wrong with the radio. And then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if this was part of the piece? Of course, it was.

It's called Hearing Voices, and it's about language death - the extinction of languages. It's part documentary, part sound art, done by a man called John Wynne. Coincidentally, as I sit here and type, I'm wearing a Third Coast Festival (an organization I have mixed feelings about) t-shirt, and the web tells me this piece won an award at the 2005 festival. You can hear a six minute excerpt here, or you can find the whole 28 minute piece here. The piece was also featured in this exhibition. Here's an interesting (if a bit pretentious)article about clicks and glitches - the way the traditional African language comes across on the radio). You might want to skip or skim the first two paragraphs.

As I was trying to find the audio link for Hearing Voices, I ended up streaming the BBC live on my laptop, and hearing a bit of another documentary about the Scottish island of St. Kilda, a barren place that is now uninhabited. One anecdote jumped out at me - a woman telling the story of how hard her mother worked, and that she received an orange for payment. She'd never seen an orange before, and didn't know what to do with it. So sat it on the dresser and eventually it rotted. And that was her payment. Very odd, very touching. Very very BBC.

Listening with Scissors

I've decided to use this blog as a place to listen to radio and talk about it -- the good, the loud, and the ugly. A virtual listening session, if you will. Thanks to Julie Siple and Tina Tennessen for the inspiration -- check out the project Tina's a part of, D.C. Listening Lounge.

To start with, I'm going to add a link to a piece that aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered this past Sunday -- from a great team, reporter Joe Shapiro, and producer Tracy Wahl. It's a profile of the real mother portrayed in the book "Running With Scissors" - a classic monster mom, a wild woman. Except, maybe she's really human like the rest of us, and just as fascinating as the cruelly drawn caricature her son presented to the world.

It's interesting to read a few of the comments posted by listeners on NPR's blog. Some harsh words. What do you think? How do you feel about the role of the reporter question in this piece? Is it a fair story? Did the reporter sound like he was approaching the story objectively? These are questions, not criticisms...discuss...