This is a feature that has long been suggested to me, but I'd felt that the topic had been adequately addressed on other web sites on the Internet. As The Digital Deli evolved, it was my aim to assemble, disseminate, and originate as much of the available quality resources as one person could, to provide a foundation to both new and more seasoned Golden Age Radio collectors in their pursuit of this fascinating hobby. The addition of Deeann Neyhart to the staff has made it far easier to further expand our efforts. To that end, the extraordinary success of The Digital Deli Online has proven that there is room for another approach to enhancing and promoting the hobby.
This section will grow and expand as have the other sections of The Digital Deli Online, but in a more advisory, editorial -- and hopefully collaborative and cooperative -- direction so as to lend a new voice to answer many of the frustrations, misinformation, and -- on a more positive note -- to provide a compendium of suggestions, tips, best practices and perhaps even an exchange of philosophies regarding the subject of collecting and preserving Golden Age Radio for the enjoyment of generations of Golden Age Radio devotees to come. Watch the sidebar to the right, as this section grows and expands to address the needs of both novice and seasoned Golden Age Radio collectors.
The Golden Age Radio Collecting and Preservation community has a great many challenges facing it--many of which absolutely must be addressed within the next 5 to 10 years due to the continuing deterioration of the extent original Golden Age Radio source material.
This main section will deal with Best Practices, Ideals, and Philosophy behind the growing and steadily expanding movement to collect, preserve and share the wealth of both public domain and limited licence, privately held Golden Age Radio recordings, ephemera, technology, and history regarding The Golden Age of Radio. This timeless resource continues to provide immeasurable pleasure, enjoyment, and continuing new insights into the very qualities that make Golden Age Radio timeless in it's broad appeal. To that end, let me begin with an editorial regarding my thoughts on Golden Age Radio's timeless appeal and on the state of the Golden Age Radio collection hobby at present.
There are passionate opinions on both sides of this question. Here's my take on the pros and cons of sociological nostalgia in general, and more particularly as it pertains directly to Golden Age Radio Preservation.
The proponents who argue against any nostalgia movement tend to cite several common and recurring themes:
Nostalgia is unhealthy because it looks backward instead of forward.
Nostalgia is unrealistic because it clings to the past instead of accepting social, political, and technology changes, dealing with them, accepting them, and moving on.
Nostalgia, in general, provides little tangible value, adding nothing of consequence to the realities of the present and future.
Devotees of nostalgia, in general, are simply hoping to 'escape' dealing with the realities of Life in the present by immersing themselves in unrealistic, outmoded, or even unattainable ideals from the past, by simply 'cherry picking' the best of what they either recall or learn about the Past and seizing upon nostalgic notions or ideals which are simply unrealistic as applied to modern, contemporary life.
Proponents who find and take a measure of comfort -- to widely varying degrees -- from nostalgia tend to cite the following arguments:
One can learn both good and bad from studies of the Past, and hopefully help to perpetuate the good, and continue to be mindful of the bad, should bad practices of the Past rear their ugly head in the present and future. This is the embodiment of George Santayana's timeless observation that "Those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it".
Common courtesies -- social, political, religious, and philosophical -- tend to wax and wane through the generations, often skipping a generation or two in the importance they place on Quality of Life, and then resurfacing. An oft-cited example would be the practice of 'dressing' for family meals and engaging in meaningful dialogue between family members at these daily events
Cultural tastes are cyclical in nature and cycle with exponential speed, as the means and modern variations of communication develop and evolve.
Basic human needs and instincts are inherently timeless and universal by definition. They transcend political, sociological, ethnic, cultural, and philosophical boundaries, irrespective of how persuasively any minor group of society with an agenda would have the majority steer itself politically, socially, religiously or culturally in the powerful minority's direction. Our social and cultural history has shown repeatedly that the motives behind minority movements such as these generally have a self-serving, economic force driving them.
The practice of 'cherry picking' the best of the Past from the worst of the Past can only benefit a society, or at the very least, provide a measure of comfort to society -- if only psychological or spiritual in nature. Those who would deride, ridicule, or continue to marginalize the Past tend to beg the question of their motives. Especially when the objects of such derision or marginalization address demonstrably beneficial lessons of many of the social customs, culture, politics, or philosophies from the Past.
There are as many pros and cons in the evolving points of view and philosophy behind collecting and preserving Golden Age Radio as there are in the issues surrounding any other collection or appreciation of nostalgia or ephemera in general. Many divisive issues exist within the hobby of collecting Golden Age Radio and ephemera. This polarization is even more ironic, given the over arching message conveyed throughout the entire period of The Golden Age of Radio: a message of hope, resilience, patriotism, sharing, and global brotherhood. Ironic, because these underlying precepts should work more in favor of unifying the Golden Age Radio collecting community. But as with many other precepts of the 30's through 60's -- when filtered through today's culture -- there's always some self-serving, economic (as contrasted with altruistic) motivation behind most of the current divisions within the hobby.
The elections of 2006 were a direct reflection of the backlash, throughout our great nation, to how far we've drifted away from the principles of the Golden Age of Radio era. Some examples follow:
The current tempest in a teapot within the hobby revolves around the various means of distributing or acquiring Golden Age Radio recordings, scripts, ephemera, and memorabilia. One camp takes the position that the only Golden Age Radio recordings worth having, collecting, distributing or enjoying are those still recorded on highly fragile cassettes, reel-to-reel, or original transcription discs. Tape deterioration can occur as a result of chemical reactions between the magnetic oxide, the binder, the lubricant, water vapor in the air, and particles of dirt from the air. Increases in temperature tend to act as a catalyst and speed up the deterioration process. Conversely, the other camp seems more concerned with employing more modern preservation technologies like CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and solid state digital storage of the materials previously archived and distributed exclusively on tapes or cassettes.
Another subset of polarization within the collecting community centers around the means of digitally encoding existing Golden Age Radio material on digital media. Lossy compression technologies of today allow archivers to record and store as much as 30 to 45 times the amount of audio material on digital media than can be accomplished with traditional analog or early digital encoding technologies. Digital compression technologies such as MPEG-3 compression have as many champions as detractors within the hobby. And both camps tend to be just as passionate in defense of their respective positions.
An even finer line separates proponents and detractors of the sale and distribution of Golden Age Radio recordings. Some take the position that it's merely a 'quantity vs. quality' issue. The growing trends toward total disregard for quality, copyright, or preservation, in favor of a simple 'numbers game' throughout the hobby is also a highly polarizing situation. There are passionate purists and champions on both sides of these issues.
As it happens, a very vocal and passionate minority of collectors in possession of vast holdings of reel-to-reel, cassette, and original electronic transcription media feel--arguably so--that, since they've invested small fortunes in collecting first or second generation source materials, they are fully justified in charging whatever the collecting community will bear. This buttresses their support of the perception that this material is superior to anything recorded on compressed media. And in all fairness, these collectors, with either the benefit of foresight, circumstance, inheritance, or simply the means of wealth sufficient to pay as much as $1500 for a single transcription or set of reels 'back in the day', are most passionate about obtaining a return on their considerable investment. These collectors feel justified to exploit every means at their disposal to both preserve the value of their investment. But going even further, they actively discourage and deride the practice of employing contemporary digital technology to further preserve or distribute these recordings. This segment of the collecting community represents approximately 15% of the Golden Age Radio community.
The other 85% of the Golden Age Radio collecting community have neither the access, nor resources with which to obtain these limited, increasingly finite, and increasingly fragile and rapidly deteriorating first and second generation media. Even if they did have the access to such media, or the wealth necessary to outbid anyone else for it, the means of transferring this older technology media to modern digital storage media is even more prohibitively expensive and increasingly unattainable. One might argue that this is the more pragmatic group of the two. Since the original media is often inaccessible, they can only rely upon the now common practice of acquiring these recordings digitally, either by direct download, trading CD's or DVD's, purchasing cassettes of varying quality, or through large scale trading groups, buying groups or clubs.
One could be forgiven the reference to the 15% as The Bourgeoisie of the hobby and the 85% as The Proletariat of the hobby -- or more simply, the 'haves' and 'have nots'. This has been a common theme throughout Human Society -- moreso throughout The Golden Age of Radio era itself, when the 'haves' and 'have nots' were more in a ratio of 1% to 99% throughout that period. With the systematic attacks on the American Middle Class of the past twenty-four years, the 'haves' have far more, and the 'have nots' have no discernible--or practical--way to ever catch up. The solution to this growing imbalance can be found in the very precepts espoused throughout the marvelous Golden Age of Radio itself.
What made The Golden Age Radio era different in this regard was the passionately democratic expression of the dynamics between the haves and have-nots of the Golden Age. The Wall Street Panic, The Great Depression, two World Wars, and a Cold War of fear and intimidation, served more to unify, rather than polarize America. As the memories of these previously unifying influences have faded, they've been replaced by an equally passionate belief that it's every man for himself -- both domestically and internationally -- and let the devil take the hindmost.
It's the sociological and cultural miracle forever preserved within the estimated 43,000 shows or series believed to be held in private and public Golden Age Radio collections, that almost never fails to impress both experienced and novice devotees of Golden Age Radio recordings. The scripts, the production values, the messages, the P.S.A.s, and yes even the quaint -- by today's standards -- commercials and promotions reinforce over and over again, at each listening, the immutable fact that for at least 35 years our proud nation was a cohesive, compassionate, passionately patriotic -- and passionately democratic -- Nation and People.
Herein lies the saddest irony in the current divisiveness in the Golden Age Radio collecting community. The very message conveyed in virtually every recording from the era, seems entirely lost on a very vocal minority of the collecting community who convey the impression that every effort to democratize or expand the hobby to potentially millions of new listeners, let alone further generations, is a direct threat to the value of their first and second generation holdings. This is by no means a new social or cultural dynamic in America. But then that's to be expected, since by every indication, the vast majority of 'OTR' vendors don't even bother to listen to their 'commodity', as evidenced by the sloppy logs, crappy encodes, inaccurate tags, file names, history snippets, and questionable provenances they cite for their collections. Perhaps that's the cruelest irony of all. The very content that would inform them about the values of the era and value of the recordings of that era, never get through to them, though they profit obscenely by distributing inferior recordings in vast numbers to a naive community of new, technically or historically unsophisticated devotees.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. We've experienced this cultural dynamic during every new technological transition in American society. There was a period of 20 years during which radios were such a rare commodity that less than 17% of America possessed them. Television was available as early as 1929, but it was, again, another 25 years before television found it's way into the average American home. Telephone underwent a similar transition period, as did VCR's, computers, cell phones, and yes, even most major appliances. All of these technological introductions were slow to arrive in the average American household. During every one of these periods, a minority of the population could take great pride, and a measure of comfort, in the knowledge that they possessed something unattainable by the average American citizen.
And so it is with the technology available to us today, as it applies to acquiring, collecting or preserving Golden Age Radio recordings -- or even photographic or print ephemera of the era. Those with either the access to, or means to acquire first and second generation material take great pride in possessing something which the average collector may never touch, hear or see, let alone possess.
What's left to the rest of us, are -- in most instances -- the thousands of MP3 or similar renditions of these recordings, in varying quality and fidelity to the original, first generation source material. To the pragmatist, that has to be enough, for the moment. The Digital Deli Online currently contains over 162,000 individual recordings in MP3 format, and another 28,000 still being encoded, cataloged, archived and prepared for inclusion in the publicly available collection. These recordings are encoded in at least 11 kHz sampling format, at a minimum 24 bit compression rate, though our personal preference is 22 kHz - 44.1 kHz sampling and 64 kbps compression as a minimum.
Herein lies the one of the most passionately contentious issues in the Golden Age Radio collecting community: "What is the qualitative, audible difference between a 16 bit to 128 bit encoded MP3, as it compares to a first generation, analog recording of the same material? Is the difference truly noticeable across the board? And is it a compelling enough difference to abandon collecting Golden Age Radio altogether, unless it can be acquired and heard on first or second generation media alone?
Here are some practical illustrations, comparing recordings of identical source material:
First a brief illustration of sampling and bit rates.
Sample Rate
1 second
1 minute
1 hour
44,100 samples/second 16 bit
(This is the CD Standard)
l88.2KB
5.3MB
317.5MB
22,050 samples/second 16 bit
44.1KB
2.6MB
158.8MB
16,000 samples/second 16 bit
32.0KB
1.9MB
115.2MB
Fig. 1
Storage requirements at the indicated Sampling/Bitrate (.WAV's)
Take note of the digital storage requirements for "CD-Quality" recordings in Figure 1. You can store about 80 minutes of conventional CD-Quality recordings on a single CD using a .WAV file. By contrast, you can record as much as twenty hours of Stereo AM or FM quality recordings on a single CD using MP3 or similar compression.
Fig. 2
A comparison of Bit rates (.MP3 Compression)
Here's a practical comparison of two renditions of the same recorded material, head to head, .WAV versus .MP3:
First, the analog .WAV rendition, recorded at 11 kHz/8 bit:
And for comparison, the same source material recorded as an .MP3:
Listen to both of them several times, as needed, for comparison purposes. The faint background hiss in the .WAV rendition was faithful to the original source tape. Nothing has been altered in either recording. Though the choice of Apple's QuickTime Player for the comparison was arbitrary, you'll note a small artifact at the beginning of the MP3 rendition as the compression algorithm attempted to deal with the light background hiss more apparent in the .WAV rendition. This could just as easily have been removed with Adobe's Audition 1.5 or similar audio editing programs, but I left it in both renditions to more faithfully illustrate the comparison. The .WAV is approximately 215 kilobytes, versus the 74 kilobyte size of the .MP3. If I'd chosen a CD-Quality .WAV file for comparison, the .WAV would have been approximately 800 kilobytes, as compared to the 74 kilobytes of the resulting .MP3.
Here's a perfect example of the absolute worst type of misinformation being disseminated to the Golden Age Radio Community at large:
Typical Misinformation from A Large, Popular 'OTR' FTP Download Site
It's hard to even know where to begin. The only remotely accurate hypothesis in the above, refers to the absurd practice of trying to 'up-encode' highly compressed audio recordings. Apart from that, there isn't one word of accuracy or truth in the remainder of this self-serving website owner's deception. Let's simply deal with the most egregious misinformation:
1. The author cites all Golden Age Radio recordings as simply 'spoken word' recordings. This is an understandable mischaracterization since the vast majority of the site's advertised holdings are contemporary, copyright-protected audio books, which he freely steals from whatever sources he finds, and pays no royalties to the copyright holders. It's also readily apparent that the site owner doesn't bother to even listen to any of his site's material. This practice alone speaks volumes about his site's integrity--as well as to any subscriber that continues to support him. As any genuine Golden Age Radio Collector knows all too well, the foley work throughout the Golden Age of Radio Era was--and remains--some of the most important contributions to the wonderfully absorbing realism and effectiveness of any dramatic productions from The Golden Age of Radio, be they comedies, suspense, thrillers, detective dramas or virtually any other dramatic genre of the era. The site's contention also flies in the face of tens of thousands of variety programs of the era, wherein the spoken word elements of the recordings took a back seat to the preponderance of musical, instrumental and ensemble recordings of the era. Even more than in the dramatic genres, the audio engineering behind the variety recordings of the era rely almost completely on the fidelity and richness engineered into the best preserved transcriptions and reels recorded from the era. The more of this material preserved from the higher encodes of these recordings, the better. Reducing any of them to 8 - 32bit recordings arbitrarily, simply destroys--forever--any possibility of further cleaning and enhancing any such down-sampled renditions of these recordings. Indeed, it's the stated practice of The Digital Deli Online to simply delete any and all recordings (or simply 'files' in the parlance of his site) that we identify as sourced from this site, so as to ensure that we never help to perpetuate sub-standard 'OTR' garbage. Thankfully, he goes to great pains to identify his site's 'files' with equally substandard graphics, file names, and internal tags, so it's relatively easy to select them out for permanent deletion.
This is what Golden Age Radio collectors actually prefer:
64% prefer 64 kbit or greater recordings
2. The author's self-serving claims are designed to appeal to one--and only one--type of Golden Age Radio Collector. This is the archetypal, 'baseball card-collecting' , 'OTR' Collector who doesn't respect the era to enough to refer to it accurately as The Golden Age of Radio, let alone 'Old Time Radio'. That's too many words. Too much fidelity to the era. To them, they're just 'OTR Files'--no more, no less. As with all things with this type of self-styled 'collector', cheaper is better. Smaller is better. Less is more--just not in the artistic sense. To this type of 'hoarder', a box full of hundreds of Home Shopping Club jewelry creations is far superior to 5 - 10 true works of a jeweler's finest craft. 'Bling is King', irrespective of it's quality. These 'OTR File Collectors' are the lowest common denominator in the Golden Age Radio Collector Community. Either by simple ignorance, false greed, expediency, or crass commercialism, such 'collectors' are systematically destroying the Golden Age Radio Preservation and Stewardship movement. Every recording they touch, they degrade. This is not stewardship. Such operators and eBay vendors are the very dregs of the Golden Age Radio Collecting Community.
3. The author's title reeks of cruel irony; 'The Spoken Word'--something the author clearly seems to have great difficulty in articulating from Sentence #1. But note that the site operator arbitrarily and recklessly down-samples every recording that passes through his inept, careless mitts. That alone speaks volumes. Note also that he claims to do this to 'save' his subscribers' 'download credits'. Absurd. Recordings that pass through any collector's hands , of varying encodes and bit rates, must be treated individually and listened to individually, so as to determine the respective quality, preservability, or restorabilty of any given recording. Transferring a recording from a 1st generation transcription disk or tape reel to any other format demands conscientious stewardship and the utmost care, utilizing the highest quality transfer equipment, audio cleaning tools, and physical care to ensure an accurate transfer of the highest fidelity achievable with today's technology. Indeed, it's been my experience in collecting Golden Age BBC Recordings, that virtually all BBC Collectors record and preserve their holdings at the very least, 64bits, and more commonly at 160bits. Hence, virtually all Golden Age BBC recordings in circulation are almost uniformly of the highest fidelity--even those from the 1940's and 1950's.
4. The author of the 'Spoken Word' fails to note that transcription recording technology was dramatically advanced during the 1940's, and the advent of magnetic tape recordings exponentially increased the fidelity of all recordings that followed. Bing Crosby himself dramatically advanced this technology precisely for these reasons--to obtain the highest fidelity obtainable with the technology of the era.
5. Finally note the 'I have heard that . . .' technique the author employs to underscore his 'arguments'. Such prefaces hold the same water as the infamous 'Some say that . . . ' arguments propounded throughout history by propagandists. These are the typical, time-tested techniques of non-attribution employed by all self-serving propagandists. They create and perpetuate misinformation to the uninformed by simple innuendo or twice-removed hearsay, in the hope that their self-serving misinformation will eventually become accepted as fact as long as it's repeated as often as possible without challenge.
Herein lies the very epicenter of the current opposing forces in the Golden Age Radio Collecting and Preservation movement. The OTR opportunists versus the Golden Age Radio Preservationists. Who will eventually win out? This is simply a reflection of our society. It won't change until society changes--for the better. There's every expectation and hope that we've now turned that corner. Let's hope for the best. In any case, each and every one of us must take a stand somewhere on that continuum of American principle and tradition. Time and history will judge. But as with all conflict--philosophical, moral, religious, class-based, ethnic, or economic--it's up to the individual to decide how much of his or her personal integrity he or she is willing to compromise to make a Life of Quality. As with all preservation efforts throughout history, we ignore or discount all generations that follow us at our own peril.
Herein lies my contention that this issue is, has been, and continues to be a Tempest in A Teapot, among those 'collectors' with an agenda having nothing whatsoever to do with the advancement of the Golden Age Radio collecting hobby or the further archiving and preservation of Golden Age Radio material. Many of these are the same naysayers with as many as several thousand 30 - 50 year old analog reel-to-reel tapes sitting deteriorating in their media closets, as the magnetic oxide upon which this precious material is recorded, simply powders, stretches, or flakes away with each passing year. All the more reason for them to scoff at digitally capturing this material to digital media for the few remaining years before their tapes simply disintegrate beyond recovery? Or should this be a call to embrace preservation of this material to digital media before it's lost forever. And going even further, as a simply practical matter, how much of this material can most of them hope to transfer from these 'thousands of reels' of first and second generation media on their own? A third of it? Half of it? Let's hope so, for the sake of Historical Preservation at the very least.
The prime motivating factor has less to do with altruistic preservation of this irreplaceable material, and more to do with the fashionable trend toward contemporary greed.
If that's the answer, so be it. Step up and simply admit it. But isn't it just a wee bit disingenuous to continue all this hand-wringing about the destruction of the hobby as we know it, should this rampant movement towards committing these recordings to .mp3's continue? It strikes me as more than a bit hypocritical and self-serving for the current movers and shakers in the hobby to continue to rail against 'the horror of .mp3's ruining the hobby', while they continue to line their pockets with sponsorships from the biggest commercial .mp3 sellers on the Internet. That may be Citizenship in Action today, but it's a far cry from the principles and precepts contained within the source material from which they're enriching themselves -- at the Golden Age Radio Collecting hobby's expense.
You'll find several very popular and widely visited sites on the Internet which would have you believe that they promote the preservation and distribution of Golden Age Radio. The dead giveaway is -- with precious few exceptions -- the presence of the initials O.T.R, plastered liberally all over the sites and their pages. These sites would have you believe -- or persuade you to accept -- that the initials O.T.R. are widely accepted as an acronym for Old Time Radio, and that this is the 'accepted' means of referring to Golden Age Radio. There are exceptions to every rule of thumb, and while I have occasionally come across something of valid historical, genuinely altruistic or preservationist in nature on these sites, I continue to observe, to my lament, that the vast majority of these sites and their content are either self-promoting, self-serving, or nakedly commercial in nature.
The other dead giveaway in identifying these self-serving, self-promoting, misinformation sites, is their insistence on one or more of their pages that .mp3 renditions of Golden Age Radio shows or material, or preachments against the validity of any form of lossy compression techniques -- as applied to collecting or preserving Golden Age Radio episodes -- are either audibly inferior simply by nature of the lossy compression algorithms employed to create MPEG3 content, or that ''mp3's are ruining" or in some other way, doing a disservice to the preservation of Golden Age Radio.
See if you can answer this question: "What is the state-of-the-art technology currently employed almost exclusively in producing virtually all HDTV Broadcast-quality material you all watch on your 40 - 55 inch plasma and LCD HDTV screens?" (Yes, the ones that cost upwards of $5000 these days). Answer? MPEG2, for the most part, with some of the more cutting edge technology of MPEG3.
The next time any of you see one of these pseudo-experts on the 'OTR' sites bad mouthing .mp3 renditions of Golden Age Radio recordings, you might think to ask one of them how it can be that the most powerful movers and shakers in the HDTV Broadcasting Industry are betting the farm on MPEG2, MPEG3 -- and the soon to arrive MPEG4 -- for their measly 6.1, 7.1, and THX audio, High Definition Audio-Visual presentations on the most expensive, most technologically sophisticated television screens yet devised by mankind.
Perhaps it's their conviction that the 98% monaural or monophonic, scratchy, hissy, poppy, rumbly, first and second generation recordings from The Golden Age of Radio era were far superior to the state of the art content of today? Superior to the THX-quality or Dolby 6.1 quality, 64-channel mixed audio and video tracks of today?
Or is there perhaps another motivation behind the promulgation and perpetuation of these self-serving tactics? A self-serving, self-promoting, self-enriching motivation perhaps? I'll leave you to come to those conclusions on your own. If you're the kind of person that believes only what you hear or see on the news, you'll more than likely continue to believe the OTR-promoters' version of the facts about MPEG technology. This is a grand tradition in Radio. Lee Deforest himself, was one of the greatest charlatans and intellectual plagiarists in the History of Radio, and achieved wildly varying successes by perpetuating his own misinformation about early radio technology.
Thanks to a more recent round of big lies, the rest of the world now perceives America as a Nation of Liars, so why should we treat the preservation of Golden Age Radio any differently? The short answer is that America, as a Nation and as a people, fought three wars,-- World War I, World War II, and The Cold War -- throughout the Golden Age of Radio Years defending the disenfranchised of The World against the big lie. What we've become as a Nation is due to our loss of contact with each other and the rest of the world. Golden Age Radio forced us to remain in contact with each other -- there was no other alternative. Commercial communications was about money and power then as now, but it was constrained by the simple fact of the Radio listeners needed to listen to understand -- and listen intently to understand. Modern, popular message delivery systems require no such attentiveness, and the advertisers, networks, and politicians of today are simply doing what they've always done best: taking advantage of a mass audience's ignorance.
Golden Age Radio made us more intellectually curious and in the days when there were tens of thousands of diverse media ownership, an entire nation's intellectual curiosity is what those advertisers, politicians and networks had to contend with -- and it's what kept them as honest as we forced them to be. Today we have, effectively, no more than five primary media conglomerates controlling what we watch, read and hear. There's no more room for intellectual curiosity. Information has become a commodity, the dissemination of which is offered to the highest bidder. The Internet of today is the closest we'll ever come again to the diversity, intellectual freedom, and popular critique that The Golden Age of Radio offered us as a nation -- and who can predict how long this era will last?
As the Editor of The Digital Deli Online, I believe passionately in the precepts of the era of The Golden Age of Radio.
It wasn't the shows and episodes that were being sold to the public throughout the entire era of the Golden Age of Radio. It was the commercials, products, and self-promotion of a given network or station that were being sold. And being sold freely over the free airwaves owned lock, stock and barrel by the entire American Public at large. The shows, episodes, and media upon which they were preserved meant little or nothing to the Networks once a show had run out of steam. And once Television became the darling of the Networks, these priceless recorded media simply rotted, rusted, tarnished or disintegrated in hundreds of Network and affiliate storage vaults throughout the country, unprotected or preserved in any way for future generations. That's how important these copyrights were to them. That's how important the archived material was to them, and that's how important it was to them to preserve any of it. They were simply too short-sighted and greedy to anticipate the remarkable resurgence of interest in this material 30 years later. Given the obvious disdain that the majority of the Networks showed for this material, how is it that much of it even managed to be preserved in the first place? Simple. The vast majority of it was either embezzled, stolen, walked away with, or otherwise lifted from their vaults. Some would say the motivation was to preserve the material by absconding with it -- to protect it. Some would say, since the Networks and originators of the material showed no further interest in it anyway, why not just walk away with it?
OK, if you're like me, you're morally torn by this dilemma. On the one hand it was wrong to remove or embezzle this material. On the other hand, were it not for the hundreds of engineers, crafts people, station managers and other employees and technicians at these stations and Networks that took this material in the first place, what would now be left from the era? Yes, it's definitely a moral dilemma. And time has tended to allow a certain patina of justification and respectability to accrue to these efforts. I just happen to be one of those people who tend to keep an historical perspective on such issues. Yes, I'm a shoulder tapper.
How ironic that now we have a situation where generations of our ancestors paid and enriched countless sponsors, businesses, radio stations and networks throughout this era. And yet, here we are, 30 to 50 years after 90% of the copyright to any of this intellectual property was either abandoned, scrapped as salvaged by short-sighted Network bean counters, or simply lost to the generations through neglect or abuse. How is it then, that those of us -- any of us -- willing to step forward and attempt to salvage, restore. archive and preserve as much of this material as possible, are the ones being accused of threatening the Preservation Movement?
Joseph Goebbels was brilliant at promoting 'The Big Lie' through revisionist history to the point of being accepted as commonly accepted truth. Dr. Lee Deforest, the self-proclaimed 'Father of Radio' was nothing more than a charlatan, liar, and plagiarist, bereft of any moral compass whatsoever, and wholly incapable of producing or creating anything of his own -- successfully -- without stealing from others. So were our own Father Coughlin at one political extreme (the 1930's to 40's), and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy at the other (the 50's).
Those who invent and promulgate the 'big lie' invariably share several motivating factors in common:
A powerful political, religious or profit-based incentive
Self-serving motives designed to enrich the smallest number of beneficiaries at the expense of the majority
A pious, arrogant vanity that their ends justify any means to attain them.
Take this classroom film from 1946, for example:
Click Above for: 1946 - 'Despotism' from Encyclopedia Brittanica Films (25.18 MB) PLEASE BE PATIENT. It's WORTH THE WAIT (QuickTime Plug-in and High-Speed Connection Required.
Embedded videos do not play on all browser/OS configurations.
Download times vary. Approximate download time on a 1.5Mbit T1
is 1 minute, 10 seconds. Or 12 - 15 min on a dial-up)
This is becoming a chillingly disturbing trend -- in many aspects of American Society -- and has recently begun, yet again, to achieve breathtaking gains in politics, network news, radio, and religion. The basic premise? If you're not with 'us' you're either a reactionary or un-American. These labels, or the threat of having them applied to one's self have all too often proven highly effective in silencing the weakest minded or apathetic among the citizenry.
Simply put, it's one thing to offer constructive ideas, thoughts, and efforts toward the common end of a cooperative effort to preserve and archive -- altruistically -- as much of this material as possible. It's quite another thing to continue to attempt to revise history, in an effort to lend a veneer of credibility and justification to the means by which a tiny minority of the Golden Age Radio Collecting community acquired control of as much as 90% of the era's surviving material. The fate of all further attempts to preserve and archive this finite resource for the betterment of all of us -- those who have discovered Golden Age Radio, and those who have yet to discover it for themselves -- should rightly be shared by all of us, and not by a minority of self-promoting, self-serving profiteers.
I'm both a realist and a pragmatist. What's past is past. What was done is done. What's available in circulation today is, in fact, owing to the sticky fingers, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of those hundreds of radio personnel who managed to justify walking off with those thousands of transcriptions and reels that survive. When all is said and done we are indebted to them for doing what the Networks didn't have the foresight or corporate responsibility to do on their own -- save this invaluable legacy from the landfill. To be fair, I'd like to think that, in many of these instances, at least part of their justification was to save these materials from the trash bin for the sake of posterity.
But I'm also realistic and pragmatic enough to know that 'trickle downs' theories are total rubbish. Let's look at the empirical evidence over the past 30 years. Nothing -- and I repeat, nothing -- ever 'trickles down' from the 'haves' to the 'have nots'. This may have been a noble concept at the turn of the century, when many of the robber barons were finding religion, but given today's exponentially greater stakes, this concept is total rubbish, plain and simple. Indeed, Religion itself -- the uniquely American variety -- has become the greatest proponent of 'trickle down' economics in the history of our culture. The proponents of these biggest of lies have tried to shove these concepts down the world's throat for over 30 years now. 'Trickle down' will never ever happen -- not in our lifetime, and certainly never in our grandchildren's lifetimes. The Social Security Insurance Program itself -- the only successful altruistic legacy that's survived The Golden Age years -- is now threatened to be scrapped by the promulgation of The Big Lie, yet again to the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many.
But please, for the good of the Golden Age Radio collecting community, enough already with the posturing, revisionist history, and self-promotion. Those of us who didn't have the good fortune to work in Radio during the Golden Years can only obtain what's available to us today -- and be both grateful, and good stewards to what we can obtain, archive and preserve. Most of us, even if we'd had hands-on access to Golden Age Radio transcription materials wouldn't have felt morally justified in simply walking out the back door with it. But what would be left now if the more morally challenged among us hadn't? I can wrap my mind around that concept. What I can't wrap my mind around, is the notion that these people feel some 'moral right' to sitting on this irreplaceable material, simply because it's in their possession and is viewed as an their personal assets, rather than ill-gotten gains.
There are in fact genuine altruists in the hobby. Hundreds of thousands of them. Let's simply be mindful of these issues whenever we interact with each other in the Golden Age Radio collecting and preservation community. That's the embodiment of the hobby. That's the 'high road'. And it's the embodiment of the ideals and message from these invaluable, irreplaceable recordings. If we can get this message out to the Golden Age Radio community at large, we can undertake a massive, synergistic push to preserve, archive and disseminate thousands more of the episodes and shows we know exist in private hands before they deteriorate beyond recovery -- for the common betterment and preservation of the entire community, not just for the continued enrichment of the few.
Disclaimer: These comments are the observations, opinions, and conclusions of the editor alone, and are not intended to reflect the corporate position or belief of either The Digital Deli Online, or Digital Presence New England, it's officers, management, or any of it's supporters or contributors. They're propounded solely to promote an honest dialogue about both the History and Future of The Golden Age Radio Collecting and Preservation hobby. Comments welcomed.
