Tuesday, January 17, 2017.
The New Radio Regime.
The managers of all parts of the Entercom New Orleans radio station group met today with the engineers and me. Next week, an experiment in using HD broadcasting will commence. Until now, the HD signal--which every FM station can employ--has not been much used for standard radio programs or commercials. We are about to change that, and the WWL-FM HD-2 service will be nearly on a par with standard broadcasting.
My program will be the one most affected by the changes. To my pleasant surprise, they not only asked me for suggestions as to how to keep my show going, but adopted my ideas, down to letting me have the on-air schedule I asked for. It won't be much different from what it's been for many years. Most of the changes have to do with the fact that most of the time listeners won't be able to listen to the show unless they have a) an HD radio or 2)a computer, pad or smart phone for pulling up the program. This will be no more difficult than it was in the 1960s to listen to FM stations. Most people only had AM, but they learned to adjust by just getting the more capable radio, sooner or later.
My weekday show remains mostly unchanged. I will continue to go live at three in the afternoon, but for two instead of three hours. At five, we replay the two hours we just finished, like NPR has always done with All Things Considered. It works very well, because not many people listen to all four hours of the show. This gives them twice the chance. (We also have podcasts for listening any time one wants.)
The other change is that I will expand my Saturday program to include a live show on Sunday afternoon, as well. Given that most of those shows are stuck behind sportcasts that take precedence, this will not be too onerous. I'll be on the air live almost exactly the same number of hours as before. But being there on weekends will serve the people who can't or won't buy a an HD radio for the next few years.
A few people are really upset by not being able to listen to the show in the way they always have. I'm sure that this won't last long. The new routine solves many problems that have dogged my show as long as it's been on the air. The nighttime signal for an AM station like mine is so attenuated that it's hard to listen. And static keeps getting worse at all times of day. The HD signal will have none of these problems. At last, the North Shore will be able to listen to me after dark.
I asked for one more somewhat frivolous concession. I am from the generation who considers radio news on the hour to be essential to a balanced life. Except for CBS, almost all those newscasts are gone. Our station is a CBS affiliate. We will once again have the CBS News on the weekday show, every hour, from (repeat after me ) CBS, the Coe-LUM-bee-ahh broadcasting system. How I love saying those words! (Have I mentioned that I'm a lifelong radio geek?)
So what will happen to 1350 AM, my radio home since 1988? It will be converted into a music station in a format that makes eminent sense to me, but will be a complete break with 1350's past.
I will host the final hour of the radio station known for most of its 92-year history as WSMB. I have experienced in such shows. I hosted the final hour of WSMB from its classic old studios atop the Maison Blanche Building in 1995. In 1983, I hosted the final broadcast of the old WGSO 1280, which went from being a station like WWL to a rock station. After all the years these venerable stations served New Orleans, you can't just throw a switch.
At the moment, the launch date for all this will probably be Friday, January 27. The amount of engineering required to make all this happen is formidable, but things seem to be okay. I will have a new radio home which, really, is exactly the same as the old one. And I feel great about it.
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Meanwhile, Mary Ann and I need to catch up with two Christmas obligations that we feel terrible about. One is dinner with Oliver and Carolyn Kluna, longtime best friends of mine and Jude's godparents. We have long gone out with them at Christmas time. In fact, that goes back to well before MA and I got together. It started in the days when the Fairmont (Roosevelt) Hotel was still serving the magnificent Christmas feasts that were the forerunners of the Reveillon.
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Chef Andrea.[/caption]
Some time during the holidays Mary Ann told Chef Andrea Apuzzo that Jude and his wife and baby were coming to town, and Andrea wanted very much to see them. It was on the calendar, but there was too much going on for us to pull that gathering together. Visiting people when you have a one-year-old in your arms is a slow, logistically challenging activity. We never made it to Andrea's. The Klunas attended a party Mary Ann put together at Andy's Bistro that was aimed more at relatives than anyone else. We think the Klunas had something more formal and private in mind. And, frankly, so did I.
Tonight, we took the Klunas to belated Yuletide dinner. . . at Andrea's. MA showed the chef some pictures and videos of grandson Jackson, but Andrea clearly wanted to hold Jackson in his arms. He really likes kids, which is a deep tradition among Italians.
We have a better dinner at Andrea's than we could remember going back a long time. It begins with seared fresh tuna with a scattering of marinated, crunchy vegetables that were seriously good with the tuna. Next for me was split pea soup. That's something I love, but rarely see in restaurants. And this was a fine example.
My entree was braciolone, which lived right up to the primary fact about that dish: no two cooks make it or spell its name the same way. Oliver has a beautiful grilled salmon that he enjoyed, and Carolyn ate a filet mignon with a very good brown sauce.
Mary Ann ate nothing. She didn't stay long, either. She will leave at four in the morning for an all-day drive to Washington, D.C, where she plans to attend Trump's inauguration. The Klunas are edified by this plan, and they and MA have a wonderful evening of lauding their man's success. I keep my mouth shut, as usual.
My day began hours ago with circumnavigating the fog through Slidell. It ends with speed reductions on the Causeway, for the same reason. But there is hardly any fog at all! All it takes is one driver who stays with the 45-mph limit to make a backup for miles. I just smile and say, "This is CBS, the Coh-LUM-bee-ahhh Broadcasting System."
