Monday, October 18, 2010

It was 25 years ago today

Today is my oldest son, Sean's, 25th birthday and just as I did on #21 and #23, I'm about to embarrass him again. Because I have an audience, Sean and Patrick get to have many of their secrets aired in public.

See this?


We had a lot of rocks in Sheffield, where we lived from the time Sean was six months old to the time he was 6. One day, he decided he would collect them, paint them, and sell them.

As with so many of the exploits of my children, I talked about this on the radio one day and when I went to get lunch at the local pizza joint, the owner said he wanted a couple of these well-painted rocks to "sell." So I delivered two of them, and gave Sean $1 each. If you're a parent, you know what this means: It means you're about to get a whole new crop of painted rocks, and a heightened expectation of riches.

I kept this one. I keep a lot of things from my kids' youth. I've got old hats they wore at baseball, old games, T-shirts and God knows what else. There isn't enough money in the world to pry this rock from my hands.

Like other parents, I look at all of these things and try to remember the kids that fit them. But I mostly can't. When Sean and his brother, Patrick, were very young, I remember holding them like footballs and thinking, "I've got to remember what this feeling is like." But while I remember doing it, I can't quite remember the moment. Few people can.

Our brains are not wired to be able to remember a snapshot like this. Our memories might be preserved but the feelings are not. As each one comes along, our brain rewrites the previous one until after 25 years, you have a composite feeling made of little pieces of 25 years. It's a good feeling -- a great feeling. But it's not the feeling of a singular moment.

On his 25th birthday, I want to believe that my oldest son had the best childhood a kid could have, that his memories of being the son of Bob and Carolie Collins are as joyful as his mother's and mine are, and that at 25, he realizes the great things that are still to come, and that they will be better than anything you can imagine.

Just like he is.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Video: A good case of the blues

During much of last night's Buddy Guy concert at the State Theater in Minneapolis, I kept thinking how I could get my kids to one of his shows. At 74, he remains one of the greatest bluesmen ever. Every time he comes to town, I'll be at the venue. He's backed up by a sensational group of musicians, especially guitarist Ric Hall (in the Orioles jersey). What must it be like to play with some of the greatest jazz artists ever? Check out Ric Hall's Web site.



Here's a better look at the two of them:



What were you doing when you were 8?

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

How I inspired Ira Glass and kept my job for another week

Welcome. You've just been sucked into clicking on a link because of a pretty misleading headline that included a big name. I feel dirty about that and now maybe you do, too. I apologize, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out here in blogville.

The trip down memory lane I took this week has got me thinking more about my long road of working in radio. My guess is my radio career peaked some years ago and each day I become "that guy" that most young radio people encountered on their way to a long radio career: the guy with the long radio career that peaked years earlier.

Whatever. I can hold on like most other men in their mid- to late 50s in this recession that's claimed a disproportionate number of them,  which is to say: holding on tight and hoping to survive to work another day. Besides, I'm used to it. It's the way I started every day in broadcasting since 1975. Scared.

Some years ago -- 1996 -- I was in San Diego covering the Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, I was in Balboa Park where a "Faith and Freedom Rally" was held. It's no big deal now, but back then it was one of the first public displays that the religious right had gained control of the Republican Party. The moderates were left out.

I was voicing a piece I wrote, noting that the event  was a metaphor for the party as a whole. After I finished  sending it back to my organization, a man standing nearby, who overheard it said, "that's the best piece I've heard all week."

I was flattered, of course, but I had no idea who it was and it wasn't until years later that I was told it was Ira Glass, host of the Public Radio's "This American Life," who is widely considered a god among public radio employees.

I'm remembering  this because a week or so ago, a flurry of "tweets" appeared in my account. It was from colleagues of my company who were in Denver for the Public Radio Program Directors convention. They were surprised when the speaker at the "benediction" gave me something of a shout out. The speaker was Ira Glass.




That sure surprised my colleagues. It surprised me, too. Frankly, there's something wrong with journalism when a 56-year-old man who's been doing it for 35 years is its "new face."  It's more than amusing, I think, that a group of colleagues went to Denver only to find out this "new face"  was the old face in a cubicle in the city they just left.

The reality, however, is that I'm not "the new journalism," I'm the old journalism I described in my previous post: just having a conversation with the audience rather than a sermon.  The "antique aesthetics" of journalism, as Ira Glass says, threatens to kill off broadcast journalism now. It's already killed off most of it in commercial media.

But, beyond that, there's a more disturbing reality: The "face of the new journalism" may well be the guy in a cubicle, working too long, and too hard, because he starts each day with the fear that this is the day he gets laid off.

The original posting that Ira Glass referred to can be found here.

Monday, October 04, 2010

It was 23 years ago today


It was a Sunday and I wasn't supposed to work. I was the program manager of WSBS in Great Barrington, still in the infant stages of trying to upgrade the role the station had in the community. I hadn't yet learned -- or proven -- that I make a lousy manager. I can do. I don't know how to make others do.

The leaves were just turning in the Berkshires, and the snow was just starting to fall. Snow on October 4th?

Like most small-market radio stations, we had a skeleton staff on duty on a Sunday morning. And by skeleton, I mean 1 person who wasn't a newsperson. So I went to work.

The snow got heavier, and soon, two other people, who lived just up the street, made it in to work to help out.

Then the branches started snapping, and the power went out all over the Berkshires, except at a small 1,000 watt daytime station. By now, I was on the air, using a model we'd used at WHDH in Boston years earlier. Open the phones and talk to people.

I recall one person who had a baby on a respirator,only the power was out. She called the radio station. Everyone was getting on the air. She told her story, a few minutes later, we had someone with a 4x4 and a generator on the phone, too.

At one point, Gene Shalit, then the NBC Today Show film reviewer, called from his home in Stockbridge. He had no other point, really, than anyone else who was calling. They were without power, trees were falling, and he wanted someone to talk to .

We continued into the night. When the sun went down, I kept the power up even though we were supposed to sign off at sunset. Nobody else was on the air. Eventually, I compromised and flipped on a smaller transmitter -- 3.9 watts, which -- because everyone was without power except for us -- boomed throughout the Berkshires.

It was radio the way it was meant to be, and the way it can never be again. It was the best day I ever spent in the radio business. It's why I still fume when the occasional public radio snob mockingly says "commercial radio."

My family -- Carolie and two-year old Sean (Carolie had yet to give birth to Patrick) -- were somewhere, but I didn't know where. Carolie is the daughter of a radio guy; she knew I had a job to do and she'd figure out how to survive. They huddled with some neighbors who had a wood stove.

It was 10 or 11 O'clock at night and the Berkshires were scared. And then, a power company truck came by the state highway out front, then another, and another, and another. They kept coming. The rest of Massachusetts had sent us some help. So I told southern Berkshire County that help was here.

As midnight approached, people were still calling. When they weren't, I pulled out the Old Farmer's Almanac and began reading stories. Finally, around 1 a.m., the Berkshires were asleep, and I signed the station off the air.

The next morning, I showed up at work, and there were flowers in the lobby from people, and I think people dropped baked goods by. They were still calling to say "thank you" to a small group of people who didn't let them down.

A newspaper in Pittsfield ran this commentary a few days later (written by Clarence Fanto):

Radio tends to be taken for granted by most listeners; they use it for hours every day but video usually occupies the spotlight.

Over the last few days, however, appreciation for public service provided by radio during an emergency has reached new heights in Berkshire County. For many residents on the day of the Great October Blizzard, the area's radio stations provided a lifeline for some, and the only link to the outside world for others isolated and marooned by the devastating storm.

With power out, phone service disrupted, TV sets disabled, those with the foresight to keep their portable radios powered with fresh batteries were able to gain reassurance from the knowledge that thousands of others share dtheir plight and, in many cases, were even worse off.

The surprise storm hit the region at a time (Sunday morning) when most radio stations are minimally staffed and are offering pre-taped syndicated, religious or ethnic programming.

Although most of Pittsfield's stations eventually rose to the occasion, Berkshire Broadcating Co. (WSBS in Great Barrington and WMNB in North Adams) deserves special recognition for quickly recognizing the severity of the storm and suspending normal programming in favor of continuous storm coverage.

As heard in an isolated South County cabin, WSBS provided what amounted to an emergency command post, taking calls from listeners who needed special help, interviewing utility officials, police, and others involved in the crisis, and providing invaluable updates on highway conditions, road closings, power failures and phone problems.

Although the Barrington station focused, and rightly so, on South County, it also offered information on North County via reports from its sister station WMNB and on the Pittsfield-Dalton area from its news director, Tom Jay, who happened to be in Dalton that morning.

The WSBS on-air team -- program director Bob Collins, Dick Lindsay, Tony Betros, Liz Chaffee, Nick Diller -- combined authoritative news gathering with just the right amount of folksiness and sorely needed comic relief. There were several phone calls from stranded New Yorkers who insisted they just had to reach the Taconic State Parkway Sunday afternoon. Collins and company gently coaxed them into the realization that any kind of highway travel would be folly.

Those who complain about Berkshire radio -- too many commercial, "conservative" music programming, an overly homespun approach -- must now realize that without the outstanding service provided by the county's station's since Sunday, more lives might have been lost, panic could have developed, and the sense of isolation experienced by many storm victims would have been genuinely overwhelming.


Stephen Fay, a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, wrote this story:


Great Barrington -- Bob Collins was as blown away as anybody by the big snow, Oct. 4, which is a little odd since he had known it was coming and had planned for it six months ago.

Last May, in his capacity as program manager for radio station WSBS, he compiled a policy handbook, what he calls a "storm package," that established programming formats designed to serve listeners tuning in during any of four levels of meteorological disturbances ranging from rain-swollen rivers to, as he put it, "total paralysis."

Total paralysis is as good a description as any for the impact of the Oct. 4 blizzard. And through it all, from early morning to late at night, Collins' storm package (and voice) provided listeners in South and Central Berkshire County with information, weather updates, help, tips and, as the grateful Great Barrington Civil Defense director put it, comfort.

As a result of the station's fast and facile assumption of the role of storm-information center, it has become a candidate for canonization among the many listeners who lacked power, lights, phone, transportation and heat. It's not just that he station was broadcasting -- it was broadcasting valuable information in the form of itnerviews with utilities' spokesmen, current weather reports, cancellations, and sources of help and shelter.

"It may sound like nobility," Collins said, "but it was part of a plan."

Collins, 33, said he is no fan of what he calls "stream-of-consciousness radio." he likes to plan ahead and organize the station's day. When he first came on board last April, the station's music policy was DJ's choice.

"Lawrence Welk would be followed by Whitney Hosuton and then some old song by Walter Brennan," he recalled.

He worked at rationalizing the music menu, allocating so much time for oldies, so much time for contemporary. He weeded out some strange records ("the Ballad of the Green Berets" was an early casualty) and threw away all the elevator music.

Beyond that, he said, he has tried to make the station a part of the life of the community. Fundraisers for sick children, such as Jared's Jamboree and HUSTLE, the SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) auction, and the effort to raise money to bring a Spanish boy to the Berkshires received the station's cooperation in the form of live broadcasts and plenty of on-air promotions and public service announcements.

The news coverage got a little broader and more ambitious under Collins' direction. he's not exactly taking bows for that advance, because Collins, who gets his feelings hurt when criticized, has gotten his feelings hurt a lot by angry selectmen, irritated listeners and aggravated advertisers.

Interestingly, he's not all that comfortable with praise. The praise from many quarters that's been coming in since last Sunday ought to be shared with his colleagues, he said, and really should go to the electric company and telephone crews who worked without rest to restore service.

"We were just sitting in a warm room passing on information," he said.

His journey to that warm room at WSBS has been long and bumpy. Born in Fitchburg, the youngest of five children of an insurance agent father and housewife mother, he developed an interest in radio early on. He used to record records on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and then play the DFJ -- announcing the hits and providing patter between platters.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in mass communications from Boston's Emerson College and landing his first radio job right after graduation in 1972, selling advertising for a little station in Marlboro. He didn't like ad sales and wasn't any good at it, either. He lasted a week. He got a DJ job at a station in Southbridge -- a 90-mile round trip commute from Fitchburg -- working six days a week for $110 a week. Then he got a better offer from the Fitchburg station, WFGL, and had his baptism under snow during the big blizzard of 1978 when he was one of the only staff members to make it to the station. He learned the value of making the station accessible to listeners, he said, as he took calls and did what he could do to let people know what was going on.

That year, he took a newsman's job at WBEC in Pittsfield, covering City Council meetings and other events. It was a good period, he said, for he liked working with Bob Cudmore, George Bulgarelli and others associated with the station at that time.

But WBEC changed hands and job security became a questiion, he said, so he bailed out and landed at WUPE, another rewarding interval darkened only by the time he forgot to throw a switch while making a personal phone call, drowning out a Zayre's commercial with language that was somewhat unfortunate.

Opportunity, in the form of WHDH in Boston, knocked in 1981, and there he worked until WCVB-TV in Boston hired him to write TV news copy. He said he didn't mind the anonymity of the news writer -- "I've always been content to be Joe Nobody" -- but the caste system of the anchorman and on-air "news personalities" turned him off. He went on to New York City to work for RKO Broadcasting until his father-in-law, Donald Thurston, owner of Berkshire Broadcasting, called in August of 1985 and asked if he would like to bring his wife, Carolie, and 2-year-old son, Sean, back to the Berkshires. Thurston wanted Colling to try the new position of program manager at WSBS.

He took over last spring and, judging from the response to his "storm package," he's been doing OK. But there have been many tough moments -- an on-air retraction over a mix-up in the coverage of the covered-bridge hassle in Sheffield and complaints from listeners who say there's too much rock-and-roll, too many changes.

He takes the criticism the way he takes his responsibilities: to heart. Does he ever think about giving up and getting out?

"Yeah, all the time."

I sent the article to my mother. Her reaction? "You called me a housewife," she fumed.