#82 Radio

Continuing with the 100 life-enriching little nuances series …

A long time ago, in a galaxy very close to home (okay it was my home), there lived a teenager who didn't have cable TV (because it was invented yet). His TV only had three channels, plus something called PBS that seemed quite stuffy. As a sports fan, he sat at his kitchen table with a radio, a notebook and a pencil and he jotted down stats as he listened to the Creighton Bluejays play basketball and the Kansas City Royals play baseball. And some nights, he inched his way across the radio dial trying to pick up sports from across the country.

Cable TV eventually found its way into his living room and he loved it. But there was always something missing – a certain intimacy that only exists between a radio announcer and his or her audience. All of the stats were on the screen and the calls made by the announcers were still exciting, but the myriad of announcers coupled with the medium of TV just never made me feel as if I knew the announcer. I simply heard him make the call.

Steve Brown had a radio talk
show in Omaha called "Talk of
the Town" (Photo: KKAR)

As I got older, I worked in several office environments and they all allowed employees to listen to the radio at their desks. I branched out from sports to local talk shows and then to Christian radio. A couple of years ago, I wrote about one of the local radio show hosts named Steve Brown who became part of my life during those years. Here are a couple of paragraphs from that post:

One of Brown’s claims to fame was introducing the Beach Boys to the Beatles back when he was a concert promoter. He had programs on three of the largest and most well known radio stations in Omaha over the years. He was a fisherman. He was good friends with Ted Nugent and Senator Ben Nelson. If you follow politics, then you know that Nugent is a staunch conservative while Nelson is a middle of the road Democrat.

I heard Brown tell a story once about a barbeque he had at his house in which Nugent, Nelson and his family, Congressman Lee Terry and his family, several musicians, and a number of other people sat around on his deck for five hours enjoying each other’s company. Brown had a way of moving past partisanship and really listening to people—even if he disagreed with them—maybe even especially if he disagreed with them. More than once, I heard him change his mind on the air while speaking with somebody.

I met Brown a couple of times at functions around town and I wrote to him a few times too. Twice, he read what I wrote on the air. When he died in 2008, I felt like a friend died. I even went to his funeral. That's the type of bond that can develop over the radio airwaves and that bond is the reason I'm a radio guy.