By ED HUNGNESS
A few days ago I was listening to WTCM, my favorite AM radio station, which has been broadcasting in Traverse City since 1941.
It was getting dark when suddenly their signal level dropped significantly and I could hear the crackle of static coming from my radio along with another station, from some far-off place, in the background.
What my ears had witnessed was their nighttime reduction of power from 50,000 watts to 1,100 watts.
This station, like many others, is required by FCC regulations to reduce power at sunset. The reason for this is that AM radio waves travel farther at night and multiple stations across the country are assigned to the same frequency.
Without this nighttime reduction in power, these stations could interfere with one another. Stations that are not required to reduce their power at sunset are called "clear channel" broadcasters and are the only ones assigned to that radio frequency.
Being a radio buff since the '50s, this little listening experience brought back some fond memories of radio's good old days. I feel fortunate to have enjoyed a portion of what was called radio's "golden age." Some refer to the same period of time as "old-time radio," which lasted from the early 1920s until 1962. For most rural areas, this might be considered pre-television days.
My family lived in a farming community in central Illinois. In the early 1950s, few homes in that part of the state had a television set because there weren't any stations close enough to receive a viewable signal.
For those too young to remember, cable did not exist and a "dish" was something you ate off of. There were television stations broadcasting in St. Louis and Chicago but they were out of reception range even with a good antenna. Most households had to wait until a television station was built that was within reception range.
In the corner of the living room sat our "entertainment center." It was a RCA floor-model AM radio.
I marveled that it was also capable of receiving shortwave broadcasts from around the world. It was hooked up to a wire antenna that ran out the window and up onto our roof and then to a tree. At night we could often "pull in" stations from coast to coast when conditions were just right.
My Dad and I would often sit in front of the radio's impressive wood cabinet, with the dial aglow, trying to tune in stations from far-off places. I remember the magic of listening to the BBC broadcasting from London and hearing people on other stations speaking in foreign languages that we couldn't understand. We also listened to the English-language broadcasts of Radio Free Europe during the height of the Cold War.
On weekends, we enjoyed listening to the shows as a family and we had our favorites. On Saturday and Sunday nights we would occasionally eat our dinner sitting on the floor, in front of the radio, with a fire burning in the fireplace and the lights dimmed.
There were comedy shows like Jack Benny, Amos 'n' Andy, and Burns and Allen. My favorites were the thriller mysteries like "Suspense," "Yours Truly Johnny Dollar" and, of course, the "Inner Sanctum Mysteries."
There was nothing quite like a big bowl of buttered popcorn while listening to Matt Dillon, the sheriff on "Gunsmoke," as he dealt with the bad guys.
Laundry detergent companies such as those producing Ivory Soap Flakes and Oxydol sponsored daytime serial dramas that became known as soap operas. I can recall my mom listening to those while she made our lunch.
In the late afternoon, I rushed home from school to listen to "The Cisco Kid" and "The Lone Ranger," which came on just before dinnertime. Like Ralphy in the movie "A Christmas Story," we were encouraged by our radio heroes to drink lots of Ovaltine. Cereal manufacturing companies like Post, Kellogg's and General Mills encouraged young listeners to eat a hearty breakfast of their products.
The amazing phenomenon about listening to radio shows was how your imagination would picture what was happening in the drama. You became so absorbed in the story that you created visual images of the characters that became fixed in your mind just as you do when you read a book. Listeners were frequently quite surprised when they saw a picture of the actor who played their hero on the radio show.
Compared to today, we were living in an age of innocents. Parents didn't concern themselves with the content of the programs to which their children were listening. The programming of that era wasn't saturated with questionable content in order to boost ratings. It was just good wholesome family entertainment during a simpler time.
Ed Hungness and his wife owned their cottage on Fife Lake for six years before moving there after his retirement in 2005. He can be reached at edhungness@yahoo.com. For more of Ed's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/edhungness.
