For most of my life I have been around television and radio. Back in my early days (that means earlier than I care to remember) I produced and voiced a weekly music program on the Woodstock, Ontario, radio station. As a friend of the station’s chief engineer, I also got a good understanding of the technical workings. That experience would prove valuable when I accepted an assignment to a radio studio in South Africa.
When I began helping with production of our church’s two weekly radio programs, things got interesting. To make these programs, we would set up the recording equipment in a living room. During one recording session of a youth program, I positioned myself with the tape recorder behind a sofa pulled out from the wall.
Beyond the sofa, Grace stepped up to a microphone and began singing. Her powerful soprano voice began pinning the needle, so I leaned over the VU meter carefully adjusting levels. About two verses into the song, she abruptly stopped singing. Thinking I had a technical failure I looked up. Grace had vanished. Was this the Biblical rapture that describes people being snatched away? No, we found her stretched out on the floor in a dead faint.
One day the pastor asked me to look after a Sunday morning radio meditation. I would take the visiting speaker to the radio station, assume the announcing duties and do the program live. I had never done live radio. At the studio I picked a record without listening to more than a bar or two before handing it to the operator. I sounded like a pro when I introduced the speaker and the record. I felt like an idiot when the music faded, and a voice said, “This is Charles Fuller, hoping you enjoy this record.” I had selected the introductory cut on the record. We could do nothing but carry on. I swore I would never do live radio again.
A few years later I did three or four live programs on cable TV. I barely remember them, so I assume nothing too serious went wrong. From that experience I went to Africa to produce recorded radio programs, and there things often went wrong. Fortunately, when you record a program you can fix your blunders by just re-recording.
In later years I have switched to print media. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the gremlins that sneak in and upset that business, whether books or newspapers. Too often I was the guy who left the door open and gave them access.
Now things seem to have gone full-circle and I find myself on live radio and television. Since the publication of When Cobras Laugh, written with fellow author, Dr. Don Ranney, we have had many opportunities to appear on radio and TV. It might have something to do with great interviewers like Deb Dalziel of Over the Fence, or Moira Brown, of 100 Huntley Street, because we made no big blunders.
Nobody fainted and nobody played the wrong record or pushed the wrong button. Neither Don nor I had to run to the rest room in the middle of the show. We didn’t pick our noses on camera, or say bad things when we thought the microphone was off, or forget our names. And don’t kid yourselves; when media people deal with old codgers like us, those sorts of things do happen.
Now that I’ve brought age into this discussion, how come I had to wait until I reached my 70s before things started to go right?