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Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation |
Author: Marc Fisher
Published: 2007-01-09 |
List price: $27.95
Our price: $18.45
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As of: November 21st, 2008 05:32:20 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 A Good Read For Radio Fans
Marc Fisher's "Something In The Air" should be required reading for anyone entering the radio business. I've been behind the mic for 30+ years, but wish I had read this at the beginning of my career.
The book really helps to define how music-oriented radio came to prominence, and the roles that individual stations played in their communities and in the socio-economic evolution of the 1950s through today.
My only complaint is Fisher seems to lean too heavily on East coast and Midwest radio, overlooking much of the pioneering work done by West Coast stations. For example Wolfman Jack only gets 4 pages, 2 of them devoted to the Wolfman's ill-fated stint in New York, years after he became legendary for his broadcasts to the western U.S. from just over the Mexican border.
But that's a minor complaint. The book is well-written and a good history of rock radio in the U.S.
 +1/2 -- Broadcast radio from the challenge of TV to the invention of podcasts
Fisher's history of radio stretches from the medium's shove from the living room (by TV) in the late `40s to its shove aside by the internet and iPod. In between he chronicles the social, political and business forces that led to radio broadcasting's multiple re-inventions. The breadth of Fisher's focus is both a blessing and a curse: by taking in 60 years he's able to show common patterns and the relentless force of commerce, but by telling the story in vignettes of personalities, there's ten times as much omitted as included. What comes across by book's end is that Fisher is a better analyst than he is a storyteller. His descriptions of seminal radio people never quite reach the level of excitement or magnetism of their subjects, and his New Yorker styled interwoven narratives are often more frustrating than compelling. Fisher's bias to the East Coast, and to New York radio in particular, is obvious, and his lengthy discourses on Jean Shepherd and Bob Fass will be interminable to many. Better are his profiles of those who were behind-the-mic forces, such as consultant Lee Abrams. His analysis of radio as a numbers game, and the confluence of surveys, statistics and deregulation make the second half of the book a winner. His description of how the fragmentation of radio formats in the 1970s has come back to haunt oldies radio is particularly enlightening. Over and over he describes how the inexorable march of commerce rules radio, and how research-oriented programming drove radio into a dead-end. This is worthwhile reading, but more for the analysis than the profiles. 3-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]
Wonderfully told, with surprising content
Two metrics by which to judge a survey are whether what you know to be true matches what the author says and whether there is information that is fresh and new to the reader. I have no problems with Marc Fisher on the first point, and it is on the second point where the book really shines.
I grew up as a middle-of-the-baby-boomer listening to Top 40 Chicago stations, early FM campus radio, and the rise of album-oriented FM. I thought I knew something about radio's history. Nope. With little anecdotes and lengthy stories, Mr. Fisher provided background and analysis from the early days up to the present. The most pleasant are easily the rise of Top 40 with Todd Storz and a wonderfully written piece on Jean Shepherd. Several other bits follow closely behind.
The author moves along at a nice pace, perhaps using his columnist's talent for compact writing and interviewing. No sections were duds, although a few may have gone on a tad long for unfamiliar readers. For example, Bob Fass meant little to me in advance and wasn't particularly interesting here, either. We can cut the author some slack for a bit of partiality toward the radio of his beloved New York.
The fun fades some as the book moves closer to the modern age of homogenized, pre-packaged radio. Fisher's analysis of how that happened and why that's bad seems spot-on, and he's not afraid to complain. Even NPR takes its lumps for turning into just another market-driven vehicle that moved away from its mission and roots. His look at podcasts, web radio, satellite radio and other alternatives and trends makes for interesting reading, and he highlights the conflict between nationwide reach, affinity groups, and local content. Fisher clearly believes that radio's soul belongs to local flavor and variety, and that passion helps energize the book.
Will the radio of today and the next decade inspire that passion in others, as it did for a young Marc Fisher with his transistor? Read this book and listen to the radio and you'll probably think not, but with the way radio has changed even in a single lifetime and with such a diverse country, who knows?
An Absorbing and Enlightening Page-Turner, with Few Errors
I had to read this book twice. The first time I started with the Jean Shepherd section, then skipped around. After I made it through all the pages, I didn't want the book to be over, so I read it from beginning to end. That is how absorbing Something in the Air is; Fisher has put together fascinating strings of anecdotes and facts, well-cemented with narrative and a bit of his own opinion, and given us the evolution of radio as experienced by listeners, station owners, management, deejays, and other air personalities, and he's shown us all the angles--legal, commercial, esthetic, and ethical.
The book won't please everyone, and anyone who reads it is going to say "What about ____?" and "Why didn't he tell the story of _____?" The answer to that is, of course, that everything wouldn't fit into the book. Having written quite a bit on radio history, I can tell you that Fisher's research and interviews probably left him with half again as much material as he put into the book. That's always the burden of the competent author: what do put in and what do I leave out?
As other reviewers have pointed out, there are a few errors here and there. I won't dwell on those; the book is so valuable that they are of little consequence. It would be nice if the author posted an errata sheet at his blog, though.
And I have to say that the story of the WOR I, Libertine hoax that Jean Shepherd and Ian Ballantine perpetrated, aided and abetted by Theodore Sturgeon's ghost-writing, is worth the price of the book on its own. And there are other anecdotes that equal that one.
Fisher might have overdone some of the topics, falling at the feet of radio "gods," for instance. But I was pleased to see that he didn't harp on Don Imus or Howard Stern to please readers, nor did he haul out other celebrities the way some overly self-conscious writers feel obligated to do when writing about the famous.
Did I mention how good the writing is? Good enough to keep you turning the pages. Fisher is a good stylist. He also has a journeyman technique, as illustrated by the fascinating build-up to Rush Limbaugh's triumph. Among other things.
There's nothing more to say, other than this book does for radio what Michael Korda's Another Life did for book publishing.
--Mike
Absolutely riveting
This is less a review and more an enthusiastic recommendation. As a Brit, many of the presenters' names in this book (apart from, say, Stern and Limbaugh) meant little to me but I still found this book absolutely unputdownable. This is testament to a) my radio "geekiness" and - more importantly - b) Marc Fisher's skills as a writer, historian and storyteller. A fascinating history of radio in the US with many a good story tucked away in the endnotes. Highly recommended.
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