Analogs and Epilogues
Rewinding the tape for a new listen to the decades and decadence
NEW YORK — Overshadowed by the Empire State Building six blocks to the south, the 23-story high-rise originally known as the American Radiator Building has not received much notice in the neighborhood since its 102-story bigger sister was completed in 1931, seven years after the Gothic Revival and Art Deco headquarters for the heating device company took up residence on W. 40th Street.
A century later, many who bother to look up at what is now the Bryant Park Hotel (racks rate north of $500/night), probably do not have much appreciation for it amid the Midtown’s newer skyscrapers. Out with the old, in with the new, you know. But when the reflection of the sunset is just right, the black and gold glitters with a dignity that the taller and newer buildings cannot command.
I was treated to a view of the unusual edifice when invited up to NPR’s New York City bureau by my longtime and Fukushima meltdown fellow traveler, Doualy Xaykaothao, during one of her weekend newscasting shifts. I did not arrive empty-handed, delivering a dinner of Virgil’s BBQ she could wolf down in between her top-of-the-hour broadcasts. In my few seconds in the claustrophobic booth from where she goes live, I noted the absence of any mechanical sliders and switches to adjust levels or play the soundbites (which presumably exist now only in a digital cloud hovering somewhere more elevated than the Empire State Building).
Despite my very digital presence, I miss the analog.
The big Bakelite knobs and dials of the already-obsolete control boards I first manipulated at radio stations KLAV, KVEG and KORK in Las Vegas were reassuring to a novice once past the initial stage of intimidation. The levels exhibited by the needles of the VU meters were real, not some animated facsimile like on today’s equipment. When you hear something go wrong on a radio newscast these days it’s probably because some digital gremlin glitched and the panicky anchor or producer is furiously tapping on the unresponsive touchscreen.
I don’t have any photos of me at a control board from that era so here’s one of Tim Smith that is eerily reminiscent. I had a hairstyle and mustache like Tim’s, similar glasses and even that shirt (which will certainly come back into fashion any year now).
Fortunately, amid all the digitalia inside the NPR studio there was a piece of equipment that compelled me to emit a comforting sigh.
That’s a Studer A807 loaded with Ampex reel-to-reel tape, now worth many thousands of dollars. I suspect any recent college graduate with a broadcast journalism degree would be terrified if asked to operate this machine. It was state-of-the-art when introduced in 1986. The next year Sony would unveil Digital Audio Tape and DAT was the beginning of the end for analog.
Just as when the rectilinear design of International Style replaced Art Deco on the Manhattan skyline, something beautiful was lost when audio digitized and miniaturized.
Doualy is definitely digital. Very busy digital. In between newscasts, she told me about her latest reporting trip for her independent podcast series: “The Ones Who Guard Ukraine.” Stay tuned for that.
I left Doualy to her own digital devices and headed south to drink sake and eat izakaya fare with another long-time friend — who just happens to be one of the best journalistic minds on all terrible things Russia vs. Ukraine, that Pale of Settlement from whence our forebearers had the good sense and luck to escape before the pogroms amplified to the Holocaust.
Simon Ostrovsky of the PBS Newshour was just back from Kyiv. He’s spent as much time there in recent decades as any non-Ukrainian journalist I know. Simon does not like Putin and I think the feeling is mutual.
By the time the kara-age arrived at our table in some joint (not the one in the video below) in the Japanized if not gentrified Lower East Side, I think I had convinced a somewhat skeptical Simon that what the digital audio world really needs is just one more podcast.
Someone has to counterbalance the blather of the most famous but far less traveled who sit before their USB-connected microphones. I am baffled how they attract audiences in the tens of millions with false bravado and international ignorance.
Journalists such as Simon, Doualy — and maybe me — could elucidate the confusing, messed-up world by detailing our decades — with only the slightest embellishments for dramatic effect— of intrigue, temptations, death threats, detentions, decadence, tropical diseases, natural and man-made disasters and the plagues upon us.
We could provide useful travel advice, How to cross borders without proper visas. We’ve all done that. Darian Gap? That’s for amateurs!
Doualy, being the sole remaining un-jaded altruist among the world’s press corps, would also have to helm the program’s role of a Robin Quivers, inserting admonishments and illustrating the moral lessons of the foibles of her co-hosts and unfortunate guests.
At one point in the evening, Simon and I may habe settled on a name for the podcast: Turkish Toilet. Under the harsh light of the following morning it didn’t seem like such a great name. And I’m sure the Embassy of Turkey (sorry, Türkiye) would file a démarche. I’m already apologizing.
There is so much more to say about the era when it was a significant effort to produce a radio or TV story or a documentary from afar. No affordable satellite uplinks or internet connections. International calling necessitated a trip to the central post office, not always reachable or advisable amid a coup. There was not going to be film at 11. Maybe 11 days or weeks later. For the most urgent of stories, someone from the crew would convince a trustworthy-looking passenger about to board an international flight to New York to accept a couple canisters of film to hand off to a network courier upon landing at LaGuardia. (This was decades before any air traveler was ever asked: “Did you accept any packages from strangers? Did you pack everything yourself?”)
The complexity of international communication once allowed the luxury of nocturnal frivolity among the cadre of correspondents. Prior to the era of around-the-clock deadlines (thank you, CNN) the only way for a desperate editor to reach an off-the-clock reporter was to dispatch a Telex message which certainly would not be read by the recipient until sobriety well after sunrise.
Analog downtime allowed reflection, spirited discussion about the despot about to be deposed and chewing on the philosophical lessons of the carnage with colleagues and rivals (who might try to sabotage any competitor’s scoop as all was fair back then in love, war and reportage).
I would like to weave this thread into something more elaborate and consequential. Perhaps into a pilot pitch for that podcast. But I am no longer in a remote posting across oceans nor undistracted for hours or days to contemplate. Two cell phones in my pockets chirp like annoying crickets. Each hour, 50 more emails in the inboxes of my four accounts. Editors and colleagues assume the courtesy of a response at most hours.
There was once a compelling reason not to dispatch a riposte past twilight — the fogged and exhausted mind, further addled by pre-somnolent libation, could compel the middle finger to type an undiplomatic reply.
Noctem sequitur lux.