Things You Can't See On the Radio

I have always been fascinated by Howard Stern. I'm not a big fan. I rarely listen to him. But I would tune in, occasionally, when I was on the road all the time.

The thing that fascinated me about him is the naked women on his show. And the thing that fascinated me about the naked women on his show was that, "Um . . . it's RADIO, dude!" In a world of special effects, air brushed flaws, and breast implants, he is able to titillate his audience with WORDS. If it wasn't for his show on E!, we would never have known whether Howard and these women were reading a script or if he was actually using his weird combination of Svengalli and peer pressure to get these deluded women denuded.

But his audience eats it up. They listen with rapt attention as the women's will power is beaten down, the stakes are raised and, slowly, piece-by-piece, her clothing comes off. They, somehow, share her embarrassment while thinking what a dumb ass she is. They relate and berate simultaneously.

Somehow, in a world of flat screen TV's, video iPods, Pixar animation, and other visual and graphic wonders, Howard's audience is asked to use their imaginations. To visualize what they so want to see. It may be the closest many of his listeners have ever come to experiencing what it's like to read.

Yet, I keep coming back to our fascination with naked women on the radio. It is a non-visual medium. There is nothing to actually see. But, on his show, the women are all beautiful and vulnerable whether they are trailer trash or super-models. They are unseen yet forever seared into our memories as if we were there.

I am reading a book called The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont. It is about a lot of the pulp fiction writers of the 1930's. Orson Wells is one of the characters, having brought voice and life to Maxwell Grant's The Shadow series on the radio. One of the innovations Wells brought to The Shadow on his show was the title character's ability to "cloud men's minds" and become, essentially, invisible. When somebody asked Mr. Wells how he got away with having a man turn invisible on the radio, he referred to Edgar Bergan, replying:

"If they'll believe a ventriloquist on the radio, they'll fall for anything."

Apparently, they still do.
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