I first became a huge Howard Stern fan when he was on WNBC here in New York. This was back in the early 1980s when he radically advanced the state of the art of humor on the radio. Despite his huge ratings he had endless clashes with the NBC brass, which led to his firing. Clearly, the hostile environment wasn't a radio "bit," it was real. Stern was always keeping it real. It was all such compelling radio Stern based his biopic movie, "Private Parts," mostly on that time period.
After the NBC canning the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" moved to another NYC station, WXRK, where he was more comfortable and still amazingly funny.
I'd say he jumped the shark when he divorced his wife Alison in 2001. After all of those years of lusting after his female guests he was a free man. Some male listeners expected to be in on Stern's exploits as a single man, but he clammed up. Or maybe it was when his head writer and sidekick Jackie Martling left the show, also in 2001. The energy level dropped a few more points.
If he didn't jump the shark after those losses, Stern surely did after the move to Sirius Satellite Radio. Great, he was rich and uncensored, but the edge was completely gone. To me at least, he seems like he'd rather be somewhere else, enjoying his wealth. He's in his 50s, and the shock jock schtick is wearing thin.
What do you think? Does Stern still have it or has his talent faded away?
Some say it was 'The Best Damn Show on Television.'
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)I've always thought it was strange that so many people who bought VHS tapes rarely watched them. And then a lot of them bought them again on DVD! They needed to own Sex in the City, The Godfather, or the Star Wars trilogy, but never even broke the seal. Maybe they buy them as keepsakes, to remind them how much they loved the film or TV show, but don't actually need to see it. Or they watch it once and that's all they need. Big multi-disc box sets can be daunting, I bet half the ones sold remain unviewed.
Sure, it looks like downloads are the future, but how does that jive with the desire to covet your favorite films? Millions of people keep buying new editions, Director's Cuts, 20th anniversary editions, remastered Sopranos, and some smaller number will buy them again on Blu-ray. Will the keep buying new downloads of old faves?
Maybe it's just that people crave a physical connection to the things they love and virtual facsimiles don't cut it. Physical media may be impossible to replace--its actual usefulness doesn't seem to be the point.
A very small part of my collection.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)I own 3,000 CDs and 4,000 LPs. They take up a lot of space in my apartment, and that's OK with me. They're lined up in metal racks, wood shelving, and stacked up in piles on the floor. But a lot of my friends with just a few hundred CDs are in a big hurry to dump them into their computers and get rid of the discs. I just had lunch yesterday with an audiophile friend who is in the midst of transferring all of his CDs as WAV files to his new HD. As always I'm completely out of step with the times. For me, the joy of sauntering over to the wall and scoping the titles to figure out what I'm going to play next is still so satisfying. I stumble upon stuff I haven't played in years, like the other day I popped on "The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann" and that led to gamelan percussion from Evan Ziporyn, which put me in the mood for Radiohead's "Amnesiac." And so it goes.
I like clutter, it seems to spur creativity, but to most folks it looks like a mess. So maybe the whole move to download music and movies is really based on the urge to purge. That at least makes some sense. That's also a big part of the whole iTunes mindset. But for me, scanning playlists just doesn't have the tactile appeal of fingering CDs or LPs. I like sitting there reading the booklet or just staring at the cover. Which sometimes jogs my memories of buying the music in the first place. The funky store in San Francisco where somebody turned me onto Clifford Jordan's jazz, or the time I was walking through Central Park on a misty April morning listening to Copland's "Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano" on the radio. The music so perfectly fit the scene I headed straight to the Tower Records store on 66th and Broadway and bought it. And now every time I play that CD it takes me back to the day in Central Park. The CD is a physical connection to that day, and I don't want to give that up.
The little black squares on the top of the billboard are the speakers.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)UPDATE: An earlier version of this blog incorrectly described the technology used in an advertisement for the A&E's TV show Paranormal State. The technology, developed by the Holosonic Research Lab, uses a beam of ultrasound as a "virtual source", which changes into audible sound as it travels through the air. Please read the technology's inventor, F_J_Pompei's comment or visit the Holosonic Research Labs site to learn more.
The folks who heard the ad for A&E's TV show Paranormal State emitted from a billboard in New York City's Greenwich Village must have thought it was pretty weird. As they walked into the targeted area they were exposed to highly focused sound. One big advantage of the technology is that it doesn't contribute to ambient-noise pollution. I went to the Village a few days ago to check out the technology, but A&E had already pulled the plug. A&E's PR agency told me the speakers were only active during the first week of the campaign, so you gotta wonder, if it was such a great idea, why turn it off? The billboard is still there.
The phenomenon was covered in a terrific segment on the December 14 On the Media radio program on my local NPR station, WNYC.
The "Audio Spotlight" technology used in the billboard was developed by Holosonic Research Lab. Their Web site claims that "through a combination of careful mathematical analysis and engineering insight, the Audio Spotlight sound system has become the very first, and still the only, sound beam system which generates low-distortion, high-quality sound in a reliable, professional package." Well, I'm not so sure about that.
American Technology Corporation's HyperSonic technology also focuses sound into small beams. The Brooklyn Historical Society is currently using Hypersonic speakers in an exhibit, "In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn's Vietnam Veterans." The show features life-size photographs of the veterans, and when you stand in front of the portrait, the sound system automatically turns on and you hear the soldiers' pre-recorded stories. Many visitors can simultaneously experience the exhibit without hearing other sounds (because the sound is so tightly localized each patron hears only the intended sound).
I found the Hypersonic system worked quite well, but its fidelity was rather limited (it sounded like a small table radio). The oral histories are really interesting, and the Brooklyn Historical Society has a number of exhibitions on view. Check it out.
- prev
- 1
- next
