I spent most of my teenage years immersed in a radical outsider artform: AM radio.
Every weeknight from 8 to 11 p.m., San Francisco station KSFO played one hour of radio dramas, one hour of vintage comedy shows, and one hour of tracks from comedy albums. The Shadow, Suspense, Dragnet; Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen; Tom Lehrer, Firesign Theater, Bob Newhart.
My gosh, it was wonderful!
And my gosh, what a nerd I was.
In addition to being tremendously entertaining, the programs gave me great respect for creative artists of the past. Radio performers were toying with their medium—breaking the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience, parodying commercials and newscasts, doing callbacks that rewarded long-time listeners who paid close attention—in very clever ways. The “theater of imagination” conjured more comedy and terror than film could ever depict.
In my field of comics, too many cartoonists don’t know their own medium’s history. Creators such as Winsor McCay, Cliff Sterrett, and George Herriman were doing work a century ago that would be heralded as graphic and storytelling genius if it were published as new today. It holds up. They still have much to teach anyone willing to learn.
“Everything old is new again.”
Disc jockey John Gilliland hosted KSFO’s programs and did a lovely job cultivating a community of listeners in the night. We were all out there, in our bedrooms or cars or with a transistor radio earpiece in our ear, thrilling and laughing, alone but together.
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