Give me a "P"... Give me an "O"

This isn't the first time I've stolen an idea from Andy Palumbo, and it likely won't be the last. Andy's a bright guy. I've been telling him that for years. He won't listen.

Damned kids.

A recent post of his, though, tied in nicely with recent remarks I'd made about WARM. My contention was that WARM once treated its listeners like errant children.

Yes, I could be an errant child. That was a lifetime ago.

And so it is I borrow from a man whose "career path" and mine run side by side. Though the years may not fall into line side by side, the places and mediums do indeed.

Andy had some problems with the term "pissed off." Surely the term bothers him none. I know Andy. His trouble was with the trouble others have in using the term on the air. Not using it for shock value, mind you. No, not at all.

Andy wasn't sitting there scowling at Mrs. Clark, debating whether or not to say, "You know, Noreen, this forecast really pisses me off."

While I'm at it, I have to confess that typing it out here is making me squirm some - and I'm also wondering where the term originated. Why "pissed off?" Who came up with that?

My mouth can be as foul, or as sophisticated, as any particular situation dictates. Even still, this isn't about obscenities. What it is about is having the arrogance to act as surrogate Mommy, Daddy, Aunt Helen, Uncle Ed, and Grandma and Gramps to, in this case, a television audience.

It's about protecting people that neither need nor want your protection. It's about sheltering those who'd rather you'd leave them alone and quit telling them what they can and cannot hear, what they should and should not hear. It's about abandoning the notion that anyone has any right to tell adults what's good for them and what is not.

The term POed has become part of the lexicon, certainly acceptable in even the most delicate of company. Heck (or maybe even Hell!), suck has likewise become an everyday word to be used in a variety of ways and situations by those of any social status and just about any age.

Do I really need to make an establishing statement about what suck really means? We all know, right?

If not, by golly, you might not be old enough to have unsupervised access to the internet.

Shucks, you might not be old enough to visit the bathroom alone.

Gosh, dare I go on?

Jeepers Catfish, what to do?

The context in which Andy encountered the dilemma about using the term "pissed off" was within the coverage of a very important news story, a story in which an individual who they sought out for a comment used the term.

If your interviewee, known also as "the soundbite," says "pissed off," then put it on the air. If you can't find the gumption to go where you should with this, then leave the soundbite out altogether, don't censor it, don't feel the need to protect your viewers. They don't want to be protected.

I don't want to be protected, don't want you thinking for me.

I don't want your shielding me from real words used by real people in real situations. Worse yet, most offensive of all, is that those who tut-tut over hearing the words on TV use them all the time themselves. I know my share of these people. Their hypocrisy is galling.

And let's not lose sight of the fact that these are words that we, as in us English talkers, created. They're not on those tablets, there is no "...in vain" involved here. These are simple words, letters arranged such that some prude somewhere decided they were improper.

So, Andy, you've got me in your corner. But I caution you that a mutual friend of ours once scolded me harshly for using the term "Mister Poopie-Pants" on the air. I wonder if he remembers. I wonder if he's embarrassed.

Maybe he's still pissed-off.

If so, he might consider what I heard over and over again from a wee lad forward in my not so proper growing-up neighborhood, "Better pissed off than pissed on."

WARM Tanks...Part #2

Realizing that my last post about WARM might've been somewhat edgy, I thought it a good idea to sit and watch WARMland Remembered again. So, I did.

Saturday evening I sat through yet another broadcast of this memorable program produced by WVIA.

The show sure has its moments. Every so often you could darned near go a bit weepy for the good old days, scant few as they were.

Admittedly, my previous post may have been snarky. Some situations call for snark, so if you're an honest type, you go with it. I did.

With that admission, I'll be sticking with my previous post. After watching WARMland Remembered, my recollections and observations about WARM snapped into even sharper focus.

Once great, once the legit market leader, and a singularly strong one at that, WARM fell victim to its own smugness, its own vanity. Foolish in its belief that it could dictate tastes, wants, and needs, WARM moved further and further afield of serving its listeners.

WARM developed a position that seemed to be, "We'll tell you what you want and need, then give it to you...maybe." WARM began treating its listeners like errant children.

WARM management had adopted an attitude of "Our way or the highway." Given enough time, most people headed on down that highway, leaving WARM behind and befuddled as to what went wrong.

Lots went wrong.

One startling move was the introduction of play-by-play sports to WARM's schedule.

Among the most notable reasons so many people loved WARM was that it didn't clutter up its programming with baseball, football, basketball play-by-play.

Sports? Yep, plenty of sports, done about the best and always right up to the minute in the market, via 20/20 Sports with Ron Allen and the news department. Scores, stats, and pertinent information, all yours on WARM without the clutter. I will forever contend that WARM made its first disastrous turn when it began carrying PSU Football somewhere in the mid to late 70s.

Which brings me to what I feel is a valid point; WARM was headed in a wrong direction long, long before most would admit. It wasn't until seeing WARMland remembered again, and tempered by WARM going away for good, that I heard things I'd missed many times before.

If you watch and listen, you'll find within the words of Bill Kelly, Tommy Woods, Terry McNulty, George Gilbert, Harry West, Joey Shaver, and Lenny Woloson, an acknowledgment that things were bad, and sliding towards worse, a great many years ago. If these gentlemen knew it, it wasn't exactly a guarded secret.

Their sense of discretion may have prevented them from shouting it at passing cars, though it is inarguable that they all knew.

You also might come to understand that those Golden Years at WARM were few, that they likely ended before the '60s did. In an act of generosity, most concede that WARM was the monster through much of the '70s. The actual fact is that WARM was king of an increasingly steeper and more menacing hill until 1981.

I'll wrap up commenting on WARM with a couple things.

1) Over on the right is the cover of the last edition of The WARM Cookbook, an extremely popular promotion. I had the privilege of editing that last edition. It was tough, and that's no joke. We asked for recipes on the air, we got them by the sackful in the mail. Thousands, and it could have been literally tens of thousands of recipes from viewers. We rejected recipes by what was probably a twenty to one ratio, at least.

2) Take a good look at that logo. That is the logo of the radio station that was supposed to the voice of NE PA, fun listening, contemporary, on top of it all. The last thing that logo says to me is fun. It looks like it was designed by a committee of accountants.

The signs were long there. Many saw them, many did not, and even more saw them and pretended all was well.

The Trouble With Mr. Sorvino....

I've been a fan of Paul Sorvino since first seeing him in a movie called Dummy.

Dummy was a made-for-TV movie (which we all know, often stink by comparison to their theatrical cousins)about a deaf guy accused of killing a prostitute. That deaf young man was played by LeVar Burton, with Sorvino playing the deaf lawyer who becomes his defense attorney, all of which has about zero to do with this post except to establish my being a Sorvino fan.

I've never met the man, although I have been close enough to him to hear his voice. That was during a chat he had with my wife at the Radisson in Scranton several years ago. Carol knew Sorvino from his days in Scranton filming That Championship Season. Carol was his "dresser," she handled his wardrobe for him during all of the Scranton shooting. Paul Sorvino, that day, was in the company of one Martin Sheen, who I also have never met. Again, my wife knows them both. The three of them had a nice chat.

All I got from their chance meeting was the opportunity to name-drop by association.

Sorvino's fondness for Scranton has been a boost to the area, no argument there. That he wanted to shoot a movie here was also pretty heady stuff. That a former Lackawanna County Commissioner handed him a big bunch of county money to help make the movie was a bit troubling at first. Now, yeah, Lackawanna Countians, looks like you've been had.

That movie, The Trouble with Cali, will never see the light of day, and we all know that. The money that the county "spotted" Sorvino is also never to be seen again.

I keep reading about meetings and missives and phone calls regarding the movie and the money. The one thing that hops out and pokes me in the eye is this; the principal photography for The Trouble with Cali was shot three years ago.

Three years ago.

Given styles of hair, clothes, make-up, given Sorvino's claims that the movie could be released in four or five months, which means that photography will then be close to four years old, am I the only one who thinks that this movie just might look a little goofy because it will be obviously out of date when it's released? I am assuming it's not a "period piece."

All academic points, since it won't be finished in four or five months, or ever. The real trouble with Cali is that we'll never see The Trouble with Cali.

WARM Tanks...

I could sit here and make with the nicey-nice about WARM's passing, and what a great radio station it was, and what a crying shame it is that it's gone.

I can't do that.

The time for wailing and sighs of disbelief is long past.

People need to get a grip.

People need to realize that the WARM you may have loved has been gone for a long, long time.

Any "love affair" I had with the place ended shortly after I went to work there. Whatever warts, pimples, and wrinkles WARM had on the outside looked far more hideous from the inside.

While I'll not dance a hornpipe on the grave of WARM, mourning its loss is not a day late and a dollar short, it's decades late and millions short. I don't think it's great that its gone, I really don't think it's going dark means much of anything to anyone here in 2009. It's a matter of relevance, something WARM surrendered way back when.

Know this, a lot of good friends were made while there. Some living, some not. It changes nothing.

Regardless of what you might think, I also grew up in the shadow of the giant, I also went through grade and high school, and college years, and most of my 20s listening to WARM. WARM was then the radio station of record in NE PA, The Standard Radio Station of this corner of Pennsylvania, a distinction it did indeed deserve...back then. Back then would be the '70s, latest.

Once the '80s dawned, different days awaited WARM. The beast was out of the cave. That beast was FM. Or maybe it was more like FM was the troll that had lived beneath the Radio Bridge forever and had now climbed into the sunlight.

"FM intrusion" is how much of AM management used to refer to the rising popularity of FM, like FM had no right to exist, like it was a threat and a danger that could be stopped, like the barbarians of FM could be turned back at WARMland's gate. Such fools.

It was delusional thinking.

More important, the smart heads in radio as far back as the 70s knew that AM's end days were upon them, that they were very real, that the AM party was over and FM was going to have the pleasure of turning out the lights.

Some AM lights went dim then dark long before others.

WARM, likely because of it size, strength, and image, managed to lumber along through the 80s with respectable numbers. Defying most odds, WARM held on to the #1 position in this market until WKRZ knocked it off the perch, upon which it was never to sit again.

(I can't sign an affidavit to this, but I believe that it was '82 or '83 when 'KRZ did something no other station had ever been able to do in well over 20 years.) ***Since writing that, Andy Palumbo tells me it was 1981.***

For a respectable time, WARM maintained a sizable market share, WARM still had a lot of listeners. WARM also had a lot of something else; it had a lot of down-time. Down-time in the radio biz is those parts of any given hour when the audience stops listening to your station and goes to another. What's happening is that your audience still listens for certain things you offer, like "First News First," while turning away from you for most of what they want.

WARM's down-time was increasing such that it scared its owners, who knew well enough early in the '80s to bolster their market presence with an FM. Thus was born Magic 93. Thus WARM's favorite child status began to show signs of being a little threadbare, a bit worn and ragged.

In time, WARM's owner, Susquehanna Broadcasting, sold its properties here in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, leaving behind the station that had in all reality made Susquehanna a very successful and profitable company. Although headquartered in York, Pennsylvania, Susquehanna had considered WARM its Flagship Station for decades. No more.

Since I worked at WARM I get a pass on speaking my mind, just like being Irish gives you a pass when you feel compelled to tell an Irish joke, or perhaps, take an unkind swipe at parade weekend.

WARM was not a good place to work. Although it had is ups, downs, and in-betweens, it was on balance, a lousy place to work. That I spent seven long years of my life there doesn't say much about me, does it? And I'm admitting that right here and now. That, though, doesn't change the fact that the inside of WARM was nothing like the outside of WARM.

Some may think it unkind, inappropriate, almost blasphemous to trash the WARM of the their dreams. To them, all that can be said is, "You never worked there, did you? You simply do not know, cannot know."

WARM is gone. The world is not a better place because it is, but it certainly hasn't been a better place for its existence since around the time that Springsteen's "Born In The USA" peaked at #9 across the land - a song which WARM never played.

And therein you'll find one telling symptom of the systemic disease that first took WARM to its knees, then shoved it face-first into the canvas.

While Americans were singing along with The Boss about lovin' this great country of ours, WARM was falling further and further out of touch with its audience, probably hoping that Lobo would release a new and innocuous single. It's been a long fall.

Remember, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.

WARM's going away is not a shock, it's long overdue.

Intermodal Requires Modes...

Intermodal Transportation Centers are pretty darned popular at present. Wilkes-Barre's is going up before onlookers' "sidewalk supervising" of the project.

In Scranton, I will confess, the status of that Intermodal Center is unclear to me, although it wouldn't take much to find the answer. Scranton's Center was to tie in all forms of mass transit, including that train to NYC. Can you hear me giggling out there?

Williamsport already has such a center.

Hazleton has one on the way.

Transportation must have gotten a big boost in our part of Pennsylvania from all of this inter modeling. We must be going places and getting there in one heck of a hurry, by golly, and we must have lots of choices as to how we do.

Are you kidding me?

You still can't get there from here.

And if you think I'm full of mud, just try traveling Scranton to Williamsport on public transportation. Your choices are thin; Capitol Trailways, that's it. You're looking at a six hour bus ride, two and one half hours of which is spent sitting in Hazleton waiting to make a connection.

Just so we have some idea of what an Intermodal Center is supposed to mean, let's get it out on the table in plain-speak; it's a centralized location for the transfer of travelers between air, rail, bus, cab, and rental cars.

Do any of the aforementioned existing or under construction Intermodal Centers offer connections to a single airport? Connections to any rail service? To wide and far reaching bus service? Rental cars will be available?

No to all of the above.

I somehow can't imagine someone, anyone, coming down from Carbondale on a COLTs bus, then renting an SUV to drive on over to visit his sister in Hyde Park.

Does anyone in Parsons think they can take the LCTA bus downtown to the new Intermodal Center, then hop the shuttle out to the airport?

Is this some sort of "build it and they will come" dream? If so, the price tag is a little heavy, not to mention the folly of us trying to be something we are not, not even close.

Frankly, I don't know what's going on here. I have no idea why these facilities are being built.

If you don't have "modes" to "inter" with one another, you don't need an intermodal center.

The Pardeesville bus and a Hazle Yellow Cab don't give you much to hang the term "intermodal" on, no matter how you twist and turn it. Oh, sure, that cab could get you out to the Airport Beltway, then into the airport, that would be the airport with no scheduled flights.

We don't have the modes. We don't need the centers.

First, we need the service.

Too late now, they're on the way...just like that train to NYC.

____________________________________________________________________

Paul Stueber offers this poser:

"...no one could tell me if I'm supposed to drive my car to the parking lot to take a bus--or take the bus downtown to the parking lot to pick up my car."

Falling From Fitness...

Over my adult life there have been several different levels of fitness in the physical sense. I don't suspect this qualifies me for some sort of bailout or aid, since most everyone plays the game. Or perhaps better put, they often enough don't play the game. And although there is strong correlation between mental and physical fitness, let's just isolate the body angle this time around.

I am in really lousy shape.

This shocks me?

Of course not. I put myself in lousy shape from the first day in this new job, which is now a little over two an one half years old.

See, for years and years, I could never figure out what it was people did behind office walls and doors for hours on end each and every day of the week. I now know.

You may work your butt off in an "office" job while never getting off your butt. That's about the size of it.

As a kid, like all kids, you walked everywhere. By default of being a kid, you were in good shape.

Those awkward teen years had me still walking for the most part. Not having enough money to buy a car, I really didn't own a dependable ride until I was maybe nineteen. Even in that particular situation, "dependable" was a very vague term.

In my 20s and on the job meant getting that first real car of my own. This brought about a downward spiral in exercise and subsequent fitness.

By my mid 20s, it was back to fitness. That's when I fell in love with ten speed bicycles and rode long and hard every single day, weather permitting. Anything with less than three wheels doesn't do well in snow and a grown man on a tricycle with a little tinkle bell on the handle bar doesn't look good.

Cycling kept me in probably the best shape of my life into my 30s, that's when the knees started squawking. Off the bike, I was back on my feet and walking/running Lake Scranton on a regular basis, usually every day.

Right around forty, it was back on wheels. OK, one wheel. I bought a stationary bike that I'd pump and pedal for a half hour each day while planted in front of the TV watching All My Children before going to work. That, too, had to end, because my knees required being completely slathered with some brand of cold-hot topical in order to deaden the pain.

Never forget the added magic that a stationary bike offers. Somehow, those bikes that go nowhere make time stand still.

And so on and on and on, the rhythm of keeping fit rises, falls, and stalls.

Then, about five or six years ago, I got serious about walking again. It was an unalterable routine; one hour minimum of tough, fast, as much uphill as flatland walking. Every day, in all weather, sixty minutes minimum, with most days hitting more like an hour and fifteen.

Yeah, some days it was an enormous hardship to get on my legs and hit the pavement. Some days, I hated it, dreaded it, but I did it, that was all that mattered.

Feeling a very strong need to run, or at least jog, my knees put the screws to that in a hurry. From a "wind" standpoint, running was no problem. My knees just said no.

And so did my doctor when he pointed out that the benefits of walking are roughly equal to those of running. The big difference is that you don't blow out your knees and have to start shopping for a surgeon to replace them.

Factor in a couple years of near sedentary behavior and we come right to this very moment, when I just returned from a really good walk of about forty minutes.

I plan on doing the same tomorrow, and the day after, and...

Let's just see if I can get that far.

Which One of You Is Chicken Little?

Clucking, whispering, winking and nodding, people have spoken of WYOU News' sky falling for a long, long time.

Rumors, "facts," innuendo, gut feelings, whatever, the sky had been alleged to be falling on that operation for probably beyond a decade. I will say again that my only surprise is that it didn't come crashing down sooner.

I'd like to tell you that countless people have asked me about WYOU calling it quits...I can't.

Countless haven't asked. Those who have mentioned it add roughly the following caveat, "...well, I'm not really all that surprised."

That alone is a sad lack of tribute to those who worked there, those especially who stood before cameras each day and tried to comport themselves in a fashion more consistent with a station of sizable audience.

And therein lies one of the myriad reasons WYOU News is no more.

Few watched, fewer cared enough to mark its passing, to be nosy enough to need to know just what happened. It truly did end with whimper and not bang. It's been less than a week since it happened and boards and blogs have all but fallen silent on the matter.

So, what did happen?

Opinions are about all you'll get from me. Being formerly associated with the corporate tangle that operated WYOU News, or more accurately, "provided news services" for WYOU, my opinions, unlike WYOU viewers, are indeed countless.

None of them are very flattering.

It all came down to a matter of neglect, plain and simple neglect. The only question left hanging would be, was it neglect of thoughtlessness, or neglect of design?

When WYOU's present owners purchased that station I once worked for, it became clear in both abundance and a hurry that WYOU was being shoved into the backseat, that it was to be treated like the poor stepchild. We lived in the big house on the hill, WYOU had that little shack of a place down below.

The little shack's gone, the sky fell on it. The big house stands. If clocks still ticked, you just might hear one somewhere off in the distance. Or maybe it's another piece of the sky starting to crack, someday likewise to fall.

This Just In...And I'm Not Shocked

Well, not really "just in," I knew about this early today from an informed source. C'mon, I spent over thirty years in the news business hereabouts. Contacts develop, if only by happenstance, if only because you stayed at the dance too long. I stayed at the dance too long. They finally tossed me out.

Although I knew fecal and fan were coming together today on South Franklin Street, it wasn't until I was physically on South Franklin Street at the right moment this very afternoon that I heard the particulars. A couple seconds either way and I would have missed an encounter.

Coming out of a very productive and pleasant meeting around 2:15 PM, I spotted a former colleague on the opposite side of the street. He didn't look good. No name, OK, but he didn't look good.

Seeing me, he came over to my side of the street, where the sun was starting to come out. On his side, the clouds were dark and dreary, as was he.

He gave me the highlights, such as he had them. The WYOU bomb had dropped only minutes before that second when we stood and talked for the first time in almost three years.

Beale's Bites is where you might want to be, so get on over and learn more, or maybe leave a thought or two.

WYOU's collapse has been in the wind for years. Today's developments, while most unpleasant for many, are of zero surprise to me. Good luck to all whose pain I've known myself.

What Makes This Happen?

OK, I know there are a million and three things that come along with advancing age.

Gravity starts to to do what it does best, and things go saggy and baggy. And I don't want to hear how you can prevent that from happening.

I say you can't.

You can slow it, stunt it, hide it. You can't stop it. Look hard in that mirror, the full-length one, in a room where you have privacy. Somewhere upon your person, Demon/Demoness Gravity has been pulling and pulling.

Sure, you can fix it, you can get in there with scalpel and skill and make things look good again, that's about it. Or you could try and cheap it out with someone who has a scalpel and not quite the level of skill you'd hoped for. Then not only don't you look good, you have people looking at you not so good.

You ache, you creak, you crack, you groan. Your knees holler at you all the time. You get down, there's pain in getting back up. You move the wrong way and it's good morning to a layer of some icy gel and and hopes of making an afternoon visit with the chiro.

All of this, I can live with, I can understand, it all makes sense. Time takes a toll. Or as I once remarked, "Time takes no prisoners, it leaves them to mourn." That might be profound.

What stumps me all to hell is this, the big question, the one that has me not only scratching my head, but annoying me no end.

Why were you able to get up, get ready, and get out of the house in, let's say, a half hour, once upon a time, when it now takes you an hour to do the same?

An hour? Hold it. It's more like an hour minimum. Some mornings, and it really isn't confined to mornings, it can take me ninety minutes to simply get out of bed, do the morning basics, and walk out to the truck and back out of the driveway.

I don't know what went wrong. Somewhere, somehow, something or someone stole up to an hour from me, gobbled it up doing whatever it is that takes a lot of time.

My routine is llikely what it was twenty, even twenty-five years ago. Then I could be on my way to work in thirty minutes, maybe forty if I sat to look at a paper for a few minutes. So what we have is The Departure Process. Typically, it's The Morning Process. Simple enough, here goes...

The Process...

I arise. Most mornings this is accomplished with weighty reluctance.

I go directly to the shower. Leaning against the wall for what could be all of a full minute, falling back to sleep is not impossible at this point in the process. I do not. I scrub, rinse, shampoo, rinse, and don't repeat.

Finished toweling, and cursing gravity, I now go downstairs to an already made cup of coffee. A slug and glug and it's keep moving.

In the downstairs half-bath I finish things off.

I dress and make sure the pets are fed and watered, also double checking that everything is where it should be, both on me and in the house.

I walk out the door.

I lock the door.

The walk is maybe eight seconds, then the key's in the ignition, and I'm in gear.

Whereupon and almost inevitably, I say to myself, "Fercrissakes, look at the time, I can't get out of this house anymore!"

And you know, I can't, I just can't.