Just a reminder that the Milkman’s Matinee is on VermontMornings.com every night, seven nights a week, starting at midnight Eastern U.S.  Tune in swingers…

October 1987.  The Royce Hotel in West Palm Beach, right near the airport.  I was working at a radio station that played standards and big bands and we brought Margaret Whiting in for a concert on a Friday night.

The concert was scheduled to start at 8:00 PM.  I had dinner with Miss Whiting (for $29, it was a seafood buffet with all-you-can-eat lobster!) and at 7:30, we went into a quiet room so I could record a ten-minute interview for airing the next day.  We talked about the songs she would be singing, about her father, the songwriter Richard Whiting, and the man who became her surrogate father when Richard Whiting died (she was just six), Johnny Mercer.  I said “Tell us something we don’t know about Johnny Mercer.”  She looked off into the distance and said “He loved trains….”  And she explained how the trains became part of the soundtrack of standards like “Blues In The Night” and “I Thought About You.”  She went on.  We chatted.

At 8:10 there was a knock on the door.  “Miss Whiting, the crowd is getting restless.”  We looked at each other and laughed, she gave me a hug and she went out and brought the house down.  Later, she signed my album “Thanks for my favorite interview…EVER.  Love, Margaret.”  We traded addresses and exchanged Christmas cards for a decade or so.

I last wrote her to tell her that I had moved to Vermont, to thank her father for writing “Moonlight in Vermont” and to thank her for singing the definitive version.  In yesterday’s New York Times, I read this anecdote, a conversation that Margaret had with Johnny Mercer when he asked her to record that song:

“I’ve never been to Vermont,” she said. “How can I sing a song about a place I’ve never been to? What is the significance of pennies in a stream? What are ski tows?”

“I don’t know,” Mercer replied. “I’m from Savannah. We’ll use our imagination.”

There aren’t a lot of sycamores in Vermont.  Who cares?  She DEFINED Vermont, to this day.

Margaret Whiting, a Manhattan resident for her entire life, died Monday in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home, where she had lived since March.  Natural causes.  The interview from 1987 is on a cassette, in my archives, which means it’s in a large unorganized basement.  But I will dig deep and I will find that interview, and when I do, I will put it up here on Vermont Mornings. And we’ll have a tribute weekend SOON.

Margaret Whiting may not have been the most famous singer of the era (Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald?)  and she did not become a movie star like Doris Day.  But Margaret Whiting was my favorite interview.  EVER.

R.I.P.

Love,

Steve

Having made a New Year’s resolution to expose herself to new music, Miss Hermoine Markleump of North Barkhamsted Village, Connecticut is seen listening to The Flaming Lips perform ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ on New Year’s Evening on VermontMornings.com.

At 10:00 PM EST we present Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre’s presentation of “A Christmas Carol,” first broadcast on December 23, 1938. (Sponsored by Campbell’s Soup!) Just click on LISTEN HERE to the left. In the fervent hope that it will allow the ghosts to visit as many in need as possible, we will run re-broadcasts all Christmas Day.

God Bless Us, Every One!

(UPDATE:  rebroadcast at 11:00 PM Eastern, 8:00 Pacific, the Martians have landed…)

The original CBS broadcast of “War of The Worlds” featuring Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre will be presented here on VermontMornings tonight at 6:00 PM Eastern U.S. time.

Click on LISTEN HERE! to the left and hear the entire broadcast.

Radio as we know it was pronounced dead this week, or close to it. Again. This time, it happened right in my own neighborhood, over at the resort where a cup of coffee costs more than a reasonably equipped Hyundai, where the D8 All Things Digital conference was taking place. That’s the one where Steve Jobs showed up being all Steve Jobs-y and resolute in his opinion that he knows more than you about what you want, which is very likely true, and the FCC Chairman talked broadband and everyone who IS anyone in the upper echelons of technology paid several thousand dollars a head to gather and congratulate themselves on being able to afford several thousand dollars to be there.

I don’t have several thousand dollars to sit in a conference room listening to anyone, so I stayed away, but I did pay attention to what was going on, and, as I said, radio – the kind you get over the air, on a, you know, radio — got a grim prognosis again, this time from one of our own, Vivian Schiller, the President and CEO of NPR, who said that your present garden variety broadcast signal is going to be dead and buried in five to ten years. Internet audio, she said, will replace terrestrial broadcast radio in that time. She seemed pretty sure of it, so sure that, she noted, NPR isn’t calling itself “National Public Radio” anymore. None of that archaic, passe “radio” stuff for them. The “R” in NPR stands for nothing. NPR’s the brand, and its future is as a “super network” to bring local, regional, and national news and programming producers and affiliates together. Radio, the medium, is beside the point. When she speaks about NPR’s future, “radio” as we’ve defined it in the past isn’t really the focus.

I think Schiller may be off on the time frame, but she’s right in a critical sense: The delivery medium’s not what matters for the future. It’s what I’ve talked about here before. If you paid a lot of money for a license and equipment and tower lease and all that, you’re probably not looking at blue skies from now on. it doesn’t mean there won’t be growth again, and it doesn’t mean that for the immediate future (longer, I think, than Schiller’s projection), terrestrial broadcast radio won’t remain the primary audio delivery system for in-car use. With all the attention given to the growth of online listening, the mass audience still uses radio. There’s still value left in that. But when streaming is common and easy in cars — and assuming that mobile providers don’t find a way, with pricing and usage caps (hello, AT&T), to make people hesitate to stream lest they go over their maximum — the audience will be more fragmented, the ad market will be even more problematic, and the future for FM and, especially, AM will be… interesting. Yeah, let’s call it interesting.

On the other hand, if you produce content, we’re back to what we’ve discussed here many times before. The delivery system doesn’t matter for you. What WILL matter is how to turn what you create into enough money to pay the mortgage. That’ll come. In the meantime, there’s still radio, there’s podcasting, there’s streaming, and there are more pipelines needing to be filled with material. On a creative level, there’s a lot of opportunity. Will the economics support it? Maybe the people at the conference can answer that, but I don’t think they can. I don’t think anyone can, not yet. As for me, I’m hopeful we’ll see ways to make money creating compelling audio content, whether it’s advertising, subscriptions, sponsorship tie-ins, ancillary business and marketing, or something creative that we’re not seeing quite yet. There’s a demand for what you do, there’s a market, and when the general economy starts to more aggressively grow… let’s hope good things will happen.

The thing that’s missing from all these conferences and all this deep thinking about the future, though, is exactly WHAT content will work for the next generation of delivery and content and listeners. And as for that… well, I think I’ll hold that for another column. (Ah, yes, the art of the tease)

For we don’t know how long, we have flung open the doors on Christmas Eve at the Magic 97.7 studios and invited everyone to come visit, share food and drink, share memories and send wishes.

This year we recorded the whole damn thing.   Hour One begins with Todd Wellington stumbling into the studio after the 6:00 AM News.

Christmas Eve at Magic 97.7 2009 Hour 1

In Hour Two, Todd tries to do the news (he does better at 8:00), Freddy Torres does the sports (en ingles), Mark Been sings and forecasts, Jill settles in and Darcie McCann brings cookies.

Christmas Eve at Magic 97.7 2009 Hour 2

Todd Wellington finds his news mojo in Hour Three, guests bring presents and The Doctor of Entertainment shows why she has a PhD. in Hollywood.

Christmas Eve at Magic 97.7 2009 Hour 3

In Hour Four, you’ll hear more songs, as most of the participants hit a caffeine/sugar wall.  Hang around for the ending…that’s how the Christmas Eve show ends every year.

Christmas Eve at Magic 97.7 2009 Hour 4

Thanks for listening.  If you’re sick of regular radio, make sure you check out the Vermont Mornings stream in the upper left corner of the home page.

And tune in during 2010.  You can’t believe what we’ve got planned!!

Just to our north, Ric Peterson, the afternoon host on CJAD 800 in Montreal invited a gentleman who tastes (and promotes) single-malt Scotch onto his show.  Watch and learn how to pronounce… Glenfiddich.  (If you speak Yiddish, you’ll have no problem…)

Cheers!