Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies - what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news?
My great-grandfather played organ for silent movies. Talkies in, Gramps out.
When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films. I don't think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don't say, 'I read an old book by Flaubert,' or 'I saw an old play by Moliere.'
I did television for a very long time, but if you're on television, words don't count. What the eye sees beats the words. If you switch sides, from radio to television, you learn that the wordiness that you learn on the radio is useless or not nearly as powerful, and you have to learn to trust that the eye will just beat the ear.
I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive.
My father had been an avid fan of Chaplin during the silent film days, but when the talkies came along, my father lost all interest in movies.
I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films.
For years everyone looked toward the demise of radio when television came along. Before that, they thought talking movies might eliminate radio as well. But radio just keeps getting stronger.
Bobby is the Aaron Rodgers of managers in professional wrestling - Rodgers works magic on the professional football field, but Bobby Heenan did the same thing in a wrestling ring, in a television studio, on a radio program, and he could do the same thing in a newspaper layout. He was a great communicator, and he knew how to generate heat with fans.
The invention of gas and electric heaters has not meant the end of fireplaces. Printing did not end penmanship, television did not kill radio, movies did not kill theatre, and home videos did not kill movie theaters, although all these things were falsely predicted.
We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child.
I prefer radio to television. Radio is a dialogue; television is a monologue. In radio, you have to interact - they put the words in your head; you build the pictures in your mind. To that extent, it is more engaging than television.
Local television is a slightly different story. It is under much more pressure in the same way that all local businesses are, whether that's a local newspaper, local radio or local television. But I think television in the aggregate is actually in very good shape.
Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
People often lump radio and television together because they are both broadcast mediums. But radio, anyway, and the radio I do for NPR, is much closer to writing than it is to television.
The absolute key difference between television and radio is the ability of radio to communicate. With television you can watch the screen and your mind can be anywhere. On radio it requires a certain amount of discipline from the listener to follow what's being said.