the language of "radio-televese" -- 3/15/16

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Today's selection -- from The 50s: The Story of a Decade, "Thoughts on Radio-Televese", by John Lardner. Even in the early days of radio and television, commentators lamented the prose of broadcast announcers. Here is an excerpt from an article on the subject written in 1959:

"Interviewing Governor Rockefeller recently on Station WMCA, Barry Gray, the discless jockey, felt the need to ask his guest a certain question. He also felt a clear obligation to put the inquiry in radio-televese, the semi-official language of men who promote conversation on the air. Though it is more or less required, this language is a flexible one, leaving a good deal to the user's imagination. 'Governor,' Mr. Gray said, after pausing to review the possibilities of the patois, 'how do you see your future in a Pennsylvania Avenue sense?' I thought it was a splendid gambit. Another broadcaster might have said 'How do you see yourself in the electoral-college picture?' or 'How do you project yourself Chief Executive-wise?' The Gray formula had the special flavor, the colorful two-rings-from-the-bull's-eye quality, that I have associated with the work of this interviewer ever since I began to follow it, several years ago. For the record, Governor Rockefeller replied, 'I could be happier where I am.' He might have meant Albany, he might have meant the WMCA studio. As you see, radio-televese is not only a limber language, it is contagious.

Barry Gray in 1951.

"The salient characteristic of remarks made in radio-televese is that they never coincide exactly with primary meanings or accepted forms. For instance, Mr. Gray, a leader in the postwar development of the lingo, has a way of taking a trenchant thought or a strong locution and placing it somewhere to the right or left of where it would seem to belong. 'Is this your first trip to the mainland? How do you feel about statehood?,' I have heard him ask a guest from the Philippines on one of his shows (the program runs, at present, from 11:05 P.M. to 1 A.M.). On the topic of Puerto Ricans in New York, he has said, 'How can we make these peo­ple welcome and not upset the décor of the city?' ...

"Artie Shaw, a musician, in describing the art of another per­former to Mr. Gray, said, 'He has a certain thing known as "presence" -- when he's onstage, you can see him.' Another guest declared that the success of a mutual friend was 'owing to a combination of luck and a combination of skill.' 'You can say that again,' Mr. Gray agreed, and I believe that the guest did so, a little later. The same eloquence and the same off-centerism can be found today in the speech of a wide variety of radio and television regulars. 'Parallels are odious,' Marty Glickman, a sports announcer, has stated. 'The matter has reached a semi-head,' a senator -- I couldn't be sure which one-said at a recent televised Congressional hearing. 'I hear you were shot down over the Netherlands while flying,' a video reporter said to Senator Howard Cannon, a war veteran, on a Channel 2 program last winter. ...

"Perhaps the most startling aspect of radio-televese is its power to move freely in time, space, and syntax, transposing past and future, be­ginnings and endings, subjects and objects. This phase of the language has sometimes been called backward English, and sometimes, with a bow to the game of billiards, reverse English. Dorothy Kilgallen, a tele­vision panelist, was wallowing in the freedom of the language on the night she said, 'It strikes me as funny, don't you?' So was Dizzy Dean when he said, 'Don't fail to miss tomorrow's doubleheader.' Tommy Loughran, a boxing announcer, was exploring the area of the displaced ego when he told his audience, 'It won't take him [the referee] long be­fore I think he should stop it.' ...

"Ted Husing was on the threshold of outright mysticism when he reported, about a boxer who was cuffing his adversary smartly around, 'There's a lot more authority in Joe's punches than perhaps he would like his opponent to suspect!' It is in the time dimension, however, that radio-televese scores its most remarkable ef­fects. Dizzy Dean's 'The Yankees, as I told you later ... ' gives the idea. The insecurity of man is demonstrated regularly on the air by phrases like 'Texas, the former birthplace of President Eisenhower' and 'Mickey Mantle, a former native of Spavinaw, Oklahoma.' I'm indebted to Dan Parker, sportswriter and philologist, for a particularly strong example of time adjustment from the sayings of Vic Marsillo, a boxing manager who occasionally speaks on radio and television: 'Now, Jack, whaddya say we reminisce a little about tomorrow's fight?' These quotations show what can be done in the way of outguessing man's greatest enemy, but I think that all of them are excelled by a line of Mr. Gray's, spoken four or five years ago: 'What will our future forefathers say?'