December 3–10, 1998
mailbag
Letters to the Editor
Bravo for Margit Detweiler's "Glory Days" (Nov. 27). It was an exceptionally well-reported and -written piece. It not only engendered plenty of warm 'n' fuzzy nostalgia, but pointed out just how much we owe Ed Sciaky, Michael Tearson et al, and brought into (depressing) focus the lifeless, generic mediocrity that is contemporary radio at the end of the century.
The article also made me feel more than a little sorry for listeners born too late to have lived through the "Golden Age" of FM rock radio. How pathetic is it to have some suit with a spreadsheet sitting in an office 500 miles away decide just what new "product" you're going to hear this week on the airwaves?
Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to rock radio, I'll take 1972 over 1998 anytime.
Chuck Darrow
Pop music columnist
Courier-Post
I want to thank you for your wonderful article on the state of Philadelphia radio ("Glory Days," Nov. 27). I was in high school (way back in the early '70s) when I became a devoted listener of WMMR. I remember the wonderful group of personalities. They helped provide me with a sense of generational loyalty. The fact that many of these knowledgeable and talented people cannot find work is a crime! My life has been culturally enriched thanks to these broadcast pioneers. I took WMMR off my dial after they began to dismiss their older DJs. I mostly listen to public radio these days. However, I find their current direction to be very disturbing. WHYY has rid themselves of all programming that is not talk radio oriented. It was my belief that the purpose of public radio was to foster an environment in which an eclectic brand of programs could thrive.
Hal Beardsley
I just finished reading your article on the old days of Philly radio, and frankly it broke my heart. I worked in radio there for a number of years, in the promotions departments for WYSP, WMGK and EAGLE 106 (sorry). I had the great pleasure to have professional and/or personal relationships with Philly DJs Ed Sciaky, Michael Tearson and John Harvey, among others.
These guys were heroes. They spread the word. In the old days, DJs would play you something new and tell you that you'd like it. Today, radio won't play anything unless their research proves you like it already. That's not the way it should be.
I left radio (and Philly) a few years ago for this reason—the longer I worked in radio, the further I got from music.
Thanks for keeping these special people in the public's mind.
Eric Davis
Dallas, TX
eman615@aol.com
"Glory Days" hit the mark about 98 percent—pretty amazing since author Margit Detweiler probably wasn't around to appreciate the wonders of Philadelphia-style free-form radio in the 1970s herself. My only quibble was the single, unfair citation of Jerry Stevens as the program director in charge of WMMR when it hit its lowest ratings point circa 1977 (after WYSP's detestable all-hits, no-risk "Superstars" format stole away the mass of less-committed dial spinners).
In fact, Stevens was also the architect of WMMR's earliest, bravest and most artistic period, the man who preached the creative doctrine of music "flow" to his air personalities. And a talent who also set a very fine example with his own mid-day presentation on air.
Jerry argued that we (mostly fresh-from-college) DJs could play "any kind of music, as long as it was thoughtfully and properly set up." That is, if it flowed texturally and/or conceptually—making logical connections in the listener's head.
It was one reason why the Philadelphia music scene in the '70s earned the reputation for breaking/supporting a zillion artists and for being eclectic as hell.
Without Jerry Stevens' good taste, creative philosophy and ultimate (no-playlist!) trust in us fledgling air talents, none of this would have been possible.
Jonathan Takiff
Philadelphia Daily News Music Writer, WMMR weekend DJ 1971-1980
Your cover story on Ed Sciaky and Philadelphia Rock Radio was wonderful. You managed to make sense out of a very complex story with a minimum of miscues. WMMR's music librarian who produced the live radio concerts was Dennis Wilen not Wyland; the Michael Tearson door-chopping incident took place at 19th and Walnut long before the station moved to Market Street; and Jerry Stevens should get a bit more credit than the guy who led the station to bad ratings in 1978.
Ask Tearson, Sciaky, David Dye, Jon Takiff, Steve Martorano or anyone who worked at 93.3 during the '70s and I'm sure they will agree that it was Stevens' creative direction in the early '70s that made WMMR the great station it was. It was his idea to add classical music and jazz "stings" to the mix and gave the on-air staff the right to use them whenever it felt right. He was behind the Sigma Sound Concerts.
Stevens encouraged 'MMR DJs to look outside the window and react to the day, the weather, the world. (Few radio stations had windows but WMMR's studio window looked out over Rittenhouse Square.) He took the station to new heights and made it relevant, constantly surprising and never slick or cornball.
In 1973, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Stevens fought the sales department and won. He removed all commercial spots for 24 hours. At the top of each hour there was a short excerpt from one of various JFK speeches. And in a perfect example of his good taste, the radio station never once hyped what they were doing. No bragging, no pats on back… they just did it. Now that was a class act.
Gene Shay
Philadelphia
Take Your Condom and Stick it…
Greg Ippolito ("Condemnation," Slant, Nov. 20) has got to be the biggest schmuck to ever express a totally groundless, self-serving opinion in your rag of a paper! It seems more likely that Mr. Ippolito espouses this lunacy as a part of his latent pubescent fantasies of getting laid more often, and hopefully by some of the teenage girls he "liberates" sexually.
Mark C. Jones
South Jersey
Discussion of contraception is good, but I wish it would be a bit better informed than Greg Ippolito's "Condemnation." Ippolito says: "I didn't even realize that teen pregnancy was a disease." Get a clue. The public health community is fond of medicalizing all kinds of social ills, but this one has a physiologic basis and is amenable to medical therapy. As a physician working in a North Philly emergency department, I can tell you that teen pregnancy certainly is a disease. Kids die from pregnancies that should never have happened. One girl almost bled to death in front of me when the pregnancy she still wouldn't acknowledge ruptured her fallopian tube. Another did die, her belly open on the OR table, from a preventable gestation that had lodged in her abdomen.
The thalidomide experience radically changed the way drugs are approved for use in this country. Preapproval testing is much more extensive and thorough. And Depo isn't new. It's a steroid contraceptive, like the pill, which was introduced in the '60s. Millions of doses have been given since it was introduced at the beginning of this waning decade. Published reports with that particular agent came out first in the '70s. Many thousands of cases have been closely monitored for such subtle epidemiological phenomena as changes in the rate of breast cancer. Depo-Provera is a safe drug. It may not be the thing for everyone, but it's safe.
Q: What do they call people that use condoms for birth control? A: Parents. Fifteen out of a hundred adult couples using condoms for contraception will get pregnant in a year. I doubt teens would fare so well. They are our best available defense against STDs, best next to abstinence, which clearly can't be prescribed for everyone, but they aren't effective birth control. Withdrawal? Are you kidding? With pre-orgasmic leak, the loud "call of nature," and peri-orgasmic brain dysfunction, you must be. Everyone should wear a raincoat; girls and boys should be taught to take responsibility in carrying them and using them, but they aren't very effective birth control.
Rusty Peacock, MD
Center City
I read with interest your article on the city's Empowerment Zones (Gwen Shaffer's "The Twilight Zone," Nov. 20), especially after reading about the city's TIF (Tax Increment Financing) program earlier that day in the Inquirer. Am I alone in finding it hypocritical that the city can forgo hundred of millions of dollars in future taxes—with little in the way of democratic debate—while the Empowerment Zone program is weighed down with cumbersome community involvement requirements?
Ask any politician—when they need to get things done they hardly have the time for democracy. Public leaders seldom seek community consensus. If anything, they make every attempt to squash it. Why does the Empowerment Zone require such levels of democracy, when the rest of the country does just fine with a representative form of economic development decision making? Instead of a redistribution of wealth policy, it seems the federal government has developed a system of ideological redistribution where democratic virtues held in high esteem by the powerful—but seldom placed into effect due to their messy and inefficacious nature—are foisted upon the poor.
Bob Stokes
Bella Vista
