Links to Bob Steele & Radio Disney criticism

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

        FYI, today's Hartford Courant <www.courant.com> has a long article
about WTIC (AM) radio legend Bob Steele. It's the first I've ever seen him
talk at all publicly about maybe giving up his once-a-month (first
Saturday, 530-10 am) program pretty soon. He's about to turn 88 (although
that didn't stop him from correctly predicting on the air on the day of the
Kentucky Derby that extreme long-shot Charismatic would win). He says that
when he did the show every day he'd show up two minutes before airtime and
always slept well. Now, he doesn't sleep well the night before and gets to
the studio an hour early, then still can't sleep after he goes home. He
seems to sound as if he's just not that comfortable anymore doing it once a
month. Steele started on WTIC in 1936 and retired from his six-day-a-week
program 10/1/91, the exact 55th anniversary of the day he started there. If
he does his last show September 4 or October 2, it would really be another
annual anniversary like that. And November would be the last show this
season before his winter break anyway, based on the schedule he has kept
the last few years.

        There's also a between-the-lines suggestion in the article that the
station's impending move (within a few weeks now, I believe) from its
large, fancy studios at the top of a high-rise office building in downtown
Hartford to the CBS radio group's building in Farmington with about five
other stations may have something to do with it. Farmington's a much
farther drive for Steele, and he already doesn't do his show in the winter
because he's concerned he might not be able to get there in a snowstorm.
There's some sort of hint in this article that he's really not interested
in trading the rather impressive glass-walled studio high above HIS city,
where on a clear day you can see the Berkshires, for whatever little
generic closet with a moderately priced microphone and a clearance-sale
chair from Office Max that they're going to start using this summer.

        Also, you could find on the Courant website an interesting article
from a few days ago by one of the paper's music writers that looks at the
music and overall programming of Radio Disney and doesn't like it very
much.

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