Herald: Ch 4 going back to "WBZ" brand

[Dan Strassberg]

One AccuWeather meteorologist, Gary Bowers, can't pronounce the name of his
profession. AccuWeather and its affiliated stations let him get by with
meteorolist. I would think that they would get him to record the ojj
syllable and then use digital editing to insert it between ol and ist. From
the correctly pronouced word, a closing line, "This is AccuWeather
meteorologist Gary Bowers reporting for <insert station call letters here>,"
could be synthesized and dropped into each forecast he records. In fact, I
would think that, given the availability of the necessary technology, the
Americans with Disabilities Act would demand that exactly this be done. The
guy can't do his job properly without this fairly simple measure. A radio
personality who can't pronounce the name of his (learned) profession is, as
far as I am concerned, obviously disabled.

Flush with the success of of this exercise, the digital-audio-editing
experts could turn to President George III's repeated mispronunciation of
nuclear. All they would have to do is get him to record three simple
one-syllable words (new, cleat, and are). Then they could remove the t sound
from the end of cleat and string the three words together to get nuclear,
which they could drop into all of his speaches. In fact, just using new and
clear might be sufficient. He could lip synch by saying the word his way but
the audio that the public would hear would have the correct pronunciation
overdubbed. Like his namesake, who suffered from an obscure kidney or liver
ailment called porpheria, this George III is disabled and needs the help of
21st-century technology to do his job correctly.

--

Dan Strassberg
dan.strassberg@att.net
Fax: 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@csail.mit.edu>
To: "Eli Polonsky" <elipolo@earthlink.net>
Cc: "Boston Radio" <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: Herald: Ch 4 going back to "WBZ" brand


> <<On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:58:17 -0500, Eli Polonsky <elipolo@earthlink.net>
said:
>
> > I also remember that one of the longtime sponsors of
> > Community Auditions was Community Opticians, which
> > caused me much confusion when I was four years old.
>
> I can imagine!  (In English-language dialectology, an important
> feature of North American dialects is the "cot-caught merger".  People
> in the northeast tend not to have it, but much of the rest of the
> country does.  For many CIC ["Cot Is Caught"] speakers, "audition" and
> "optician" differ only in the articulation point of the first
> consonant, which is probably difficult for a four-year-old to
> distinguish.)
>
> ObBroadcasting: There's one traffic reporter working for MetroShadow
> in Boston who says "donton" (downtown) like a Pittsburgher.  More than
> one of his colleagues says "eat" instead of "eight", which is
> apparently the mark of a Philadelphian.  (And don't get me started on
> the way the meterologists at AccuWeather mangle the name of their
> profession on-air.)  It's almost enough to make one wistful for the
> old Gary LaPierre "Doobita-bee-zee" testimonials.  (Actually, speaking
> of that letter, one of the MetroShadow guys says it "dubh".)
>
> -GAWollman
>