Radio Open Source - Tony Schwartz for the Next Generation

Summary:

Chris Lydon interviews filmmaker David Hoffman about Tony Schwartz

Website:

http://www.radioopensource.org

Additional Credits and Funding:

Host: Christopher Lydon
Producer: Paul McCarthy
Production Help: Christian Holland

Timely on:

July 15: Tony Schwartz's died June 15

Tones:

Engaging, Informational, Inspiring

Language:

English

Description:

From Chris Lydon:

Tony Schwartz made his famous TV and radio commercials (like the ?Daisy spot? for Lyndon Johnson, and Coca Cola?s ?It?s the Real Thing? campaign) in what felt like a chapel in his apartment in the old ?Hell?s Kitchen? neighborhood of West Side Manhattan. Hunched over his turntables, wrapped in earphones and cables in a room lined on every wall with Tony?s 40 years of sound recordings, he?d remind you of the Wizard of Oz with his bumbling air of magic, but also of Orson Welles with his grasp of theatrical effects, and also his friend Marshall McLuhan with his flair for multi-media theory and his experience with how message systems really work, in and out of your body. I?d first entered this little high church of sound covering George McGovern?s presidential campaign in 1972.

I went back in 1974 to write this Times piece, Packaging Voters for Candidates, TV-Style on Tony, the ?best in the business? of media consulting. And I went back and back for ever after to absorb Tony?s coaching. He was gently instructive when I took him my first television stand-ups after leaving the Times. ?You?re trying to do what Times training impels you to do ? push ?facts? through the camera lens at the viewer. But listen to me, Chris: television is not a medium of information; it?s a medium of effects?? I learned on my own, when I came back from vacation to the TV desk with a mustache, that television viewers are looking mainly at their presenters? hair, and not hearing much of what they say. Tony observed that television is mainly an auditory medium, and would be more effective if your picture tube was out of commission. He beleived that for many evolutionary and anatomical reasons ? not least because ?people are born without ear-lids? ? the ear and audio deliver more of the signals that form our thinking than the eye does. And many of the trademark Tony Schwartz spots on television were commercials that deliberately slowed down the eye input with still photos, for example, or neutralized the eye with a shot of just an office clock and a second hand, while an actor?s plummy voice was asking: ?Would you give me sixty seconds to tell you why Bob Abrams should be Attorney General of New York??

Tony adored the babble of babies and the outdoor sounds of his block of New York. Above all he loved what Studs Terkel calls ?that fabulous instrument, vox humana.? The blossoming of Tony?s reputation in the Seventies and the soundness of his books ? The Responsive Chord and Media: the Second God ? ran nicely parallel with the rebirth of radio at NPR. I was late taking the cue to radio myself, but I knew from Tony that radio was God?s own medium, and by the time I got there I knew from Tony why it felt like home. It is wonderful to realize, in the responses on Tony?s death two weeks ago, that the pied pipers of the rising radio generation ? people like Jay Allison and Ira Glass? are devoted practitioners of Tony Schwartz?s ideas.

So maybe the next question is how many more of the podcasters and other newbies enabled by the inexpensive tools of Internet radio will get the blessing of Tony?s techniques and wise encouragement. I engage the brilliant and prolific TV documentarian David Hoffman ? of ?Sputnik Mania? in theaters this summer and the comprehensive film Guerrilla Media about Tony ? in the conversation here not only to remember the master of sound and his signature pieces, but to introduce the wisdom of Tony Schwartz to the podcast generation. With your help, it might be just the start of our appreciation of Tony.

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