Earl Nightingale and the morning
I DXed with my FM radio
Most visitors to this site are familiar
with the late Earl
Nightingale and the radio broadcasts he produced during
most of his career. His Our Changing World was one
of the few successful programs based on good news and motivation.
I can remember the first time I heard
Earl Nightingale. Back then, you could actually DX for FM
signals even in the middle of Houston.
Early one summer morning when I was
14, I suddenly found myself in the presence of the sonorous
voice of Earl Nightingale. It was one of about 7,000 broadcasts
Nightingale would eventually create.
That voice had arrived on an FM station
completely new to me, KTOD in Corpus Christi. The call letters
stood for "top of dial."
A "skip" in their signal
had suddenly ushered KTOD into Houston that morning. Unlike
AM signals, FM radio only goes as far as the horizon —
except when it breaks the rules. Don't ask me for a more
technical explanation.
Around that same time, I also picked
up WRR-FM, the city-owned station in Dallas, and a university
run station in Minnesota.
That particular morning was the only
time I ever heard KTOD. It was not the only time I heard
Earl Nightingale. In fact, I eventually worked for a station
that carried his broadcast. Later, I paid good money to
hear him speak on tape and CD.
I am pleased that I now have an affiliation
agreement with the company which Earl Nightingale co-founded.
Here are some Nightingale-Conant
audio products which I personally purchased and recommend
to people interested in radio and communications:
Since 1986, I have purchased over 80 Nightingale-Conant
audio programs. They are one of the main reasons why I don't
listen to the radio much any more.
Use any link on this page to initiate a Nightingale-Conant
purchase, and a generous commission will go to this site.
That will help keep these pages on line and will help to
justify the time needed for further development.
All of these airchecks were recorded
in Houston. The quality of the September recordings was limited
by poor weather in the Houston area.
Short Wave Signals
Now for something totally different
. . .This is primarily a Houston radio web site, but I will
include other materials if they were recorded by me. These
are my only short wave air checks.
I am not a a big short wave hobbyist,
but I do occasionally take an interest in the international
broadcasts. Before the Internet, the short wave was the one
medium which allowed a voice to skip across the oceans directly
to the ear listening at home.
Recorded in Houston one afternoon in
early 1973. (Time of day and time of year are big factors
in short wave reception.) If you're not used to short wave,
bear in mind that these are radio signals which have to bounce
across the ionosphere. The effect on the sound is dramatic,
but often frustrating.
Recorded in Bay City, Texas, on a night
in the fall of 1979.
I don't understand much German, so I
asked for help in identifying this material.
Thijs Wassens wrote from the Netherlands
and identified the program as "Schlagerparade der Deutschen
Welle," a program featuring a parade of hits.
Wassens adds that the station is probably
RIAS Berlin, a station in the American sector aimed at Germans
then behind the Iron Curtain. According to Wassens,"That
would be why the presenter explains so much about the music.
I think this program is rather progressive for its time."
Wassens also tells us that the woman
at the beginning of the recording is Marion
Maerz, a singer who had been popular since the 60's. Her
voice was what got me to start this very spur of the moment
recording. I had always assumed that the material was someone
who was very young in 1979, but she is actually older than
me.
Semi-technical dissertation: One thing which these materials have in common is that they
were both recorded using cassette recorders, rather than reel
to reel units. In both cases, a portable short wave receiver
was patched into a portable cassette recorder.
Both items remained on cassette until
2003.
The cassette used on the BBC 1973 recording was already
four years old at the time of the recording, a Scotch C-60
in a clear yellow shell.
When cassettes first came out, some
experts doubted whether they would last more than ten years.
I have had my share of cassettes which jammed or distorted
much sooner than that. With these two tapes, I was lucky.
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"Then there is electricity
-- the demon, the angel, the mighty physical power, the all-pervading
intelligence!...
"Is it a fact -- or have I dreamt it --
that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great
nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
"Rather, the round globe is a vast head,
a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall we say, it is itself
a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we
deemed it?"
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851
As
a Depression-era child, Earl Nightingale was hungry
for knowledge. From the time he was a young boy, he
would frequent the Long Beach Public Library in California,
searching for the answer to the question, "How can a
person, starting from scratch, who has no particular
advantage in the world, reach the goals that he feels
are important to him, and by so doing, make a major
contribution to others?" His desire to find an answer,
coupled with his natural curiosity about the world and
its workings spurred him to become one of the world's
foremost experts on success and what makes people successful.
