This morning I heard a local 1,000 Watt radio station sign on at 6 AM CDT. Their carrier popped on over the swishing noise coming in on 770 kHz, and remained silent for 15-seconds while I noted the prominent line noise in their audio channel.
A friendly sounding guy spoke the call letters and city and there it was.... the National Anthem sung by some crooner.
The first station I worked for back in 1959 always started the day with the National Anthem, it was on a 12" "Anthems of the World" LP on the Epic label, and of course we took care to play the right one. To my knowledge no one ever played Russia or China by mistake.
Since then I noticed even TV stations signed on with a picture of a waving flag and the National Anthem.
No doubt this is a tradition but so far as I know it is not required by the FCC rules.
Earlier in my pre-career in a low power station I co-owned with a buddy, we didn't have a recording of the National Anthem, so we used a proxy by playing a 78-RPM recording of "Lilli Hot From Chili" which we agreed as a substitute anthem.
Who started it? Has anyone ever defied custom by not doing it?
It would be appropriate for a government station like VOA to play it, but it seems unnecessary for a civilian radio station.
Although burned into our minds by familiarity, the lyrics of the U.S. National Anthem are gibberish and don't say anything useful.
There is talk of an Earth Anthem and an Earth Flag. That would be something to consider.
Carl said: "Who started it? Has anyone ever defied custom by not doing it?", referring to the National Anthem.
I worked for a station in the 60s who started each broadcast day at 6 AM by playing the Theme From 'The Sound of Music" by Percy Faith. The format was easy listening and we called the format 'The Sound of Music', so it was appropriate. They signed off by playing "The Lord's Prayer" by the Morman Tabernacle Choir. It went on and on and on. A babysitting 1st class engineer (required back then) once threw the 'off' switch at the second "Amen" and went home....almost got fired.
I have that Percy Faith album and it is fantastically good both for music arrangement and technical quality.
Starting the day with the theme that introduces the station format was a stroke of brilliance and more stations ought to think of ways to do that.
But signing off with that overblown rendition of "Lord's Prayer" sounds like the death-wake of the station, bow your heads and say last goodbye.
Well over 35 years ago I worked for a small town station where the owner had promised God that if he ever got to own his own radio station he would honor Him by dedicating programming to the almighty every day. So every morning at 6 AM we signed on with the 15 minute daily program from the "Sacred Heart Hour". Which I always thought they should have called "The Sacred Heart Quarter Hour". What a yawner.
TIB
Our National Anthem is horrible. Firs tof all, it's copyright infringement at it's finest. The melody is swiped from a British pub song. In modern times there would be lawsuits galore. The general theme is about violence and bombs. It's impossible to sing.
Ray Charles, among others were working to change the anthem to "America The Beautiful" which is an actual original song, can be sung by the populace, and has a much more positive attitude.
TIB
Sure enough, creativity spreads like a California forest fire... when Tim mentioned that our anthem is a British pub song I was reminded of the rich tradition of drinking songs from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, France, and elsewhere...
I got to wondering whether any radio station ever had a drinking song format?
I actuallly could do it up to a point having several drinking sing along albums.
Over at the Save-So-Much Store the main center aisle is the booze section and all these people wearing laundry file through grabbing 64-packs of beer and clinky bottles of wine and jumbo jugs of vodka. They need there own radio station.
Even the Bible has a drinking song. When Jesus converted water into wine the apostles sang "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."
Here's the original song, from which the melody for our Anthem was stolen:
http://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/mp3/song.anac.dsl.mp3
TIB
Thanks Tim. I've added it to my collection.
Polka is good pub music.
"In Heaven there is no beer,
That's why we're drinking it here."
Tim's mention of pub music got me spending Sunday morning digging out some drinking albums I half-remembered. There are more of them than I thought.
The Symphony De Paris Presents Rockin and Drinkin Music New Songs for Orchestra by Ray Haney Norwood Label.
Flames, Flappers and Flasks Joe Glover & His Collegians Epic Label.
Party Style The Gaylords Recorded Live at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas Mercury Label.
Drinking Songs Sung Under the Table The Blazers ABC Paramount.
Drink Along With Irving Songs and Nightcaps for the Gentleman of No Distinction composed by Irving Taylor Warner Brothers.
Mickie Finn's America's No. 1 Speakeasy Dunhill Label.
Music To Break a Lease Sid Feller and Don Costa ABC Paramount.
Music To Break a Sub-Lease Don Costa's Free Loaders ABC Paramount.
Ghost Riders in the Sky Spike Jones and a Drunken Singer RCA.
The Drunkard in Springtime from Song of the Earth Gustav Mahler Columbia.
The National Anthem will never sound the same.
Since I was a little boy I remembered AM stations signing on with the National anthem. We at the Michigan School For The Blind had both an FM station and an AM station called WMSB. We'd either sing ourselves or play the national anthem when we went on the air. It was just something you did. During certain days we would broadcast readings of things that happened Today in history.
Besides the history readings we had plays during Christmas and we'd broadcast them. Parents could hear the play as they got close to the campus usually around 2 miles for AM.
Our audio department done a wonderful job mixing the live programming for Live broadcasting and we had off campus listeners who loved our Christmas programming too. It was a tradition every year to have a On Air play. That was until they really tried to make a big deal of the separation of Church and state and sort of discouraged teachers from teaching the Christian religion therefore there was no more official play.
This is part 15 done right or Hobby Broadcasting because I am not sure if the station was compliant or not at that time. But there was a heart felt warmth when the students were able to express themselves live on air to an audience that they've organized and put together themselves.
Lets get back to that basic heart warming feeling of creative expression on the Raio.