CITRUS LIFE
Adam Nicolson on the
trials of a segmented existence on US airwaves
WE HAD recorded about half an hour's conversation. It had gone pretty well, I thought, dwelling on a few striking particu- lars, pooling out here and there into generalised swagger, serious and funny, a modulated balance, just what was wanted. `We'll get a good minute out of that,' the interviewer said, a nice fat man called Bill Thompson.
`What?'
`I'll edit it down, write a nice little intro, link the pieces and it'll work very nicely.' `One minute?'
`Yep. It's what we call a feature seg- ment. We run it throughout the day — this is an all-talk station — and then I'm syndicated to a 1,000 stations nationwide — you know we even hit Guam? — and they'll be hearing it in Kansas, Nebraska . . . Alaska, would you believe?' I said I could. 'Now 1,000 one-minute segments, that's 16 hours 40 minutes airplay and a very large number of people,' Bill said, his voice dropping way down with the adverb, as he contemplated the size of the audi- ence. 'You could say I've got my name on that minute right across the country. That little bit of time, it belongs to me.' For a moment Bill looked like a sweet manufac- turer, the bon-bon millionaire.
I have to confess I had never heard of the feature segment before that Monday, but for a week it life. My father and went on an 'author-tour', celebrating, if that's the word, the publication of a book we wrote together last year: 25 segments in five days and three cities. There was one triumphant moment on a Boston talk-in, where Gene Burns, the host, a one time Libertarian candidate for the presidency and the owner of a chocolate factory in Florida, was so sileased with our perform- ance over the allotted time that he offered us another segment. We knew by then — it was the last day — exactly what sort of accolade this was, a denial of the laws of physics.
The lady who was showing us from segment to segment (giallo, I'm Mary, I'm your escort') had told us that we would love Gene. 'He loves vocabulary and gram- mar,' she said. So it was obvious why it had gone so well. But we were already late for the WFNX New England Syndicated Radio segment the other side of Boston, and Gene was forced to wheel on the French Canadian chef (he had discovered a new way of deep-frying oysters in walnut oil) as per the schedule.
There was only one time, in the New York studios of Cable News Network, where the walls of our citrus life dissolved for a moment and we were allowed to sit in on the previous segment. It was occupied by a terrifying man called Bowie Kuhn, who had been the National Commissioner for baseball and had written his auto- biography. Its title was Hardball. The '1 just can't think of you as a father.' professional brutalist was in a Prince of Wales check and his face, like ours, had been painted orange to impart an air of health to a network that has almost gone bust recently. Mr Kuhn's manner was made for seg- ments. `What did you think of August Veeck Junior?' asked the disembodied voice from Atlanta. 'Hated him,' said Mr Kuhn. 'Marvin Williams?'Not a single redeeming feature.' This was the segment style. Keep it tight. Lots of full stops. Judge Busch?' Loved that man.' Only when it came to Danny Kaye did the grammar expand. Mr Kuhn allowed him- self the luxury of a nominative pronoun. He was a good man,' he said. But then Bowie Kuhn was over, his escort hurried him out — there was a segment waiting somewhere uptown — and after the pause for 'messages' — corned beef, Nissan trucks and Vidal Sassoon — we were into the downhill logic of our little piece of history `Tell me Mr Nicolson Junior, where was your favourite place in America?' I knew what to say. 'Butte, Montana.' And you, Nigel?' asked the gloss from Atlanta.
He was braver, three or four sentences about Savannah. That would be easy meat for any editor who was feeling tight up against the segment walls; it would come down to the bald, universal American phrase: city comma state, the plain fact for the fact-hungry nation. There are places in American broadcast- ing — National Public Radio for instance — where the segment doesn't rule and talk can run on a little. We were even allowed to read passages from the book there! But they are conscious and even self-conscious exceptions. People talk much more quiet- ly on NPR — there's a tendency to shout in a commercial segment as if you can make up in height what you lack in length. But culture murmurs and has subordinate clauses.
The last slot was the Christian Science Monitor radio programme Conversations in Boston. Blessed word. Our host, Bob, said that we could refer to him if we liked in the course of our remarks. We nodded.
He gave an example. 'Like, "That's a very interesting question, Bob, and I would like to answer it in the following way." ' But for some reason neither of us did. Perhaps we were put off by Bob himself who was never perfectly happy with the way in which he phrased the questions. 'And which, both of you, Nigel and Adam, were your favourite places in America?' he would ask and then suddenly the smile would drop off his face as he waved his hands like an air traffic controller at his engineer through the glass, saying 'No, no, no. Can I pick that up?' We would wait and then on the signal Bob would pick it up. And which of you, Nigel and Adam, both, were your favourite places in America?' smile, point, nod, read the notes. We talked away.
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