GK: Everybody knows the story of Kodak and how they kept on making film for cameras (CAMERA, CLICKS, REWINDS) and they were slow to catch on to digital until suddenly (SMARTPHONE CLICKS) everybody was taking pictures with little telephones. Same thing happened to Detroit. They were making big big cars (SFX) that were like works of sculpture and suddenly (SMALL CAR BUZZES BY) little Japanese cars came and ran them right off the road. Remember word processors? A big monitor connected to a processor the size of a suitcase. It lasted for a few years and then then the p.c. came in and the word processor went out the window. (SFX, MACHINE HURLED OUT OPEN WINDOW AND FALLS TO STREET). All of this makes those of us in radio a little uneasy. We've tried to innovate. A few years ago, we experimented with Smell Casting ---- we'd do a story about cattle, for example (COWS) and the smell would waft out of your speaker. Or wet dogs. (WET DOG SHAKE). Or salt air (SURF). But it required a lot of maintenance. A man had to come to the house once a week (FN: Radio man! Here to refill your Aromameter.) and that wasn't practical. Plus which the chemicals were unstable and in hot weather they'd blow up. (SFX)
We experimented with the ham radio ----- in which there's a cage with a wheel and a hamster in it who runs in tempo with the music (PIANO, HAMSTER RUNNING, WHEEL SPIN) and it didn't sell all that well.
GK: We experimented with a radio hooked up to a color printer so that, for example, when we'd have a singer on the show (FN SINGS:
Only you can make this world seem right
Only you can make the darkness bright.
Your printer would print color pictures of the singer singing so that when you cut them out and you put them in order in a stack, and you flipped them, you'd see a moving image of the singer.
FN SINGS (JERKILY, FLIP SFX):
Only you can make this world seem right
Only you can make the darkness bright.
GK: Which was fine for recorded shows but for a live show like this one, by the time you cut out the pictures, the show would've moved on andso you'd flip the singer pictures and hear a man juggling two cats and a parakeet. (SFX)
Technical innovation hasn't helped us much and so we've had to resort to pure sensationalism. The show in which we did big naked people walking into a steam room got a big audience. (SFX SEQ) And the show in which a wolverine ate the hair right off Donald Trump's head. (SFX, TR TRUMP VOICE). And the show when we took three tons of lemon Jell-O and put it on a catapult (SFX) and wound it up and hurled it into the sea and a colony of walruses devoured it (SFX). That was good. What's the future of radio? you ask. A show like this one? Not great. When you have a staff party after the show and-----
SS (OLD): Is there fish oil in this? I'm allergic to fish oil.
TR (OLD): You what? You want a missal? What do you want with a missal?
SS (OLD): Fish oil! Like walleyes-----
TR (OLD): Who's he?
GK: It sort of dawns on you that we've been around longer than normal.
And now the consultants are coming up the hallway (FN, TR, OFF. MANLY MURMURS, TECHNO TALK) and they're going to tell us we need to be more diverse and more interactive and so we're going to interact with them---- when they get closer, we're going to fire this water cannon which shoots thousands of gallons per minute, water carrying flesh-eating piranha. (PIANO)
SS: The following scene contains graphic portrayals of men's faces being devoured by thousands of tiny fish. If you are repelled at the thought of people's faces being eaten alive, turn off your radio immediately.
(MANLY MURMURS)
SS: Turn off your radio now if you do not wish to see consultants devoured by carnivorous fish.
(PIANO DRAMA CHORDS)
SS: The scene is just about to begin.
(BIG CHORD, HANGING)
SS: The scene with tiny feral fish eating the faces of those men in suits like they were dogfood.
MUSIC OUT