Posted on 10/22/2007 7:03:20 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie Carr weekly thread
Maybe Howie IS the Phantom Gourmet! It would explain so much!!
Maybe!
by the way someone on boston-radio-interest mailing list
wondered if it meant Howie would be doing a TV show on Ch 38!
For the record, he used to be on channels 2, 7, and 56
(and his predecessor Jerry Williams used to do shows
on Channels 25 and 27)
Man, I miss 38 and 56. We had them in Portland on cable when I was a kid - they had great cartoons, and I rarely missed the “Creature Double Feature”. Some enterprising Mainer had to open up replacement stations up here. Oh, well. When those stations became affiliated with UPN and the WB (I think that was when I was in college in Worcester, early/mid 90’s) they just weren’t as good, anyway.
I don’t remember Howie from TV, which is too bad. It would be neat if he had a TV show again - hopefully it would be syndicated up north, at least a little.
Wasn’t the Phantom Gourmet on New England Cable News once? Is it still? I remember watching it on that station, fairly recently.
Phantom Gourmet was on NECN but got replaced with “TV
Diner” when Phantom moved to Ch 38
Ch 56 is doing Creature Double Feature tomorrow afternoon
(once again with host Ernie Boch Jr.) I think I remember
the host being Dale Dorman before.
I vaguely remember Howie on TV. Once he was on Ch 7
and was following a hack out of his office, trying to
ask questions while the hack put his hand over the camera, etc. Another time it was on Ch 2 with Christopher
Lydon hosting the news, and Howie doing some kind of
commentary on Christmas trees or something.
The replacement for Phantom on NECN: TV Diner
http://www.boston.com/news/necn/Shows/tv_diner/
Aaaah, yeah, TV Diner is the show I’ve seen more recently.
I’m glad to hear that Creature Double Feature is back. I don’t remember the host, but how can one forget Godzilla’s many adventures?
I also remember the Movie Loft on TV38, and the guy who hosted that was very mellow. TV38 had the Red Sox and Bruins, too, before NESN came into being.
It’s pretty pathetic to take a trip down memory lane on TV. :D
The Movie Loft host was Dana Hersey, Howie’s voiceover guy!
Yes the man you now hear saying “And now here’s Todd
Feinburg filling in for Howie”.
Dana was the question-reader on Ch 38’s legendary
“Ask The Manager Show”. It was his baritone you heard
years ago, saying their legal IDs. “TV 38. W-S-B-K-T-V,
Boston” For awhile Dana did mornings at WBOQ 104.9
in Beverly (licensed to Gloucester).
Dana on Ch 38’s “Salute to Cheers”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iZDZAlWW03M
Dana can be heard on these Ch 38 promos from 1986
(Great Gatsby; Red Sox). Hey who’s that wearing #46
for the Sox, Papelbon? Nope, prob Bob Stanley...?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=35ABg47UveA
Was that the license a Reagan donor wanted? The then-owner ran the radio station by himself, and also had health problems that required frequent medical absences, and even though he tried to automate it at the time (early 1980s), his treatments ran long on occasion, and listeners would treated to silences, etc.
The argument put forth was that the guy wasn't upholding his end of the FCC license agreement.
I don't remember what exactly transpired after reading one account, probably in the WSJ.
Hersey. I knew a guy that took his date to a July 4th Boston Pops concert. Hersey & Crew tried to come marching through, trying to displace people that got settled in early for the concert. Hersey didn't make any friends that concert, thinking he as media could uproot the hoi polloi just because he was "the media".
I KNEW I knew that voice! Thank you for the enlightenment!
Someone has some great old TV38 commercials out on YouTube. Watching those really dragged me down memory lane. Sheesh, now I just want to go home and watch 80’s cartoons. Well, not the GoBots, they were lame. ;-) Thank goodness for AdultSwim on Cartoon Network. (Yes, someone can like both Howie and Aqua Teen Hunger Force).
>>The then-owner ran the radio station by himself,
“W...VCA...Gloucester Massachusetts...you can make your
contributions to W-V-as-in Victor, WVCA...” Simon Geller
was the one man owner/operator of classical station
WVCA. I don’t know about the “Reagan donor” but eventually
it was sold to the Tanger family...they spent a bit of
money on the station, keeping it classical, but then
it became swing/jazz and today it’s oldies of 60s -80s
(plus Red Sox & Celtics). “Your good time favorites station”
I think there was some kind of challenge to the license
saying there wasn’t enough public service/public affairs, etc. Geller btw would present classical music (and announcing in a not-so-radio-friendly voice). At times
he would say “I’m turning off the station now because I
have to go shopping” or to the movies, etc.
And the bit about health problems (after the sale he
moved to NYC and passed on awhile back) rings a bell.
Hersey with a do-you-know-who-I-am moment?
from 1986—Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962291,00.html
Click for whole article but here’s an excerpt
At 3 p.m. on a gorgeous Sunday in June, Simon Geller slouches in an easy chair in his darkened apartment, with the windows closed and a chuck steak in the oven, listening to himself on the radio. At the moment, he is broadcasting the ballet Sylvia, by Leo Delibes, on the station he periodically identifies as “WVCA, 104.9 megahertz, in Gloucester, Massachusetts.”
Styrofoam cups and cans of diet Coke are scattered across a desk dominated by a bulky radio microphone.
Apart from this announcement and the briefest possible description of the music, Geller says little, which is just as well. His listeners happily acknowledge that he has the least polished delivery in broadcasting. The accent is distinctly north-of-Boston, which suits them fine: the first syllable of the word Gloucester comes out long and glottal, as if the bottom has temporarily dropped out of Geller’s voice. The letter r plays hooky.
But that voice, “the Voice of Cape Ann,” is flat and without timbre. His admirers describe it as a deadly monotone or compare it with Elmer Fudd talking with a mouthful of marbles. His patter is often punctuated by dead air and occasionally interrupted by some terse remark like “The peas are burning.”
Geller probably says less than any other broadcaster in America and has more time to say it. On this particular Sunday, as on almost every other day of the week for the past 18 years, he will sit in front of an 8-ft.-high stack of broadcasting gear from 6 a.m., when the station signs on, until 10 p.m., when it signs off. WVCA’s studio is atop the Whale-of-a-Wash laundromat. The scrap of paper next to the apartment buzzer says simply WVCA-GELLER. When Geller plans to go to the movies or on an errand, he tells his listeners so: “And now I am closing. I have to go to the doctor. The kidneys or something, I forget.” Then WVCA shuts down till he gets back.
Geller, a 66-year-old bachelor, doesn’t have what you might think of as a radio personality. He isn’t just taciturn but a misanthrope and the dead opposite of a local booster. He calls Gloucester “the end of the world” and says he would rather have caught on in New York City. In Gloucester, he says, there is nothing to do but work or have sex. “I don’t have a sex partner,” he adds gloomily, “so I work.”
Darn, I don’t get channel 38 out west.
Please update us after the Phantom show today.
I’ve been told that the announcement due in about a half hour on Phantom won’t really be a big
deal (despite use of the word “major”) and Howie will keep having to go through the legal crap
next week. But I’ll relay whatever is said anyways.
Who knows.
So far the “big announcement” is Howie talking about restaurants with BIG portions (Common Man;
Luigi’s in Wayland; Michael’s Deli in Brookline—sandwich named after Howie
Dan Andelman: “Where you been Howie?”
Howie: “I’ve ESCAPED!”
...and that was it! Howie just doing a guest shot on
“The VIP Table” (he also recommends Bickford’s for
breakfast: “YOU’RE GOING TO BICKFORDS!” he would proudly
say after giving out gift certificates. Howie says he
hopes to be back on the air soon...
And that was the BIG announcement. Guess we were suckered! :)
That’s IT?
I hope he’s back on the air soon too - Deval is just having a field day without Howie busting his b&lls.
Thanks for the re-cap
yeah—I didn’t watch the second half of the show but I think that was his only appearance. The host said goodbye to him
at the end and there was no hint of “stay tuned for a big
announcement”. If I missed it, sorry, but I get the feeling that WAS it (it’s being rebroadcast at 5 pm today and
11 am tomorrow IIRC)
a bit of radio news for those in New Hampshire: due to an agreement with Entercom, the following stations owned by
Nassau Broadcasting are flipping formats around the first of
the year:
“The Hawk” classic rock at 102.3 in Concord and 101.5 in
lakes region will switch to a simulcast of WEEI sports talk. No Sox games though as other stations around there will still have the
rights.
And oldies stations at 104.9 in Wolfeboro (WLKZ I think)
and 99.1 in Henniker (WNNH) will switch to an “adult
hits” format called “Frank”
Howie’s Sunday Herald column
At-large hacks are on edge of their seats
By Howie Carr | Sunday, October 28, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com
The good news is, the Boston City Council did accomplish one thing this year: It canceled its preliminary at-large election, thereby saving the taxpayers $600,000.
The bad news is, they have not canceled the final election, Nov. 6, raising the question: What if they held an election and nobody voted?
Even if the Red Sox [team stats] weren’t closing in on a World Series title, no one would be paying attention to this fight, so with nine days left the nine candidates for four seats care about only one thing.
Who’s Mumbles with?
The mayor these days wields approximately the same type of power in Boston that Saddam Hussein did in pre-war Iraq. Whatever he says, goes. But Mumbles also resembles another former Mideast despot, King Herod. He’s always looking up at the stars, wondering if a new king - the next mayor - has been born, and can he kill him yet?
Back in ’99, Mumbles made the mistake of trying to take out Southie Council hack Peggy Davis Mullen with Mike Flaherty. But all Mumbles did was create an even worse problem for himself. Now Flaherty is talking about taking on Mumbles in ’09, raising more than $400,000 and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Baby Flats will most likely top the ticket, followed by Sam Yoon, who seems to be the PC flavor of the month. Yoon’s often MIA. He spends about as much time on the eighth floor of City Hall in the Dapper O’Neil hearing room as Dapper O’Neil now does, which is to say, not much.
Another incumbent councilor is Felix Arroyo. He could have been a contender, but he, too, seems to have taken his eye off the ball. At the end of last year, Felix was spending as much time at Council meetings in the Chris Iannella Chamber as Chris Iannella, which is to say, none. The difference is, Chris had a better excuse for his absence: He’s been dead 15 years.
That leaves the fourth incumbent, Steve Murphy. He has two things going for him as far as Mumbles is concerned: He’s not running for mayor and he’s from the mayor’s hometown of Tikrit . . . I mean Hyde Park. Murphy was with Gov. Deval Patrick early, and now Deval returns the favor, with a fund-raiser at Anthony’s this week.
The fifth man out last time, who has been praying all year for Murphy to accept a hack state job from Deval, is John “Don’t Call Me Zip” Connolly. If Murphy had fled, Connolly would have inherited his at-large seat. Connolly’s mother is a big-shot judge and his father, the former secretary of state, is on the Boston Licensing Board. This does not hurt fund raising.
Yes, there are other candidates. Martin Hogan finished 35,000 votes out of the money in 2005 and considered that a mandate from the electorate to run again. You need 500 certified signatures to get on the ballot. Hogan got 503, which was two fewer than the 505 turned in by David James Wyatt, a black Republican.
At the candidates’ nights, Wyatt likes to tell the crowds (make that handfuls of stragglers) how he canvassed for signatures in the city’s firehouses and was shocked, shocked to learn many of the jakes don’t live in Boston anymore. Apparently he missed the news that the residency issue was settled two or three contracts ago, the last time the union picketed Mumbles’ State of the City address.
The city has changed, obviously. Of Boston’s 254 precincts, it used to be that only 70 or so could be considered totally moonbat. But last year, in the Democratic primary for governor, Deval got more than 65 percent of the vote in 141 of the 254 precincts.
That’s astounding, until you consider that Spanish, not Italian, is now the second, or maybe first, language in East Boston. Ward 3, the North End, has become an Italian-restaurant theme park, and Ward 10, Mission Hill, is a keg party. The best way to carry Ward 21, Allston, would be to get an endorsement from Vladimir Putin.
There’s only one thing Boston’s voters, old and new, can agree on. Go Red Sox!
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