Be in my broadcast when this is over

Paul Sidney died a few weeks ago, in all likelihood you have never heard of him but if you are in anyway involved in community building, you need know about him.  Paul Sidney ran and was the voice of WLNG radio out of Sag Harbor Long Island.  WLNG is local as local radio can get..The station is a throwback to late 50’s style of operation where announcers add echo and heavy bottom EQ to their voices and the News is local, local and local.  Growing up in the Hamptons of Long Island it was it was impossible to not be influenced by the sound and programming of WLNG as it was everywhere and literally at every event.

You can read his obituary here, it tells the tale of his coming over to WLNG, becoming its driving force and cult of personality. What it will not tell you is just how deeply he ingratiated himself and the radio station into the very fabric of the lives of those who listened to ‘LNG and even those who did not.  The comments section of the article will do that well enough.

In addition to music and local news WLNG features live call in shows such as swap n shop-where people call in to trade a 1940’s fly wheel for a couch or someone looking to buy or swap for a full set of tools and toolbox.  While at times it can be nap inducing it also is a window into people’s lives, needs and character. Paul would not just help the caller to describe what they wanted to trade or relive themselves of but also would check on their status – he engaged them in conversation about the news of their neighborhood.  It was not radio it was community.

The radio station was among the first to have merchants record their own commercials, clearly not professional actors but direct and personal. The ads could be grating and awkward but then so were all the rest and yes, it was the person who owned the store. The ads always left  you feeling – ‘that’s Jim’s place, I should stop by and see how the place is doing.

Having the mission to be local as local radio gets WLNG and Paul would travel to every possible event occurring on the east end of Long Island eventually using two fully equipped remote trucks .  The remotes were Mr. Sidney’s glory and crowning achievement.  These oversized airstream RV’s were literarily at every store opening, town parade, fund raiser and carnival. The draw an ‘LNG remote could –(and still does I am told)- muster was phenomenal. It was not an event of note if the remote trucks were missing. Paul knew how to work a crowd, how to detail enough to give listeners a good picture, keep them listening AND to come to the event.

In my mid to late teens I developed an overly impressive angst about my surroundings and began a lifelong quest to find new, interesting and thought provoking music and media. This local radio station was the epitome of all I wanted to get away from. In my rush to find something else, the remarkableness of Paul Sidney and WLNG was ignored. As a young person, grappling with defining a personal identity, you grew to loathe when parents put WLNG on, pronouncing it one of the seven signs of local lameness. Yet hearing the station was always comfortable, like going to the carnival with your younger brother- you would rather go alone, check out the girls and hang with friends. But he’s your brother and its okay. 

I left for NYC and its heady world of aggregating cultures and slick production values leaving the ‘farm report’ station behind me.  Imagine my shock when I attended an NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) tradeshow and one of the first things I see upon stepping on to the exhibit floor is Paul surrounded by a flock of people.  I nearly retained my youthful arrogance and rushed by thinking ‘what’s this goat doing here, intruding on my sanctuary?  Instead I stopped to see just what everyone was doing around Paul Sidney.  The questions were eager often hyperactive, asking just how such a small station could grab such large shares in the face of the conglomerates and city backed stations. Paul Sidney’s answers stuck me and started to chip away at my preconceived notions.

My thoughts wandered back to WLNG and Mr. Sidney as I started to get involved in hosting bulletin boards on BBS, AOL and later a few web communities in the early to mid 90s.  It always struck me that group chat rooms were, in effect, community halls- only broadcast. Many compared and still compare them to the days of CB radio popularity, complete with the snide disregard for the value of conversations it generated. The online community often overtly revels in the fact that they are community, ideas are shared and bonds forged. More often than not individuals or groups talk just to hear themselves but in the end fundamental value is created– community radio.  Social media now is, in part, the largest community radio project only the community is not a location but global and based on common interest. 

Next time you tweet an event, start a rolling discussion on FriendFreed or post ‘real-time’ photos to facebook, remember that you are utilizing a form once dominated by people who used radio to build and keep communities talking. We owe our current mass media social networking to men like Paul Sidney, they may not have fully understood the import and impact , they provided the framework for it to be successful.

 

 

Paul Sidney’s Über local radio is the model social media should pay attention to, all media is local, regardless of the physical location of the community. Those of us who take forward positions in the creation and application of social media groups need to remember the passion, investment and yes, love of the community Mr. Sidney exhibited.  I for one will miss his voice and although I rarely venture back to the Hamptons he and WLNG will always be the sound of The sound in my head.

Comments

[John Huntington]

Great post!

I lived in the hamptons (just about all of them) from 1985-87, and I had much the same reaction to WLNG that you did. I often saw Mr. Sidney just walking down the street on a Saturday with a wireless mic (picked up by the engineering remote unit), on the air, interviewing random passers by.

I also seem to remember (could be my imagination) that the truck had a spring reverb and would occasionally do that massive spring reverb explosion sound.

But my favorite was a remote that they did from the ferry to Block Island. Mr. Sydney was walking around the boat and occasionally the signal would just fade out and then come back. Turns out they had a directional antenna on the boat aimed back at the transmitter (in Sag Harbor?). When the boat would do a course correction, the engineer on the boat would have to re-aim the antenna (I'm assuming by just listening back to the broadcast from the station). I LOVE that kind of stuff.

I love radio and listen to it pretty much constantly. I don't think it's going anywhere because it fills a niche that nothing else can.

John
p.s. Great coincidence that Joe Jackson's "Hometown" came up on the shuffle play as I was reading your post.

[George Tucker]

Thanks! You came to live in the Hamptons just as I was beating a hasty exit. I graduated from Pierson in 85 and moved to NYC that August.

I love the story about broadcasting from the ferry and having the signal fadeout due to a directional antenna. Every time I think about WLNG I get Thomas Dolby's Golden Age of Wireless in my head, the songs, and the visuals in his early videos.

I have referred often in this blog about Marconi and the embryonic days of the Wireless. I grew up seeing radio not as a super sophisticated NASA like technology or produced from gleaming offices of stainless steel and rosewood, it was DIY. The station was close enough to town that anyone could bicycle up to the station, enter it front door and be standing a glass pane away from the studio. The studio was chock full of knobs, faders, bouncing VU meters and the ever present microphone. Oh and the ships bell front and center- of course. I unfortunately did not take advantage of this opportunity too often as the awkwardness of my teenage years and the teen culture pejorative association with ‘LNG held me back. I feel this lack of initiative delayed my entry into the tech world. (coulda, woulda, shoulda).

I wished that I took the time to study Paul Sidney more, to have walked into WLNG and embraced the kooky throwback collective. I wish that I had made the opportunity to sit and talk with him on the bench on Main Street, just next door to the pharmacy my mother help run –(and we lived above). My youthful arrogance and ignorance prevented me and now reading the local paper online forums I see that I missed his generosity and love of sharing, teaching. He could also be a right prick – Ah, but glass houses.

I still think I am going to start the FB group -'I got into a fight at a Joe Jackson concert'.

[Craig Swerdloff]

Really a moving post George. He obviously meant a great deal to you. Thanks for sharing with us.