The sound of laughter....
oh, God... not now!

Laughter is contagious. Hear someone laugh and it is hard not to join in. That is sometimes the problem. There are times when you're not supposed to laugh.

In broadcasting, you become very relaxed at your job. But there is still an underlying tension that sometimes causes trouble. Sometimes that tension causes one to get the giggles.

Every broadcaster knows this, and in local stations around the country, it has often been considered good sport to "break up" your colleague when he/she is on the air. You might slip some bogus copy into their pile of script. So, when he is reading farm market reports, he suddenly finds himself saying "heifers steady, bulls mounting". Or, reading some copy from a local car dealer, his copy may read "bring in your title and your wife and we'll dicker."

The great air personality Peter Tripp once told me of auditioning for an announcing job. The job prospect was reading a script and someone reached out with a cigarette lighter and set the script afire. But this is an aside... it was not to cause a laugh, but to see how the guy could handle an emergency. Still, it sounds like a good way to break a guy up!

I have been in recording sessions involving several announcers when someone suddenly got tickled over something. When it was their turn to talk, they just burst into laughter. Stop the tape. rewind. Take two. More laughter. Take three. This goes on until the laughter runs its course, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

I remember two times when I was on the air and started laughing inapropriately. They are true stories and I hope friends or family of the people involved never read this, because I am embarrassed by it.

In local radio we often read news "cold"... that is, we saw the copy for the first time when we read it, live, on the air. The first story was about an elderly woman who lived alone, and very cold weather. Her neighbors did not see activity for some period of time and went to investigate. They found the woman dead in her home, with a small space heater operating full blast. The room had become very hot. The story went on to reveal that the woman's dog and her cat were also dead. Then the clincher... "even her goldfish, in a bowl, was dead." I lost it. Can't really explain why that was so funny, but I could not control the laughter.

The other story was about a guy who had a flat tire while driving on a busy hiway. He pulled onto the shoulder, got his spare, his jack and his lug wrench out of the trunk and changed the tire. (You can see this one coming.) When the guy finished changing the tire, he stood up, took a step backward, into the path of a speeding truck, was struck and killed. That is a sad and tragic story, but it hit me as hilarious. I could not stop laughing.

On the subject of broadcasting and laughter, there were also times when the broadcaster made his listeners laugh.. but he was unaware.

I once did a Sunday morning broadcast of gospel music, sponsored by a company that called itself "Tractor Parts and Farm Supply." After one broadcast, several listeners informed me that I had unknowingly called them "Tractor Farts and Parm Supply."

In the 1950s, a guy named Sheb Wooley made a record titled "Purple People Eater". The stations' deejays, naturally, referred to it off the air as "Purple Peter Eater." One day I played that record on the air. Soon after the record started, the statiion's receptionist came into the control room and asked what I had done. She said she answered the phone and a woman caller said only "Sam Bradley said...." then burst into uncontrollable laughter herself. I instantly knew what must have happened.

Another example did not involve me at all, thank goodness! In fact, I was driving in my car, listening to a network news broadcast... CBS, I think... and I believe the broadcaster was Lowell Thomas. It was during the Eisenhower era, and the story dealt with an Eisenhower visit to the city of Hershey, PA. I guess the story was brief and uninteresting, because Thomas embellished it with a brief ad lib, stating that "...thousands of Hersheyites turned out, with and without nuts." A live announcer was scheduled to read a commercial for Studebaker. He snorted and gasped through the copy, trying in vain to control his laughter.

Today's local radio has degenerated into little more than syndicated national talk shows, so live local radio is now more rare. Still, any time someone opens a microphone, there is always the danger that something, some insignificant, perhaps serious or even tragic something, will suddenly become very, very funny.