When I was a kid, my parents read The Daily Oklahoman newspaper each morning and the Oklahoma City Times in the evenings, both being published for decades by the Gaylord family. The daily editions were over 50 pages and the Sunday could easily exceed 200 if you included the various inserts. The evening paper had a circulation of 123,867 in 1964 and the morning one peaked at over 300,000 statewide. But all that is old news.
The evening paper folded as I was graduating from high school 40 years ago, with a circulation of 82,335. The Gaylords’ politics were anathema to me, but they sold off the paper in 2011, and it was acquired by GateHouse Media in 2018, which acquired Gannett and took its name in 2019.
The morning paper survives under Gannett, but its circulation is only 25,000 daily and 33,000 on Sunday, so about one-tenth of what it once was. When I was a kid, the papers were printed as broadsheets, about 60 inches wide, but that was narrowed to 44 inches in 2008. These days, the paper is a couple dozen pages on weekdays, discounting non-local extra pages tacked onto the electronic edition, while the Sunday edition is 60 or less.
That decline is reflected in daily newspapers nationwide. Their circulation, counting both digital subscriptions and print circulation, has fallen by 2/3 since 1990.
The newspapers I subscribe to on my iPad
As an adult, I followed in my parents’ footsteps, reading a daily newspaper. I currently subscribe to five of them in digital form: the Tulsa World, The Oklahoman, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise. I read the first two on my iPad after waking each morning, and occasionally consult the others online.
Originally I just subscribed to the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise. But, like most local newspapers, it was hollowed out over time. I am still a digital subscriber, but the “E-E” is down to one local reporter/photographer, and it doesn’t even have a physical office anymore. Nevertheless, it and the Bartlesville Radio news page are my go-to sources for local news.
I subscribed to the print edition of the Tulsa World newspaper for several years, switching to a digital subscription in 2011. It was once a paper of a far higher quality than The Oklahoman. It was owned by the Lorton family from 1911 to 2013, entering a joint operating agreement with the rival Tulsa Tribune in 1941 and acquiring its assets in 1992. At the start of the 21st century, it had a circulation of 160,000 daily and 220,000 on Sundays, and in 2005 it had over 700 employees.
However, the Tulsa World has, like The Oklahoman, declined sharply. By 2012, after a series of layoffs, it had a daily circulation of 95,000 and 133,000 on Sundays. It became part of the BH Media Group in 2013, which was acquired by Lee Enterprises in 2020. I noticed a sad decline in the quality of its copy editing after BH Media took over, and by 2022 the daily circulation was down to 35,000 with 38,000 on Sundays.
Early in the 21st century, newspapers’ advertising revenues collapsed, halving in a few years and continuing to fall so that they are now at the levels of the 1970s, when a dollar would buy almost 7 times what it will today thanks to inflation. They now rely more upon circulation revenue than advertising revenue to stay in business.
Newspapers have gone online, of course, as their printed editions became obsolete. But the average minutes per visit for the nation’s top 50 newspapers was only 2.5 minutes in 2014 and is now down to about 1.5 minutes. I am an outlier, spending 20-40 minutes each day reading my online newspapers.
On top of that, I also subscribe to Apple News+, which shares articles from 44 newspapers and almost 400 magazines, and I frequently peruse its newsfeed. But I don’t know how much longer my local newspaper will even exist, and the decline of the two leading state newspapers is dimming the lights that help disinfect and protect our institutions from the lies, authoritarianism, and corruption of our state’s frequently dreadful politicians.
Realizing that my news-gathering habits are atypical, I looked up how people preferto get their news these days. Courtesy of Pew Research:
Preferred News Platform
TOTAL
Ages 18-29
Ages 30-49
Ages 50-64
Ages 65+
Television
27%
8%
17%
36%
50%
News websites or apps
25%
22%
29%
27%
18%
Search
15%
22%
17%
12%
7%
Social media
12%
30%
15%
5%
3%
Radio
6%
3%
8%
8%
5%
Podcasts
6%
9%
8%
4%
2%
Print publications
5%
4%
3%
4%
10%
It is helpful to chart the preferred platforms, breaking them down into age groups:
While television is the most dominant preferred platform overall, when you look at age groups, that is only for those 50 and older. I am again an outlier, as I almost never watch television news. I have long viewed it as shallow, violence-focused, and plagued with bias and inaccuracies. The very low interest in television news among those under 30 shows its creeping obsolescence, and local TV news viewing declined from over 4 million in 2016 to about 3 million in 2022, out of a US adult population of 258 million. Its collapse is manifested in how Tulsa’s ABC affiliate has consolidated its news production in Oklahoma City, with only remote reporters in Tulsa.
News websites or apps are the next most preferred platform overall, and presumably will soon surpass television. But still, only 1/4 of adults are like me, preferring to get their news via online news websites or apps.
I don’t find it surprising that the most preferred news platform for those under 30 is social media. Other data shows that 19% of U.S. adults often get news from social media, and 31% sometimes get it that way. At right are the percentages of U.S. adults who regularly get news on each social media site. As for trends, the ones showing growth instead of decline in the past few years are TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, and Nextdoor, which are all of low quality.
Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram’s news consumers are mostly those under 30. Facebook’s, X’s (Twitter’s), and YouTube’s news consumers are mostly 30-49, and Nextdoor’s news consumers are generally over 29.
Looking beyond social media, print publications are the least preferred platform for those under 65, hence printed newspapers and news magazines are doomed.
Radio is actually preferred over print by those 30-64, but radio is far more limited in how in-depth it can go across a range of stories. National Public Radio still does some good journalism, and our local radio station offers news in an abbreviated format, but neither tackle some of the issues the newspapers do.
The consequences of the changes in how news is gathered, published, and distributed are stark. Many of my fellow citizens display delusional hypocrisy and have been embracing and electing corrupt authoritarian demagogues. The ongoing erosion of standards and democracy in our great republic is connected to the decline in quality journalism. Over a century ago, the great Walter Lippmann explained what we can now readily observe:
Men who have lost their grip upon the relevant facts of their environment are the inevitable victims of agitation and propaganda. The quack, the charlatan, the jingo, and the terrorist, can flourish only where the audience is deprived of independent access to information. But where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses. The whole reference of thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what actually is.
When I was in junior high, my best friend was a paperboy. When his family went on vacations, I would take over his route. A bundle of papers would be dropped off on a street corner, where I would fold them and put rubber bands on them. Then I would load them into a big bag on my shoulders and awkwardly pedal my bicycle across the neighborhood, doing my best to deliver the paper to the correct addresses in convenient locations.
I wasn’t fast, but I was conscientious.
Those days are now only a distant memory…in more ways than one.
His master’s voice is one of the most memorable corporate phrases and logos. You know, the image of a little dog listening to an old-time gramophone. I grew up associating it with RCA Victor records, with a vague awareness that before that it appeared on the Victor Talking Machine Company’s Victrola records. But it wasn’t until I saw a video about JVC, which invented the VHS videotape, that I learned that the phrase and logo were also used by that corporation (JVC stands for Japan Victor Company) as well as the British HMV (yes, originating from His Master’s Voice). I also learned that the logo originated in England in 1899, where it began as a somewhat different painting.
Francis James Barraud was an English painter. When his older brother, Mark, died in 1887, his dog Nipper was sent to live with Francis. It happened that Francis had purchased an Edison Commercial Phonograph. He noticed how Nipper would sit close to the horn speaker, with his head turned and his ears pricked, listening to the mysterious sounds. The image stuck with him, but there is a false history about the dog sitting on his brother’s coffin, listening to a recording of his master’s voice. The real story follows.
The photograph of Nipper that Francis Barraud used when creating his painting
Nipper died in 1895, so in 1898, when Francis had the idea of painting the dog listening to the phonograph, he had to use a photograph of the dog for his model. He painted an image of the dog listening to his cylinder phonograph on a table. Barraud proceeded to register for a copyright on the painting, but he had no success in having it exhibited at the Royal Academy. When he showed it to various publishers, the only offer was to purchase it for five pounds (equivalent to $670 in 2023).
Barraud took the painting to the Edison-Bell offices in London, where manager James Hough rejected it, saying, “Dogs don’t listen to phonographs.” No doubt Hough later rued the day he passed on what would become one of the most recognized trademarks of the 20th century.
We only know what the painting originally looked like because Barraud had it photographed for his copyright. In 1972, factory worker and gramophone enthusiast Frank Andrews learned that the original painting had been “registered” and realized that a photograph of it might be on file among the “Works of Art” copyright applications in the Public Records Office in London. He found it in a box that hadn’t been opened in over 70 years.
A photograph of the original painting Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph
After the rejection from Edison-Bell, a friend of Barraud’s then suggested that he brighten up the picture, using a brass horn rather than the dark one he had painted. Barraud went to The Gramophone Company, which was just over a year old and had disc phonographs with brass horns. He asked them to lend him one to paint from.
Luckily, the American William Barry Owen was the manager, acting as the agent for Emile Berliner, the German inventor of the gramophone record. Owen asked if the painting was for sale, and if so whether Barraud would be willing to paint over the Edison cylindrical phonograph with one of their disc gramophones. Barraud agreed, altered the painting, and sold The Gramophone Company the painting for 50 pounds and the transfer of its copyright for another 50 pounds. So he netted the 2023 equivalent of about $13,400.
The altered painting, with a disc gramophone replacing the Edison phonograph
The logo and the phrase “His master’s voice” appeared in advertising literature and sometimes on company stationery. Emile Berliner visited the British office in May 1900, saw the painting, and soon registered it as a trademark over in America. Eldridge Johnson soon took over Berliner’s rights to the trademark for his new Victor Talking Machine Company and began heavily promoting it.
The US trademark from 1900
The British company began using the logo and phrase more in 1909, introducing it on its record labels, and, because it lost the trademark on “Gramophone”, replacing “Gramophone Monarch Record” and “Gramophone Concert Record” on the labels with the caption “His Master’s Voice”.
By 1913, the painter Francis Barraud was in some financial difficulty. The company asked him to make an exact copy of the painting, which he agreed to do for 35 pounds. It was sent to the Victor Company in the USA. In 1914, three directors of the Victor Company commissioned more copies from Barraud, each for 35 pounds.
Alfred Clark held Barraud in high esteem
Alfred Clark, who was a cameraman and director at Edison’s first film studio and later joined The Gramophone Company and became the managing director, befriended Barraud. He later recalled, “He was a man of great personal charm, and was beloved by many devoted friends…during the war, in spite of his years, he volunteered to serve his country, and was appointed to a regular position in the recruiting department of the Army. The prolonged hours of attendance and thoroughly hard work undoubtedly affected his health seriously.”
In 1919, The Gramophone Company and the Victor Talking Machine Company agreed jointly to pay Barraud an annuity of 250 pounds per year. In 1921, The Gramophone Company established the HMV company to sell disc records and later radios and televisions, naturally using the logo to accompany the trademarked phrase.
Barraud ended up painting 24 replicas of his original painting in total, including 12 more commissioned from him in 1922 by the Victor Company at 35 pounds each. He even made one free copy that was so exact that he painted in the old phonograph and then painted it over with the gramophone, ensuring the finished work would more closely match the original. That oh-so-exact copy eventually made its way to the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood, while the original hangs at the Gloucester Place headquarters of EMI, which was formed from The Gramophone Company, HMV, and the Columbia Gramophone Company in 1931.
Barraud in 1922, working on his commission for 12 copies of his painting
Francis Barraud died in late August 1924, a few months after the two gramophone companies had increased his annuity to 350 pounds. Alfred Clark shared, “His gentle, kindly ways endeared him to all of us. He made his voyage through his life, modestly and simply, leaving behind to his sorrowing friends a feeling of great loss.”
The high regard Barraud had earned is reflected in that, after his death, the companies learned he had been sending 100 pounds of his annuity each year to his sister, who was living at an old age home in Staffordshire. The British and American record companies immediately continued that payment each year until her death in 1929.
In 1927, the Victor Talking Machine Company incorporated a Japanese branch that would become JVC. RCA (Radio Corporation of America) gained control of the phrase and logo in 1929 when it purchased Victor and its foreign subsidiaries. Thus little Nipper and his gramophone continued to grace the products of multiple corporations for decades to come.
Today, if you go to Kingston upon Thames in England, you’ll find Nipper Alley, with a familiar logo on its sign. That’s because down that alley is a parking lot behind a branch of Lloyds Bank. Way back in 1895, that lot was the garden of a house, and when little Nipper died, he was buried there under a mulberry tree.
And what about the man who immortalized Nipper? Francis Barraud’s remains rest eleven miles away, in a neglected overgrown grave in Hampstead Cemetery in greater London.
However, the best remembrance of him are the countless reproductions of his greatest work. As he put it, “It was certainly the happiest thought I ever had.”
Can you spot the error in this funny internet meme? I only noticed it thanks to personal experience with two forms of this once-popular antiseptic which was banned in the USA a quarter-century ago.
There is a subtle error in this funny internet meme
The “fiery spit of Satan” form of Mercurochrome was a tincture of alcohol
I won’t keep you in suspense: that is a bottle of the aqueous solution of Mercurochrome. Crazy Mr. Morgan, my high school chemistry teacher, taught me that aqueous solutions have water as the solvent, and since the active ingredient, merbromin, was dissolved in water in that bottle instead of alcohol, the pictured antiseptic didn’t actually sting. The “fiery spit of Satan” was earlier forms of Mercurochrome that were tinctures of alcohol or acetone.
When as I child I cut myself badly enough, my father would open the first aid kit he had received in the army during World War II and apply an alcohol tincture of Mercurochrome. It certainly stung and also left a bright red stain. Some kids called it “monkey blood”, but I just knew it as painful protection against infection.
A World War II army first aid kit with a little bottle of Mercurochrome
I remember later getting cut while at our vacation cabin in Missouri, and my father getting a bottle of Mercurochrome out of the bathroom medicine cabinet, which still had items left behind by the previous owners. I tearfully submitted to its application, prepared for a sting. He smeared the red stuff on, but the sting didn’t come.
I was baffled and asked him why it didn’t hurt. He shrugged, speculating that maybe it was too old and had lost its efficacy. What he didn’t realize was that the newer formulation was an aqueous solution. Being water-based, it lacked the alcohol that made his old kit form pack a punch. Alcohol contains ethanol and hydrogen peroxide, which activate receptors in the body that trigger a burning sensation. That burning sensation is a valid warning: such solutions kill germs, but they also harm the surrounding tissue of the wound, which can delay healing.
Another subtle error: the Mercurochrome in this photo was an aqueous solution, so it didn’t actually sting, while the 50% alcohol tincture of Merthiolate packed a wallop
Another point of confusion is Merthiolate versus Mercurochrome. Mercurochrome was a trade name for a solution of merbromin, a compound of mercury and bromine. Merthiolate (which my parents pronounced without its “r”) was a trade name for thimerosal, a compound of mercury and sodium. Both kill some disease-causing microbes by breaking chemical bonds in proteins. Merthiolate was a tincture of alcohol or acetone, so it always stung when applied to open wounds.
In 1998, the Food & Drug Administration, concerned about the mercury in it, reclassified merbromin from “generally recognized as safe” to “untested” and that effectively banned it in the USA. To put it back on the market here in its original form would require testing and approval. Drug companies won’t pursue that expense since the drug is too old to be patented…they couldn’t recoup the testing and approval costs, since if it were eventually approved, cheap generic forms would immediately flood the market.
Thimerosal was also banned in over-the-counter products, but it is still commonly used as a preservative in various substances. Something branded as Merthiolate is still around, but it no longer contains thimerosal. Mercurochrome with merbromin is still widely available in other countries, but if you need a topical antiseptic I advise using Neosporin.
Another antiseptic of old
Another painful antiseptic of old, which my mother once kept on hand, was iodine. My father’s World War II first aid kit had also included some iodine swabs, but they had dried out, while Mom kept a blue bottle of iodine up in a high cabinet. It was a tincture using ethanol, so it stung when applied to a wound.
The inaccuracies in most of the internet memes I have seen about Mercurochrome brings to mind how consumers wasted over a billion dollars each year on oral phenylephrine, which some scientists and many pharamacists have known for decades was ineffective. Phenylephrine works fine in a nasal spray, but it is no better than a placebo when taken orally.
Thankfully I long ago had figured out that taking phenylephrine orally did not work for me and learned to rely on pseudoephedrine instead, despite the annoying restrictions on procuring it which were intended to fight methamphetamine addiction.
I was also quick to catch on that loratidine (aka Claratin) isn’t an effective decongestant, although it can help with other allergy symptoms. Thankfully I figured out that cetirizine (aka Zyrtec) works well for my particular allergy symptoms. However, I was much slower to acknowledge that guaifenesin did little for me to relieve chest congestion.
Back in 2006, the American College of Chest Physicians advised consumers with acute coughs from colds to ignore over-the-counter drugs with dextromethorphan or guaifenesin. If you think drugs with those ingredients are helpful, it’s your money and maybe they help with your symptoms and not mine, but you also might just be paying for placebo effects. As for homeopathic medicines, I’ll let James Randi address that quackery.
In my youth, similar nonsense was spread about vitamins. There is no substantial evidence of a health benefit for most of the adult population from taking a daily multivitamin. Yet I, like over 40% of the adults in the USA, still take one. Why is that?
For me, it is a combination of the halo effect, a lack of standards, and, most importantly, that prescription is far more convenient than proscription. The halo effect arises because we know that vitamins could indeed prevent pellagra, rickets, and scurvy back when nutritional deficiencies were common. The truth, however, is that few of us now have such poor diets that we might succumb to a disease caused by a vitamin deficit.
A lot of people enrich their urine with this stuff
My innate skepticism and reading of James Randi and Martin Gardner protected me from trusting Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Laureate and famous chemist, who believed that Vitamin C could prevent cancer and increase the life expectancy of cancer patients. Realizing that chemistry is not medicine and that science is more than scientists, I was not surprised to find that three subsequent double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trials, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and conducted in the Mayo Clinic, found no benefit. It sure looks like vitamin C doesn’t help much with the common cold, either. As the old saying goes, “If something is too good to be true, it probably is.”
However, few seek out rigorous research, instead relying on advertising and anecdotes or falling victim to pseudoscience. It doesn’t help that the USA does not require human research to prove that supplements are safe or effective. The FDA can stop the distribution of unsafe supplements, but they do not subject them to the scrutiny they apply to pharmaceuticals, so they escape even belated corrective actions like what is finally happening with oral phenylephrine. Throughout my lifetime the pharmacy counters have swollen with bottles of vitamins and supplements, and nowadays we have a flood of “essential oils” in the marketplace.
So why, then, do I still take a daily multivitamin? Because I know that one vitamin won’t hurt me, and my diet is far from ideal. I’d rather prescribe myself a useless vitamin than proscribe unhealthy foods I enjoy like pizza and hamburgers, and I fail to make the effort to consume more fruits and vegetables. Like you, I tend to be illogical at times, and I often prefer balms of comfort over the sting of truth.
Bob Kane and Bill Finger introduced Batman in the May 1939 issue of Detective Comics. Kane had the initial idea of The Bat-Man, but his version wore a red jumpsuit, domino mask, and had two wings attached to his back. Writer Bill Finger is responsible for the revised costume, the gadgets, the conception of Bruce Wayne and Gotham City, and much more.
Bob Kane’s original sketch compared to the published version
Bob Kane and Bill Finger
Sadly, Kane made sure that Finger got little credit for his contributions. Perhaps it is fitting that one of Batman’s co-creators was himself a bit of a villain, and that it took some detective work for folks to belatedly realize how important Bill Finger had been.
Batman started out pretty dark, killing people and using a gun. But then DC decided to lose the gun and had him stop killing people. His sidekick Robin was introduced, transforming Batman into a lighthearted father figure who traded wisecracks with Robin.
In the 1950s, the Batman comics became rather bizarre, with stories involving aliens, visiting other planets, and various gimmicks. Of course, the villains had long been bizarre, but so were the ones that Oklahoma’s own Chester Gould used in his Dick Tracy comics.
After the scare from Seduction of the Innocent, Batman gained a Bat-Family and the Catwoman villain, who first appeared in Batman #1 in 1940, disappeared. The comic book eventually was in danger of cancellation, but a 1966 television show revived its prospects and led to the Catwoman character being revived in the comics.
The Bright Knight
Bill Dozier, who was asked by ABC to produce the 1960s television show about Batman, had never read comic books. After reading several Batman issues, he decided the show could only work as a pop-art campy comedy. He hired Lorenzo Semple Jr. as head scriptwriter, and thankfully they cast Adam West in the title role.
Adam West‘s straight-faced portrayal of the absurd character, with the energetic Burt Ward as his sidekick Robin, was so much fun.
The silly fight scenes were a highlight, with plenty of Wham!Zap! Boff! and the like, and actors portraying the outrageous villains gleefully chewed up the scenery, including regulars Burgess Meredith as The Penguin and Cesar Romero as The Joker.
What many might not realize is that the narrator of the show, including the famous “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”, was Bill Dozier himself.
Recently I showed Wendy the 1966 Batman movie that featured Meredith and Romero, as well as Frank Gorshin as The Riddler and Lee Meriwether as Catwoman. Years ago, I got to see Adam West at a Tulsa convention, along with Julie Newmar. She played Catwoman in the first two seasons of the show, while Eartha Kitt took over the role for the final third season.
Adam West outlined the difference of the show from the comic books and his earnest, sincere, and unsubtle approach to the character:
I was born in the mid-1960s, so I was too young to watch the campy Batman television series of 1966-1968 until it was in syndicated reruns. In the 1970s, one of the Oklahoma City television stations ran it on weekday afternoons, and I found it hilarious.
I also saw Batman and Robin on the long-running Saturday morning cartoon Super Friends. There they weren’t played for laughs, but the show was still pretty lighthearted.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight of the 1970s comic books did not appeal to me
Detective Comics Volume 1 #428 had what appeared to be a corrupt cop involved in a dope ring. It included quite violent scenes of the cop seemingly about to kill the caped crusader, only to be stopped by the drug dealers who didn’t want the heat that act would bring.
This 1972 comic was a far cry from the silly television series of a few years earlier
I was particularly shocked to see Batman unconcerned when the cop gunned down the dealers.
Just a couple of rodents died, so nothing to worry about? Egad.
This was far more to my liking as a kid
There was no way to reconcile that portrayal with what I enjoyed on TV. The comic book wasn’t a total loss, however, as I did like the haunting atmosphere of the Hawkman story in that same issue, which at least had some clues and detective work.
Whenever my parents took me to our vacation cabin in Missouri, Mom would buy me a three-pack of comic books at a grocery store. That introduced me to the satellite-era Justice League of America, Superman, Green Lantern, and the like. Batman was in the Justice League, but I don’t recall many Batman comics in those 3-packs.
By junior high, I had stopped reading comics, but I still watched reruns of the Batman television show. One summer a neighborhood tomboy and I had great giggly fun making up our own Batgirl & Robin stories that we recorded on cassette tapes. How I wish I had saved them!
Cinematic Batmen
After junior high I didn’t think much about Batman until the late 1980s, after I had completed my undergraduate degree. Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film, with its dark and menacing Gotham City, serious portrayal of Batman by Michael Keaton, and Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top Joker, was a smash hit. As a young adult, I didn’t mind the darker tone and enjoyed Jack Nicholson’s Joker, but I hated the sequel’s disgusting Penguin and found the later Schumacher entries in that series of movies rather ridiculous. Bat-nipples were the least of their problems.
Christopher Nolan brought Batman back to cinemas with his Dark Knight trilogy from 2005-2012. They were blockbusters that I saw in theaters, but the only reason I would watch any of those dark tales again would be to relish Heath Ledger’s standout portrayal of The Joker.
I liked each of these unique portrayals of The Joker
One final Batman experience came about a decade ago, when Rifftrax released their takes on the 1949 Batman and Robin serial. That 15-chapter sequel to another serial from 1943 was of course ridiculous, with the dynamic duo confronted by the Wizard, a hooded villain who had a device to remotely control vehicles. What made it great fun was having Mystery Science 3000 veterans Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy making wisecracks throughout the episodes.
I haven’t seen the Zack Snyder movies where Ben Affleck played Batman. While I liked Snyder’s 2009 Watchmen movie, suffering through 2013’s Man of Steel made it clear that the Snyderverse was not for me. I’ve also not been tempted to sample Jared Leto’s or Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayals of the Joker.
If I’m going to watch a superhero movie, give me something with lower stakes and a strong sense of humor, such as when Billy Batson tests his powers in the 2019 Shazam!
My Bright Knight
I have no idea what the reboot of the DC Extended Universe will mean for Batman. Maybe the character will eventually evolve into something I would like to see, but superheroes are such absurd characters that for me camp is the best way to go. We lost Adam West in 2017, but long live the Bright Knight.
This is a look back at the key shifts in how I listened to recorded music over my lifetime, with examples of what I was listening to at the time.
1960s vinyl record albums
I was born in the mid-1960s, and at first the only recorded music stored in our home was on vinyl long-playing records that my mother could play on her phonograph, a Sears model from the late 1950s.
My mother taught me to play records on my own, cleaning and handling them carefully. My favorites were a 1957 performance of Peter and the Wolf by the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy conducting and Cyril Ritchard narrating, the 1955 Songs of the West album by the Norman Luboff Choir, and 1962’s Pianos in Paradise by Ferrante & Teicher.
1970s vinyl record albums
By the mid-1970s, 46% of U.S. recorded music sales were still on long-playing 33-rpm vinyl records, 32% on vinyl 45-rpm singles, 18% on 8-track tape cartridges, and 4% on compact cassettes. I was nine years old when I acquired the first album of my own: 1975’s Goofy Greats by K-tel. I had received a blue plastic fishing tackle box as a gift but didn’t like fishing, so my best friend Gene Freeman, who owned Goofy Greats, traded it for my tackle box.
The records I encountered were either long-playing (LP) 12-inch diameter albums you were supposed to play at 33 1/3 rpm or 7-inch diameter singles you were to play at 45 rpm. But 78 rpm records were produced until 1958, and Mom’s player could also handle rare 16 2/3 rpm records, which were typically talking books for the blind. So Gene and I had fun even with the songs we didn’t care for, adjusting the speed on the 1950s record player from 33 1/3 rpm to 45 or 78 to make it sound like the Chipmunks were performing or to 16 rpm to slow a song way down.
That ready ability to change speeds on record players allowed for great discoveries to be made. This included transforming Dolly Parton into what we imagined to be a black male singer by playing her song Jolene on a 45 rpm single at the reduced speed of 33 1/3:
Physical media dominated U.S. recorded music sales until the mid-2000s. The RIAA chart below shows how they then faded away. As of 2022, sales of physical media were only 11% of U.S. recorded music revenues, while 58% of revenues were via paid subscription services and most of the rest via various types of ad-supported streaming services. The light blue bars in the graph show the rise and then disappearance of cassette tapes.
Reel-to-reel, 8-track, and compact cassette tapes
For those too young to recall tape formats, the first audio tapes I remember seeing were reel-to-reel units that some audiophiles would purchase for home use. Our family never had one, but the father of a friend of mine in junior high did, although we didn’t mess with it. Reel-to-reel units were mostly discontinued by the 1980s.
Techmoan, a YouTuber I have supported via Patreon since 2016, with a classic reel-to-reel tape unit
The first tape formats to gain widespread popularity were the 8-track cartridge and the compact cassette, driven (pun intended) by their use in automobiles. Lear Jet designed a version of the 8-track that was quite popular, peaking at over 18% of U.S. recorded music sales in 1978.
Me looking at my parents’ stereo in the 1970s
In the 1970s, my father purchased an inexpensive Soundesign stereo system with a turntable to play vinyl records, an AM/FM radio, and 8-track recorder. He liked playing 8-tracks in his station wagon and accumulated quite a few, some purchased new and others at garage sales. He never used the recording feature much.
8-tracks had drawbacks, including how as an endless loop they couldn’t be rewound and had to be split into four “programs” with two tracks in each program for stereo sound. That led to songs sometimes being split across two programs. Such songs would fade out, you would hear a clunk as the tape head shifted to two new tracks, and then the song faded back in.
In the early 1970s, my parents purchased a compact cassette recorder from Radio Shack for use with my piano lessons. That was a significant purchase at the time, with $74.50 in 1971 equivalent to $563 in 2023. We used it for years, and I had a lot of fun one summer in junior high with a neighborhood tomboy recording our own “Batgirl and Robin” adventures on it. I wish I had saved those tapes!
My parents bought this expensive cassette recorder for my piano lessons
Compact cassette tape ran at a slower speed than 8-track tapes, so originally 8-tracks had better sound quality. Cassettes, however, were less bulky, could have a longer run time, could be rewound, and only had a side A and side B.
So gradually cassettes edged out 8-tracks, and eventually noise reduction technology reduced their tape hiss and different tape formulations improved their sound. 8-track sales volumes started plummeting in 1979, when I was still in junior high school, and the format was essentially dead by 1983 before I graduated from high school.
I had another cassette recorder in 1981, a Radio Shack CTR-80A we purchased to link to my TRS-80 Color Computer so it could save and retrieve programs as a 1500 baud audio signal. It worked, but I was very glad to eventually replace it with some 160 kilobyte 5.25″ floppy disk drives.
In 1983, I purchased a Radio Shack Realistic Minisette-11 for the equivalent of over $300 in 2023 when adjusted for inflation. I wanted something more functional than a typical Sony Walkman portable cassette player, although I eventually had one of those too…which I almost never used.
Vinyl with cassettes
In junior high I began purchasing some vinyl long-playing records from Columbia House, which let me acquire a bunch of albums in the mail for next-to-nothing so long as I agreed that I would pay for another album they sent me each month unless I remembered to reject it in advance.
My favorite album from my initial purchase was ABBA’s Greatest Hits, so I bought their Greatest Hits Vol. 2, and eventually all of their albums from Columbia House, and remained a customer of theirs for several years until I could drive myself to a record store.
I purchased 45-rpm vinyl singles in high school
In high school I would hear songs on the radio and see music videos on the MTV cable channel. I would purchase my favorite songs as 45-revolution-per-minute vinyl singles, usually at the Sound Warehouse in the Cornerstone Plaza shopping center at 39th Expressway and McAlester Boulevard in Warr Acres.
My first car, a 1976 Toyota Corolla, originally just had an AM radio and no way to play recorded music. So I saved up money to address that issue, which required a new home stereo and a new unit in the car.
My 1976 Toyota Corolla came with just a crummy AM radio
In high school I had a checking account with a debit card. I remember nervously making what was then an immense withdrawal of about $200 at an automated teller machine to purchase my own stereo system at a Service Merchandise.
Service Merchandise was an interesting retailer. It had an extensive catalog of items along with “catalog showrooms” where you could see a working demonstration model of an item. If you wanted to purchase an item at the showroom, you grabbed a clipboard and pencil and filled out the item number, description, and price in pencil on an order form, which you submitted at a cash register to pay for it.
You then went to the pick-up area where items would come in on a conveyor belt from their warehouse area. I remember being impressed when they updated to computer terminals where shoppers could enter an item directly into their system, immediately letting you know if it was in stock.
My first stereo was a Soundesign Model 6827
My stereo, like my parents’, had an AM/FM radio and a turntable, but while theirs had an 8-track recorder, mine had an 8-track player and a compact cassette recorder.
For the car, I had a new AM/FM radio unit with a cassette deck installed. That allowed me to play my vinyl albums and singles on my home stereo, record the playback onto compact cassette tapes, and then play my “mix tapes” in the car.
Would you go cruising on the strip in this thing?
By then it was the early 1980s and one of my friends had fixed up an old muscle car and would go “cruising” in it along 39th Expressway/US 66 in Warr Acres and Oklahoma City. My girlfriend and I once had fun cruising the strip in my pathetic green 1976 Corolla, blasting I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on my cassette deck. We would provoke the muscle cars to go tearing off at stoplights, leaving us laughing and choking on their exhaust.
I was nerdy enough, and my handwriting poor enough, that I actually used a typewriter for the cassette labels and the track listings on the case inserts. Soon I had a briefcase in the backseat filled with cassettes, almost all being ones I had recorded off vinyl records, not commercial cassette tapes, since I liked being able to listen to my songs on vinyl records at home and on cassette tapes in the car.
In 1986 I updated my stereo system from an all-in-one to components when I was mid-way through my undergraduate work at The University of Oklahoma. I spent about $100 each on a Technics tuner, phonograph, and cassette player. By then, U.S music sales by volume were 20% vinyl albums, 15% vinyl singles, and 56% cassettes. Compact discs had appeared, but were still less than 9% of sales volume.
I bought a Technics SL-QD3 direct-drive turntable. I liked how it had quartz lock and a stroboscope to help ensure it was turning at the correct number of revolutions per minute, whereas my cheap Soundesign phonograph had some noticeable wow and flutter.
My phonograph, tuner, and cassette deck in 1986, with a record sleeve and cleaning cloth to one side
But that nicer turntable needed a dedicated tuner to amplify its phonograph output, and I needed a compatible cassette recorder. So I also purchased a Technics SA-150 tuner and a cassette deck. The tuner provided AM/FM radio and allowed me to switch between the phonograph and the cassette tape monitor.
So what sort of albums was I purchasing in college? Favorites would be Paul Simon’s Graceland, U2’s The Joshua Tree, and Promiseby Sade. I had them all on vinyl, and would eventually buy them on compact disc as well.
Compact discs
Compact discs were wonderful, being digital and having anti-skip error correction. I was so glad to be rid of the distracting pops and crackles and jumped grooves of aging vinyl records, and I embraced the greater dynamic range and simpler handling of CDs.
I remain bemused that some people prefer vinyl. If they say a vinyl record sounds better than a compact disc, they might also be the type who like the “cinematic look” of 24-frames-per-second movies and are not annoyed by flicker or motion blur.
As I was completing my undergraduate degree, I finally purchased my first compact disc player in 1988, almost six years after the first players became available. It was a Technics SL-P1, which was quite expensive and was 13.1 inches deep, while my tuner was only 9.5 inches deep and the cassette deck was 8.66 inches deep. I put my new CD player on the bottom of the stack and was grateful that the cassette deck and tuner did not block its top rear vents.
My first compact disc player
My first CD
Compact discs were originally specified to support indices within a track, which allowed you to jump to different parts of a given track. My SL-P1 could display the index during a track, and I could jump to an index. My first compact disc was Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) by the Montréal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit. Like many early classical compact discs, it supported the index feature, but I don’t recall ever using the index function on another disc, and none of my later players supported them.
I also spent $60 in 1988 on a Sony CFS-1000 AM/FM Cassette portable stereo with speakers that could be detached and extended on wires. I never used it much.
My first “boombox”
1989: phonograph on top (with a landline phone sitting on the lid), then the receiver/tuner/amplifier, the cassette recorder, and the compact disc player with compact discs, vinyl records and cassettes below that
Looking at a photograph of my stereo system taken in an Oklahoma City apartment in early 1989, I see that by then I had 24 compact discs as well as the various vinyl record albums, vinyl singles, and a few cassette tapes – with a bunch more out in the car. I see that the system was still hooked up to some old Zenith speakers that each had a tweeter and a woofer.
Although I had updated from the 1976 Corolla to a 1978 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and then a 1981 Toyota Celica Supra, I was still using cassettes in the car, since I didn’t have a car with a compact disc player until I bought a new Honda Accord in 1991.
When I moved into a rental house in 1990, I could finally play music as loud as I wanted to. I found I enjoyed turning off all the lights at night and lying on the couch, listening to a compact disc. But there were times I wanted a mix of songs, and CDs sounded much better than cassette mix tapes. So in 1992 I replaced the original compact disc player with a Technics SL-PD827 carousel unit that could play five discs at a time. I could program it to jump to a particular track on any of the five discs.
1992 compact disc changer
That setup was stable for over a decade. The CDs I purchased during my early teaching career included various ones by Basia, Pet Shop Boys, Sinéad O’Connor, Sting, and U2. At a Science Club Christmas party at my rental house in the early 1990s, I remember some students were impressed that I had about 40 CDs…that would grow to over 400 by 2010.
My stereo in 2001 before I finally upgraded my television; notice that an old lyrics sleeve is out, and by then the telephone handset was wireless, but not cellular
Television brings an audio update
My music system evolved again in 2003 when I upgraded my television. By then the stereo in the living room was hooked up to the big old speakers my parents had purchased with their 1970s Soundesign system and there were also wires tucked under baseboards leading back to my office where my old Zenith speakers were available as remotes.
My 2003 Onkyo speaker system
I decided to purchase a new 30″ high-definition cathode-ray-tube television to replace my 19″ television from 1982. In addition to the high-resolution 16:9 screen, I wanted surround sound for movies. So I upgraded to a Panasonic SAHE100S receiver with Onkyo surround sound speakers to use with a VCR and DVD player, which could also play CDs.
Those 2003 speakers are still what we use twenty years later in the living room, albeit with a different tuner/receiver/amplifier that could support a 7.1 system if we wanted that. 5.1 systems have a center speaker, left and right front, and left and right back plus a subwoofer for low-frequency sounds. That’s plenty for us, but some folks splurge on 7.1 systems that add side left and right speakers, and a few folks add in-ceiling or up-firing speakers for Dolby Atmos.
My system in 2008 shows several added devices for video playback, while music was either from playing a compact disc in a DVD player or from the phonograph
2003 was when I abandoned playing cassettes in the house, and that was also the last year cassette recordings had a measurable amount of sales volume in the U.S. Soon I would make the switch to downloading music as MP3 files.
MP3 files
My first iPod in 2004
The MP3 compression format for digital audio files came along in 1993. That eventually allowed the Napster file sharing network to make pirated music readily available. I refused to use Napster or LimeWire to steal music…I was never a Boy Scout, but my wife says I might as well have been one. I continued to purchase compact discs, although once I had an iPod, I did begin “ripping” them on my home computer into the MP3 format so I could load them onto it.
In 2004 I purchased a 4th-generation Apple iPod for $500 (equivalent to $819 in 2023). It was exhilarating to carry so many songs in high quality around in my pocket on its tiny 40 gigabyte spinning hard drive. The click wheel was a great interface for the time.
I will never forget taking my iPod with me on a hike on Mount Rainier in Washington State in the summer of 2005. I was hiking on a snowy trail in short sleeves listening to my iPod on shuffle play. Just as I came to a tremendous vista, Hanson’s MMMBop of 1997 started playing, and I couldn’t resist singing along as I bounded down the snowy mountainside.
One of the happiest days of my life, in which my new iPod played a key role
Since I was building up MP3 music files, I also purchased an Philips AZ 115517 MP3-CD player boombox for my home office. You had to burn MP3 files on a recordable compact disc to play them; the unit didn’t support USB flash drives. It survived until the great Meador Manor cleanout in 2016.
My first iPod still used a spinning hard drive, but it was replaced by solid-state iPod Nanos in 2005 and 2007 and then my first iPhone in 2008. I had so many music files, all of which I had paid for in one form or another, that I had to buy iPhones with larger storage capacities to handle them, and for several years still couldn’t fit my entire collection on the devices. My 2008 iPhone 3G only had 16 gigabytes of memory, while my 2022 iPhone 14 Pro has 16 times more.
MP3 killed the CD star
Compact discs were less attractive once I had an iPod, since I could connect it to a cheap cassette adapter to play songs in my 2001 Toyota Camry and dispense with having to create cassette tapes or playing CDs in the car. So sometime after 2004 I shifted from purchasing CDs to purchasing music as digital files via the iTunes Store. That led me to upgrade the computer speakers in my home office for awhile since I found myself playing songs there on iTunes instead of on CDs in the living room.
For awhile I was fascinated by the iTunes Visualizer, and I would playback songs like Fatboy Slim’s Praise You with the room lights off, watching the Visualizer.
I found it fascinating to see how Fatboy Slim created his remixes back in the day:
I still love his remix of Brimful of Asha, which really amped up the original song. And of course I identify with how Tjinder Singh was singing and writing about listening to Bollywood cinema star Asha Bhonsle “on the 45”, referring to the vinyl record singles I listened to back in high school.
I managed to get paid $631 for 364 compact discs in 2010. By then, downloads accounted for most U.S. recorded music sales, with compact discs accounting for only 16% of the sales volumes and vinyl for a paltry 0.2%. I crammed all of my old phonograph records and cassette tapes into a bedroom closet, where they sat until Wendy and I got rid of them in 2016.
Car surgery
2010 was also when the cassette player in my 2001 Toyota Camry automobile wore out, forcing me to switch to FM transmitters to get the music on my Apple devices into the car’s amplifier. In 2012 I pulled the stereo from my car so I could wire in an FM modulator. That provided a line-in port from my devices to the stereo. It was quite a task for someone like me, but it gave me much better sound in the car for a couple of years until I finally sold the Camry in 2014 when it had over 236,000 miles on it.
Sliding the stereo out of my 2001 Camry to install an FM modulator for my iPhones
Thankfully my 2014.5 Toyota Camry XLE sedan, which I am still driving in 2023, has Bluetooth allowing me to easily use my iPhones in it for music playback. Wendy’s 2018 minivan is new enough to support CarPlay.
My 2014.5 Camry’s Entune Audio has Bluetooth, but not CarPlay
Modern music
So how do I acquire and listen to music in 2023? Wendy and I have access to three different services which each provide access to over 100 million songs. I pay $33 per month for Apple One Premier, which provides 2 terabytes of iCloud+ storage along with Apple TV+, Music, Arcade, Fitness+, and News+ which I can share with up to five people. The Apple Music component lets me stream over 100 million songs, and I actually purchase very few songs these days — only rarities which are so precious to me that I would never want to lose access to them should they disappear from the streaming platforms.
I also still pay $25 per year for iTunes Match, which is an older service that provides high-quality versions of songs I ripped many years ago into my iTunes library and syncs all of my music across devices. I could probably cancel that, but I fear that might cause weird glitches for my Apple music library, which I began building in 2004 and now includes over 17,800 songs on 2,154 albums from 1,336 artists across 138 genres. So I just keep paying for iTunes Match as a form of insurance.
There are two other music streaming services available to us. I pay $23 per month for YouTube Premium, which gives Wendy and me ad-free YouTube videos. It happens to include access to over 100 million songs via YouTube Music, but I rarely use that service, although Wendy uses it often via the Google Home Hubs around the house. I also pay $139 annually for Amazon Prime, mostly for free Amazon deliveries and renting streaming movies, but it is a third streaming music option that now also includes over 100 million songs, but it has skip limits on playlists.
Across the U.S. in 2022, recorded music sales volume was about half of what it was in the 1970s, about one-fourth of what it was in the 1990s, and about one-sixth of its peak in 2008. People mostly just stream their music these days.
Personal music
Much of my music listening is in my 2014.5 Toyota Camry, which connects via Bluetooth to my iPhone 14 Pro. I rarely play music on speakers in the home. Wendy’s hearing is far more acute than mine; I have high-frequency loss and tinnitus. So around the house, I usually wear headphones of some sort.
For music and audiobooks on the trail, I use wired Apple earbuds with my iPhone, while around the house I sometimes listen to music on my iPad using AfterShokz Aeropex bone conduction Bluetooth headphones, but I mostly listen to videos with them. If I want to listen to high-quality music in the house, I connect my Tribit XFree Tune Bluetooth headphones to my iPhone or iPad. When working at my home office desktop computer, I wear Mpow HC6 USB headphones. The bone conduction headphones are so comfortable I can wear them for hours, while headphones with cups get annoying after awhile.
When Wendy and I want to listen to a song together in the home, we usually just tell one of our Google Home Hubs to play it. We could also pull up a song on the Apple TV to play through the living room speaker system, but we never bother with that.
Nostalgia only gets you so far
I certainly don’t miss messing around with the vintage technology of vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, and compact discs. But I do get a kick out of the many obscure formats and players that Mat Taylor of Techmoan has explored, and I have supported him on Patreon since 2016. A great example is the Tefifon, which had a needle playing music on cartridges of endless loop plastic tape.
Nowadays, Wendy and I can stream whatever we want, whenever we want. Recorded music has come a long way in the past half-century…we have no use for record stores or most physical media.
What comes next? I don’t have a vision for much more innovation in our audiovisual technology at home, just occasional updates of aging devices with new ones that operate similarly; virtual or augmented reality headsets have never appealed to me. Having navigated the transitions from vinyl records to 8-track cartridges to compact cassette tape to compact discs to MP3 files to online streaming services, I’m pretty happy that physical media have mostly disappeared from my life.
Meador Manor 