Welcome new subscribers! This is one of those posts that benefits from toggling the “display images” option if you’re reading it in email form. The header photo in the web version is a picture of legendary child star Baby Rose Marie, who in fact did not fear microphones at all, as proven by her incredible 90 years in show business.

A new phobia arrives

You know how you’re down in a research library sub-basement looking up one thing, and another thing just leaps off the page?

There I was, searching the August 14, 1926 edition of the Saturday Evening Post for what RCA macher David Sarnoff had to say about the future of video — and out pops this bizarre cartoon of sweating musicians. The caption comes from something Sarnoff said about people struck dumb on the air: “There is something terrifying in the utter silence, the total lack of facility for determining what the audience is like.” Though he didn’t use the term, this terror would soon have a name: mike fright.

I’ve felt it. During my first air shift as a student announcer on Iowa Public Radio station WSUI-AM, I felt as if I were talking down a well without an echo. I wasn’t sure anyone could hear me, but it was worse than that. My voice felt distorted and weird as it went into the microphone. If it weren’t for the kindly program director, who actually stood outside the control room booth’s window to give the thumbs up, I might never have come back for another shift.

“It is the very weirdness of the whole business that makes you uneasy at the thought of speaking through a little hole in a cylinder hanging in front of you, to an audience that mounts up into the hundreds of thousands,” Austin Lescarboura wrote in 1922, describing the same disorientation I felt (without the 100Ks of listeners). 

Most people in 1922 were already acquainted with microphone-like objects as the receivers on telephones. But radio mics represented a new kind of party line, one with no reply from the other end. That was the weird thing Lescarboura wanted his readers to understand about broadcasting.

Radio’s mike fright is a subset of stage fright, which itself is a subset of glossophobia, fear of public speaking. All of these fears might exhibit themselves as stammering, an inability to vocalize, and physical “flight, fight or freeze” symptoms — including sweating, nausea, and elevated heart rates. When psychologists write about glossophobia, they focus on our fears of being judged. But with mike fright, you have to imagine your judges first, then freak out about the judgment. This is what gives it such an intense, surreal feeling — a feeling with nothing to focus itself on except the microphone itself.¹

No doubt, early mike fright had to do with the novelty of broadcasting, and the fact that so much of radio was live by design. But media coverage of the phenomenon also seemed a way to humanize the disembodied voices who came to occupy the minds of American listeners. Take, for instance, books like Radio Round-Ups (1932), which offered profiles of new on-air celebrities, many of whom, we are told, once had the Fright.

At the same time that radio popularized the term “mike fright,” it was also used to mock silent film stars such as Clara Bow, who found work in sound films harrowing. Perhaps this is why NBC constructed a special mic-in-a-lamp contraption for another silent film actress, Mary Pickford. (Thanks to my art director Josh Sarantitis for colorizing the magic lamp!)

Later media coverage showed Mary Pickford handling the microphone just fine. Mike fright had become one of those self-perpetuating tropes: microphones were scary because everyone was told they were scary. Meanwhile, to make fun of radio’s pretensions, the team behind The Little Rascals made a short film in 1934 entitled Mike Fright (and it’s all about their lack of fear of anything, of course).

Whatever the cause and prevalence of this fear, radio engineers seemed particularly excited to tackle the alleged problem. Within the warren of NBC’s studios at Radio City were special “speaker’s studios” (also called library studios) designed to lessen the terrifying effect of microphones by nestling them in fake parlors, complete with fireplaces. 

For a while, the CBS roundtable program “People’s Platform” broadcast from a dining-room table with microphones tucked (somewhat lumpishly?) beneath cloth napkins. NBC’s Cleveland affiliate WTAM boasted of special mics hidden within footlights for its stage show, so as not to intimidate the live audience (NBC Transmitter, Dec. 1943, p 14).

Helen Sioussat, one of the first female program directors at CBS, published a wartime memoir called Mikes Don’t Bite in 1943. By that point, mike-fright discourse was already two decades old, so Sioussat starts off with:

Beneath her breezy anecdotes, there is an interesting subtext in Mikes Don’t Bite. In his introduction to the book, the newly-appointed head of the Office of War Information Elmer Davis describes how Sioussat would coach beginners, including at one time himself: “When they go on the air, she is with them in that dark hour, and generally pulls them through without loss of self-esteem.” 

In other words, remaining calm or eliciting calm before the microphone had become its own form of power. This may be one reason why women like Sioussat were able to find a place in radio despite the sexism of the business. Though radio heavily favored (white) men on mic, it found they needed a lot of help. “Some of the bravest among political speakers have gone down before that awesome velvety stillness,” David Sarnoff said, also admitting that when it came to the Fright, “men are harder hit than women.” (Saturday Evening Post, Aug 14, 1926, p. 94).

Being good on mic day after day is a specialized skill, and a difficult one. But look at any successful production, and the hosts on mic are not in charge as much as one might think. They are the vocal talent part a team that works well together. Too often still, we confuse voices for programs, and microphones for production.

What do stock photos of microphones do?

Back in the glory days of Podcast Trend Pieces, I started to notice a lot of tedious illustrations with microphones, as if the equipment made the shows, not people. So, in a fit of irritation, I created a Tumblr, Stock Photos of Microphones Doing Nothing.

Now I see the shadow of radio’s past in all these stock pics, which are still being used. By absorbing the flop sweat of millions, the microphone (and its little friend, “On Air Sign”) grew into a signifier of excitement and prestige. But in podcasting, which is only live on rare occasion, we don’t have the same relationship with microphones — because we don’t have the same relationship with our audiences. If we do our jobs, we can fix our flubs, bad takes and — heaven forfend! — bad facts, if any are recorded, before they go out into the world.

Other than a little self-consciousness about our voices, podcasters are not as preoccupied with those metal transducers on sticks. But maybe we should be, as audio continues to be a strong vector for bad ideas, junk science, defamation and misinformation. It would be healthy to fear the microphone again — not for what it does, but how people abuse it.

🎙️🎙️🎙️

P.S. Not a paid placement (though hit me up, guys!): Shure is celebrating its 100th anniversary with this demo of old crystal mics in its archives. Who knew microphone makers had archivists? Good for them. Also, salt crystals were in these mics, which is mind-blowing. (Hat-tip to the Radio Preservation Taskforce for the link).

1  This is one reason why old fashioned public radio pledge drives, the kind where you do anything to get those phones to ring, are great for conquering mic shyness. (Also: Protect your public media!) I came to enjoy moonlighting at WSUI’s classical-format sister station, KSUI-FM, just because that audience was certain to call the second after I mispronounced the name of a composer or opera. For the record, no one actually knows how to pronounce Turandot, you biddies!