People Want Crud! Rise of the Neanderthal
Airdate:
Monday - April 19, 1965 (Airdate Confirmed)
WOR Show Original Airing
(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
Oh, wowee. . .it hit it right there in the nose. . .
Show Description
Salute to trouble
History is one long record of trouble.
Television - "Have they run out of crummy stuff now? Have they run out of junk? I almost said something more. Have they...
Have they... Have they run out of it and they've decided that they're going to only play the same six movies over and over again eternally? You know that they found that slobs will watch no matter what they put on?"
[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]
Jean Shepherd’s April 19, 1965 WOR monologue is a long, comic rant that starts as a mock “public service” salute to trouble and turns into a savage take on mass taste, television, and the idea that most people want junk.
Opening: a salute to trouble
Shepherd opens with studio banter (cues, “Ralph,” a joke about awarding a “brass figlagee with bronze oak leaf palm”) and then announces that WOR is saluting trouble—the thing that gives people character, plots, headlines, and a sense that their lives matter. Without trouble, he says, you’d have no lined faces, no memos, no yelling bosses, and no drama. History itself is “one long record of trouble,” starting with cavemen hitting each other with clubs.
He riffs that important lives are full of trouble (Liz Taylor vs. Richard Burton); ordinary lives are so dull that people miss being yelled at. He invents services like “Dial a Psychologist” (30 seconds to spill it) and predicts “dial a gripe”—a voice that will chew you out on demand.
The “silky” modern world
Life, he says, is being smoothed by lanolin, computers, and no one taking blame. He cites a New York Times piece on lawyers learning to cross-examine machines. If a computer over-orders Wheaties or fires someone, no human is at fault. Offices no longer have Scrooge-and-Cratchit shouting matches. People still hunger for conflict, so “dial a gripe” is coming.
Television and “the giant shark”
The core of the show is an attack on TV and its audience. Critics like Jack Gould complain that TV is junk but miss the point: most of the public wants crud. Ratings stay high no matter how bad the show. People watch seventh reruns of 1948 bowling, roller derby, endless golf, Flipper, Donna Reed, and movies that look like they were shot underwater with no film.
Shepherd’s image: a giant shark (or rhinoceros) with red-rimmed eyes and an endless appetite for “glop.” You cannot “raise the level” of that audience any more than you can raise the Atlantic by spitting in it.
“Neanderthals” and simpleton sports
He claims people have not all evolved equally. Some are still “around 12,000 B.C.”: sloping foreheads, no necks, satin jackets, diner hamburgers eaten paper and all, language of grunts (“Mac… you smart guy”). Catch their eye in a diner or subway and you get punched.
Spectator sports, he says, have gone the same way: bowling, demolition derbies, barrel-jumping, crash-the-planes stunts—kid games with no subtlety, packaged as “Wide World of Sports.”
The station’s own ratings
He tells a story about WOR’s program director: a classic like La Strada got test-pattern numbers; a Steve Reeves Hercules knockoff sent ratings through the roof. The conclusion: you cannot apply high culture or “civilized” standards to an audience that prefers crud and gets angry when you give it anything else.
The piece ends where it began—stay loose, don’t catch the klutz’s eye, and accept that people want trouble and junk more than they want polish.
Comments
• Shep was away on a trip to Austrailia - April 18, 1965 to May 6, 1965
WOR ID
Time
Station ID (All times approximate)
15:17
Speaking of trouble, this is WOR. Holy smokes. This is WOR AM and FM New York.
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