I recently stumbled across the NBC Radio coverage of the San Francisco Bay Bridge opening in 1936. Apart from being curious about how such an event was covered by the media of nearly a century ago, I was struck by the colorful, crisp, and poetic language of the radio reporters as they described for their listeners the many celebratory scenes.
In this pre-television, pre-video era, good reporting required visual captioning, a facility with metaphors, and an “I-was-there” understanding of what listeners would need to hear and feel in order to “see” with their mind’s eye.
There is an unscripted verbal eloquence to these vintage broadcasts, evident in these following examples.
On Navy planes flying in formation past the Bay Bridge: “The planes are all battleship gray, decorated in the red, white, and blue of the national colors…by turning our heads, we can see the aircraft carriers outside the Golden Gate, the mother ships who’ve launched this trim brood that is churning the air from Sunnyvale to Marin.”
On the view of the Bay Bridge from an airplane: “Now from up here the suspension bridges look for all the world that Mother Nature has strung a clothesline over two sets of poles.”
On the view of the Bay Bridge from a parade of sea craft: “I can see waves lapping around the concrete…
