Broadcasting Giant Gary Owens

While we’re on the subject of radio (from age 5 to age 21, I wanted nothing more than to be a radio man myself), in the process of preparing a (coming soon) tribute to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, I fell down the Google Hole looking for information on the show’s announcer. Like many announcers and gameshow hosts back in the day, Owen’s day job was at LA radio station KMPC, the crowning glory of a long radio career.

What I discovered was that “shallow fakes” long preceded deep fakes. I ran into a clip of Owens claming to be an aircheck at KORN (no kidding!) radio  in the 1950s.

I wrote the same radio friend as above: “Neither his voice, nor his delivery, nor his sense of humor, changed much in the intervening decade or so before KMPC and Laugh-In.”

To which he pointed out it was unlikely Owens sounded like that as a beginner; most likely it was a recreation he recorded for some much later event at KORN.

Turns out I’d been victimized by a similar “shallow fake.” As a boy, I was given a record I presumed was the actual recording of CBS coverage of the start of World War II, as spoken by the reporters at the time. Many years later, I learned that it was a recreation for the CBS radio series Hear It Now. All it takes for a shallow fake: you’re still employing the same people years later, who can read the same scripts.

--Mogul, the Friendly Drelb