RADIO LISTENERS TAKE TO AIRWAVES OVER SHUTTLE

“I’m grieving as an American because I feel like part of my brotherhood went down with that shuttle,” one caller said.

“I’m just as grateful to the astronauts as I am to my father, who fought in World War II,” said another. “These men are doing it for us.”

While many turned to the broadcast media Tuesday morning for the latest information on the tragic explosion of the space shuttle, others in the Los Angeles area were tuning to KABC radio to share their grief with the people who were calling in to Michael Jackson’s show.

Jackson, who has been hosting the morning call-in show at the ABC-owned station for 19 years, devoted the first hour of his broadcast Tuesday to the shocking event in Florida, which occurred only about 20 minutes before he went on the air at 9:05 a.m.

KABC program director Wally Sherwin threw out all commercials for the hour and Jackson spent the time fielding calls from listeners, interspersing them with updated news reports as they became available.

“It’s really sad,” one man said, “thinking about the children and what’s in their hearts.”

“Are we really surprised?” another asked. He noted that the space shuttle program seemed to have been experiencing more problems in recent months. A fatal crash, he said, “was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Yet another mourner proposed staging a candlelight vigil across the nation Tuesday night as a memorial to the seven space shuttle victims.

The tenor of the calls, Jackson summed up in an interview later in the morning, was “pained, sympathetic, loving and prayerful. I’ve said this before: If the purpose of language is communication,” then in times of tragedy and crisis, “the American people do it better than any other people.”

But why call a radio station?

“It’s a release,” Jackson said. “It’s a way of painfully being able to share the love. It is an umbilical (cord), really, a way of all of us being joined. It’s much more immediate than TV.”

Lyle Gregory, who screens the calls for Jackson’s show, said the switchboard lit up as soon as Jackson said he would be devoting the opening hour to the tragedy. He said that many people “called in from work, saying that their work has just stopped.”

At least five mentioned they had not been so moved since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Gregory said. But the program coordinator estimated that 80% of the people he spoke with expressed support for the U.S. space program, saying they hoped “the scientists and the politicians wouldn’t push it back into a closet.”

“With every great human endeavor, there’s going to be some loss,” one man said. He lauded the space program for showing “that we can take our mass knowledge and know-how to advance the cause of mankind rather than the destruction of mankind. It (the shuttle explosion) is a small price to pay for what we’ve learned and accomplished with the system.”

One woman told Jackson on the air that her 12-year-old son had just been telling her Monday night that he would like to be an astronaut. When she asked whether he might be frightened to go into space, she said he responded, “Mommy, how could I possibly be afraid of that for the opportunity to be part of something so wonderful that this country has?”

At 10 a.m., Jackson returned to the schedule that had been planned for the day, which included in-studio interviews with Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge); Barbara Bush, wife of Vice President George Bush; and New York Mayor Ed Koch.

Shortly before her appearance at 11 a.m., Bush walked into the studio and was greeted by Jackson. “Sorry to have upstaged you,” he said.

“Not at all,” she said. “I’ll go home if you want me to. I’m just heartsick.”

They went ahead with the planned interview, which dealt with her efforts to fight illiteracy, but not before Bush called the day “one of the saddest” in her life and reported she had just learned that her husband was going to fly to Cape Canaveral.

Jackson said that he first heard about the disaster from his wife, who called him at work shortly after the spacecraft exploded in a huge fireball. Then three colleagues rushed in with the news. He watched replays on TV, then dashed off the opening remarks for his show, which was only minutes away.

“How do you start a program, keeping your mind focused on all that you’d planned to say and do, when you’ve watched the disastrous shuttle blastoff at the Cape?” he told his listeners. “On a clear-skied day, what has become almost routine, we heard the countdown following the usual few technical delays: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5--steam emits from the rockets--3, 2, 1.”

His voice rose. “We have liftoff. You hear the elation, the enthusiasm, the sense of success and relief in the control room--and then a minute later, it’s all gone.”

Meanwhile, at KGIL radio, whose morning call-in show is hosted by Carole Hemingway, the decision was made to forgo listener calls in favor of following developments in the story, said Mike Lundy, director of programming and operations.

He also said that immediately after the crash, all airline commercials were suspended by contract and that a representative from Continental Airlines called to make sure their spot did not run.

“Some business we’re in, huh?,” Lundy said.