The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast · A L Katz

S4E10: A Voice In The Dark

March 18, 2025·1 hr 17 min·5 clips

The episode opens with a loud, overstuffed pitch for other projects before the actual conversation gets space to unfold. From there it moves into a long stretch of radio history and personal memory. The speaker explains how he kept turning down the jobs he did not want, including being pushed into a sportscaster role. When the station came back again, he tried to scare them off with outrageous demands about wardrobe, control of the show, and salary, assuming that would end it. It did not. They met the demands, and he found himself in a job he now had to shape from the inside. He wanted control of the structure. He wanted control of the guests. He wanted a say in how the thing looked and felt, not just what time it aired. The talk widens from personal frustration into the larger life of the station. He points out that the place was full of community programming. Greek, Jewish, Korean, and other shows were all living on the same dial. That detail matters to him because it reflects the world he grew up in. He describes a childhood shaped by people whose parents came from somewhere else. He calls that an immigrant mentality, and he does not mean it as a slogan. It is just how the world worked. From there, he explains why he wanted the show to periodically feature the hosts of those other programs. The idea was not to sort everyone into separate lanes. The idea was to find the common ground first. He is explicit that he did not want to ghettoize the show. The conversation keeps its loose, oral-history feel throughout. It has the rhythm of someone remembering the deal the way it actually happened, not the way a press release would clean it up. There is humor in how often the plan goes sideways. There is also a little anger. The anger never takes over the story. It just keeps the edges honest. What comes through most clearly is how much of broadcasting is made in arguments about control, identity, and who gets to define the audience. By the end, the episode feels less like a neat anecdote than a report from inside a community station where everything was always more tangled than it looked from the outside. The closing stretch rolls through credits and thanks with the same casual certainty that framed the whole thing.

As heard by us

A radio-life story about control, compromise, and community.

The episode centers on a memory of show-business bargaining: a hard refusal, a station that keeps coming back, and the moment a bluff turns into a job.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For the day you want a show-business story where saying yes backfires.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast