Radio: Radio Webster

Many of radio’s most familiar shop words (cue, gag, ad lib) arehand-me-downs from its elder cousins, the stage and screen. But radionow fits so snugly into a few that they seem custom-made. Last weekMutual published a dictionary of 200-odd broadcasting terms. Sampleradioese:

clinker—a bad or sour musical note.

fluff—missing a cue, or stumbling over a gag.

hook—a stunt, novelty, contest or other device intended to producetangible evidence of audience attention.

leg—a regional chain, one link of stations in a network.

live—as opposed to recorded or transcribed.

mike hog—one who elbows others away from a microphone.

on the button (head, nose)—a program ending exactly on time.

pancake turner—the sound technician controlling the playing ofdouble-faced records.

segue (pronounced say-gway)—the transition from one musical number toanother without break or announcements.

stretch—slow up the concluding musical numbers so that the show willfinish on the nose.

tight show—a program that exactly fits or runs a few seconds over itsallotted time in rehearsal.