Radio: Radio Webster

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

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 produce tangible 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 of double-faced records.

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

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

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