S'Long, Bill-O, We Hardly Heard Ye

As 2008 chokes away its last gasps of life, Bill O'Reilly's radio career doest the same soon to be relegated to the dustbins of radio history. While there are those who will say that the Factor radio era will not be missed, I am not of that crowd.

I will miss his fool's-gold pipes and his laughable pretext of impartiality, but most of all I will miss Bill's radio flair and style so reminiscent of the 1930's and 40's glory days of radio. The days of radio theater where shows like Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds, a 1938 version of the H. G. Wells novel, convinced the logic-challenged Folks that Mars was actually invading Earth. That, I tell you Mr. Cavett, was entertainment.

There are those of you in some larger metropolitan areas like Philadelphia who may not even known that Bill had a radio show. At WPHT, the major talk signal in Philly, you would have had to tune in to their prime 12PM-2AM spot to find Bill's taped Factor. But listening to a show that promotes what will be on TV that night hours AFTER the TV show runs is not my cup O'Factor tea. As I am a Philly guy and BO fan, me and the family chose to sit around the old radio-Victrola to catch tune in the scratchy signal from New York's WOR 90 miles north on the Turnpike.

Why, you ask, would a show as successful as Bill said it was turn up in the graveyard slot? If you need to ask then you just don't understand the radio wizardry that was Bill's. Where fact need not READ MORE ABOUT THE LOSS WE ALL WILL SUFFER WITH THE DEMISE OF O'REILLY RADIO HERE

Award-winning TV writer, Steve Young, is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (www.greatfailure.com) and blogs at the appropriately named steveyoungonpolitics.com