New Language for the People's Radio Network

There was a time, before the advent of widespread television swept away regional dialects and left everyone talking like characters in "Seinfeld," when one could tell, by the speaker's voice, his or her place of origin.  Residents of southern Ontario, the Prairie provinces, Newfoundland, all had distinctive dialects, whether they thought so or not.

Those of us who--as we used to say--toiled in the vineyards of radio could move this up a notch: we could tell, listening to an announcer, from which radio station he had emerged.

The reason for this:  people tend to pick up, by a kind of osmosis, the speaking characteristics of their peers.  Not surprising, then, that radio announcers would begin to sound like each other at their particular stations.

Recently, this listener has become aware of this process taking place at the People's Radio Network.  With unhappy results.  For many years a model, a national standard of diction, pronunciation and grammatical correctness, the PRN recently, it seems, has set out to prove it can be as semi-literate as any Top 40 station.  

There are exceptions--the very cool Katie Malloch, the erudite and witty Tom Allen--but there are others who say something like this:  "Gonna play yuh somethin' rilly fine, but first, wanna getcha caught up on yer nooz, see what's goin' on in yer world."

You know what this means?  If the current PRN style takes hold, we'll all be speaking Palinese.