"Stand by! For News!"

His politics aside, Paul Harvey was a giant force in radio, and for anyone who appreciates radio as an art (just go ahead and say you do, please!) he was a long-time icon in the field.

His death on Saturday stilled his baritone voice, but what he did for all the years before will live on. Again, I'll agree with Garrison Keillor and say that I couldn't have disagreed more with his Goldwater-style politics, but if you ever listened to him, you were hearing someone who literally shaped a whole way of broadcasting.

The man lived to be 90, and was technically still working for ABC radio. In 2002, he signed a ten-year contract (for $100 million) and even though he faced several major health threats and lost his beloved wife and producer Angel a year ago, he kept on. He cut back on broadcasts, and had not been heard regularly for some months, but he was still a force. At 90!

When I did middays on the radio, he was my lunch break, and even today, when I hear that voice cry out, "Hello Americans! This is PAUL HARVEY! Stand by! for news!" I reach for a sandwich and a bottle of water. Maybe some Andy Capp's Hot Fries, or a TastyKake pie, or an apple. "Paul Harvey News and Comment" was 15 minutes in length, and all I had to do was pop in one 60-second commercial at about 10 minutes in. For those 15 minutes, Mr Harvey held forth. One beauty of the show was the juxtaposition of the big (invasion of hostile forces into an American embassy forces diplomats to flee!) and the mundane (invasion of bees at a picnic forces family forces family to flee!) It wasn't a place to get reliable unbiased news; it was more like a visit to the barber shop to catch the local scoops.

The other beauty of the show was the commercials. Have you ever noticed that you'll see (or hear) a commercial, and when it's over, you have no idea what product was being sold? That's called style over substance, and it's also called wasting your money if you happen to be the owner of "Mr Chimney Sweep" and your business is down because the guy who writes your spots is so doggone clever, he thought that people would really love to see a commercial in which some schlimozel keeps falling down the stairs or something. Funny, in that "Funniest Home Videos" sort of way, but it doesn't sell your service or product effectively.

Paul Harvey would sell your service or product effectively, all right. First of all, he had to use what you were selling before he would agree to endorse it, and then, when he did, he sold like a son of a gun. There would be days when I'd be halfway through my roast beef 'n' muenster and Mr Harvey would be talking about a pair of work gloves or a steel shed or an appetite suppressant or I don't know what-all else, and before I could cue up another Conway Twitty record, I'd be planning to stop off at the Buy-1-More and load up.

Paul Harvey used silence like some use words. He would pause in the middle of a sentence for such dramatic emphasis that you just couldn't miss his point. It was said that he said more with what he DIDN'T say than most say with what they do. It's true. He never had the chance to say goodbye to us.

Good day, Mr Harvey!