Bart Ritner says this is a perfect time to bow out. Ten days ago, he had to go to work in a late-season winter storm, because when you're a radio news guy that's what you do, even if you would rather sit in your recliner at home. Now he'll never have to confront that situation again.

That's the way to do it: Retire when the reason you don't want to work anymore is fresh in your mind.

Ritner has been a radio guy for 40 years, almost 39 of them with WPTF, the station that long ruled the dial in Raleigh. He says he holds the record for continuous service at a single Raleigh radio station, and I couldn't find anyone who disagreed with that. Over the years, he did everything there is to do at WPTF. He "jocked" (which is to say, spun records), he hosted talk shows, he did news and he did commercials.

Ritner's voice was his career, as is common in radio, but his was ... well, uncommonly common. In an industry filled with basso profundo, word-of-God, stentorian emoters, Ritner was normal and conversational in his talk, as easy on the ear as a slipper on the foot.

It all ends Thursday with the 6:30 p.m. newscast. After that, Ritner becomes an ex-radio guy.

Like Ritner, I think this is a good time for him to retire, but for a different reason. Radio is a much different game these days. Ritner isn't just an old hand. He's an anachronism, an artifact left over from an age when radio announcers wore coats and ties in the studio, spoke respectfully, avoided profanity and didn't think porn stars were cultural touchstones.

It's nothing like that now. The coats and ties are gone, and sometimes -- at least in Howard Stern's radio studio -- the guests aren't dressed at all. Coarse language is the coin of the realm, announcers encourage listeners to humiliate themselves for cash prizes, political discussions are reduced to name-calling contests, and decisions on local programming are made in faraway corporate offices.

Let me put it another way: When Ritner started at WPTF in June 1965, its studio in downtown Raleigh could accommodate an audience of 150 people, and was used for forums and live entertainment. When Ritner retires this week, his final broadcast will be from a place that he describes wearily, making box shapes with his hands, as "a little studio."

This unhappy trend in radio isn't universal, of course. Some stations owners resist the slide toward carnival-geek programming. (WPTF, for instance, still offers a daily roundup of farm commodity prices, even though the number of farmers who still depend on the radio for that information could probably fit in that tiny studio Ritner is leaving behind.) And Ritner, unsurprisingly, defends the radio business: "Do you blame the industry, or is the industry reacting to the audience?" he asks.

Whatever the answer, it's not Ritner's concern anymore. When his shift ends Thursday, somebody else can ponder the issue. Ritner will be leaving with only one thought in mind: the likelihood of a second surprise winter storm, one that this time he can watch, with smug satisfaction, from the comfort of his home during the first days of his retirement.

"I'm hoping we get another 2-foot snow," he says.

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