"I'm sure they felt they needed to be talking all the time. Hey it's radio that's what is expected."
As a former commercial radio announcer I was taught to minimise the amount of dead air - the times when nothing was being transmitted. That might be one reason Harold does his best to keep some chatter going. Ron sure used to have dead air lots of times -- bu his microphones were on the CB radio's speaker and sometimes picked up ambient (engine) noise, too.
For LSR - well, JD, you've got a very valid point when you say that LSR is NOT radio-friendly. I've described it to many friends as " mmMMMZZZZOOOOM!!!MMnnn" followed by about two minutes of dead silence and then another "zoom", and so on. It's boring if you don't know how land speed racing is run. And those two minutes are what today's announcers are trying to fill.
But -- how 'bout having a microphone or two set to pick up sounds from the race course, or maybe the course and the line, and maybe one in the pits, too? Those ambient/background sounds not only are a vital part of our racing -- but they're able to show the casual listener that no, the signal is not dead - there's just nothing to talk about for the moment. Heck - even the sound of a generator or two in the pits (or how about the one by the announcer's trailer?) is part of racing -- and would be proof that the radio is working.