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The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2018 : Issue 47
A Part of the [removed]!
[removed]
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
Those were the Days [ A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed] ]
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Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2018 02:38:44 -0400
From: A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Those were the Days
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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2018 20:29:47 -0400
From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];
8/13
1912 St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, PA was granted the first
experimental radio license by the [removed] Department of Commerce.
So when did the government start licensing radio stations? Was there
ever a time when radio stations just went on whatever frequency they
chose and whenever they liked, without regulation?
1942 Gary Moore hosted a new program on NBC. The Show Without a Name
was an effort to crack the morning show dominance of Arthur Godfrey
(CBS) and Don McNeil's Breakfast Club (ABC). A prize of $500 ($7,645 in
2017 dollars) was offered to name the show and Someone came up with the
title, Everything Goes.
A later effort by NBC to take over Arthur Godfrey's morning time slot
was in the early 1950s, when they put Bob Smith, of Howdy Doody fame, on
opposite Godfrey on weekday mornings. It is said that they had heard
rumors that Godfrey was planning to retire. He wasn't. Bob Smith began
as an entertainer of general audiences, not just kids, and he apparently
assembled a good show.
It was so successful that they took some bits from the morning radio
show and repeated them at noon Eastern Time on a half-hour Bob Smith
Show on television. This also was doing well, but it gave Bob Smith a
rather grueling routine: Arrive in the early morning, rehearse the Bob
Smith radio show, do that show from 10 to 11, then do the TV show at
noon, then rehearse Howdy Doody, go on with Howdy Doody at 5:30, then
record bits for the Saturday morning Howdy Doody radio show. It wasn't
long before Smith, in his mid-30s, had a heart attack, over Labor Day
weekend in 1954. He was off the Howdy Doody show until January, and the
Howdy Doody radio show disappeared. When he returned to the Howdy Doody
show in January, he was on a remote hookup from "Pioneer Village," which
I learned many years later was a studio built for the purpose in his home.
I first listened to the Bob Smith radio show around that time, when I
was home from school (4th grade). Knowing of his heart attack, when I
saw the Bob Smith Show listed in the newspaper radio listings, I decided
to listen in the hope of hearing how he was. The show was hosted by Bob
Nicholson (who was playing Clarabell the clown at the time on the Howdy
Doody show). There was no mention of Bob Smith other than in the show's
title until, during the December school vacation, after Nicholson had
announced that the show was ending. One of the last shows contained a
tribute to Bob Smith, talking of how he had come to New York from
Buffalo, describing his New York radio career without mention of Howdy
Doody, and including some recordings of him singing. This didn't sound
encouraging to me regarding his condition, but around the same time,
they began to talk on the Howdy Doody show about his impending return to
the show.
--
A. Joseph Ross, [removed] . 1340 Centre Street, Suite 103 . Newton, MA 02459
[removed] . [removed] . [removed]
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End of [removed] Digest V2018 Issue #47
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