------------------------------
The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2003 : Issue 248
A Part of the [removed]!
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
Re: Early Auto Radios [ Shenbarger@[removed] ]
June 24th birthdays [ Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed]; ]
Car radio's [ davesline@[removed] ]
WRVO Online [ Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed]; ]
Re: calling all cars [ "Ed Carr" <edcarr@[removed]; ]
Re: "It's a Joke, Son" [ Roo61@[removed] (Randy Watts) ]
Winamp OTR Skins [ Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed]; ]
Car radios [ "A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@attorneyro ]
guest on Friday night on Yesterday U [ "Walden Hughes" <hughes1@[removed]; ]
NBC predecessors [ Bill Harris <radioguy@[removed] ]
OTR Research in NYC [ mbiel@[removed] ]
re: forthcoming Encyclopedia of Radi [ Art Chimes <[removed]@[removed]; ]
Today in radio history [ Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed] ]
Re: Reading Barnouw [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
Car/Bus Radio [ George Kelly <gkelly1@[removed]; ]
RE: Speaking of Radio-Jack Benny Pro [ "Jack Feldman" <qualitas@millenicom ]
Dr. Grimshaw's sanitarium [ "[removed]" <[removed]@[removed] ]
disk recording urban legend, perhaps [ "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed] ]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:28:57 -0400
From: Shenbarger@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Early Auto Radios
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Zenith made auto radios beginning about 1933. These were after market units
for installation by a local shop or radio dealer. There were various designs,
some had controls in or under the dash, some had controls attached to the
steering column with a clamp. The main electronics chassis was remotely
located.
Speakers were integrated into the chassis unit or remotely installed in their
own cabinets depending on model.
By 1935 Zenith had entered into contracts to supply radios to automobile
manufactures, but little is know of this business other than Hudson was one of
Zenith's earliest customers.
Don Shenbarger
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:29:05 -0400
From: Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: June 24th birthdays
June 24th births
06-24-1893 - Arthur Hughes - Bloomington, IL - d. 12-28-1982
actor: Bill Davidson "Just Plain Bill"; Stephen Dallas "Stella Dallas"
06-24-1904 - Phil Harris - Linton, IN - d. 8-11-1995
bandleader, singer: "Jack Benny Program"; "Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show"
06-24-1909 - Milton Katims - Brooklyn, NY
violist, conductor: "NBC Symphony"; "Eternal Light"
06-24-1910 - Katherine Locke - Kalakenchu, Russia - d. 9-12-1995
actress: "Columbia Presents Corwin"
June 24th deaths
02-26-1916 - Jackie Gleason - Brooklyn, NY - d. 6-24-1987
comedian: "Jackie Gleason-Les Tremayne Show"
08-04-1889 - William Keighley - Philadelphia, PA - d. 6-24-1984
host: Lux Radio Theatre
09-06-1908 - Paul Lavalle - Beacon, NY - d. 6-24-1997
conductor: "Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street"; "Dinah Shore Show"
Ron Sayles
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Hometown of [removed] Kaltenborn and Spencer Tracy
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:29:24 -0400
From: davesline@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Car radio's
The mention of getting stations as much as 10 miles, then the correction to
100 miles made me think of the days in the late 40's and early 50's the the
reception in our area was even better. We lived in south central Idaho (Twin
Falls to be exact) and I remember the car and home radios getting both Boise
and Idaho Falls, each at opposite ends of the state. The there were those
occasional (DX) listening sessions we would get on a really long distance
station. One we could count on was a clear channel station in Salt Lake, KSL
and that old standby that I think everyone in the country got, the high power
station in Del Rio, Texas, Good Listening, Dave Palmer
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:29:31 -0400
From: Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: WRVO Online
Kurt Yount asks if WRVO is on-line.
Sure - go to [removed] and select listen live (at the
appropriate time).
Jim Widner
jwidner@[removed]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 23:47:16 -0400
From: "Ed Carr" <edcarr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: calling all cars
hi
many thanks for the replys, all discs are sold
ed carr
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 23:48:31 -0400
From: Roo61@[removed] (Randy Watts)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: "It's a Joke, Son"
Sadly - and this is the truth of the matter - that no one is willing to
pay the $5,000 to $10,000+ costs to have a film remastered and
cleaned up when it's in the public domain
"It's a Joke, Son" has been preserved by the UCLA Film and Television
Archive, mostly from the original nitrate negatives. So far as I know,
UCLA's restoration has never been released commercially.
Randy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:11:23 -0400
From: Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Winamp OTR Skins
I've got three OTR-related winamp skins. One of them I
downloaded from the Turner Classic Movies website;
it's called simply TCMRADIO. It's the skin I usually
use. I think you can find it at
[removed],,11965,[removed]
.
The other three are based on The Shadow. Two of them
use graphics from the old pulp covers. You can get one
of them at this URL:
[removed]
That page contains a link to another site, with
additional skins for The Avenger and Doc Savage.
I think the second Shadow skin I have came from here:
[removed]
The third Shadow skin uses graphics from the Alec
Baldwin Shadow movie; it's available at
[removed]~jamina1[removed] .
What we need now is a good I Love A Mystery skin.
Seems like it wouldn't be much trouble, if you knew
how to make skins. (I don't.) [removed]
Kermyt
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:30:54 -0400
From: "A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Car radios
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 02:26:38 -0400
From: Bill Harris <radioguy@[removed];
Often a set, along with the horn
speaker, would be placed in the back seat with the appropriate A, B,
and C, batteries mounted in a box on the running board (hold up your
hand if you know what a running board is) or in the luggage space.
I seem to remember my father telling me that his first car radio had a part
that clamped onto
the steering column.
--
A. Joseph Ross, [removed] [removed]
15 Court Square, Suite 210 lawyer@[removed]
Boston, MA 02108-2503 [removed]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:31:07 -0400
From: "Walden Hughes" <hughes1@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: guest on Friday night on Yesterday USA
Hi Everybody,
Frank Bresee and I will have live this Friday night around 7-30 PM West
Coast Time. John Milton Kennedy. John was the announcer on Lux Radio
Theater from 1942 to 1952. John is celebrating his 90th birthday this week.
You can hear the show at [removed] Just hit the Listen on Line
link and follow the instructions to down load the free player to hear the
show on your computer. Take care,
Walden Hughes
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 08:51:03 -0400
From: Bill Harris <radioguy@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: NBC predecessors
"Ed Ellers" <kd4awq@[removed]; wrote:
AT&T's network -- which was called the Broadcasting Company of America, and
later became the Red Network of NBC -- started a regular schedule in fall
1924, so they may have carried the convention as well. RCA had a network of
its own that predated NBC; it later became the Blue Network.
For any interested, I have posted a copy of the letter from the
BCofA concerning the purchase of radio station WEAF by RCA/NBC,
which became the flagship station of the RED network.
[removed]
Bill H.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 08:53:24 -0400
From: mbiel@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: OTR Research in NYC
Christopher Werner asks about OTR related sites to visit in NYC. By
coincidence I am visiting my daughter in NYC right now and we are also doing
the OTR thing.
Today we visited The Jewish Museum's exhibit on 100 years of Jewish
entertainers, and there is a bunch of OTR related exhibits there. There's a
living room where you can sit and watch some excerpts of The Goldbergs, and
in a display case there I saw for the first time the dust jacket for the 1930
book "The Rise of the Goldbergs" which I have (sans jacket, of course.) I
was a bit aggrevated that they had nothing in the exhibit about Sam Levenson,
but we'll be going thru his archive which is at the college my daughter
attends. The museum is on 5th Ave at 92nd Street, and the exhibit runs only
thru Sept 4. (Elizabeth---I swear that the 1941 WEVD aircheck they played
started with the same 5-chime ID that we hear on the 1931 NBC Chicago
recordings. I'll ask Henry Saposnik about it, it's from his collection.)
Of course there is the Museum of Television and Radio at 25 W 52nd St. I
won't make my usual snide remarks about it because anyone is bound to find
something of interest there--it's just not the research collecton they think
it is. You onliy get two hours there at a time, but if you have your AAA
membership card, admission is free.
Go down to the NBC Experience store in the former RCA Building. Naturally
the emphasis is on television but there are some radio exhibits there
(including in the hallway outside the inner entrance) and loads of overpriced
souvenirs. You can find copies of the 75th Anniversary book that Elizabeth
and I helped troubleshoot. You can also take the studio tour, but there is
nothing left of any of the original radio studios. They're all
unrecognizable TV studios now. Actually, because of the work I did on the
book, my daughter and I got a real INSIDE tour of the facilities, and we were
taken to what is believed to be the only remaining radio studio doorway--it
is now a closet, so it remained relatively untouched. Believe me, you won't
see this. The guides know nothing about radio. In fact, we were standing in
the middle of 8H talking to Don Pardo for a half hour and not one of the tour
guides even mentioned the celebrity in front of them. (Not me, Don!)
The Address of the Stars, 485 Madison Avenue, still stands, but there are no
remnants of CBS there. NBC's first home, 711 Fifth Avenue is still there but
there are no remnants of NBC or World Broadcasting System which moved in when
NBC moved to Rockefeller Center. WOR is still where it was when Mutual was
there at 1440 Broadway, but there's nothing to see. You might want to eat at
Joe Franklin's restaurant on 8th Ave--he occasionally tapes a radio program
there.
You can look up at the tower on the Empire State Building where Edwin Howard
Armstrong did his exsperimental work on FM before he was removed in favor of
the TV work. His original three-armed tower is still standing in Alpine, New
Jersey, and can still be seen by crossing the George Washington Bridege and
going North on the Palisades Interstate Parkway. For a romantic evening, be
sure to pull off into one of the scenic outlook parking lots and watch the
submarine races.
Christopher asked about the Performing Arts library. The recordings are at
the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound of the New York Public
Library at Lincoln Center. There are broadcast recordings there but that is
not the main thrust of the collection. But you are likely to find almost
anything there. It's a great sound archive. And they have a great reference
book collection there as well. In the Theatre Arts collection nearby is a
great clipping file collection. The newspaper microfilm files are now back
in the main Library on 5th Ave at 42nd St. This is where you can find the
other NYC newspapers beyond the easily found NY Times.
There are other things in NYC of course, but this can keep you busy. I will
end with my usual reminder that if anyone is interested in doing REAL
research into broadcasting, the place to go is Washington, [removed], not NYC.
The Library of Congress, National Archives, and the former Broadcast Pioneers
Library now at the nearby Univ. of Maryland are the real outstanding OTR
archive collections.
Michael Biel mbiel@[removed]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:02:47 -0400
From: Art Chimes <[removed]@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: re: forthcoming Encyclopedia of Radio
Howard Blue (digest 247) points out that Christopher Sterling is the *editor*
of this upcoming reference set, not the author. My error, which I regret. I
regret, too, that the publisher's web site did not include names of the
contributors to this new work, including members of this list. Thanks, Howard,
for setting the record straight.
I thoroughly concur with Howard's recommendation of Erik Barnouw's
three-volume history of broadcasting (which is also available in condensed
form in a single volume). He says the Barnouw work is out of print, but Amazon
seems to be selling 'new' copies of the 30-year-old edition (plus there are
plenty of bargain-priced used copies listed, too).
Titles of the three volumes are:
A Tower in Babel (-1933)
The Golden Web (1933-1953)
The Image Empire (1953-)
Regards
Art
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:17:23 -0400
From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];
To: otr-net <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Today in radio history
From Those Were The Days --
1960 - The Romance of Helen Trent was heard for the last time. Helen and
her boy-toy, Gil Whitney, were about to be married, but the loving
couple never made it to the altar -- just in case the show would ever be
renewed. Helen Trent and her romance aired for 27 years -- a total of
7,222 episodes -- on the CBS.
Joe
--
Visit my homepage: [removed]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:18:55 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Re: Reading Barnouw
On 6/23/03 10:36 PM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:
But I would like to
suggest that anyone interested in the encyclopedia should also take look
at the superb but out of print, three volume history of broadcasting by
Eric Barnouw.
I'd also recommend Barnouw's work as a good introduction to broadcasting
history -- but not without reservation. The books have many strengths --
but there are also many weaknesses, and the reader needs to be aware of
them.
The most significant weakness is that much of Barnouw's research is
anecdotal -- a lot of it taken from oral histories preserved by such
groups as the Broadcast Pioneers. Barnouw seems to have spent
comparatively little time examining actual primary-source documents -- to
be fair, much of the archival material we take for granted today was not
availble to the public in the early 1960s, but that doesn't change the
fact that Barnouw depended for much of his information on the memories of
those who might very well have had reasons why they wanted to tell a
certain story in a certain way, and he was often unable to double check
these recollections against original documentation.
There is also an awful lot of projecting of motive and assumption of
attitudes in Barnouw's writing. I sometimes think he draws conclusions
based on what he assumes people *should* have thought, based on his own
sociopolitical perspective, rather than doing the necessary research to
determine what they actually *did* think. Barnouw was very much a
cultural snob, in a 1930s liberal "PM"-reading sort of way -- and as a
direct result of that he tends to give short shrift to anything that
doesn't meet his own Eastern Academic Intellectual idea of what radio and
television *should* have been. I think this rather elitist attitude
colors the perspective of the entire work -- he has no feel at all, for
example, for interpreting what radio meant to the working-class and rural
families that made up much of its audience.
And my third misgiving about Barnouw is his "Columbiacentric" point of
view. Barnouw spent much of his own radio career connected with CBS --
and as a result he tends to place perhaps too much emphasis on CBS's
accomplishments, especially in the realm of cultural, "highbrow"
programming -- giving the impression that these programs made much more
of an impression on the mainstream audience than they actually did. I
don't believe he gives sufficient credit to similar accomplishments by
NBC -- either in the way of "cultural" programming or broadcast
journalism. This perspective, in turn, has been pretty much adopted by an
entire generation of historians who've used Barnouw as a source --
creating the general impression that everything that was pure and noble
and creative in broadcasting had its origins at CBS. This isn't a
perspective that I endorse.
In summary -- by all means read Barnouw. But keep in mind *when* it was
written and *how* it was written, and *who* wrote it.
Elizabeth
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:19:04 -0400
From: George Kelly <gkelly1@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Car/Bus Radio
According to my first cousin, his father drove a school bus in rural
north Mississippi in which he had installed a radio. The antenna was in
the roof of the bus. The family did not have a radio in the house so on
Saturday nights my uncle would pull the bus up close to the porch so
they could listen to the Grand Ole Opry. The time would have been in
the 30's since my uncle died before I was born in March of 1940.
George Kelly
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:27:08 -0400
From: "Jack Feldman" <qualitas@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: RE: Speaking of Radio-Jack Benny Program
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You have the correct [removed] can get the set from Metro Golden Memories. My
old catalog lists it for $[removed] If you don't have their catalog you can get
it and order the tape by calling toll free at 1 800 538-6675. It is a great
oral history of the program.
BTW, Chuck publishes the Nostalgia Digest four times a year. It is a great
magazine. His Saturday program is from 1-5PM CDT, and can be heard on the Web
over WDCB. The digest can be ordered by writing
The Hall Closet
Box 421,
Morton Grove, IL 60053
(847 965-7763)
I'm not sure of the subscription price now that it has gone quarterly, but it
was $15 for one year, $27, for two. It is probably the same. Too bad there are
no lifetime subscriptions to save me a stamp every two years.
Jack
[ADMINISTRIVIA: Metro Golden Memories is also available on the web at
[removed] --cfs3]
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:24:43 -0400
From: "[removed]" <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Dr. Grimshaw's sanitarium
In #246, Mark Higgins wrote:
Craig, possibly you are thinking of "Dr. Grimshaw's
Sanatarium". It was done on Dimension X on 9/22/50, and
on X Minus One on 7/14/55, and concerns experiments with
shrinking humans, with scenes such as the hero escaping
from a mouse cage.
If I'm not mistaken, the Evil Doctor of this show is supposed to be Nazi
scientist working underground since the end of WWII. It's not a bad show,
but I never understood how developing a long term medical process that slowly
shrinks people to the size of mice does much to advance the cause of
resurrecting the third Reich, which evidently was the doctor's motivation.
-Chris Holm
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:24:57 -0400
From: "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: disk recording urban legend, perhaps
I worked at WTSO (1070kc, Madison, WI) in 1971. The transmitter building
was set up for production and, if necessary, broadcasting. Among the
antiques installed therein were a couple of 16" turntables plus a recording
lathe or two.
The disks, or the box that the blank disks came in, bore a somber warning:
the 'chip'[removed], the thread of plastic that was cut out of the new groove
by the cutting head--was highly flammable. I commented on this to one of my
betters at the station, and was informed that this phenomenon was the basis
for one of the many practical jokes played on station personnel by their
collegues.
What you'd do is to collect a sizeable mass of the thread-like 'chip' and
place it in, say, a wastebasket. When the party of the second part,
hereinafter known as the "victim," was distracted with some task, [removed]
reading a lengthy ad or the news, live, the wastebasket's contents would be
ignited with a casually-thrown match. The object was to listen for a change
in the victim's tone of voice when a pillar of fire suddenly leaped from the
floor at him.
Other variants of this high-quality scheme included the use of an
almost-invisible 'fuse' made of several threads of 'chip' leading from the
ashtray on the console to a larger mass of the substance.
I have no idea if any of this is true, but knowing the general mentality of
radio station people in general and technicians in particular (Mr Murtough
doubtless knows whereof I speak) I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
M Kinsler
--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2003 Issue #248
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