Subject: [removed] Digest V2014 #110
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 12/25/2014 4:18 PM
To: [removed]@[removed]
Reply-to:
[removed]@[removed]

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                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2014 : Issue 110
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Free OTR Christmas Short Story for K  [ Joe Stevens <joestevensus@[removed] ]
  Richard C. Hottelet                   [ "Bob C" <rmcblc@[removed]; ]

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Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 14:19:36 -0500
From: Joe Stevens <joestevensus@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Free OTR Christmas Short Story for Kindle

For those of you who do the Kindle ebook thing, here's a short story based on
the Classic Phil Harris Christmas Episode. It is free until December 27th.
[removed]

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Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 14:19:44 -0500
From: "Bob C" <rmcblc@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Richard C. Hottelet

In 1975, I was a graduate student putting together as a
special project a five-part series of 30-minute programs to
commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of World War
Two. There wasn't all that much information about radio's
role back then -- at least, not much being shared in a
concise way; many of the younger broadcast pioneers had not
yet retired and written their memoirs, and many of the fine
radio researchers who frequent this list had not put on
their green eyeshades and started digging into radio's many
aspects.

In a letter to Mr. Hottelet, I naively asked about the ban
on the use of recordings (why?), his experience with first
being able to record a report, and the matter of censorship.
Most of his reply is quoted below the jim-dash (-0-), along
with a [removed]

-0-

23 May 1975

My impression is that the networks refused to use recordings
and insisted on live transmissions -- even when failures
were heartbreakingly frequent -- not because of union
problems, but because they felt that such use would be
inconsistent, possibly even destructively [so], with the
idea of a network. Recordings were seen as something canned
and old, further as something which could be sent out by
mail to individual stations, obviating the need for network
inter-connection. Paul White's book (I've forgotten the name
of it) may afford a clue. I'm not sure I ever heard the
reason officially spelled out in those terms, but that was
the way it came through to me. Nor was it altogether silly,
because actuality recording was infinitely more cumbersome
then -- recording meant essentially studio voice recording.
This could -- and indeed should -- have been done in advance
when atmospheric conditions made the live circuit too risky,
but the quality of immediacy was -- and not unjustifiably --
considered more valuable.

I have a dim feeling that I made the first in-flight
recording on a bombing mission -- over France several months
before D-Day -- and it was done with a wire recorder. It was
a terrible nuisance, breaks in the wire had to be fused with
a burning cigarette. There was certainly no tape available
then. We heard of tape in connection with speeches recorded
by Hitler in advance which, when broadcast, did not sound
recorded. And I first saw a magnetic tape and a tape machine
in Hamburg immediately after the end of the war. If the
technique was known in the West at that time, I was unaware
of it.

Censorship problems: censorship is always a problem and was
then. I'm not sure there were any on D-Day -- but World War
II was a situation in which the necessity of military
censorship was not questioned. When censors did apply it too
broadly, one did argue with them -- and heatedly. Sometimes
one changed their ruling.
...

PS -- As to recordings -- we also used a portable wax disc
recorder which the BBC had rigged up in a jeep trailer -- it
was like a portable studio and occasionally worked -- but
strictly for voice. It was too awkward and too delicate to
move off roads.

And we used a film recorder -- in which a belt of clear
gelatin was looped in a figure eight through a recording
head where the sound signal was incised by a needle -- the
principle of the wax recording. It never worked -- and the
man who sent it to us, together with the so-called engineer
who was attached to it ostensibly to make it work, should
have been shot for the agonies of effort and expectation
inflicted on the poor slobs who thought they were getting
real battle actuality with it.

-0-

At some point in my letter, I must have mentioned Ed
Murrow's "Orchestrated Hell" broadcast -- perhaps I was
having trouble pinning down its date. Hottelet responded:
"Murrow's Berlin raid broadcast must have been in December
1943 -- because I seem to remember being in the office for
the first time just about then, before joining CBS on
January 1, 1944."

I have long since found the date was December 3, 1943. On
the Internet, I saw that a collection of Mr. Hottelet's
papers is at George Washington University. I'll be sending
his letter there to be a part of the collection.

Bob Cockrum
Lubbock, Texas

Merry Christmas!

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End of [removed] Digest V2014 Issue #110
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