Subject: [removed] Digest V2004 #238
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 7/21/2004 5:37 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2004 : Issue 238
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Nig  [ charlie@[removed] ]
  radio logs                            [ Michael Berger <intercom1@attglobal ]
  Re: Ratings                           [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Collector of OTR                      [ "John edwards" <jcebigjohn41@hotmai ]
  MASH                                  [ "dchandler" <dchandler@[removed] ]
  Re: It's dumb, that's why.            [ hal stone <dualxtwo@[removed]; ]
  Newspaper radio pages                 [ Bhob <bhob2@[removed]; ]
  Page dropping mystery solved          [ "Jorgenson, Ron" <RJorgenson@planom ]

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:53:13 -0400
From: charlie@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Night!

A weekly [removed]

For the best in OTR Chat, join IRC (Internet Relay Chat), StarLink-IRC
Network, the channel name is #OldRadio.  We meet Thursdays at 8 PM Eastern
and go on, and on! The oldest OTR Chat Channel, it has been in existence
over six years, same time, same channel! Started by Lois Culver, widow
of actor Howard Culver, this is the place to be on Thursday night for
real-time OTR talk!

Our "regulars" include OTR actors, soundmen, collectors, listeners, and
others interested in enjoying OTR from points all over the world. Discussions
range from favorite shows to almost anything else under the sun (sometimes
it's hard for us to stay on-topic)...but even if it isn't always focused,
it's always a good time!

For more info, contact charlie@[removed]. We hope to see you there, this
week and every week!

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:53:35 -0400
From: Michael Berger <intercom1@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  radio logs
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/mixed
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

The New York Times archives are now online, dating from the 19th century.
Word searches are free and then downloads in PDF format are available in
single story or multi story packages which can be purchased online with a
valid credit card.

Michael Berger

  *** This message was altered by the server, and may not appear ***
  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:55:28 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: Ratings

On 7/21/04 12:19 AM [removed]@[removed] wrote:

I ran across two terms I am looking to have clarified. The Hooper ratings and
The Crossley ratings. How were these systems used and are there any records
of these ratings documented somewhere like a book or library. I found the
Crossley ratings term in G. Nachmans book (excellent) and the Hoopers in a
couple of [removed]

The Crossley service, named for founder Archibald Crossley, was the
popular name of the non-profit Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting,
which was the first ratings service to be used by the industry, beginning
in early 1930. It was widely used thru the 1930s and into the forties,
but was controversial because of its methodology: next-day phone calls to
a sampling of the audience in large urban areas. Respondents would be
asked to recall the programs they had heard the previous day, which was a
system that could easily lead to errors. The C. A. B. was modified
slightly in an effort to improve its accuracy, but its credibility
slipped as the years went by, and it was discontinued in 1946.

The C. E. Hooper Inc. "Hooperratings" service came into use in 1934, as a
for-profit competitor to the Crossley service. Like the Crossley service,
Hooperratings were based on phone calls made to sample numbers chosen in
large urban areas -- but unlike Crossley, Hooper's calls were
"coincidental" -- asking respondents what program they were hearing *at
that moment.* The industry considered Hooperratings a statistically more
reliable method for gaguing program popularity, and they were used until
the Hooper company sold its national operation to A. C. Nielsen Inc. in
1950. Hooper himself was killed in a boating accident in 1954.

The Nielsen company entered the ratings business in 1942 by a side door
-- as the inventor of a device called the "Audimeter." This device would
be attatched to the radio sets owned by families randomly chosen as
"Nielsen homes," and would produce a printout logging the stations to
which that particular set was tuned at any given time. (The Audimeter
began to be supplemented by written diaries in 1955, and such diaries are
still used today. I have twice served as a "Nielsen Family.") This method
was the only national ratings service to sample rural as well as urban
communities, and this is a vital point to consider when discussing
ratings: Crossley and Hooper only logged city listeners, meaning the
programs popular among the vast number of Americans who lived in small
towns and rural areas were *never accurately documented*.

The Trendex system, popular in the 1950s and 1960s, used phone calls in
much the same manner as Hooper, but was primarily local in focus --
emphasising a sampling of 29 cities.

Arbitron was founded in 1949 as American Research Bureau, a
marketing-research service specializing in local radio -- as opposed to
the established firms, which focused on network programming. Arbitron
also tracks local television, using a diary method in which participants
fill in the programming they hear or view for a stated period. (For a
while in the 1950s and 1960s, a listener logging device called the
"Arbitron" was used to supplement the diaries.)

Ratings information for all of these services was proprietary, and full
data was available only to paid subscribers. Occasionally some of the
data was published in trade magazines, but the complete surveys were
never made available to the general public, and the information remains
very difficult to find. The most common sources are industry annuals such
as the Variety Radio Directory and the Radio Daily Radio Annual, which
presented abridged "ratings leaders" charts; as well as Harrison Summers'
"Thirty Year History Of Radio Programs," published in 1956, which
presented "sample" ratings information for each season. This data is far
from being precise, but it does give a general idea of the relative
popularity of programs in any given year.

Elizabeth

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:56:07 -0400
From: "John edwards" <jcebigjohn41@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Collector of OTR

Hi,  I have enjoyed reading the various posts for almost three years.  From
time to time there is a posting from "a name from the past" that I have
traded with many years ago & lost contact with over the years.  I wondered
if anyone on the list knows of the whereabouts of Don Pellow.  Don was very
helpful to me from about 1971.  He had a very large reel to reel collection
and traded with & loaned me material when I had only a couple thousand
shows.  In recent years I have asked many who once knew Don if he was still
around but no one seems to know for sure.  If anyone from the list does know
please contact me off [removed]  John

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:21:03 -0400
From: "dchandler" <dchandler@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  MASH

Regarding MASH ...

I seem to recall that while there was a shot of a 70s comic used in one MASH
episode (Chamber of Chills, I think?), on at least one occasion Radar WAS
reading an accurate period comic, because when I saw the episode, I was
thrilled that they "got it right!"  The comic in question, if (failing)
memory serves, was Captain Marvel Meets the Good Humor Man, which I believe
was published in 1951.  (Don't have an Overstreet here with me.)

Now, I've never read this comic, and can't testify to its contents, but I
also remember a connection to Jack Carson - could it have been a back-cover
ad for the 1950 movie, The Good Humor Man, starring Jack Carson?  I DO
remember thinking "Jack Carson!" when I saw Radar reading the comic, so
either I made the connection between the two, or the back cover was visible
in the shot, and it said something like, "See the movie starring Jack
Carson!"

Anybody confirm?  Anybody remember this episode, or read the comic?

As to Jack Benny ... it's always been a source of interest to me that so many
Benny mannerisms were SO stuck in the public imagination. For a non-visual
comic (well ... at least primarily a radio star), his mannerisms, it seems,
were pretty thoroughly picked up by the public.

In addition to his movie appearances, of course, wasn't Benny parodied
several times in Warner Bros cartoons?  And often we forget how often radio
stars made visual appearances in vehicles we don't commonly see today -
newsreels, war bond drives, etc.  Even publicity photos likely pictured Benny
with the hand/cheek gesture, likely captioned with "Well!"

How else would the public have known what Charlie McCarthy looked like?

I don't mean to nit-pick MASH.  The integrity of the piece (MASH, in this
case), always defines itself, in my mind, and I never really got too hot
under the collar when MASH played fast-and-loose with the facts.  It was just
a delight to see OTR given the attention and respect it deserved.

For that matter, does anybody recall the scene from the MASH movie, where
Donald Sutherland rigs up a microphone to broadcast the illicit tryst between
Robert Duvall and Sally Kellerman?  The Father Mulcahy character draws up a
chair to listen, claiming innocently, "Oh, is this The Bickersons?  I love
them!"

-dc

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:30:30 -0400
From: hal stone <dualxtwo@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: It's dumb, that's why.

 George M. Kelly just posted;

I was away during the most recent discussion of script dropping.  I bow to
the professionals and scholars on this issue; however,

Ah! that word "However". Lay it on us George.

as to why whether an actor dropped or didn'9t drop a script is a big issue, I
am puzzled.

I will attempt to un-puzzle you. And probably incur your, (and some other
peoples) wrath in the process.

I can see that in a large cast dropping the script on the floor
would create problems or at least a mess, but  for a cast of one or two, I
don't know why it would matter.

Let's see if I can explain why it matters to me, as a "professional" and
perhaps speak for others in the hobby (those digest subscribers who are
serious OTR fans, collectors and historians.) They like factual information
about what OTR was really like, and hearing the inside scoop from the
surviving OTR performers who relate their experiences in broadcasting.

For me, it mattered some time ago when someone, (a former digest subscriber
who shall be nameless), began waxing eloquent about what a grand time he had
as a radio performer, and he began communicating with me in an attempt to
rope me into what turned out to be his "fantasy" world. I began to suspect
he was a phony, and a blowhard. (He was!) Anyway, he made a big point about
how he would stand at the mic while reading his lines, and drop his finished
script pages to the floor.

When I read that, I saw "Red". This guy claimed to have been a professional
actor. No way, Jose. Professional radio performers did not drop their script
pages on the floor. Maybe that happened in podunk, but I never encountered
it in Network radio, and at age eight, I was taught how to place a finished
page "QUIETLY" behind the entire scrip. As a matter of fact, the kind actor
who taught me the proper technique was Matt Crowley, who played my "father'
on the NBC show, "The Nichols Family."

That is not to say that dropping pages never occurred, but it was considered
highly unprofessional, not to say messy. And not just by the East Coast
crowd. I was supported by my fellow West Coast performers (like Conrad
Binyon) who chimed in on this subject. We all considered it bush. And
totally undisciplined.

I was contacted by a fair amount of people who said they witnessed, or had
been told, that page dropping would sometimes occur. But consider the
occurrences.

1) A radio program originating out of Montreal, Canada. (What do you expect
from a French culture). :)

2) Bing Crosby's kids, on Bings show. (Remember, the catch phrase here is
"Professional radio Performer". Bing's kids were not considered
"Professional" at that age. merely the sons of a famous Professional.

3) I was taken to task when I facetiously referred to a heavyweight female
radio performer as "addle brained" because she was quoted in some book about
dropping her script pages to the floor. In all the years I knew her, and
worked with her, that never happened. Yet, I was pointedly informed that she
was on radio long before I came upon the scene, and she probably dropped
pages before I ever met her. True! Very possible. It seems she was a very
successful Broadway Actress before she entered the new "Discipline" of
Radio performing, and maybe she "dropped" early on before she learned the
proper technique. But she didn't "Drop" from 1939 on. So there! :)

4) Now, there is one other real possibility. It takes a slight degree of
manual dexterity to slide the top page (with one hand) off the full stack of
pages (held in the other hand), all the while while reading one's lines,
simultaneously slipping the finished page behind the stack. It's even
trickier when one has dialogue at the bottom of the page being moved, and
have that dialogue continue at the top of the page being exposed.

Now picture the poor novice to radio broadcasting who suffers from what the
theatre called "Stage Fright". In Broadcasting, it was obviously referred to
as "Mic fright". I have seen people's hands tremble so much, that they could
hardly hold the whole script in both hands, much less isolate the top page
from the stack and move it to the rear.

In the most severe cases, they would often bring out a music stand to hold
the script. If the individual was a "film or stage Star" (as often
happened), it made little difference. They were nervous, and out of their
element. But if it was a rank and file performer, the Director never used
them again.

George kelly goes on to say:

In the 1970s I did a series of broadcasts on American Literature for the
local
campus radio station. (SNIP)
my engineer complained about the pages rustling when I was trying to place
them. Since the floor was carpeted, we solved both problems by dropping the
pages on the floor; seemed like a reasonable solution.

Certainly reasonable. And since you were the only person at the Microphone,
(sitting at a desk even) and you only had six pages of script, you could
bend over and pick them up in a instant. Now, I'm going to add my "However"

However, if you ended your posting at that point, I probably would not have
written the above. You obviously think the whole subject is making much ado
about nothing. It just seemed more than a trifle sarcastic when you closed
[removed]

I didn't realize I was  breaking some sacred code.

Now, Now! You won't be punished, and you don't have to do penance. We always
cut non-professionals a little slack. :)

(Now! That's admittedly a trifle sarcastic). The devil made me do it.
Besides, I've given up cigarette smoking, so being testy comes with the
territory.

Hal(Harlan)Stone
Jughead

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:31:27 -0400
From: Bhob <bhob2@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Newspaper radio pages

Does the technology exist for getting such newspaper issues on the
Internet, page by page? If it does, do any of you have any knowledge of
the availability -- or of the future availability -- of any such
newspaper issues online?

Go to NewspaperARCHIVE which claims to have 16 million newspaper pages:
[removed]

This has a $[removed] annual fee after a two-week free trial. It also has
free summaries. Enter a date range like 1940 to 1950. Enter a search
term such as "radio log." Relevant pages from numerous different papers
will come up with two-line summary excerpts. Click on one and the page
will display with Adobe Acrobat Reader. When I did that, the page with
the "Gazette Radio Log" from the RENO EVENING GAZETTE (January 18,1950)
came up within seconds.

Paper of Record has a $[removed] monthly fee and claims 8 million newspaper
pages: [removed]

Try "lovejoy" in the "Search for Free" blank, and you'll get the
WASHINGTON POST obituary for Frank Lovejoy (October 3, 1962).

Although Paper of Record has many international papers, it has few [removed]
newspapers covering the 1930-1960 years and seems somewhat more awkward
to use than NewspaperARCHIVE. These are OCR scans from microfilm, so
there are many imperfections.

Not all that relevant, but nevertheless a good spot to mention Nicholson
Baker's controversial book DOUBLE FOLD (2001):
[removed]

In DOUBLE FOLD he details the widespread destruction of books and
newspapers by libraries once microfilm came into use. Baker is the
founder of the American Newspaper Repository, which he just turned over
to Duke University.

Bhob @ VINTAGE NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS @
[removed]

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 15:30:23 -0400
From: "Jorgenson, Ron" <RJorgenson@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Page dropping mystery solved

I know this subject has been discussed a bit lately and seems to come up
every once in awhile. Each time there are people who are sure that it
never happened (at least not in the good ol days of OTR) and those who
are sure they saw it or someone told them that they saw the pages being
dropped.

Well I think I saw something yesterday that will shed more light on the
truth. I was browsing Laura's IJBFC web site at [removed] and
downloaded a short film clip there that showed Jack and the gang
performing at Camp Haan from 4-12-42. It was really neat to see the gang
performing their act. Jack was at the mike and he carefully placed each
script page behind the rest as they were completed. Then next was Mary,
and what do you think she did? As she finished her script page she
carefully took it from the top of her stack and placed [removed] on the
floor! Yes, there it is, in glorious black and white, documented at
about the 1 minute 40 second mark of the clip, Mary Livingston placing
her script on the floor, and she did it again about 1 minute later just
to make sure we saw it. The rest of the gang performed in this 10 minute
clip as well. Don, Phil, Dennis and Rochester all were there. None of
them put their script pages on the floor, Dennis even had his stapled
together.

So this should put to rest the controversy of "did they or didn't they".
It showed in this clip pretty much what I would assume was happening in
other shows as well. Sometimes some of the performers placed their
script pages on the floor and a lot of the performers did not. It seemed
to be pretty much up to the individual, and that wasn't consistent, when
Mary appeared later in the clip with her noticeably thinner script
package she placed her used pages behind the rest of them and did not
put them on the floor. I guess there may be some question still about
this, since this film was not in the studio but on stage at camp Haan,
but I would think that veteran performers would not do something so
unusual as put their script pages on the floor on stage if they didn't
also do it occasionally in the studio, where would they get the idea to
do it if they hadn't done it before. Just watch the clip yourself you'll
see that they all look very comfortable and the clip really captures
what it would have looked like if you were in the audience (man don't we
wish!) Jack even does a flub. I guess the only other issue we can
discuss about this relates to a post I read a week or so ago, that
someone said that they threw pages while performing in Canada. And my
fuzzy memory recalls that I read that Jack originally met Mary when she
was a teenager when he and Zeppo Marx went to dinner at her house in
Canada. If I recall this correctly I guess we can blame Canada for this
page dropping ;)

Thanks for the great website Laura, I signed up for membership yesterday
as well, you all should too.

Ron Jorgenson

PS. Who has Jack Benny TV shows for trade? I have a few dozen but want
to watch more.

[ADMINISTRIVIA: Be careful taking this clip as "proof" of anything; this
piece of film, which has been making the rounds of the USENET groups for many
many years and was included on last year's Digest fundraiser disc, doesn't
really show Ms. Livingston, "placing her script on the floor," it instead
shows her in both instances sliding her script page somewhere below-camera.
Whether onto the floor, or onto a table just below camera-level, is uncertain
- I don't discount the floor as a possibility, but it is far from a certanty
(at no time during the clip do we actually see the pages lying on the stage
floor). It's also pretty obvious that this excerpt, apparently filmed for
Columbia's "Screen Snapshots" series, was _not_ filmed during the broadcast,
but was almost certainly re-created for the camera, so it would be difficult
for it to be accepted as "cannonical."

"Proof" of a negative is impossible, of course, so it would be inaccurate to
say it was _never_ done. However, it is clear to me based on having been
blessed to talk with many, many professionals over the years (too many no
longer with us, I'm afraid) that script pages were _not_ routinely dropped to
the floor. Surely _someone_ did it at one time or another, or we wouldn't
keep getting into this discussion amid the protests of the professionals
here, but I am quite confident based on everyone I've talked to who actually
performed in the [removed] during the time when radio was king that it would have
been considered abhorant behaviour.  --cfs3]

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2004 Issue #238
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