------------------------------
The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2009 : Issue 146
A Part of the [removed]!
[removed]
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
Tom Mix Wooden Guns Radio Premiums [ Dick Fisher <w9fjl@[removed]; ]
RE:Arthur Godfrey [ "Belpedio, Dr. James" <[removed] ]
Why No Seders On Radio? [ Stuart Lubin <stuartlubin6686@sbcgl ]
Re: moon coverage [ Dixonhayes@[removed] ]
Re: I Love A Mystery [ John Olsen <jrolsen2@[removed]; ]
The Green Hornet [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
Ronald Liss [ "Irene Theodore Heinstein" <IreneTH ]
Re: Radio and the Jews [ "Irene Theodore Heinstein" <IreneTH ]
Re: MP3 or elitist [ Sammy Jones <sjones69@[removed] ]
I Love A Mystery [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
mp3s and otr quality [ rand@[removed] ]
mp3s and otr quality [ rand@[removed] ]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:40:31 -0400
From: Dick Fisher <w9fjl@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Tom Mix Wooden Guns Radio Premiums
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain
I am a long time OTR premium collector. I had many OTR premiums during
the middle 30's to middle 40's when I was a kid.
The Tom Mix radio show offered wooden guns as a premium at two different
times - the 1933 gun opened and the cylinder spun. The one offered in
1939 had no moving parts. Both guns were about 9 inches long.
As a premium collector I have always wondered how they could make
thousands of these guns and sell them for 10 cents. The making of these
guns had to be extremely labor intensive. The 1933 model broke like a
real gun and the cylinder would spin. It was nearly all wood except for
a small nail and a small metal cylinder. The 1939 model was entirely
wood. It appears that you would have to have had a well equipped wood
working shop to even consider producing them.
Now in a recent E-Bay offering of these two guns the seller states that
Ralston hired men (and possibly women) who were out of work during the
depression and that these guns were all made by various people. He
further states that no two guns are exactly alike. These had to be the
most difficult premiums ever produced as they were almost entirely wood.
Can anyone verify the accuracy of these two statements or provide any
additional information? It would help to put to rest a long time
interest in the answer to these questions.
Thanks.
Richard
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:40:54 -0400
From: "Belpedio, Dr. James" <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: RE:Arthur Godfrey
One memory of Arthur Godfrey was the Lipton Tea and Lipton Soup
commercials, I think from both radio and television. I remember images
of Godfrey sipping the soup and exclaiming how good it was , and then
making jokes about the absence of pieces of chicken, sturring the soup
and looking for chicken pieces. I recall onc Godgfrey opening a soup
packet and searched for pieces of chicken and not finding any. Once he
announced that Lipton people probably just waved a chicken over the pot.
Whatever the Lipton people thought of his antics behind the scenes is
probably unknown, but Arthur sold oceans of chicken soup. Does anyone
have any info on that aspect of Godfrey's career?
As to the La Rosa affair, La Rosa actually had explored getting out of
his contract because of a disagreement about learning to dance for the
TV show, a demand that Godfrey had announced to the cast and that La
Rosa had loudly objected to. The surprise firing on the air was the
culmination of that issue. It led also to Godfrey's public feud with Ed
Sullivan when Sullivan featured La Rosa on his Sunday evening show
JBelpedio
Becker College
Worcester, MA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:41:25 -0400
From: Stuart Lubin <stuartlubin6686@[removed];
To: Old Time Radio Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Why No Seders On Radio?
Recently, Sean Dougherty posed a question to the Digesters. I have been very
interested in hearing opinions of other digesters to get answers. So far,
Michael Biel has addressed that question
My question: Do any other digesters have opinions on this insightful
question, or must we buy the book to get the answer?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:42:17 -0400
From: Dixonhayes@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: moon coverage
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain
In a message dated 8/3/2009 4:14:29 [removed] Central Daylight Time,
[removed]@[removed] writes:
And CBS even aired only the falsified versions of their coverage
where film that was not seen until a month after the flight had been
edited in replacing the simulation animation that had originally been
aired. They are either too embarrassed -- or are completely ignorant --
that CBS and the other networks were airing simulations and graphics
during the moon landing.
CNN showed fairly long clips of the CBS News coverage, including the moment
of stepdown, and it had all the original "CBS News Simulation" footage
still intact. Evidently the older people who knew better are all at CNN now.
Anyone know if the Mutual radio coverage is available for
download/streaming anywhere?
Dixon
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:42:25 -0400
From: John Olsen <jrolsen2@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: I Love A Mystery
_<pauljustmill@[removed]; asked:_
> Has there been any further information on the recreations of the old ILAM
> scripts? When will they be available?
I know they supposedly were doing a presentation at the 2009 REPS
Showcase back on June 26-27. The schedule listed it at 4:15 on Sunday
afternoon and said:
*****I LOVE A MYSTERY*** Premiere- Tim Knofler has been authorized by
the Morse Estate to release a new production of I Love a Mystery (now in
pre production) . Tim will let us see a glimpse of the new radio series
at the REPS showcase. In today's drama we are witness to the events that
brought Jack, Doc and Reggie together as a team.
I didn't attend the REPS Showcase, so I don't know what happened at that
meeting. Did anyone her attend REPS Showcase? What happened? Inquiring
minds want to [removed]
John
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:43:02 -0400
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: The Green Hornet
Back in May, I did a presentation about THE GREEN HORNET on radio for
SPERDVAC. The presentation revealed a good bit of Hornet lore and dismissed
the numerous myths that have continued to be reprinted in magazine articles
and reference guides. The visual slide show also reveals conception sketches
Trendle commissioned for the Hornet mask before settling down to the Hornet
mask we are all familiar with today. Most of this material is NOT available
anywhere else which is what makes the presentation fascinating.
I have been invited to do the same for the Metro Washington Old Time Radio
Club and for the first time in years I'm actually able to make it to one of
their monthly meetings. I was informed that even if someone isn't a member of
the club, they can still attend the meeting. The information is enclosed
below so anyone within driving distance wants to see the presentation and
attend an old-time radio club meet is invited.
WHEN: Friday, August 14th
TIME: 7:30 PM
WHERE: The social hall of Trinity Episcopal Church, corner of
Columbia Pike and S. Wayne St., Arlington VA.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:44:15 -0400
From: "Irene Theodore Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Ronald Liss
Sean Dougherty asked about Ronald Liss. I found these sources on
[removed] which give his date of death as 1969-1970.
-Irene
[removed];so=2&rank=0&=%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c&gsfn=ronald&gsln=liss&sx=&gs1co=1%2cAll+Countries&gs1pl=1%2c+&year=&yearend=&sbo=0&sbor=&ufr=0&wp=4%3b_80000002%3b_80000003&srchb=r&prox=1&db=&ti=0&[removed];gss=angs-b
Name: Ronald Liss
Birth - Death: 1931-1969
Source Citation:
[removed] The Encyclopedia of American Radio. An A-Z guide to radio
from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. By Ron Lackmann. New York: Facts on File,
2000. (EncARad)
[removed] Same Time, Same Station. An a-z guide to radio from Jack
Benny to Howard Stern. By Ron Lackmann. New York: Facts on File, 1996.
(SaTiSS)
Name: Ronald Liss
Birth - Death: 1931-ca. 1970
Source Citation:
[removed] Radio Stars. An illustrated biographical dictionary of 953
performers, 1920 through 1960. By Thomas A. DeLong. Jefferson, NC: McFarland
& Co., 1996. (RadStar)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:17:47 -0400
From: "Irene Theodore Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Re: Radio and the Jews
Thanks to Michael Biel for his info on the Siegel book "Radio and the
[removed]". Sounds very interesting. I checked the used book websites and
surprisingly found that the price for most used copies is higher than for a
new one. At Barnes and Noble the online price is $[removed] Amazon has the
book at the same price.
On the Amazon page they list other books related to the subject of radio.
I'm curious as to whether any of you are familiar with the author Michele
Hilmes. I'm not. Among her media books are these on radio.
[removed]
Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952 by Michele Hilmes
(Paperback - April 1997)
Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio by Michele Hilmes
(Paperback - Oct 19, 2001)
Hollywood and Broadcasting: FROM RADIO TO CABLE (Illinois Studies
Communication) by Michele Hilmes (Paperback - Jul 27, 1999
There are detailed descriptions of these books at Amazon. Amazon reports
that she is Prof of Media and Cultural Studies at the U of
Wisconsin-Madison where she has taught the history of broadcasting for over
a decade.
I am not pushing Amazon. I do most of my online book buying at Barnes and
Noble and Overstock and have no connection with any of these sellers.
-Irene
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:19:03 -0400
From: Sammy Jones <sjones69@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: MP3 or elitist
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain
MP3 has opened up the hobby to untold thousands, I see nothing wrong
with that. We need all kinds in the hobby, those who collect, those
who listen and those who do both.
If you want to be an elitist, that is your privilege, but don't belittle
the ones who are not elitist.
Ron,
I had no intention to come across as elitist, and don't believe that I
did, nor did I belittle anyone. I simply stated my opinion, in light of
certain facts. I didn't bring up the topic of mp3s; I only responded with my
opinions and observations.
Call it elitist or not, I am proud to say that I
care about sound quality.
Sammy Jones
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*** as the sender intended. ***
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:19:19 -0400
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: I Love A Mystery
Someone asked:
Has there been any further information on the recreations of the old ILAM
scripts? When will they be available?
Answer: not yet, but when information is made available, it will be posted.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:19:29 -0400
From: rand@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: mp3s and otr quality
Charlie pointed to a blog post on his [removed] site that encapsulated
his thoughts on old time radio encoded in mp3 format.
Charlie - thank you! My thoughts exactly. For those that didn't read it,
I'll summarize the main points and add a few of my own.
-The reason so many old time radio shows sound terrible in mp3 files isn't
because of the bit rate, it's because they come from tenth generation tape
copies or badly recorded conversions from other formats.
-Shows, when transferred, should be recorded and kept as a digital master
in an uncompressed format.
-MP3 files are intended as "listening copies" and can sound quite good,
even at 32k mono. They're not intended as archival copies of shows and
shouldn't be used for further editing or sound reduction - they're
compressed and lack important information, so further tinkering with them
will just make them sound worse.
Now, I'll ad a few of my own thoughts on the matter.
I do think that 16 bit versus 24 bit can make a small, but perceptible,
difference when transferring a disc to digital. It does two things.
First off, on near hi-fi shows, it can improve the bass response and help
capture some of the room ambience, better preserving what you hear off the
original disc. I have an audiophile system with tube preamps and power
amps and can hear the difference on some material, like reference acetates
from the networks or original vinyl discs used for syndication.
Secondly, if you have a beat up transcription, it gives denoise or
declicking software more "bits" to work with, lessening the incidents
where you get odd digital artifacts. The original source material might
not have high frequencies, but you can sure bet that tape hiss or surface
noise from a disc does extend into a range you can't hear, but interacts
with what you can hear.
If you start out with the best sounding original uncompressed file you
can, it makes the derivative mp3 files sound better, even when you're
using 32k encoding.
You have to keep in mind that the player is having to uncompress the file
"on the fly" and recreate the original sound forms. There are going to be
differences in the ways that software and hardware does this. Decoding
and playing a file that has scratches and surface noise is more difficult
than "clean" music or speech. The mp3 format was designed to "toss" as
much information as possible and "guess" the details of the original
sounds. It does a decent job figuring out what's missing from someone
speaking or from a musical passage, but random disc or tape noise throws
it off.
I've noticed differences in playback of mp3 files on different devices.
My Playstation 3, for example, plays back 32k files that are well encoded
with almost no digital artifacts. The stereo in my car, which can play
mp3 files burned to cd, shows more artifacts. Even playing a file in an
embedded Flash player on a website versus the same file as a download on
your local machine with QuickTime or the Windows Media Player can be a
different experience.
I'm disappointed to hear mp3s used as a distribution format for streaming
or radio broadcast. Think about it the next time you try to listen to
some shows on the Sirius/XM old time radio channel and they're almost
unlistenable or hear a radio feature using old recordings that are full of
digital artifacts.
Think about it - you're taking a compressed audio file and the satellite
radio system or a streaming server is compressing it all over again for
distribution to your radio or computer. Even analogue radio stations
don't like to use mp3 files for broadcast since their transmitter hardware
has to compress and smush the file to go out over the airwaves. Garbage
in - garbage out.
I've sometimes thought that a syndication service for radio stations or
Internet radio station that exclusively used uncompressed, first
generation recordings of old time radio might get some traction since it
would actually make the material pleasant to hear. But, considering that
most old time radio survives in public copies digitized from bad tape
copies, you'd be hard pressed to come up with enough high quality material
to keep the service going for an extended period.
Randy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:20:14 -0400
From: rand@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: mp3s and otr quality
Charlie pointed to a blog post on his [removed] site that encapsulated
his thoughts on old time radio encoded in mp3 format.
Charlie - thank you! My thoughts exactly. For those that didn't read it,
I'll summarize the main points and add a few of my own.
-The reason so many old time radio shows sound terrible in mp3 files isn't
because of the bit rate, it's because they come from tenth generation tape
copies or badly recorded conversions from other formats.
-Shows, when transferred, should be recorded and kept as a digital master
in an uncompressed format.
-MP3 files are intended as "listening copies" and can sound quite good,
even at 32k mono. They're not intended as archival copies of shows and
shouldn't be used for further editing or sound reduction - they're
compressed and lack important information, so further tinkering with them
will just make them sound worse.
Now, I'll ad a few of my own thoughts on the matter.
I do think that 16 bit versus 24 bit can make a small, but perceptible,
difference when transferring a disc to digital. It does two things.
First off, on near hi-fi shows, it can improve the bass response and help
capture some of the room ambience, better preserving what you hear off the
original disc. I have an audiophile system with tube preamps and power
amps and can hear the difference on some material, like reference acetates
from the networks or original vinyl discs used for syndication.
Secondly, if you have a beat up transcription, it gives denoise or
declicking software more "bits" to work with, lessening the incidents
where you get odd digital artifacts. The original source material might
not have high frequencies, but you can sure bet that tape hiss or surface
noise from a disc does extend into a range you can't hear, but interacts
with what you can hear.
If you start out with the best sounding original uncompressed file you
can, it makes the derivative mp3 files sound better, even when you're
using 32k encoding.
You have to keep in mind that the player is having to uncompress the file
"on the fly" and recreate the original sound forms. There are going to be
differences in the ways that software and hardware does this. Decoding
and playing a file that has scratches and surface noise is more difficult
than "clean" music or speech. The mp3 format was designed to "toss" as
much information as possible and "guess" the details of the original
sounds. It does a decent job figuring out what's missing from someone
speaking or from a musical passage, but random disc or tape noise throws
it off.
I've noticed differences in playback of mp3 files on different devices.
My Playstation 3, for example, plays back 32k files that are well encoded
with almost no digital artifacts. The stereo in my car, which can play
mp3 files burned to cd, shows more artifacts. Even playing a file in an
embedded Flash player on a website versus the same file as a download on
your local machine with QuickTime or the Windows Media Player can be a
different experience.
I'm disappointed to hear mp3s used as a distribution format for streaming
or radio broadcast. Think about it the next time you try to listen to
some shows on the Sirius/XM old time radio channel and they're almost
unlistenable or hear a radio feature using old recordings that are full of
digital artifacts.
Think about it - you're taking a compressed audio file and the satellite
radio system or a streaming server is compressing it all over again for
distribution to your radio or computer. Even analogue radio stations
don't like to use mp3 files for broadcast since their transmitter hardware
has to compress and smush the file to go out over the airwaves. Garbage
in - garbage out.
I've sometimes thought that a syndication service for radio stations or
Internet radio station that exclusively used uncompressed, first
generation recordings of old time radio might get some traction since it
would actually make the material pleasant to hear. But, considering that
most old time radio survives in public copies digitized from bad tape
copies, you'd be hard pressed to come up with enough high quality material
to keep the service going for an extended period.
Randy
--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2009 Issue #146
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