75th Anniversary of Radio Round-Up

Here's a short audio piece prepared in honor of the 75th anniversary of the ground-breaking CBS broadcast of live reaction from European capitals to the Nazi invasion of Austria:

Late, Great Seattle Soul Station KYAC

Here (below) is a short video piece I produced last month for the SEATTLE CHANNEL, profiling Frank P. Barrow, onetime program director and on-air personality for Seattle soul radio station KYAC. The station (on the air from 1965 to 1981) was mentioned in the recent documentary about Seattle's soul music scene Wheedle's Groove.

We spent time with Mr. Barrow at his current gig with KRIZ/KYIZ, and made a visit to the old transmitter site in nearby Kirkland, Washington (now used by KARR).



Special thanks Bill Kossen; Mike Cherry; Tom Reddick; and especially Jason Remington of SeaTacMedia for tracking down and sharing a TON of great KYAC ephemera!

Broadcasting for Victory and Peace: NBC's Niles Trammell May 1942

National Broadcasting Company President Niles Trammell gave the Commencement Address at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on May 31, 1942.

Mr. Trammell's address was entitled "Broadcasting for Victory and Peace," and it was published later that summer by NBC. Individual pages of the pamphlet are reproduced here. PLEASE NOTE: the final inside page is NOT included because it is blank.

Radio during World War II has been the object of much study and nostalgia, and much has been written about the networks and the correspondents who brought broadcast news into American homes. It's always interesting to come across some random piece of ephemera from that era such as this speech. Incidentally, it was not long before the time of this speech that NBC was forced by the government to divest itself of the Blue Network.

Radio Feature Writing Circa 1943: U. P. Radio News Style Book

A recent addition to the ISLR Library is the 1943 United Press Radio News Style Book by Phil Newsom (dust sleeve pictured).

This short little tome is a relic from World War II, the early days of radio journalism, and a "once-major international news agency." I saw it referenced in Paul White's excellent 1946 News On The Air and found it right away via an online auction site.

There's not much call for traditional radio news writing anymore these days, but there's plenty of audio storytelling going on via public and community radio stations.

With this in mind and in the spirit of edifying my fellow reporters and producers with a little pre-Ira Glass (and even pre-Charles Kuralt) radio storytelling, here is the chapter from the United Press Radio News Style Book called "Radio Feature Treatment":

RADIO FEATURE TREATMENT
(Excerpted from United Press Radio News Style Book by Phil Newsom)
While the emphasis in radio news writing is on the handling of "spot" news developments, no discussion of radio news writing would be complete without a section on radio news features.

The news features leaven the loaf of the newscast by providing a relief from the heavier news of politics, economy or war.

In the radio news feature the writer has wide latitude in creating for the listener a word-picture of people, places and events. Here the radio technique of informality and conversational expression achieves its fullest development. For the radio feature, unlike the radio news report, can dispense with the basic "who, what, when and where" requirements in its lead. The radio news feature, like a short story, creates listener interest in personalities and situations, building the story toward a climax at the end.

The following is an excellent example of a light radio feature. It was written for the program "Time Out" which for a number of years has been carried on the United Press radio wires each Sunday.

* * *

Time Out!
Time out from war and its worries!
Time out from havoc and headlines!
Time out for a story of life with a little "L"--the story of a house that
friendship built.
Listen . . .

Ask anyone in Painesville, Ohio, what building they think is the finest in the world.

Radio City, the Woolworth Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State--they'll turn up their noses at them.

"Waite's house," they'll tell you. "Finest thing you ever saw," they'll say; "the richest man in the world couldn't buy the stuff that went into that house."

So you go out to see it, your eyes all set for something in marble, maybe, with gold and diamond trimmings. And what do you see? A prim, tidy little cottage!

But wait a minute before you mutter about Ohio's sense of humor.

The richest man in the world couldn't buy the stuff that went into that cottage--and we'll tell you why.

It began last spring sometime when Franklin Waite and his wife decided that if they didn't taste a steak for six months and wore what clothes they had, they could build their own house. There was Frank's weekly check from the construction plant, where he was a guard, to count on--and besides, the missus was all for it. So they began to scrimp and save, cut corners and budget. Frank reckoned he could build it by hand working in his leisure time; and Mrs. Waite said she'd help with painting and even sawing if Frank would let her.

Well, last week Frank was all set to go. The wood was bought, the paint was on hand, everything finally was gathered.

And then, Frank was drafted.

He put his chin in the air and said he wasn't going to complain. But gee, it was all set to go and they'd dreamed of the house for so long.

It wasn't long after that the men at the plant began acting sort of strange. They'd be talking, but when Frank came along they'd shut up like clams, or say something phony, like "Guess I'd better be running along."

That went on for three days, and then, one evening, one of the men walked up to him and asked him how about coming along with him at quitting time, he had something he wanted him to see.

Well, Frank went along, gloomy as he felt, smiling and joking, and pretending not to notice that they were heading right out towards the leafy grove he'd bought to plant his little dream cottage in. And when they pulled up on his lot, he stiffened up a bit and thought maybe they were carrying a joke too far. Then he noticed.

He saw his pals all had their carpentering tools with them. He saw that the car he came in wasn't the only one. He looked around and it seemed as though the whole blooming plant was heading right for his leafy grove, for all the world as if they had a construction job to do.

They did have a construction job.

Those boys were there to build a house--his house.

And they did. For a week that grove was about the most unpeaceful spot you've ever been in. Night and day, you could hear hammers whanging and men shouting and saws rasping. When it got dark you could see the makeshift light line burning bright enough for the men to work--and when meal time rolled around you could see the beer and sandwiches the union contributed to the job.

Five days and five nights and the house was built. The painters slapped on the last coat of white and Frank just stood and looked, and Mrs. Waite cried, the way women will when they're so happy they can't say anything.

Frank went off to the Army then, walking with a bounce that a king couldn't match. He said he felt like he could whip the Germans and the Japs single-handed. But now and again he'd stop and look off into space and whisper:
"Did you ever know anything like those guys?"

Well, that's Waite's house.

Better than the Empire State, Radio City, the Eiffel Tower and the Woolworth Building. The richest man in the world couldn't buy the stuff that went into that house--for it's the house that friendship built.

(NOTE: The TIME Magazine version of the story from September 28, 1942 is available here.)

A Few More RADIO REMAINDERS

We've been cleaning off the I STILL LOVE RADIO bookshelves over the summer, kicking up clouds of dust and coming up with a few more titles worthy of having their dustjackets put on display.

Dedicated ISLR readers will recall a few earlier posts (look for additional links at the bottom of this particular earlier post) highlighting similar volumes that we found notable for their aesthetic or other hard-to-pin-down, radio book qualities.

Simply put, we just love this kinda stuff . . .

On The Air by John J. Floherty

Gateway to Radio by Major Ivan Firth and Gladys Shaw Erskine

Both Sides of the Microphone: Training for The Radio by John S. Hayes and Horace J. Gardner

Broadcasting the London Olympic Games in 1948

In honor of the 2012 London Olympics and all those behind-the-scenes stories about the preparations required to properly cover the Games on TV and the web, we present this humble essay, called Broadcasting the Olympic Games.

It was written by one "L. Hotine" of the BBC, and was originally published in the 1949 BBC YEAR BOOK (pictured at left).

"The XIV Olympiad, the second Olympiad to be held in Britain (the first was in 1908), presented a planning and operational problem which had never before been encountered in the history of any broadcasting organization in the world. The BBC through the years has dealt with broadcasts of increasing magnitude and, prior to the Olympic Games, the Royal Wedding in November, 1947, created the heaviest load on its resources. It was known, when the decision was taken to hold the XIV Olympiad in Britain, that broadcasting reporting and eye-witness accounts of the Games would surpass in complexity and magnitude even the broadcasts of the Royal Wedding, because, although the latter had international interest, the Olympic Games in detail would have to be reported in practically every country in the world in each country’s own language and in most cases by commentators who were covering their own athletes participating in the Games.

The Engineering Division were faced with two major difficulties in planning: first, accommodation for a broadcasting centre, and secondly, accurate knowledge of the amount of facilities all nations would require. As the first problem could not be solved without resolution of the second, it was necessary to make certain assumptions and to err on the side of greater demands so that preliminary planning could begin.

The first requirement was a building near the Wembley Stadium, and it was at one time thought that a special building would have to be erected. Apart from the expense of construction, it was known that severe difficulties would be encountered in obtaining building materials and building labour. It was, therefore, a considerable easement when Sir Arthur Elvin, the Managing Director of Wembley Stadium, Ltd., generously offered to lend to the BBC the old building which was the Palace of Arts in the British Empire Exhibition of 1924. This building had been used in the intervening years for a number of purposes and the internal arrangements were of little us, as they stood, for broadcasting purposes. The building did provide four walls, however, and a roof and ample area in which to partition off spaces for studios, recording and reproducing rooms, etc. Preliminary planning of the area was then possible, and meanwhile replies to a questionnaire which had been sent to the broadcasting organizations of the participating countries were beginning to come in.

Analysis of the requirements showed that it would be necessary to provide for thirty-two channels; that is, equipment to permit thirty-two separate broadcasts to take place at any one time. This equipment, amplifiers, mixers, line terminations, etc., would be installed in the central control room in the Palace of Arts, to be known as the Broadcasting Centre. Space and other considerations determined the number of microphone positions which would feed the central control room for distribution to the BBC’s Home and Overseas Services and to the participating countries of the world. At Wembley Stadium fifteen commentary boxes were planned, together with seventeen open positions. The Empire Pool would have sixteen commentary positions. Because of the distance between the central control room, the Stadium, and the Empire Pool, it was necessary to plan for sub-control rooms in each of these buildings in order to raise the programme volume from each microphone. No switching would be done at these points.

Eight studios would be required in the Wembley Broadcasting Centre, together with twenty recording channels and eight reproducing rooms. The need for these facilities, in addition to the commentary points, was created because many of the eye-witness accounts of events would be either broadcast live or recorded for later transmission because of time differences in different parts of the world.

Planning of the Broadcasting Centre was now completed, and constructional work began in January, 1948. All equipment had been installed by the end of June, and exhaustive tests were carried out in the few weeks which remained before the Games were opened by H.M. the King [George VI].

Other technical accommodation provided in the Broadcasting Centre consisted of television control and production rooms, and television cameras were installed in the Stadium and Empire Pool. A co-axial cable for television had been installed by the GPO during the early part of the year between Wembley and Broadcasting House. This cable is terminated in the Stadium and remains as a permanent installation for future television broadcasts.

Non-technical accommodation consisted of correspondents’ room, editing rooms and record library, restaurant, information room, and, of great importance, the bookings room. The bookings room, controlled jointly by engineers and a section of the normal Studio-Management Unit, dealt with all applications for studios, recording rooms, commentary positions, outgoing circuits, and all reservations for lines or radio channels abroad controlled by the GPO [General Post Office].

Apart from the events at Wembley, there were many other venues: Henley, Torquay, Bisley, Aldershot, etc. All these venues were treated as normal outside broadcasts, although, because of the number of simultaneous commentaries from each place, much more equipment and many more circuits back to the Broadcasting Centre were necessary than for an outside broadcast for BBC transmission only. Twelve mobile recording cars and one vehicle containing eight magnetic recorders were available for the events at venues other than Wembley. At Broadcasting House a special control point was built, to handle all the commentaries sent by line from Wembley and the other venues and to pass them on to the Post Office trunk exchange and radio terminal for transmission by line and radio to the foreign countries.

The photograph opposite page 56 shows the control positions which were installed round three sides of the Central Control room. The positions were arranged in banks of three bays, the middle bay being a reserve for those on each side. Each bay was equipped with an amplifier and a four-channel mixer, but the outer bays were able to use two of the mixer channels of the centre bay. Thus each control position had in effect a six-channel mixer which provide six alternative input sources. In the event of a failure, three bays became two, each with a four-channel selection. This arrangement was designed to economize in equipment, but still provide sufficient reserves. Each control position was provided with ten tie-lines to the main source-selection bay, so that a maximum of ten sources of programme were under the hand of the operator. In the middle of the room were the bays accommodating the source selection terminations, outgoing and incoming line terminations, line-testing equipment, and the switching arrangements for all the cue and signal-light circuits to all the microphone positions.

Of special interest were the television arrangements, which were more complicated than for any other television outside broadcast previously attempted. Only one week before the start of the Games the BBC had taken delivery of a new television O.B. [Outside Broadcast] unit designed and manufactured by Electrical and Musical Industries, Ltd. [EMI], and the cameras associated with this unit were installed at the Empire Pool. The cameras used a new design of pick-up tube which had only been used experimentally in prototype form on the two previous broadcasts, one of which was the Royal Wedding. Much development work, however, had been done in the intervening period and the pictures obtained of the swimming and other water events exceeded the hopes of the designers and the BBC engineers. The control equipment for these cameras was located in a vehicle parked outside the building and connected by co-axial cable to the vision control room in the Broadcasting Centre.

The older television cameras were used in the Stadium, as they require much more light for satisfactory operation. Their control equipment vehicle was located in the Stadium tunnel and was also connected to the vision control room by co-axial cable routed via the Empire Pool control point. The vision control room was equipped with a vision mixer which could be faded from point to point at the direction of the producer who sat in a small production room adjacent to the control room. The producer had three monitors in front of him, which showed the actual picture as broadcast and previews of the pictures from the Stadium and the Empire Pool.

That the XIV Olympiad, 1948, represented the most ambitious undertaking in broadcasting history there can be no doubt; 200 engineers were engaged; there were twenty-five venues, 130 commentary positions, and 500 amplifiers and 150 microphones were installed. The project took twelve months to plan, building and installation work took six months and three months were required to dismantle and return to normal."

July 2012 Round-Up

How many millions of times each day does a writer somewhere begin a blog post with some variation of, "it's been too long since I've written anything here"? For everyone's sake (mostly mine), I will dispense with that formality and get right into a quick round-up of three recent items of ISLR-worthy news:

This NOT Just In: Seattle Supersonics World Championship
A new episode of TNJI premiered on KUOW 94.9 FM in Seattle in early June, this time looking at the 1979 Seattle Supersonics' NBA championship. Features some nice cuts from the late "Voice of the Sonics" Bob Blackburn, and a snippet of Brent Musburger.

More Sonics Stuff
The TNJI episode inspired me to dust off an audio recording made in 2004 of an event at MOHAI to honor the 25th anniversary of the Sonics' championship. I moderated, but the stars of the show were the aforementioned Mr. Blackburn, plus Seattle Times reporter (who covered the championship season) Greg Heberlein, and Sonics forward John "JJ" Johnson. Complete audio is available here.

JPR Foundation Successful Grant
The news from Ashland, OR-based Jefferson Public Radio hasn't been all that great lately (lots of political strife and the retirement of long-time chief Ron Kramer). So, it was good news last week when the National Endowment for the Arts announced that the JPR Foundation has received a $50,000 grant in support of the Jefferson Square project, which is slated to house new studios, performance spaces and a broadcast history museum. The grant proposal was penned by yours truly (with support and legwork from JPR staff, of course).