Subject: [removed] Digest V01 #149
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 5/17/2001 7:51 PM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

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

                          The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                             Volume 01 : Issue 149
                       A Part of the [removed]!
                               ISSN: 1533-9289

                               Today's Topics:

     Whatever became of Arlene Francis?   [otrbuff@[removed]                   ]
     Radio sets                           ["John Sloan" <jdsloan@[removed]; ]
     WJJD in Chicago                      [Davidinmemphis@[removed] (David)   ]
     Re: Archival Attitudes               [Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed]]
     Hemingway                            [Michael Berger <intercom1@attglobal]
     short wave radio                     ["Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed]]
     Re: BBC/SHORT WAVE                   [BH <billhar@[removed];             ]
     War of Worlds ownership              ["David L. Easter" <david-easter@hom]
     Re: KDKA vs. WWJ                     [Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];       ]
     Re:BBC/SHORT WAVE                    [Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];       ]
     Hello From Canada!                   [franciswalker62@[removed]           ]
     KQW-San Jose?                        [SacChief@[removed]                   ]
     Mutual Broadcasting System           ["Dale Slack" <dslack@specialty-risk]
     Australian Radio Books               ["Bruce Guthrie" <BruceGuthrie@bigpo]

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

    Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 22:27:02 -0400
    From: otrbuff@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Whatever became of Arlene Francis?

    Those who remember Arlene Francis will probably be interested in a
    website honoring this distinguished lady:  [removed].

    Aside from the popular What's My Line? television show, she was a radio
    performer of the first magnitude.  She appeared with her future husband,
    Martin Gabel, on Big Sister in the 1930s and early 1940s, was a hostess
    on Monitor, presided with Bill Cullen on It Happens Every Day, was the
    "private eyelash" (her words) of The Affairs of Ann Scotland, hosted Fun
    For All and so many, many other audience participation venues, and turned
    up as hostess of early TV's daily Home show.

    She has suffered with Alzheimer's Disease for quite some time, according
    to son Peter Gabel, now at 54 a college president in San Francisco.  The
    "love of her life," Martin Gabel, died May 22, 1986.

    You'll enjoy the sterling tributes to this lovely lady at the website
    bearing her name.

    Jim Cox

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

    Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 22:39:38 -0400
    From: "John Sloan" <jdsloan@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Radio sets

    A lodge brother has been telling me about a radio his parents had that  had
    a small viewing screen built in.   This screen was there so tv could be
    added when it was available.  My question is, was there such a set or is my
    leg being pulled.
    John Sloan

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

    Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 22:39:40 -0400
    From: Davidinmemphis@[removed] (David)
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  WJJD in Chicago

    I have fond memories of listening to WJJD and the "Suppertime Frolic" as
    a youngster.  I would dearly love to have just one recording of this
    show for reasons of nostalgia.  Could anyone direct me to a possible
    source for excerpts from this program or possibly a full evenings
    program from the 40's ?  Thanks.

    David Chamberlain
    Memphis, TN

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

    Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 23:58:29 -0400
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Archival Attitudes

    Mike Biel observes,

>     I mentioned at how embarassed BBC
>     Records was when they drew up their plans for their initial releases and
>     discoverd that much of what they wanted to release didn't exist.  And
>     how many popular programs had almost totally disappeared.  Yes, he said,
>     there were different priorities--and "light entertainment" was not one
>     of them.  Political talks and cultural events were more important.  But
>     they would try to keep at least one sample of a program series, but even
>     that was not always possible.

    It's interesting how closely this attitude follows that which seems to
    have been held by NBC during the early years of its own archival
    activity. When you examine the year-by-year holdings of the NBC-New York
    archives now held by the Library of Congress (using the SONIC database),
    you'll note that between mid-1935, when the network began making
    recordings, and May of 1942 -- when they started to record various
    Hollywood shows off the line in New York -- the overwhelming majority of
    the programs held by the network for preservation seem to have been
    exactly the sorts of things primarily preserved by the BBC: news
    coverage, actuality broadcasts, and political talks.

    There are very few well-represented entertainment series in the
    collection before May 1942, notably the programs of Fred Allen and Rudy
    Vallee, and random samples of many other series -- but the bulk of the
    material appears to have been preserved on the basis of what they thought
    the future *should* hear rather than any effort toward documenting what
    the people of their own time were *most interested* in hearing. Given all
    the high-toned "public service" pronouncements that came out of the NBC
    publicity office during the 1930s, it's no surprise that such an attitude
    would govern what ended up being saved for posterity in the Central Files.

    NBC was of course recording a lot more than ended up being preserved, and
    one must also factor in the petty pilferage and other forms of attrition
    that affected the collection over the years -- but even so, there does
    appear to be definite "We Take Ourselves Oh So Very Seriously" attitude
    behind what they chose to keep.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 00:43:04 -0400
    From: Michael Berger <intercom1@[removed];
    To: otr <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Hemingway

    Frank  Hemingway  was  well known for his off beat way of reading
    the  news,  sponsored  by  Folger's  [When  I  say coffee, I mean
    FOL-gers!!-was his signoff line].

    I remember hearing him via KFRC in San Francisco, which indicates
    that  it  was a Mutual network hookup, but perhaps only the west,
    as the earlier post suggests.

    Don't want to overdo the offbeat bit, because most of the news he
    read  was  straight  stuff, but he had a marvelous gift, and used
    it, without distorting the actual news he was reading.

    And  unlike  the  evolution  of  Paul  Harvey,  Hemingway  had no
    political agendas.

    Michael Berger
    who   also  remembers  such  KFRC  characters as Dean Maddox, who
    called  himself Buddha and did a man in the street interview show
    from  in  front of the old Owl Drug store at the corner of Powell
    and  Market,  Max  Baer's Sunday interviews from the Cliff House,
    and Mel Venter and the Breakfast Gang

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 00:45:57 -0400
    From: "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  short wave radio

>     From: "Owens Pomeroy" <opomeroy@[removed];

>        Even if the UK stops world broadcasting, if any one is fortunate enough
>     to still own one of those great floor model radios (in working condition,
>     mine needs two main power tubes that today would  cost an arm and a leg)
>     with the 3 bands (Broadcast, Ship to Shore and Short Wave),

    need not worry.

    You can buy a modern radio that will receive all these frequencies, plus
    quite a few more, with considerably better performance than your old console
    had.  I have no idea whether "ship-to-shore" frequencies are still used for
    that purpose.  Some ship communications used low frequencies, in the
    30-->300kHz range.  This required a very long antenna for efficient
    transmission and reception.  If you look at pictures of old ships, you'll
    see this long antenna stretched from one end of the ship to the other.

>     The frequency settings are there on the dial for what ever

    country you want (mine had Germany,Australia, UK, Hawaii, Canada, Sweden and
    Hong Kong).

    These frequencies change fairly often as weather and politics dictate.
    Short-wave listeners trade information on who broadcasts where and when in
    magazines and, I suppose, newsgroups.

>     Of course, now you would need an outside (CB? HAM?) audio
>     antenna. (In the 30's all we did was take the ground wire and attach it to
>     a water pipe).

    If a water pipe worked in the 1930's, it would work now.  Chances are you
    were in fact using a big loop antenna that was strung inside the radio
    cabinet.  The length and type of antenna largely depends upon the frequency
    to be received.  You can make efficient short-wave receiving antennas from
    lengths of wire.  Radio Shack sells long-wire antenna kits to this very day,
    but it's just as easy to build them yourself.

>     There must be some company that still manufactures these State - Of - The -
>     Art 3 band short wave radios somewhere.

    Well, of course.  But they aren't console radios with impressive tuning
    dials.  There are several highly-efficient radio receivers in which the
    exact station frequency is entered from a keyboard.  These receivers, which
    are small and generally battery-powered, are also capable of scanning an
    entire band to search for signals.  Again, Radio Shack has several rather
    good short-wave radios of this type, as do other vendors.

>     (Side note: Are there any Ham operators on the list that have pulled in
>     some of these UK stations direct from the UK without the "sideroad" through
>     the US?)

    It would be rather difficult to tell, because a great deal of short-wave
    broadcasting was relayed to North America through stations in various
    Carribean islands.  I believe that the BBC would have been relayed through
    the old British West Indies.

    Short-wave listening has lost a great deal of its popularity due to the
    availability of instant, two-way communication that's free of government
    control over the Internet.  It's sad to see a great tradition so quickly
    discarded, but the Internet itself has provided far greater international
    understanding and communication than the old short-wave stations ever could.

    M Kinsler

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 09:16:15 -0400
    From: BH <billhar@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: BBC/SHORT WAVE

    "Owens Pomeroy" <opomeroy@[removed]; commented:

>        Even if the UK stops world broadcasting, if any one is fortunate enough
>     to still own one of those great floor model radios (in working condition,
>     mine needs two main power tubes that today would  cost an arm and a leg)
>     with the 3 bands (Broadcast, Ship to Shore and Short Wave),

    Most tubes for these old radios are still reasonably priced. If you know
    which tubes need to be replace, reply via email with the tube numbers
    and I can tell you where to get them and prices.

>     (Side note: Are there any Ham operators on the list that have pulled in some
>     of these UK stations direct from the UK without the "sideroad" through the
>     US?)

    Not sure what you mean by "sideroad through the US", but I can pull in
    the BBC and all those other countries you mention on my Zenith
    TransOceanic receivers (I have all the tube type and solid state models
    - from the first in 1941 to last in 1981), and that is using only the
    internal telescoping whip antenna. No "sideroads", directly from the UK
    and other countries.

    Bill Harris

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 09:16:12 -0400
    From: "David L. Easter" <david-easter@[removed];
    To: "Old-Time Radio Digest (E-mail)" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  War of Worlds ownership

    <Fred Owens asked: Could somebody suggest who might own performance rights
    to War of Worlds?  Students are interested in doing a recreation.  [removed];

    Science Fiction Weekly ([removed]) reports that Pendragon
    Pictures will begin production of an independent-movie version of [removed]
    Wells' SF novel War of the Worlds in September using the same digital system
    George Lucas used for his upcoming Star Wars: Episode II.
    This implies that Pendragon Pictures must own, at least, the screen rights.

    David L. Easter
    1900 Angleside Rd.
    Fallston, MD 21047
    Email: David-Easter@[removed]

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 12:16:59 -0400
    From: Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: KDKA vs. WWJ

    From: Donna Halper <dlh@[removed];

>     Their [KDKA] web-site even has what they used to claim was
>     that first 1920 broadcast-- a neat trick given that nobody
>     had invented audio-tape yet and to my knowledge, they could
>     only have transcribed it with maximum difficulty, perhaps
>     on a dictaphone disk.  Some of the members of this list
>     took the web-master to task, and now I think they admit
>     it's a re-creation, not the actual broadcast.

    Although it is obviously a re-creation--as are all the others that claim
    to be that broadcast--it is not because it could not have been
    recorded.  While tape recording as we know it had not yet been
    invented--that came in the 1930s--wire recording had existed for 20
    years and had already been used in radio-telegraph recording.
    Dictaphones used cylinders at that time, not discs, and also had already
    been used to record a radio transmission--that radio-telegraph wire
    recording that was being transmitted high-speed by a German spy station
    on Long Island!  German ships would record that transmission on their
    own wire recorders and slow it down to decode it.  An American
    experimenter, Charles Apgar, did the same thing using a Dictaphone.
    There's a nifty quote in the New York Times of the station manager
    saying that this was impossible to do!

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 12:17:01 -0400
    From: Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re:BBC/SHORT WAVE

    From: "Owens Pomeroy" <opomeroy@[removed];

>     Even if the UK stops world broadcasting, if any one is fortunate
>     enough to still own one of those great floor model radios ...
>     need not worry.  The frequency settings are there on the dial for
>     what ever country you want (mine had Germany,Australia, UK, Hawaii,
>     Canada, Sweden and Hong Kong).

    You're pulling our leg on this, aren't you???  Those dial notations are
    now 60 years out of date, were not too accurate even then, and were and
    are no guarantee of receiving stations from those countries at those
    points--or ANY points--on the dial!!!

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 14:24:50 -0400
    From: franciswalker62@[removed]
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Hello From Canada!

    I'm so glad to find a mailing list of people with the same love of otr as I
    have!
    After getting a computer a couple of years back I first discovered this
    media.
    It's ironic that it took modern day technology for me to discover something
    that's been around for seemingly forever. After finding Mediabay I was
    hooked
    and would go to sleep every nite listening to things like The Whistler and
    Suspense.                                                             One
    program that intigued me most was The Shadow. I have
    been collecting episodes from the program and decided to put them to use by
    creating a website dedicated to fans of the [removed] can find it here:

    [removed]

    Once again I'm glad I'm glad I found this list and look forward to
    learning so
    much more of this interest.
    Francis Walker
    Ontario, Canada

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 15:32:44 -0400
    From: SacChief@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  KQW-San Jose?

    First of all, many thx to those who responded to me earlier query re. Frank
    Hemmingway. It's good to know that my memory is still somewhat intact.
    Question: I read WSJ article on KDKA, and, of course, am familiar with the
    legend that they were the first station on the air. However, many years ago
    there was a station with call letters KQW. It was the predecesor to KCBS-San
    Francisco, However, I believe that KQW was licensed to San Jose and that KQW
    used also claim credit as the first station on the air/ Anybody know anything
    about this?  bob

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 18:46:58 -0400
    From: "Dale Slack" <dslack@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Mutual Broadcasting System

    Could someone please let me know what became of Mutual.  It seems like just
    a few years ago that Larry King broadcast a late night show over Mutual.
    Even more recently I remember hearing Mutual Radio news on the hour on a
    regular basis.

    Thank you.

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

    Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 21:38:36 -0400
    From: "Bruce Guthrie" <BruceGuthrie@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Australian Radio Books

    Ian Grieve listed some books on Oz OTR for me.

    Thanks Ian, I'll chase those up.

    By coincidence I had already ordered "Out of the Bakelite Box" from
    the ABC shop, so that's a start.

    I'll go and 'haunt' Screensound next time I'm in Canberra (the
    building is already reputedly haunted, I understand) and check out
    their web site in the meantime.

    cheers

    Bruce

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V01 Issue #149
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