Subject: [removed] Digest V2003 #25
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 1/19/2003 8:21 PM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2003 : Issue 25
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Re: Facsimile                         [ Bill Jaker <bilj@[removed]; ]
      Re: Mutual Pearl Harbor Coverage      [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      Re: Radio Facsimile Service           [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      Richard Crenna                        [ "bkidera" <rkidera1@[removed] ]
      Re: Brace Beemer & a Tale of Two Gle  [ SanctumOTR@[removed] ]
      "... In a Plain, Brown Wrapper"       [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
      OTR Comedy Summa Cum Laude            [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
      RIP Richard Crenna                    [ bloodbleeds@[removed] ]
      Highway Patrol                        [ "Bob & Carol Taylor" <qth4@[removed] ]
      Re: LP to CD                          [ "Matthew Bullis" <MatthewBullis@run ]

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

    Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:02:30 -0500
    From: Bill Jaker <bilj@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Facsimile

>     From: chris chandler
>     To: [removed]@[removed]
>     Subject:  WLW facsimile service

>     On another [removed] just heard some 1939 WLW
>     [removed] of them advertises an hour of
>     'facsimile service' at 2:15 AM.  I never heard this
>     term--what is it?  TV?  Modern day 'fax' of some kind?
>     Why did they do it in the middle of the night?  Any
>     info appreciated.

    Facsimile is now all-but-forgotten as an adjunct of the broadcasting
    industry.  An ancestor of present-day fax machines, the technology of
    sending still pictures and text over a wire or through the air dates
    back to the early years of the 20th century, and by the 1920s there were
    several radio stations experimenting with fac-simile (as it was
    sometimes spelled). Newspapers were attracted by the possibility of
    delivering their editions by radio, and in 1923 the St. Louis
    Post-Dispatch was sending out articles from station KSD.

    In the 1930s the Mutual Broadcasting System established a facsimile
    network which included WLW in Cincinnati.  Transmissions were scheduled
    for the wee hours so that the few people so equipped could awaken and
    find the morning paper next to the radio (or whatever was sent - WLW was
    cooperating with the [removed] Department of Agriculture in sending out farm
    news).  Also, the overnight hours were preferred because facsimile audio
    sounded so awful.  If you want to hear what it sounded like, just call a
    fax number.

    Facsimile never caught on as a broadcast medium, even if it was given
    one last chance when the FCC established the current 88-108 FM band in
    1945.  The top few megacycles were originally intended for facsimile.
    Neither the broadcasters nor the public took to facsimile (among other
    things, the ink smeared) but it can be seen as a precursor to the
    Internet.
                                                                   --Bill
    Jaker

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

    Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:03:41 -0500
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Mutual Pearl Harbor Coverage

    On 1/18/03 1:02 PM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

>     Fulton Lewis, Jr. was just a marvel, at one point
>     mounting an extemporaneous 20-minute commentary from
>     the White House press room!  I gather Lewis is better
>     known for his latter-day political views, but he get
>     my vote as one of THE top wartime broadcasters, and
>     there's little hint of politics in his work on the
>     'big' wartime days.

    I agree with this completely. Personal politics aside, I've always
    thought that Fulton Lewis Jr is one of the most consistently underrated
    radio commentators of the 1940s-- whether you agree with him or not, his
    commentaries were always well-thought-out and clearly presented, and his
    only rival as an extemporaneous speaker was probably H. V. Kaltenborn.
    His Pearl Harbor commentary is one of the sharpest pieces of
    work-under-pressure that I've heard.

>     NBC was playing by an old
>     set of rules, on a day that saw all the rules
>     changed--and the network came up miserably short as a
>     result.

    I think this is where the real difference between Mutual and the Big
    Networks comes thru: as you mentioned, Mutual's decentralized nature was
    a key factor in enabling it to put together the day's broadcasting on
    short notice. There was no moss-covered bureaucracy, no little grey men
    on the seventeenth floor who had to initial forms in triplicate with a
    carbon to Legal before decisions could be made. Each Mutual affiliate
    knew what had to be done -- and went ahead and did it, and the result was
    coverage that really stands out.

    Of course, having said that, one also has to keep in mind that where
    NBC's Sunday night schedule was packed with high-rolling sponsored
    programs, Mutual's certainly was not -- it was the usual mishmash of
    humdrum musical sustainers, newscasts and public-affairs programming that
    seemed to fill every night on Mutual during the early forties. There was
    certainly no financial or contractural reason for Mutual not to go all
    out on its coverage.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:03:55 -0500
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Radio Facsimile Service

    On 1/18/03 1:02 PM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

>     On another [removed] just heard some 1939 WLW
>     [removed] of them advertises an hour of
>     'facsimile service' at 2:15 AM.  I never heard this
>     term--what is it?  TV?  Modern day 'fax' of some kind?
>     Why did they do it in the middle of the night?

    This is Finch process "radio facsimile service," an experimental
    text-and-graphics transmitting system which enjoyed a brief vogue in the
    late thirties. Certain stations were licensed to transmit text and
    graphics using their regular frequencies after signing off their audio
    programming for the night -- and this information would be picked up and
    decoded by special "radio facsimile receivers." These were units which
    reconstructed the transmitted image as a pattern of scanned lines and
    traced it on a moving roll of thermally-sensitive paper very much like
    that of a 1980s fax machine. Content usually consisted of news items
    cribbed from a cooperative local newspaper, or weather maps, or comic
    strips, or photos of newsmakers of the day.

    WLW was hot in the middle of this experimentation, since the Crosley
    Radio Corporation manufactured and marketed a radio facsimile receiver
    called the Crosley Reado, which looked suspiciously like a Crosley
    table-model radio phonograph cabinet with the innards torn out and
    replaced by a thermal printer. In addition to Crosley, equipment was also
    manufactured by RCA and the Finch Telecommunications Laboratories
    (company founder William G. H. Finch invented the system.)

    Eight stations were authorized to transmit facsimile material as of 1939:
    WLW, WGN Chicago, WOR New York, WHO Des Moines, WHK Cleveland, WSM
    Nashville, KMJ Fresno and KFBK Sacramento. In addition to operating
    independantly, WOR, WGN, and WLW experimented with "networked"
    transmissions, sending material back and forth from station to station
    for local retransmission.

    Experiments with this technology proved inconclusive due to the
    difficulty of overcoming signal interference, and further commercial
    exploitation of the idea by broadcasters was delayed by the war. The
    primary use for the process in later years was for the transmission of
    weather maps and related information by shortwave to ships at sea.
    Old-school ham operators would sometimes modify old Crosley Reado units
    to intercept these transmissions.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:01:37 -0500
    From: "bkidera" <rkidera1@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Richard Crenna
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    It was sad to learn tonight of the passing away of radio and tv actor Richard
    Crenna, at age 76. The account of his death stated that he began in radio back
    in 1936, at the age of 10, with Burns and Allen.  I have always enjoyed
    listening to his work on Gunsmoke, YTJD, and other shows from the '50s. He was
    an all around fine actor who will be missed.

    Bob Kidera

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

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

    Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:55:03 -0500
    From: SanctumOTR@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Brace Beemer & a Tale of Two Gleasons

    In a message dated 1/18/03 10:08:29 PM, mmargrajr@[removed] writes:

>     James Gleason substituted an ill William Bendix for one LIFE OF RILEY radio
>     broadcast.  Slight amuzing cast note because Gleason at the time was
>     television's Chester Riley.

>     When Brace Beemer died in 1941 in the auto accident, a very sick and wounded
>     Lone Ranger was played by some obscure radio actor uttering words in pain so
>     the children wouldn't recognize the voice difference.

    ***Actually, it was Jackie Gleason, not James, who substituted for the ailing
    Bendix.  James Gleason specialized in portraying Irish cops and promoters
    (and was nearly cast as Hopalong Cassidy before William Boyd won the role).

      And it was Brace Beemer who took over as the wounded Lone Ranger in the
    transition series after Earle Graser died in the auto accident.  Beemer
    continued as the Masked Man until the radio series left the airwaves in the
    mid-1950s.***

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

    Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:15:47 -0500
    From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  "... In a Plain, Brown Wrapper"

    B. J. Watkins, writing about my delight in getting auction-won OTR
    premiums in small brown envelopes or boxes observed,

>     And Stephen, remember in the 1980s when Ovaltine had those swell
>     offers!  Just send in some Ovaltine labels and you got a Captain Midnight
>     watch which came in the little brown envelope and the Captain Midnight
>     T-shirts which came in the larger brown packages!

    True enough, but the auction stuff came first.  There were three 1980s
    "Captain Midnight" Ovaltine premiums: the watch. the Tee Shirts, and the
    1989 Secret Squadron Member Patch.  These were all based on the TV show
    rather than the much different OTR program.  One could even give a nod to
    the post Captain Midnight Ovaltine Secret Decoder Ring.

    But the real charm of the auction winnings wasn't just the small
    envelopes, but that the contents were exactly the same premiums I'd sent
    off for in the 1940s.

    Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

    Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:16:05 -0500
    From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  OTR Comedy Summa Cum Laude

    Dixon Hayes, in recommending OTR comedies, noted,

>     "The Jack Benny Show" and "The Great Gildersleeve" are two high-profile
>     shows that definitely live up to their reputations.  They still hold up
>     surprisingly well.

    True enough.  But the show that really works as well today as when aired
    is the Phil Harris - Alice Faye Show.  Brilliantly written most of the
    time.

    Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

    Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:21:34 -0500
    From: bloodbleeds@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  RIP Richard Crenna

    Alas, the great squeaky voice is gone. I had wanted to interview him for my Gildersleeve
    book, but was told he didn't talk to many people in the last few years due to a stalking
    fan incident. Was this true? A few people I know wrote to him, but had their letters
    returned REFUSED. I was never sure why.

    But he was one of the greats.

    Ben

    It's That Time Again!
    [removed]

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

    Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:41:15 -0500
    From: "Bob & Carol Taylor" <qth4@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Highway Patrol
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    I wonder if Highway Patrol was ever on the radio?  Also was Bradrick Crawford
    ever in any radio shows.  My dad met him in Southbridge MA.  and he said he
    was a drunk.  Another thing about Highway Patrol, I don't ever remember police
    cars being only two doors.

    Does anyone have any Hawkshaw Hawkins radio shows?  Lee Moore when he was on
    WWVA called himself The Coffee Drinkin Nighthawk,  Hawkshaw was on the
    jamboree at that time and his band was called The NightHawks.  So Lee took the
    coffee drinkin nighthawk cause he did the overnight or graveyard shift at that
    time.

    Bob Taylor

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

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

    Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 22:03:14 -0500
    From: "Matthew Bullis" <MatthewBullis@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: LP to CD

    Hello,
    [removed]
    will do it for a charge, if you send them your material. If you want to do
    it on your computer, then you can use software that records .wav files and
    then turn them into mp3 files, after you split them up first. E-mail me
    privately if you want more info about how to do this type of thing on the
    computer.
    Thanks a lot.
    Matthew

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2003 Issue #25
    ********************************************

    Copyright [removed] Communications, York, PA; All Rights Reserved,
      including republication in any form.

    If you enjoy this list, please consider financially supporting it:
       [removed]

    For Help: [removed]@[removed]

    To Unsubscribe: [removed]@[removed]

    To Subscribe: [removed]@[removed]
      or see [removed]

    For Help with the Archive Server, send the command ARCHIVE HELP
      in the SUBJECT of a message to [removed]@[removed]

    To contact the listmaster, mail to listmaster@[removed]

    To Send Mail to the list, simply send to [removed]@[removed]