Subject: [removed] Digest V2015 #25
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 3/15/2015 10:18 AM

To: [removed]@[removed]
Reply-to: [removed]@[removed]

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                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2015 : Issue 25
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Studio Clocks                         [ "Bob C" <rmcblc@[removed]; ]
      Re: KDKA "First Commercial Broadcast  [ Michael Shoshani <[removed]@ ]
      RE: Studio Clocks                     [ A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed] ]
      This week in radio history 15-21 Mar  [ Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed] ]

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    Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:06:39 -0400
    From: "Bob C" <rmcblc@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Studio Clocks

    Re Michael Shoshani's comment: "Actually, the old Western
    Union clocks were notorious for keeping pretty lousy time."

    I have to disagree. If they were lousy at keeping time, it's
    because no one put in the effort to make them accurate.
    After having repaired several, I know how dirt, ambient
    temperature and humidity, as well as vibration, can affect
    them. Depending on how much time (no pun) you want to devote
    to adjusting the pendulum over several hours or days, the
    clock will be extremely accurate -- certainly enough that it
    could be several days without the time signal before anyone
    noticed it was off. And with the time pulse each hour, one
    would never have a problem.

    When I first went to work at a station during my college
    days I was told that the WU clocks corrected themselves on
    the hour. That fascinated me, but I never saw what I could
    be sure was a legitimate correction. Since the seconds hand
    advanced in half-second increments, it was difficult to
    notice.

    Then one day, I'm in the newsroom when I hear the announcer
    go into his top-of-the-hour spiel of weather forecast,
    current conditions, and "As we join CBS for the new, it's
    four p-m." I thought, "What is he doing?" I'm looking at the
    newsroom clock and it almost a minute before the hour. But
    when he said "four p-m," the newsroom clock showed 3:59:20,
    the CBS tone sounded, the red light on the clock came on,
    and the seconds hand swung all the way around to the 12.
    Wow!

    I went into the control room and told the announcer what I
    had seen. "Oh, yeah, " he said. "The Western Union man was
    by earlier replacing batteries in all the clocks [there were
    five in the station], and he said he accidentally stopped
    yours for a few seconds when he took out the old ones."

    Bob Cockrum

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    Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:08:29 -0400
    From: Michael Shoshani <[removed]@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re:  KDKA "First Commercial Broadcast"

    On 3/13/2015 09:54, Charlie Summers wrote:

>         Was listening to the reruns of The Bob Edwards Show this morning and the
>     2007 interview with Marc Fisher about his book, Something in the Air: Radio,
>     Rock and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation. During the hour, they
>     played a segment of the KDKA Harding/Cox election results.

>         I know it was a re-creation many years later, but can't remember the
>     circumstances surrounding the re-creation. Can anyone refresh my memory?

    My first guess would be Murrow & Friendly's "Hear It Now", which did
    recreations of many historic moments for which no actual recording was
    ever made.

    Michael Shoshani
    Chicago

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    Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:08:35 -0400
    From: A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  RE: Studio Clocks

    Back in the mid-1960s, when I did announcing at WMUA, the student
    station at UMass in Amherst, we had a [removed] Naval Observatory clock in
    the control room.  I remember the second hand sometimes jumping to the
    top of the hour, just like the Western Union clock that other people
    have described.  It also served another purpose on one occasion.  One
    year, there was an eclipse of the moon, and the Astronomy Club, in which
    I was also involved, set up a telescope in the parking lot outside the
    station.

    Besides publicizing the observations to the campus, we also conducted
    crater timings, noting the exact time that the earth's shadow crossed
    certain specific craters on the moon's surface.  The data were sent
    somewhere and processed and presumably used, along with the observations
    of others, to try to obtain more precise information on the distance to
    the moon, or the size of earth's shadow, or something like that.  So
    before doing the crater timings, we went into the station control room
    and synchronized our watches to the station clock.  I think we probably
    got some free publicity on the station, too, while this was going on.

    --
    A. Joseph Ross, [removed]| 92 State Street| Suite 700 | Boston, MA 02109-2004
    [removed]|[removed]| [removed]

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    Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:08:47 -0400
    From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];
    To: otr-digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  This week in radio history 15-21 March

    3/17

    1933   Comedian Phil Baker was heard on network radio for the first time
    on a regular basis when The Armour Jester was heard on the Blue network.
    Baker rapidly rose to the top of the radio ratings.

    3/18

    1940   Light of the World was first heard on NBC. The soap opera was
    unique in that it featured the Bible as the center of the story line.

    3/21

    1924   The voice of Lowell Thomas was first heard on radio. Thomas was
    heard talking about "Man's first flight around the world", on KDKA in
    Pittsburgh, PA.

    Joe

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2015 Issue #25
    ********************************************

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