Making Vaccum Tubes By Hand!

This was too damn cool not to post.

PART 1



PART 2

Booze, Broads and Bribes

It's sort of a chicken and the egg scenario. Did payola exist before it was illegal? Well, wasn't always illegal, but even after it was, most people didn't care or at least they acted like they didn't. It is still quite common as you might guess. I actually can put a date to the appearance of payola on the American consciousness: November of 1959. It was a hard year: Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper died, Castro took Havana, and the perception of radio changed forever.

It's a simple cause and effect sequence of events. Lets' do this in chronological order. On Memorial day weekend May 28th - 31st was the second Annual Todd Storz' Disc Jockey Convention. It was held at the Americana Hotel in Miami. This was located at the oceanfront on 97th Street, Bal Harbour, Miami Beach.  Their promotional literature of the day described itself thus

"...the magnificent Americana features the award-winning cuisine of the Gaucho Steak House, Dominion Coffee House, Bal Masque Supper Club and Carioca Lounge. An outdoor pool and all-weather enclosed pool are part of the delightful cabana and garden area..."

It was designed by the flamboyant Morris Lapidus, a neo-baroque Miami architect who defined a number of other modern hotels that defined the 1950s 'Miami Beach' resort hotel style.  The Americana was to Miami what the Sands was to Las Vegas. (It was demolished in 2007.) Needless to say... this conference was really a big blow out. About fifty record labels contributed funding  lascivious four-day party in Miami.  I don't have dollar amounts, but they were probably unspeakable.  The book Something In the Air by Marc Fisher described it in gory detail:

"...Todd Storz hosted the biggest, most raucous convention of deejays staged to date.  the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach was the setting for a bacchanalia for twenty-five hundred deejays, with free bottles of liquor and prostitutes on call all week long.  In one eight-hour party at the Americana featuring the Count Basie Orchestra, two thousand bottles of bourbon were consumed. Hired women were instructed to make themselves available to any deejay..."

The description sounds colored perhaps, or exaggerated. It's not. Fisher cites his source: the testimony of Edward Eicher, convention manager at the Americana Hotel before the U.S. House of Representatives. Almost every informed source describes it as an orgy of drugs, whores and booze. In Voice Over. The Making of Black Radio William Barlow described it similarly:

"...besides the around-the-clock receptions, parties, concerts and gambling junkets to nearby Havana, the convention featured one of the largest contingents of hookers ever assembled in a Miami Beach hotel. (The prostitutes were recruited from as far away as New York City.) Although the record companies spent an estimated $250,000 on this spectacle, and their top executives were in attendance, it was the DJs who were pilloried in the press."

Eight months passed between the investigation and the hearings. For radio it was eight brutal months in which every other media platform beat the tar out of them. It was a full-on media flogging. Payola was the vocab word of the day every damn day.When WABC fired Freed on November 20th the flood gates opened:

June 08 - Time Magazine: P is For Payola
Nov. 16 - Billboard: Clearing The Air 
Nov. 23 - Life Magazine: Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie,On the Old Payola
Nov. 25 - Miami Herald: Booze, Broads, Bribes 
Dec. 04 - Billboard ...Payola Scandal
Dec. 05 - The Nation: Payola, Sing A Song For Sixpence
Dec. 07 - Life Magazine: Payola Axes 'King' Freed
Dec. 14 - Billboard: Thorn In Industry Side
Dec. 17 -  Jet: Music Experts Predict Death of Rock 'N' Roll
Jan. 01 -U.S. News & World Report: Payola- An Inside Story
Jan. 18 - Billboard: Slugfest at FCC Hearings
Jan. 21 - Jet: Disc Firms Pay me $855 Monthly  
Jan. 25 - Billboard: Payola Crackdown

On February 8th 1960 the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight began it's investigation.  it was chaired by Oren Harris [D] of Arkansas. But while the crimes were real, the investigation was a sham. The big star witness was Norman Prescott of WBZ-AM. The feds confronted him with canceled checks from record distributors and blackmailed him into testifying.From there it was a slaughter eventually leading to the inevitable recriminations, criminalization and frequent investigations of today.

It went on for a year.By June of 1959 Billboard was publicly questioning whether there should be a 3rd Annual Todd Storz' Disc Jockey Convention. The first convention had been in Kansas City in 1958. Mitch Miller used it as a forum to harangue rock programmers and to blame rock n' roll music for the vagaries of youth. He got a standing ovation.  In some deranged way the 2nd convention was used to "prove" his point. some stations dropped their tainted DJs and flipped formats. In the end Todd Storz walked. He got off scot-free. His stations being Top-40 were purported to be immune from the influence of payola as they did not debut records. He used the corrupt commerce at his own convention as a marketing gimmick for his own Top-40 Format. It was bunk of course.

Many stations held on to rock n' roll.  Some even fired back at TV and print media. WSAI-AM in Cincinnati took their local paper to task with a series of "Newspaper Critiques." Print had been soft balling and/or quietly promoting their advertisers products. the CBS Network got in on it and they not-so-gently reminded their friends in print that hypocrisy is even less appealing than bribery. In the end they had already taken down Freed, and dozens of other DJs.. for some reason they didn't want Storz or Dick Clark or anyone else. Justice was ultimately as indiscriminate as it was symbolic.

DJ George Klein

When people interview George Klein, it's usually about Elvis, and not about George Klein. When he's mentioned in print it's usually in the middle of a reference to Elvis too. It's really a damn shame. Writer Bill E. Burke called him "America's Oldest Teenager."  Burke meant that DJ GK, (as he also called him) was the real rock n' roll deal compared to Dick Clark. There's also a George Klein at WEMU, a fine jazz man but that's a Klein of a different color. Writer Mitch McCracken also noted Klein's position squarely in Elvis's shadow. More Here. In the Memphis Examiner he wrote:

"George Klein ... was one of the first DJ’s in Memphis to play rock and roll on the radio, before Elvis. That was just the beginning of what George would do for Memphis music wise He became one of the most famous disc jockeys in Memphis history. He had the RKO “Boss” jock sound down when he was at WHBQ. You can’t mention those call letters without thinking of George Klein or GK as Elvis called him."

Yes, Klein  happened to be friends with Elvis since they were 14 years old. But Klein was big in Memphis radio, and Memphis was the epicenter of rock n roll at the time.  In short, Elvis Presley isn't the only big name in his career. Yes, in 1954 Klein was the second DJ in the country to play Elvis’s Sun Records debut “That’s All Right.” (Dewey Phillips, was the first)  When Klein was on KWEM he was the first DJ to host Johnny Cash live. At the time they were still just Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two.  They as yet had no drummer, and no record deal. A few months later Cash got signed to Sun Records and Klein obligingly played that record too.

He began at WHHM-AM doing high school football broadcasts. then he worked for Harvey Stegman at WHBQ-AM working on their baseball broadcasts for the Memphis Chicks. Klein became the WHBQ-AM gopher.  Dewey Phillips sent him out to pick up barbecue, and coffee, wrangle fans and answer the phone. Klein even came in early to clean up the studio after Dewey. Dewey was renowned for trashing the joint as he tossed records around the room. He frequently yanked 45s off the turntable and threw them toward the trash can.In his own words "I...made sure he didn't burn the station down." In the book Dewey and Elvis writer Louis Cantor called him a "baby sitter" and a "radio groupie."  

He finished college and he went over to KOSE-AM in Osceola, AR and came back to host a rock n roll show at KWAM-AM.   His afternoon show was so hot that he was soon poached by WMC-AM. Some sources say he quit, others say he was fired, but they all say he left to tour with Elvis in 1957.  But Elvis was drafted in 1958 stopping the tour bus indefinitely. Klein went back to radio and got a gig offered by Sam Phillips at 1220 WHEY-AM radio station. He was doign afternoons in the slot next to his old pal Dewey Phillips. He left Sam for a gig at WHBQ-AM in 1960.  He started pulling double duty on the TV side with show on WHBQ-TV Channel 13 called ".Talent Party.." It ran for 12 years and 500 episodes. It was like American Bandstand but better, it was more rock and more local. He later hosted the TV show Memphis Sounds which was produced at WYPL.

Late in life he did an easy listening show on the Sam Phillips-owned WLVS.  I thought at first this was the present WLVS 106.5 but that station only launched in 1999. It's actually what was once called 94-LVS.  Sam changed the call letters in 1979 to honor the then recently deceased Elvis himself. It was originally licensed in 1976 as 94.3 WGTG.  It flipped to Beautiful music as WEZI in 1983. In 1992 they shifted frequencies to 94.1. In 2008 they went classic hits changing calls to WKQK. the first song they played was Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll."  It's owned by Entercom, but so is WMC.

Klein wasn't immune to the fame and money available in the shadow of Elvis. Almost exactly a year ago he published his own personal account of life with Elvis “Elvis: My Best Man” ISBN-10: 0307452743.  I've gone out of my way not to read any of it out of solidarity for the fame George should have had.

Driving to the 585

*This post is brought to you in part due to the mighty Fybush. Without his driving directions I'd probably be lost and looking for a hotel in Irondequoit.

Back in upstate New York again. This time I drove essentially straight west from the Boston area.  As you may have heard the weather was terrible. The so-called blizzard of 2010 only dropped 6 inches where I was, but the high winds maintained white-out conditions for 15 hours or more. I stopped a lot, and listened to the radio the whole way thorough. It's that semester break between Xmas and New Years day.  It's when everybody breaks schedule, and everybody else is on vacation. you never know what you'll hear. 

On the drive up, I caught little of interest.  I heard Kayak Jack on WNTI who is one off the worst DJs I've ever heard on any station in all my travels. But on the upside I also caught the Antique Phonograph Music Xmas Special on WFMU.  That was truly amazing.I've emailed the host and hope to interview him in the near future. There isn't a lot of shellac let out there in radioland.

The first station I caught was 91.3 WUNH.  They were running a funk program at the time.Their online schedule is inscrutable.. so I have no idea of the program name or the host. Inexplicably I was still getting them well down I-495... well outside their normal range. Of course there was the ubiquitous WUMB. I heard them both on the mother-ship 91.9, but also on 91.7 WNEF. I know it's also on 1170 WFPB-AM but I'm not going near the cape after a blizzard. I listened to WUML, the under-rated UMass/Lowell station, but the kids were all gone so they were airing some medical program about seasonal affective disorder. I also caught bits of what gets called the Jazz Juggernaut on 88.1 WMBR, they have a set of jazz shows that run Mondays from 2:00 starting with Research & Development, then the Jazz Volcano at 4:00, news break at 6:00 followed by Sound Principles until 8:00PM.  It's six solid hours of far out jazz. You can't beat it.

On the way out of Mass I kept tuning into different WFCR repeaters trying to listen to a program on Solitary Confinement and one on the citizens of he Louisiana coast after the oil spill.  It was some really great radio: good editing, good music, good ambiance.. but I never caught the program name. They have 5 repeaters
plus WNNZ-AM on 640. In Springfield I could also hear 91.7 WHUS and some random metal show. I'd also like to say now for the record that WAMU has too many affiliates. Their top of the hour ID takes almost 9 minutes. I caught WSKB 88.9 briefly who had a great country oldies program. I kept getting it intermittently on the hillsides approaching the border.

Heading over the border into New York state I caught 88.3 WVCR who was running a really good oldies mix. Up in Syracuse WAER was rocking some Cannonball Adderly while 90.7 WRVD was doing something a tad more twangy. WRVD of course is a simulcast of 89.9 WRVO, Fingerlakes Public Radio.  I'll also admit I was sucked into a few minutes of 96.9 WOUR as they were spinning the long versions of songs... some of which were incidentally mentioned on the best of "Fresh Air." Terry re-ran interviews with Brian May of Queen and  Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Thankfully the classic rock was readily accessible on the dial.

As I headed west I caught the Moth Radio Hour on WEOS which was also on WRVO though it was now far behind me. The Moth is only about a year old now, but what a strange hipster spoken-word sort of gig it is. There are a number of lesser known PRX programs like this that are really worthwhile.As I got to Rochester I tuned into WITR who was spinning Free Blood, a band I once interviewed and still truly dig.
Just today I spent a little time at 1370 WXXI-AM which is also the shared facilities for 88.5 WRUR, Classical 91.5 WXXI, 90.1 WITH in Ithaca, 90.3 WXXY.. and the TV side of course.  Their studios are some of the nicest I've ever been in. I had the opportunity to meet up with none other than the mighty Fybush himself and talk a little shop. If you don't read his North East RadioWatch —you should.

That is a lot of snow.

Still digging. Back tomorrow.

Festivus Special: Transcription Mystery Disc #25

A lot of my transcription discs are recorded on December 25th and 24th. It's a frequent occasion for recorded greetings, recorded gifts, and recorded performances. Due to the era of the disc, they are usually quite bad. I just have no taste for opera or choral music. This one was far more interesting as it included a greeting and a closing message before and after the song on each side. It's a Wilcox-Gay recording disc with an outer-edge start and a 78 rpm recording speed. It dates definitively to December 25th 1946. But the date begs a question: Christmas is a day traditionally for giving gifts... not the day you make the gift. I suspect it was recorded on the 25th and shipped home from afar or alternately just post-dated.


The vocalist is Arthur Branch, and the recording is for his daughter Marion and his wife Martha. On side A he sings "Wagon Wheels" and on side B the song title isn't legible... it looks like "FS De'clent Care."  [I really do loathe cursive handwriting.] Phonozoic attests dates on this type of Wilcox-gay Recordio Type 4B to 1947 and 1948. This one certainly from 1946 predating his labelography if only by a few weeks.

The song "Wagon Wheels" was recorded by Eddy Arnold, Ray Conniff, Etta Baker, Paul Whiteman, Marty Robbins, Paul Robeson, Sons of the Pioneers, Tommy Dorsey and many others. There are several songs of similar title and/or lyric, but it's probably the one was written by Vernon Willis Homer in 1930.

Traveling

Heading up north again... more excitement no doubt. I promise to report back. Christmas special to follow, then back to normal next week.

Transcription Mystery Disc #94

This new disc is undated.  it starts at the outer edge and spins at 78 rpm  It's home recording of the song "Walkin' My Baby Back Home" sung by a mother and her children.  The song  been recorded a slew of times: Ted Weems 1931, Jo Stafford recorded in 1945, Harry Richman 1947, Nat King Cole 1951, Johnnie Ray 1952.  I'd guess it's an early 50s version. But because of the lack of date and the overlapping types of Voice-O-graph Discs it's impossible to be certain.

News and Reviews 2010

It's almost the end of the year 2010 and time again to consider the miles we drove and days we spent in this trip around the sun. Whether it was a good year or a bad year, it always seems to be a long one. I had the good sense to start doing this in 2005 so at the very least I have some iota of what the hell I was thinking when I began. Now there is almost no other writing. This editor-free zone has become my mainstay for better or worse.

I've been making Top Tens for years longer than I've been writing Arcane Radio trivia. I started when I was in radio, kept going when I was in the biz, then continued as music critic. I now now that no one ever read that crap. But like Jingle cats, it's just part of the rich American holiday tradition of schadenfreude.You can see my last 5 years of "Best of'" at the links below:
2009
     2008
          2007
               2006
                    2005
Best Post: I was so torn on this. I got a lot of Feedback on my criticism of Wikipedia, but it's not radio-related so I excluded that one. I think My favorite was PPM Explained.  Math is hard, and not my best subject so it was a challenge for me to explain PPM in a way that I understood, and that others could as well. I also wrote a post called 105 Degrees and Rising, it covered the last few minutes of the Vietnam bug out in 1975. I got a lot of response and even some from a DJ who worked at AFRN at the time. I'm still waiting for some documents from him actually. I also wrote a history of Metal Radio that I was pleased with.

Best Music Blog: Best Blog this year goes to Dead Wax. they are a consistent source for obscure sides, old 45s, kitsch, rarities and oddities. It's been running since 2008.  Bob posts frequently but not consistently audio may go up once a week on a Saturday or three days in a row on week days. But he's got quality and quantity, I cant complain. 

Best Radio Show: While in Arizona I not only had time to eat several dozen tacos, I also had a lot of drive time to sample the local radio.  In Tucsoni I listened to "The Hub" on KXCI hosted by Bob Girth. It's a cornucopia of indie rock from this week, last week, and the last decade. You never know what's on the deck next. The show has it's own blog here.

Best Record Store:Odyssey and Oracle in Portsmouth, NH. I've been there twice this year and raided their bins of cheap vinyl, and used CDs. There's also Bullmose records and a good pizzeria around the corner. Can't knock that. Second Prize goes to Jerrys Records in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. It was enormous, seeming to contain every permutation of every disc imaginable. The downside is that it's basically in Pittsburgh.

Best Local Paper: The City Newspaper in Rochester, NY.  Strange articles abtou music, art and malicious malingering crows... I dig it. They also pointed me at both House of Guitars and the Bop Shop. Total win.

Best Concert: Honkfest 2010!  I saw Honkfest in 2007 and it certainly made an impression. I went back for another visit to this all-day brass freak-out. My favorite was DJA Rara for sheer originality. I sat close enough to get stepped on. It was a hell of a show: What Cheer/ Brigade, Detroit party marching Band, Rude Mechanical Orchestra... it's a hell of a day. (had good curry too)

Top 10 Records of 2010
1. Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent
2. Gil Scott-Heron - I'm new here
3. Nerve City - Sleepwalker
4. White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights
5. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter
6. Teenanger - Give Me Pink
7. Susu - R and R and R
8. Spoon - Transference
9. Dahga Bloom - Dahga Bloom
10. Maus Haus - Sea Sides

Also notable in 2010: Titus Andronicus - The Monitor,  Sleighbells - Treats, The Black Keys - Brothers, Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest, The Walkmen - Lisbon, No Age - Everything in Between, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - I Learned the Hard Way, Liars - Sisterworld, LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening, and Phosphorescent - Here's to Taking It Easy...

The Cruise of the Great White Fleet

In the book Lee de Forest and the fatherhood of Radio By James A. Hijiya I found a very arcane reference to a piece of radio history. In passing he quotes a 1940 article by G.H. Clark that refers to broadcasting on "the Navy's round-the-world-cruise of 1907-09." I had never before heard of the event.  He describes an operator who played phonograph records over the wireless. These devices transmitted speech instead of Morse Code.  This was so early in the history of radio that he describes that in the news account the operator "gave out" the music as the word "broadcast" was not yet used in that context.

"Late in 1907 the Radio telephone Co. installed wireless apparatus on ships of the U.S. Navy before they embarked on a round-the-world cruise. (The sets did not work well, but de Forest blamed that on the haste with which they were installed and with which Navy operators were trained.)"

It was called the Cruise of the Great White Fleet. On Dec.16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a fleet of U.S. battleships around the world. They did not complete the circumnavigation of the globe until February 21st 1909.For the record, the color "white" was not racial.  In 2004 journalist Mike McKinley explained it:

"Altogether, 16 battleships and 4 destroyers, together with additional support ships, were assembled at the Brooklyn Navy Yard ready to make the 14 month tour around the world. All of the ships were newly painted a gleaming white and hence the flotilla became known as the "Great White Fleet".

Each of the 16 ships bore the name of a U.S. state, except for the Kearsarge and each was assigned a call sign for each transmitter. Some callsigns appear to have been just abbreviations The Georgia was GC for example.  Others like KSZ on the Virginia were internationally accepted callsigns. The U.S.S. Ohio carried the main network transmitter. All told de Forest sold 26 sets to the Navy in 1907. The USS Connecticut served as it's flagship. They began at Hampton Roads, VA and from there hit more than a hundred remote locations: Honolulu, South Africa, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Cuba, Italy, Chile, South America to California. and so many more. It was a saber-rattling move that was typical of Roosevelt. Wireless had been used in the Russo-Japanese war and he felt America was now competing with the Imperial Russian fleet. He still called it a goodwill tour. More here.

In 1965 Robert Hart wrote a book about the it. He described these transmitters as "rudimentary wireless sets." More here. But simple or not, communication between ships, while still maintained to some extent by semaphore and signal flags, was now principally by wireless telegraphy.  This was a big change. These ships didn't have radio before the trip. They had new equipment and novice operators. They sent messages to other ships and to the ports to schedule their arrivals replete with crowds and parades. Captains reported the events of their stops directly to President Roosevelt and also with the land-based station CC on Cape Cod.

Some navy ships had wireless sets as early as 1902, but captains were mixed on them. Of course at this early stage of development they were difficult to use, but it wasn't about that. For every useful tidbit of information they were able to send and receive, there were also orders from their superiors. In short, wireless was a challenge to the immediate autonomy of a ships captain. It's been recorded in some sources that Captains often ordered them shut down and that calls be ignored. When the ships returned in 1909, the wireless sets were uninstalled. The navy's interest in wireless stalled until 1917 and the beginning of  WWI.

The First Black Radio Announcer (Part 4)

It always seems to be worthwhile to research an early black DJ. According to Ebony magazine in 1948 there were only 16 black DJs on air. (Their count was low but the point is valid) Van Douglas was one of them. My first encounter with his name in print was in Billboard magazine October 1948. There was a single line in the VOX JOX column: "Van Douglas, 1500 WJBK-AM, Detroit, subject of the new Alben Disk. Stampede with Van by Andy Johnson and his Peppermint Stocks."  I have found that record in a few catalogs. It was a 78,  with the A and B sides as Stampede With Van / Mood By Midnight. It was Alben records #101.  It was almost certainly their first release.  The record is more collectible for the the sax player Floyd "Candy" Johnson on deck.

His real name was Howard D. Morison.  he was born in Virginia and moved to Detroit in the 1930s to attend Wayne State University. His radio career mainly concerns three Michigan area radio stations: WJBK-AM, WJLB-AM, and 800 CKLW-AM. Between the three of them he was in broadcasting for 59 years. For the most part in the 1940s he was the only black DJ on any of these stations, with the exception of  WJLB who hired Ed Baker after he left. Nelson George called this era "The Dawn of Urban radio." His first radio gig was at 1400 WMBC-AM in 1935. It was a gospel station and it's how he learned his chops.1400 is now WDTK-AM. Here's the tricky part that confuses people. In 1939, WMBC's calls were changed to WJLB-AM by the new station owner John Lord Booth. So yes he was at WMBC-AM and WJLB-AM. but only because they were the same station. Van Douglas' brokered program was allowed to continue on the cash-strapped independent station.

I have some trouble figuring out the 59 years. If he began in 1935 and worked for 59 years then he was still on air in 1994?   at the very least those years were not continuous. A September 1948 issue of Billboard notes that after a month-long absence Van Douglas was back on air at WJBK with a one hour nightly slot at 11:00 PM. In November of that same year it also noted that was hosting a religious program on alternate weekends at WJBK. It also said he was formerly with WJBK.But that should not be construed as to undermine his importance. He was as big as could be for a black man on the radio he even made appearances at the Duke Theater a black movie house and sometimes appeared at dances alongside white DJs. One contemporary reference claimed that it made the event notable as it was now "integrated."

For the life of me I cant find when he was on CKLW, I assume it's later in his career and do note that for a time under Music Director Rosalie Trombley in the 1960s it was playing a lot of Motown. I have no attribution but everyone says it was called "the blackest white station in America."  I'd like to think he had a home there in that era having already been the cities racial trailblazer. After his death his wife Conchita Morison donated his papers and record collection to Michigan State University. It includes a huge pile of collection of gospel, jazz, blues and swing but more importantly radio advertisements, scripts, program announcements, program schedules... One can only hope it'll one day be in their online collection as well.

Radio Stock Update 3

They keep saying radio stocks are ready to rebound, and overall...it just hasn't happened. Of the dozen radio stocks I've been tracking three went private, 6 were threatened with de-listing, and one was downgraded to the OTCBB which is almost as bad as being downgraded to the OTB. None exceed their late 90s IPOs. Saga has been the real winner over the last 2 years, but most of the others still struggle with Radio One only getting it's de-listing letter a month ago. For them it's 2008 all over again.

A couple years ago I picked out a dozen publicly traded  terrestrial radio stocks and I've been periodically checking up on them and being very glad I didn't buy any. This year I added Sinclair and SBS to round out the dozen to make up for the two that were de-listed. Bonneville, Peak, Greater Media and Buckley are all private and not traded so after the big ten the groups get pretty small.Hopefully the data is still meaningful.  I'm also deliberately avoiding conglomerates with focuses outside radio.

Clear Channel Communications CCU/NYSE
IPO 7/6/1994 - 29.9
Peak - 11/5/07 - 38.4
07/24/08 -WENT PRIVATE

Cumulus Media CMLS/NASDAQ
IPO - 11/16/2001 - 6.99
Peak - 4/23/2004 -22.25
10/15/08 - 1.77
03/02/09 - 1.82
12/22/10 - 2.27
Currently -  3.70

Saga Communications SGA/NYSE
IPO - 10/15/1993 - 5.4
Peak - 5/3/2002 -23.20
10/15/08 - 4.9
03/02/09 - 4.28
12/22/09 - 12.75
Currently -  24.40

Entravision Communications EVC/NYSE
IPO - 8/11//2000 - 18.1
Peak - 8/18/2000 - 20.0
10/15/08 - 1.3
03/02/09 - 0.84
12/17/08 - DE-LISTING LETTER
12/22/09 -3.39
Currently -  2.49

Citadel Broadcasting CDL/NYSE
IPO - 8/1/2003 - 20.09
Peak - 12/26/03 - 22.7
09/15/08 - DE-LISTING LETTER
10/15/08 - 0.26
03/02/09 - 0.2
03/06/09 - DE-LISTED
12/20/09 - DECLARED BANKRUPTCY
06/01/10 - EMERGED FROM BANKRUPTCY

Regent Communications RGCI/NASDAQ
IPO - 3/4/2000 - 13.12
Peak - 3/11/2008 - 13.68
08/16/08  - DE-LISTING LETTER
10/15/08 - 0.7
06/30/09 - DELISTED (Stock now trades on the OTC Bulletin Board.)

Cox Radio CXR/NYSE
IPO - 10/11/1996 - 7.2
Peak - 12/31/1999 - 33.25
10/15/08- 6.85
03/02/09 - 5.20
06/01/09 - WENT PRIVATE

Entercom Communications ETM/NYSE
IPO - 3/12/1999 - 29.68
Peak - 2/4/2000 - 65.8
10/15/08- 2.34
03/02/09 - 1.28
12/22/09 - 7.48
Currently - 9.35

Salem Communications SALM/NASDAQ
IPO - 07/02/1999 - 26.375
Peak - 04/23/04 - 33.08
10/15/08- 1.01
03/02/09 - 0.56
12/22/09 - 4.48
Currently - 9.35

Beasley Broadcasting BBGI/NASDAQ
IPO - 02/11/2000 - 14.125
Peak - 02/13/2004 - 19.05
10/15/08 - 1.71
03/02/09 - 1.11
12/22/09 - 3.82
Currently - 4.77

Emmis Communications EMMS/NASDAQ
IPO - 03/04/1994 - 7.75
Peak - 12/31/1999 - 62.32
10/15/08- 0.60
03/02/09 - 0.31
12/22/09 - 1.23
11/05/10 -  DE-LISTING LETTER
Currently - 0.47

Radio One ROIAK/NASDAQ
IPO - 06/02/2000 - 65.00
Peak - 06/02/2000 - 65.00
10/15/08 - 0.301
03/02/09 - 0.41
12/22/09 - 3.29
09/20/10 - DE-LISTING LETTER
11/22/10 - REGAINED COMPLIANCE
Currently - 1.01

Sinclair Broadcast Group SBGI/NASDAQ
IPO - 06/09/1995 - 9.54
Peak - 04/03/1998 - 29.81
10/15/08 - 6.64
03/02/09 - 1.13
12/22/09 - 3.66
Currently - 8.36

Spanish Broadcasting System SBSA/NASDAQ
IPO - 11/05/1999 -26.625
Peak - 12/31/1999 - 40.25
10/15/08 - 0.41
03/02/09 - 0.09
12/22/09 - 0.75
02/13/10 -  DE-LISTING LETTER
05/01/10 - REGAINED COMPLIANCE 
10/18/10 -  DE-LISTING LETTER
Currently -0.74

Day traders will tell you that you're better off buying penny stocks in lots of a thousand to offset the cost of brokers fees. It means you need a relatively smaller bump to offset that cost. But being penny stocks, it also means that sometimes you basically donated that money to Lloyd C. Blankfein. In other words... most of these are still a dubious investments even after 2 years of recovery. You can clearly see that some have been winners and the rest have been losers.

Transcription Mystery Disc #121

It is rare that I Google a brand of acetate recording disc and find nothing. This is a 10-Inch 78 rpm recoding on an acetate. It starts at the outer edge.  The song is clearly labeled but the artist was not. However it came in a batch of other mixed acetates that seem to have a common origin in a collection of Helen Olheim demos. Others in the lot are dated to 1935 and 1936. She studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester in 1925 so these were recorded after she graduated. A couple are labeled clearly for WJZ and WEAF.  This may have been recorded in a radio studio, but the mix of this specific side makes me doubt that.  I purchased them near Rochester and I suspect they may have come directly from her or her families collection.This one contains only vocals with piano accompaniment.There are pauses in the playing and singing that make me think she's pulling double duty.

But the brand of blank, Tonex is totally  unknown to me. The stroboscope on the label makes me think it might have had some kind of audiophile marketing.  The manufacturer is listed as "OH &A Selmer Inc. Elkhart, Indiana U.S.A."  that I found a little bit about. In a February 1967 issue of billboard I found an article on H&A Selmer Inc. It was a write up for an electric saxophone. They were described as making a wide variety of wind instruments by company president Jack F. Fedderson. In fact Their Bundy model clarinets are said to be among the best selling in the world.

Alexandre was one of 16 siblings, several of which were musicians, most notably Henri-Chery, Charles-Emile and Alexandre-Gabriel.   Henri and Alexandre were both clarinetists. By 1890 Henri was a maker of clarinet reeds. In 1895, at the age of 31,  Alexandre came to America and performed with a number of orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the above mentioned the New York Philharmonic. Around 1900 he opened a retail musical instrument store on Third Avenue in Manhattan.  It was founded as H&A Selmer Inc. in 1904. If you didn't guess, the H and the A stand for Henri and Alexandre. In 1918 Alexandre returned to France and left the American side of the business in the hands of one of his students, George Bundy. You can read a very detailed biography here that skips acetates entirely.

Their Elkhart plant was built in 1927. In the 1950s they began making brass instruments in addition to woodwinds.They made bassoons, Clarinets, trumpets, oboes, trombones, fluets, and saxophones. They had over 200 different models of just mouth pieces. Benny Goodman played a Selmer. John Coltrane played a Selmer. Coltrane actually played a Mark VI which was assembled in Elkhart, IN.  Thsi is all very interesting.. but when did they start making acetates?  Well I found an ad in the June 1943 issue of Popular Science that included one crucial detail...

"Glass recording discs are the latest answer supplied by the phonograph industry to shortages of critical details. The new disks are made on a transparent base of ordinary glass with a coating of slow-burning ethyl acetate.  They were developed by H&A Selmer of Elkhart Indiana."

So we know for certain that they were making glass acetates by 1943. It's reasonable to think they were already making standard aluminum core blanks before that, perhaps even in the mid 1930s. By inference I'll assume the Tonex blanks date similarly to the others.  it's not certain, but there is enough context to corroborate at least that inference. I do have one lingering question.  Why is there an "O" in the company name on the acetate?

The Cancer Inside Wikipedia

I write about radio every day. But today I won't. Today another topic distracts me so much that I must air it out so I can get back to more important things like radio history, programming, engineering, media law, and broadcasting ephemera... I recently found a short entry I wrote on Palda Records was deleted. It was not a multinational corporation, but certainly a record label of relevance in it's day. I tried to contest the deletion and my account was promptly blocked. I have come to find this is a very common problem.

For years I have created and edited entries on Wikipedia. This is not unique. Hundreds of thousands of people have added or edited information to Wikipedia. but in the years since I began my ad hoc contributions Wikipedia has changed. Wikipedia has had a small problem for a long time. One group of contributors create, and another deletes. The problem with this is that creation takes time, knowledge and effort. Deletion does not. This is a fundamental imbalance.

Deletionists according to their Wikipage believes they are fighting "Rampant Inclusionism." It's a negative, even dogmatic point of view. One that is at odds with Wikipedia's stated goal: "...to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia." I note the word all. Deletionists by definition, oppose this primary purpose of Wikipedia. I am therefore by default, an inclusionist.

The fun of that Wikipedian goal is that we all have specialized knowledge. People have interests, they get interested in tintypes, cast aluminum toys, wood working, bodies of water, species of salamanders, planetary bodies, typewriters, regional architecture, defunct sports teams, old record labels and an incredible wealth of historical minutiae. The possibilities are infinite and in fact early predictions suggested Wikipedia could literally grow at the above rate.  But the growth of Wikipedia slowed. In 2007 the growth rate broke sharply from the estimate. You might see this as an indication that the estimate was optimistic.  It's not. The rest of the Internet continues to grow at that rate as a whole.

In 2009 a user Rd232 started an article defining notability. It was a formal criteria for exclusion. This has become the rationale behind all deletionism. I'll freely admit some contributions are surely trivial, unclear, redundant, grammatically poor, or even factually wrong. I'll admit vandalism exists too and furthermore that all these things need edited out. What does not need deleted is content. In our Web 2.0 world, information is what we call "content." There is no technical term for the content you discard. That's because deleting content is contrary to being content-driven. Indeed most content on the Internet is assumed to "be forever." But on Wikipedia content is discarded frequently, more frequently than I even knew. A Wikipedia article was started in 2001 regarding it's own size. That article grew to include data on it's growth rate which now, due to deletionism now has a projected plateau. You can see the growth rate in the graph below:

So in seeing this data for the first time, I realized that the argument between deletionism and inclusionism isn't just an obtuse philosophical disagreement within it's editorial community. It's an actual threat to it's future  relevance. At some point in the very near future, (probably under 5 years) Wikipedia will become stagnant.  Inclusionism isn't rampant, as deletionists claim.  The math does not bear that out.  In fact the situation is quite the opposite. So knowing all this I decided I can no longer donate to them.  I wrote to Wikipedia to tell them why. The first response was sort of a form letter. It became personalized thereafter but each became progressively more flippant, dismissive, and even rude. In the end he started to lie. So being the over-educated prick that I am, I'm publishing all of it below minus some edits for length. I hope it provides some insight.

FIRST EMAIL:

I had intended to donate to Wikipedia this Xmas. Then, upon signing on I saw that your "editors" had deleted every contribution I had made in the last 2 years.This was offensive to me philosophically. I see the deletionist theory as completely contrary to the free exchange of knowledge.

I am a member of the SBE, the ARSC, and a researcher in the field of late 1940s record labels, and broadcasting. Wikipedia presently has little information in these areas as its editors are promptly destroyed in some overreaching dogmatic response to the ignorance of an individual. Relevance is a measure of personal knowledge. In this exchange knowledge is destroyed by an editor who is by definition, less knowledgeable than the author.

I will not be donating this year, or ever again until the problem is rectified.

-Jose Fritz

FIRST RESPONSE:

As you know, Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia (as explained at http://en.wikipedia.org wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction, and so anyone may edit its articles. The choice of what remains and what is removed is taken by individuals on Wikipedia; article content is not controlled by a central authority, and I'm afraid we cannot resolve editing disputes via email.

I suggest you follow the steps outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:DR. These steps are designed to help you work with other editors and to draw upon the help of the wider community.

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Chapman

SECOND EMAIL:

I do not intend for you to personally intervene in any specific deletion of any article I wrote. It is the policy of encouraging deletionism that I disagree with. I am suggesting you make a substantive change in policy.  Currently deletionist advocate the wanton destruction of knowledge. It is in total opposition to what you purport you purpose to be. Allow me to quote your own site "Our goal with Wikipedia is to create a free encyclopedia; indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and in terms of depth."

It is an error on your part to tolerate deletionism. It opposes the central purpose of Wikipedia. It threatens the quality of your sites value: content. Everytime you fail to take responsibility for that, you diminish yourself. I can not support you if that is the case.

-JF

SECOND RESPONSE:

As far as I am concerned, everybody on Wikipedia is inherently an inclusionist. We do, however, have different thresholds for inclusion. The definition of what is indiscriminate, what is sufficiently well sourced, what counts as trivial versus non-trivial coverage, has been and always will be subjective.

There are arguments on both sides. You could equally argue that the inclusion of material which is not supported by in-depth coverage in reliable secondary sources jeopardizes the project, tending as it does towards original research and personal bias. Not saying that's the case here, just that it's an alternative interpretation.

As far as I can tell the only objective test for a deletionist versus an inclusionist is thet it's *my* article that got deleted! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_Deletion_is_not_a_war_zone

is a nice essay on the subject. Anyway, this is all philosophical debate. I understand your frustration, have seen it at first hand, and I don't think there's much I can do to change that right now.

Sorry, I wish I could be more helpful to you.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Chapman

THIRD EMAIL:

On that point I must disagree with you firmly. Deletionists destroy knowledge, or at least obstruct it's dissemination which is synonymous. They apply their own subjective judgment on what should and should not be available. Those limited circumstances of deletion  are nothing like what actually occurs in practice. 

This deletionism is apparently so rampant that content creators must either babysit every piece of content, or surrender everything to a possibility eventual destruction. At the very least it displaces time better spent creating more content. The situation is totally contrary to your stated goal.

Inclusionists take a completely different tact. Typically they believe that everything should be includes. Knowing that disc space is cheap and plentiful, there is no onus for deletion beyond concerns for quality: profanity, tact, impartiality.. etc. Deletionists are modern day censors, redacting text, destroying knowledge. In other words, you are sowing the seeds of your own obsolescence.

Best of luck in the future.

-JF

THIRD RESPONSE:

Well, like I say, it's a philosophical division, and it's lasted as long as Wikipedia. "Destroying knowledge" is emotive language for what is, basically, a process of editorial discrimination, which is by common consent essential else we'd have an article on everyone's pet hamster.  Anyway, I understand your point even while disagreeing with you.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Chapman

FOURTH EMAIL:

I thought about this for a couple days to make sure I was not responding in undue haste. I like very much that Wikipedia exists, but I do not like what Wikipedia is becoming.

I did use the term "destroying knowledge" quite willfully. But I don't see it as emotive. I did so deliberately, to illustrate a delicate point. The information that resides in only one place, in one document, one sheet of music, one hard-drive, or worse yet, one brain... is in always in danger of being lost. Wikipedia does not wait for the wiles of time to destroy information. Wikipedia clicks delete.

...Content arrives free and freely as digital text in file sizes that are trivially small. Grammar is corrected by volunteers for free, and connected to existing works so that it's relevance can be made clear to the novice. Then after volunteers create and tidy those tiny files, those nuggets of raw potentially immortal data... you throw them away.  Ergo: destroy knowledge.

Regardless, your responses have been professional and pleasant. Thank you kindly.

-JF

FOURTH RESPONSE:

We do understand. This is one reason that parallel projects such as Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikisource exist: we have deliberately set policies that Wikipedia is not a news source or a venue for publishing original research, but we completely recognize the value of news and original research, so we provide alternative venues for these.

I do get the impression that this is simply a case of "not on Wikipedia", not "not on our servers". I could be wrong, of course. Do please have a look at our sister projects and see if their aims might inform

your view.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Chapman

FIFTH EMAIL:

I am curious if Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikisource all also suffer from significant data loss due to deletionists. You must keep at least internal metrics on these sorts of things, right?

-JF

FIFTH RESPONSE:

You are begging the question. We do not keep metrics based on subjective judgments.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Chapman

SIXTH EMAIL:

There's nothing subjective about deletion. Either an article/content was deleted or it wasn't. The validity is irrelevant to the math.  If you're uncertain if an edit was additive or subtractive you can guess from the file size before and after. At the very least Wikipedia must know how many whole entries are created and deleted every day, week, month and year. You can determine the scope of your problem with a simple SQL query.

Wikipedia should know if it is shrinking or growing? Is the rate of growth flat, increasing or decreasing? A more interesting comparison would be a histogram of content creation vs. content deletion. My expectation is that Wikipedia has at the very least, plateaued in terms of the rate of creation and that the rate of deletion is rising. These are basic metrics any content driven project needs to do just for hardware allocation.

I am certain that Wikipedia is aware.  Best of luck, hope you feel like sharing the math. 

-JF

AVP, IPT, ELM, DSV, ROC

A long largely rural drive in bad weather can be pretty unpleasant. But I scan the radio dial coming and going looking for good news as I so often do. There were some winners losers and some surprises as always.  the terrain of upstate New York leaves for erratic reception atop all the hills and at the bottom of every valley. the challenge is catching an ID before it vanishes into the static.

88.1 WDIY was playing classical, doing nothing interesting on the northbound trip, but on the southbound side I caught a show called "Good Clean Fun" which was excellent. I heard a tune by a band called Broken Records that really grabbed me. WDIY-FM is also available on 93.7 W229AO Fogelsville and 93.9 W230AG Easton which help the little 100 watt station stretch it's legs a bit.

Moving north I ended up being a Muzak van which was ironic and somewhat comical.  I continue to be amazed at that corporations continued existence. 91.7 WMUH was rolling out the indie rock as I passed by with some band called the Headless Horseman who was excellent and turns out to be local to the region. The DJ did both a frontsell and a backsell so they're either a fan or they're in the band. WXLV was spinning Jeff Becks's Broken Guitar Blues, a sold proggy tune in the middle of a really good set of other rock I didn't even recognize. The show was probably Pet Sounds though I didn't catch the name.  90.3 WXLV, WMUH, WLVR and WDIY were all gone by the Lehigh tunnel or at least gone on the other side. When I saw daylight I discovered that 99.5 WUSR had dropped their regular programming for automated Christmas music, one of my personal pet peeves.  Within a mile of the bridge I heard a signal on 91.9 clearly but briefly... the only station I can attribute that to would be WNTI. If you live in that neighborhood -kudos, enjoy the splatter.

As I turned West I'll admit that I scanned right over 88.9 WQSU twice because they were spinning random pop of the 1980s like some crap Jack station. I hope that's not indicative of their normal playlist.In Bloomsburg I stopped in town and drove right past the WHLM studios.

In town I tried out 91.1 WBUQ which was playing commercial active rock on both trips confirming my worst fears. The is literally nothing new between Bloomsburg and Williamsport so I worked my way through a CD by Q65 I brought. In Williamsport   88.1 WPTC was playing uninteresting pop.The DJ on 91.7 WRLCwas yapping but at least it was their own local sport talk. Just outside Williamsport I stopped at Allenwood Americana Antiques and bought a stack of acetates on a chance. It was freezing cold, but it was a quality joint worth stopping at.

By now I was far enough out into the woods that I could hear both New York and Philadelphia area AM stations. 1060 KYW-AM informed me that I had bad weather behind me, and 680 WINR-AM informed me that it was bad ahead of me too. On 89.5 "The Giant" WNTE-FM I caught part of the Super Jocko Taco Show, the name kind of says it all. Further north I heard mostly NPR on the non-com band WSQA, WETD, even WRUR. As I approaches Rochester the first original voices I heard were WGSU and WBER of course. On the southbound trip I caught one last good program. Out in the boonies late at night I listened to Rick Jackson's Country Hall of Fame on 105.1 WILQ. Admittedly not my normal listening, especially since it's a satellite fed dialglobal show. But this was the Turkey and Leftovers episode, an all country comedy show.  It reminded me of Dr. Demento in a world that still really needs one.

Short Trip

Traveling today, break out the snow tires.  I'll be back shortly.

Barn Storming and Barn Dancing

Barn Dances predate American history. It's a tradition that is said to have descended from a tradition of bohemian round dancing in Bavaria. It rose to prominence in the late 1800s. This is the source of the tradition of the dance, and therefore the root of the radio program it was all founded upon.

A barn dance is any kind of dance held in a barn, but usually involves traditional or folk music with traditional dancing. It is a type of dance, originating in America and popular in Britain in the late 19th century and early 20th, derived from Schottische. Folk dancing events are often also referred to as "barn dances", despite being held in locations other than barns.

There have been a substantial number of "Barn Dance" themed programs. WBAP-AM is generally credited with debuting the first Barn Dance type of program in 1923. Even if I exclude the very similar Jamboree, Jubilee, Stampedes, Follies, Round ups, Hoedowns and Hayride programs the numbers are almost really surprising. Obviously those too are barn dance radio programs. According to the book Music of the World War II Era by William H. Young there were approximately 5,000 country music programs in radio land in the year 1935.

It seems impossible at first, but there were easily thousands of similar country music and variety radio programs on air at that time. There were about 600 stations on air by then [source] Even if they all broadcast only 12 hours a day, that's 7,200 hours of programming per day, 50,400 per week!  The math bears out the possibility at the very least. What I'm trying to do is to indicate their enormous popularity. Despite the obvious strength of country radio today, it is nothing compared to it's former prominence.  The "Barn Dance" formatted programs debuted essentially along with radio, then exploded toward the end of WWII.  The 1944 Music Year Book remarked on the phenomena, they "hold and build audiences."  But by then the National Barn Dance was in it's 12th year.

WRVA-AM - Old Dominion Barn Dance - 1946
KMBC-AM - Sears Roebuck Barn Dance - 1928
WLS-AM - National Barn Dance - 1924
KMOX-AM - Old Fashioned Barn Dance- 1930
KFH-AM -  KFH Barn Dance - 1946
WNAX-AM - Missouri Valley Barn Dance - 1940
WBRM-AM - Carlisle Family Barn Dance - 1933
WBAP-AM - Barn Dance Show - 1928
WSM-AM - WSM Barn Dance - 1925 (Grand Ole Opry)
WHO-AM - Iowa Barn Dance Frolic - 1931
WLW-AM - Renfro Valley Barn Dance - 1937
WOV-AM - Broadway Barn Dance - 1944
WXYZ-AM - Lazy Ranch Boys Barn Dance 1950?
KSTP-AM - Sunset Valley Barn Dance - 1944
WNOX-AM - Tennessee Barn Dance - 1942
WDVA-AM - Virginia Barn Dance - 1949
WHAS-AM - Old Kentucky Barn Dance - 1949
KMPC-AM - Country Carnival Barn Dance1948
KVOA-AM - KVOA Barn Dance - 1954
KRKD-AM - Los Angeles County Barn Dance- 1943
WMCA-AM - WMCA Barn Dance - 1935
KNX-AM - Hollywood Barn Dance - 1943
WBT-AM - Crazy Barn Dance - 1931
WAOK-AM - Hocking Valley Barn Dance
KLRA-AM - Arkansas Jamboree Barn Dance - 1946
WBRM-AM - Carolina Barn Dance - 1949
KRKD-AM - Foreman Phillips County Barn Dance - 1944
WCKY-AM - Liberty Theater Barn Dance - 1950s?
WEAU-AM - Chippewa Valley Barn Dance - 1948
WJHL-AM - Hawkins County Barn Dance - 1952
WKNX-AM - Michigan Barn Dance - 1954
WVLK-AM - Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance - 1949
WINS-AM - Village Barn Dance - ????
KTBB-AM - Texas Barn Dance - ????

Many of these stations have become what we now call heritage brands and are still broadcasting today in one form or another. Of those 30 or so radio stations listed above almost none are still airing country music. WSM of course has stayed the course with Country Music simulcast on both 650 AM and 95.5 FM. But WNAX moved Country to their FM stick on 94.1 and flipped the AM side to News Talk and small town 1250 WBRM-AM is still a country station today.  But that's all.  WOV became WADO and now airs regional Mexican music. WXYZ became WXYT and now airs Sports talk. WAOK and WDVA are a Gospel stations. KVOA became KCUB in 1953, it's a talker as well. KLRA became KELC-AM in the 1980s and went talk. All the others are News, talk or News/Talk as well.

There are still a handful of radio stations airing Barn Dance programs today.  Thought admittedly the format is dissimilar, the persistence of the branding is what's interesting.

KRFC-FM   - Poudre Valley Barn Dance
WMPG-FM - Barn Dance Radio
WSM-AM   - Grand Ole Opry

There's Good News Tonight

Gabriel Heatter was a news commentator for Mutual Broadcasting.  at his peak his 15-minute news program was carried on over 200 stations five days a week. You will find his name frequently in Billboard in the 1940s usually for his Hooper Ratings. Like many popular programs, his had a certain lowest common denominator quality to his program. It is usually described as earnest and not analytical, while that's a minus for a hardcore news-hound, it's oddly representative of modern opinion-driven commentary programs. The primary difference being that Heatter was upbeat. His program was optimistic, a quality completely absent from all modern news programming. More here.

He started out as a reporter for The East New York Record,  and went on to write for the Brooklyn Times.  He then in a politically fortuitous moment was offered a job with William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. the hire made sense, when Hearst had run for mayor Heatter had campaigned for him. At 16 years old he introduced Hearst at the podium, the crowd was not friendly as was recorded in a 1941 article in Time Magazine:

"The assignment fell to the juvenile Heatter, then 16. All over New York the youthful Gabriel trumpeted the virtues of candidate Hearst. Frequently he was bespattered with eggs and tomatoes, occasionally bashed on the nose."

Hearst lost. Heatter continued to write.  He went on to write for the the New York Tribune, trade magazines, and several magazines. Then at the age of 42 he made the leap to radio quite unexpectedly. In 1931, he wrote an article for The Nation debating Socialist pundit Norman Thomas. Inspired by the article, Donald Flamm, the owner WMCA-AM invited Heatter  to debate a Socialist on air. His opponent did not make it to the program in time and Heatter instead had the program to himself.  It went so well that Flamm hired him as $35 a week. Heatter got lucky and within a year, WOR became the flagship station of the Mutual Broadcasting Network. He now had syndication. His big break supposedly came in 1936:

"Heatter's advent on the big time dates from April 3, 1936. That night he was stationed at Trenton to cover the execution of Bruno Hauptmann. Although Heatter had been tipped off that Bruno was scheduled to be electrocuted at 8:05, he did not die until close to nine. Meanwhile, Heatter ad libbed triumphantly for 53 minutes for MBS, setting a record for extemporaneous chatter."

What he's remembered for is his sign on catch phrase. He always said "There's good news tonight!" At his peak he hosted two news programs We, The People and A Brighter Tomorrow. He was big enough to do celebrity endorsements and publish books. He appeared in a couple films including the Cary Grant movie “Once Upon a Time”and the 1951 flick“The Day the Earth Stood Still”. More here. After WWII his popularity waned though he remained with Mutual. Though in all fairness, in 1952 MBS was bought by National Tire Co. and pretty much everything MBS was on the wane.

Most biographies date his move to Miami to 1951. This is incorrect, the more likely date is 1948. His own daughter Maida dated the move similarly in an article for Miami Beach Memories and described his broadcasting from home:

"My dad started doing his show here in the late 1940s when Frank Katzentine invited him the radio station he owned. [WKAT-AM] Most of the time dad had the engineers come to the house, and he would broadcast his live 9:00 PM show from there. We hung bathmats and blankets on the walls to insulate for sound."

He never left Miami. He died there on 30th March 1972.

Transcription Mystery Disc #95

I've seen Philco Safety Records before. It's a brand of acetate recording blank.  But all the others I've seen were black.  Phonozoic lists 3 types of Philco blanks, all with black lacquer, all also dated to the very early 1940s. Because of thsi one record I now know that in the early 1940s there was a fourth type of disc used concurrently. It reminds me of the red lacquer Wilcox-Gay Recordio discs that were made in the 1940s. I suspect there may be a reason that both debuted and discontinued the red safety lacquer at about the same time.National manufactured red lacquer blanks in the early 1960s.

This 6.5 inch diameter disc starts at the outer edge, and spins at 78 rpm. It is labeled clearly (a rarity) with the song, artist and date all written legibly. The artist is Billy Heinz who is either a female or prepubescent. The vocals are very clear over the bed noise which I've toned down with a high pass filter.  The song is "Ferry Boat" most notably performed by the Andrews Sisters in the Summer of 1940. This home recording by Billy Heinz was recording about 6 months later.

Radio Tours

I swear I didn't know things like this existed. I knew that radio stations gave tours, I've given them. What I did not know is that some radio stations videotaped them. This is a strategic error. Radio is an audio media.  Until you create a visual image, the listener has no preconceived notions. Let me assure you that they are in fact imagining something much more appealing than the reality of the situation. Of course today is a bit different,  with websites, steaming and studio cams all de rigueur.  But Trust me unless your studio looks like the faux set around Glenn Beck you don't belong in that game.

I've selected a few different ones I found on Youtube for your Schadenfreude.

99.1 WHKO-FM Dayton, OH


 98.5 KVOO-FM  Tulsa, OK


600 WICC-AM Bridgeport, CT


1380 KBWD AM in Brownwood, TX


1240 WWCO-AM Waterbury, CT

The End of Daytimers

By modern media standards, limited service seems strange and arcane. We're living in an era of 24/7 news and opinion, instantly downloaded digital media, and not just portable media players, but portable media players built into portable phones! Dayshares and daytimers just seem awkward and somewhat less than quaint to a youth demographic that can play DVDs, Blu-Ray, CDs and video games all on the dame device. To that point I can at least say that the FCC isn't creating any additional daytimers. Their goal was not just to reduce future interference, it was to permit improvements to AM reception. More here.  Under section IV "Potential Impact" they listed:

"Numerous daytime-only AM stations on the U.S. clear and regional channels, many of which are typically small entities, will benefit from the proposed rule change by being enabled to enhance their broadcast service during nighttime hours." 

As of  December 1st, 1987 new daytime-only stations are no longer being authorized by the FCC. MM Docket 87-131 reads as follows:

• I. Reason for Action: The need to improve the capacity of daytime-only AM radio broadcast stations to provide improved service to the public during nighttime hours.

• II. Objective: To increase the opportunities for daytime-only AM stations to operate during nighttime hours, thereby enhancing the usefulness to the public of their broadcast programming; and to discontinue the authorization of new daytime-only stations in order to ensure the efficient use of remaining spectrum for new and improved nighttime service.

Being the FCC they spelled out the purpose clearly. At the time almost half (2,500) of the total number of AM stations licensed by the FCC are daytime-only stations. the FCC properly saw this as a tipping point.  earlier they had been granting special permission to daytimers to operate before and after sunset to flush out those critical drive-time hours. But in the long run it was counter productive. FM radio had overtaken AM 7 years earlier. At the time the FCC estimated that they'd be able to grant night time operation to 500 (20%) of the extant daytimers.

 But it was limited. They broke it into two groups of stations. Class III Stations, those on foreign clear-channel frequencies were granted permission to operate at less than 250 watts. Which Ultimately isn't much  of a service, it was just more RF haze. Class III-S, the regional clear-channel stations they too were granted authority to operate under 250 watts, but with secondary status. As a condition to allowing that trivial increased service, no new daytimers would be licensed. 1350 WRWH-AM wrote them such a scathing petition to reconsider, they alone were named in the memorandum papers. The FCC tersely dismissed it.  I'll point out that WRWH-AM currently operates 1000 watts daytime, 93 watts night-time. In 2007 they took advantage of the new rules and filed for night operations. It was only 20 years late. More here.