Transcription Mystery Disc #197

This 12-Inch, metal-core Audiodisc brand acetate has a center start with is uncommon. It's in nice shape except for some notable oxidation. I was able to wipe off much of the whitish coating of palmitic acid. This indicated increased bed noise but it was tolerable. I edited a couple pops off the start of the recording to soften the one problematic area. Sadly it's wholly unlabeled.

Unknown Clarinet


The recording is of an unknown jazzy organ and clarinet duo. There are no vocals and I don't recognize the tune. The arrangement is a bit strange but speaks of a level of competence that's interesting. I wish I knew who this was.

Why not a Lutheran Broadcasting Station?

In March of 1923, horribly offended by science lectures on the radio, Walter A. Maier wrote an editorial that was published in the Walther League Messenger “Why not a Lutheran Broadcasting Station?” [SOURCE] The Messenger was a monthly publication of the a Lutheran group, the Walther League Synodical conference based in Milwaukee, WI. Walter Maier had been it's editor since at least 1922.

"The other night we adjusted the head-piece of our radio set, found the sensitive spot on the crystal and broke into a lecture on the subject: “How Old is Man?” that made our ears tingle because of its open and unveiled contradiction to the Bible. When the lecture was over the question suggested itself: “How many of our people and other sincere Christians have just heard this insult to Biblical Christianity? “...the hope presented itself that at some point in the not distant future our Lutheran church might establish a broadcasting station that would send a one hundred percent Gospel message from coast to coast, yes, even to the ships that ply the oceans, and, with the continued improvement of radio, even to Europe."

Religious programs predate the act of licensing call letters. Indeed, the first religious program on KDKA-AM was broadcast less than two months after it was licensed. In January of  l921 KDKA did a remote broadcast from Calvary Episcopal Church with the Rev. Edwin Jan van Etten. Maier was well aware of this precedent and even referred to another in his article "...a catholic writer in 'Current Opinion' claims that his church has already won converts by radio."  In short, if radio was a tool for education, debate, recruitment and conversion, then the Lutherans needed one as well.

In August of 192 they broadcast portions of their convention. They launched a Lutheran radio program on KPO-AM in San Francisco. then in May of 1923 they began fund-raising. The new station, designated KFUO was funded by the Walther League,the Lutheran Layman’s League, and even seminary students. Thea 500 watt station began broadcasting from Concordia Seminary on December l4th, l924. It operated at 545.1 meter wavelength from the middle of the mid-west. 

Maier was not done. Now that KFUO was running he moved on to a new goal of notationally syndicated evangelism. He began by contacting NBC in early 1930. He learned that it was NBC's policy not to permit paid religious air time. Maierwent down the line and contacted CBS. They did accepted paid religious programing but the rates were very high. The cost would be $4,500 per half-hour... an annual cost of over 200k.   The Walther League collected $94,000 and signed the contract with CBS.  The Lutheran Hour premiered on Thursday, October 2, 1930 at 10:00 AM.  Despite good ratings, financial concerns disrupted their broadcasts from June, 1931 through 1934.The program returned in 1935 on the Mutual network and later also the Don Lee Network in California. Maier continued to speak on the program until his death in 1950.

Flooded Radio Stations

In natural disasters people turn to radio for emergency information. radio is uniquely available in most disasters. When the lights go out a 9 volt battery can keep you connected to information by radio even when cable is out, the phone lines are down, and there are no bars on your cell phone... you can tune in and get information. Radio is structured to survive most disasters. But among these... flood waters are the hardest to endure for a broadcaster.  You can see a few videos below ranging from total destruction to tales of survival.

WMIZ and WVLT 92.1

Cork City Community Radio

Midwest Family Broadcasting (WHIT, WLMV, WOZN, WJQM, WMGM, WOZN, WWQM)

WCDO 1490/100.9

Radio Vs. VD

Section 11 of the 1927 Federal Radio Act stated that the Federal Radio Commission could deny broadcast licenses to stations that did not serve "the public interest, convenience and necessity."  However milk toast that sounds, it lacked clear guidelines. That year the NAB created guidelines more conservative than your grandma; forbidding the discussion of anything more risque than Christmas cookies. Looking at the state of broadcasting today obviously there has been significant change since then. Everyone knows about the infamous 7-words incident on Pacifica... but decades earlier there were events that eroded the guidelines for more pragmatic reasons.

In 1934, CBS radio told Health Commissioner Thomas Parran of New York State that he could not mention the words syphilis or gonorrhea during a scheduled radio address on public health. New York health commissioner John Rice wrote to NBC, CBS and 15 newspapers in protest. NBC responded that they thought such remarks might be inappropriate. WEVD-AM stepped in and put Parran on air.That same year the FCC succeeded the FRC but the new communications act did little to change the status quo.

In 1948 Erik Barnouw and Dwight Eisenhower [R] changed everything.  While Erik Barnouw was a professor at Columbia University (1946 - 1973, Dwight Eisenhower it's president (1948 - 1953). This was of course before Eisenhower was President of the United States (1953 - 1961). Eisenhower gave crucial backing to Barnouwwho wanted to produce a syphilis-education program for radio.

The idea game to Barnouw in a visit from Edwin Gurney Clark and Thomas Lefoy Richman of the U.S. Public Health Service. They invited him to apply for federal grant money to create a series of educational programs on Syphilis. Barnouw later won the grant as it's sole applicant. He made several test programs in the formats of soap operas, and hillbilly shows and screened them with Eisenhower who was reported to be "delighted." Creating the programming wasn't the problem... it was getting radio stations to air the content.  Despite protests from Catholic groups the first program aired on ABC April 19th 1948.

The federal program continued and Barnouw continued to get grant money for more programs. He hired Alan Lomax to help write rural dramas that would play better to people outside of the cities.Lomax was able to get the programs introduced by celebrities like Bill Monroe, the Maddox Brothers, Eddy Arnold,  Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Roy Acuff. Stations like WGN-AM, WNBC-AM, KFI-AM, WKY-AM, WPWA-AM, and WIP-AM all participated. Interestingly Columbia Universities' own radio station, 610 WKCR-AM, first licensed in 1941 was not listed among the call letters in news articles. But in November of 1948 they aired interviews with ex-VD Patients on syphilis treatments by George Hicks of ABC. More here.

In the end a broadcasting taboo ended. Where one had fallen others would soon as well. Perhaps that was the idea all along.

Festivus

Taking the holiday off, hope you all do as well. I will see you after Xmas.

Christmas Radio

Apparently, Santa listening to the radio is a thing, perhaps even a meme. I have no explaination for this whatsoever.  Three of these are in English, the rest are cyrillic, I'm assuming Russian. Some of these have been re-used on QSL cards by clever hams. The others seem to be just seasonal obscurities.

News and Reviews 2013

Another year has passed. I've been blogging Arcane Radio Trivia for over 8 years since my debut in April of 2005. As of this date, that works out to more than  2,100 posts. It's a time-consuming hobby.  My bookshelves and file cabinets are bursting with research materials. I get contacted by audio geeks, collector wonks and radio devotees. It was a banner year, I changed jobs, moved and survived it all. As is tradition, the time has come to reflect and review.  It's a good time to look at my previous top 10s, and "Best Of" lists.You can see previous years lists at the links below:

2012	2011
2010	2009
2008	2007
2006	2005

Best Posts:
I did my first readers survey this year which was enlightening. I was pleased with my self-restraint when writing about the invention of the vacuum back in January here.  I do enjoy a good tangent. My interview with Mark Speer was awesome. I researched the etymology of the word "wire" for personal enrichment. One post on Wrist-Mounted radio's reminded me about the word of toy radios. One of my favorites was my list of all known record sizes though nobody else seemed to care. I also spent weeks making a canonical jazz radio servicing list here.

Most Popular Posts:
My most popular post since 2009 has been a post about Peter Tripp. It continues to deliver a traffic as random trivia websites recycle their content. Thank you Reddit. Similarly a 2010 post on Barn Dance programs remains popular. It's also notable that my 2007 post on the Career Academy of Famous Broadcasters continues to earn comments from it's former students. My posts seem to get discovered in their own due time. I did take a readers advice (from the survey) and branched out into more articles about radio abroad and have been richly rewarded with thousands of hits on one about 1940s Spain (here) and one on PJ Wodehouse here.

Best Music Blogs:
Many of my favorite music blogs have fallen by the wayside leading me to believe this outlet may have passed it's Renaissance. The last blog standing from my old standby list is Shiny Grey Monotone. My favorite blog aggregator has become a river of 80s disco synth and has lost its knack for finding new tunes. The blogs Noise for Zeros and Compressed Maniac sometimes unearth gems, but I've had great luck with Phoenix Hairpins lately.

Best Concert:
I saw a Canadian group called Slam Dunk kind of by accident. I went to see Built To Spill and those canuks just ate them for breakfast. Everyone in the room knew all of Built To Spill's singles and covering a Metallica song was clever.. but Slam Dunk came in as total unknowns in a podunk town and killed it like cult leaders taking the podium after the Kool-Aid is passed around. They were the voice-cracking rock preamble you need after the hubcap full of beer and before the parking lot full of puke.

Best Radio Show: 
This was a truly unexpected program. The program Polka Changed My Life Today, airs weekly on WRUW 91.1 in Cleveland. It's hosted by Andrew Votaw. He has hopes of revitalizing the polka scene in his area. In application his mix of local, classic and obscure European polka makes for a mix unlike anything you have heard in your life. I had hopes of interviewing this polka savant but never established contact. More here.

Best Radio Station:
I find most new tunes these days just browsing bandcamp.com. They have fulfilled every empty promise that MP3.com made a decade ago. It's not a radio station but I so badly want to port them to my Roku and just stream obscure punk rock straight into my stereo system. Their library is a full exponential order bigger and more interesting than Pandora but funding would be difficult. On the other hand... unsigned bands are a lot less picky about royalty negotiations.

Best Record Store:
This year I've done a fair amount of pillaging at a small and relatively new shoppe called Bohozone. They have a really nice jazz section and a great little library of classic hip literature. I've more or less been looting it. I've also scored a few good sides at Deep Groove Audio.  The rest of this years scores have all been from fleamarkets.

Best Zine: 
The most nifty little zine I've seen this year is a tiny little 4 page folded 8.5 x 11 zine called "Professionals." It showed up in a record box with some LPs I ordered from a store in Massachusetts.they have no web presence of any kind. they have a circulation of 750 copies, and they're free. It's just music reviews, and interviews with obscure recording artists. It's a super niche zine but it's right-sized for my attention span. I don't write for them but I wish I did.  For more info email professionals.zine@gmail.com.

Top 10 Records of 2013    

1. Listener - Time is a Machine
2. JARS - A Moveable Feast
3. Octaves  -Which Way The Wind Blows
4. USSSY - Afghan Music House Party
5. Throat - Manhole
6. Zozobra - Savage Masters
7. Zigzags - 10-12
8. Phillip H. Anselmo and the Illegals - Walk Through Exits Only
9. Discourse - Curse of Consciousness
10. Tape Deck Mountain - Sway

Honorable Mentions go out this year to killer bands like: Cellos - Standard and Poors 7-Inch, Dope Body Saturday 7-Inch, Skylark Split 7-Inch with Wedding, Blackbird Raum - False Weavers, Spray Paint -Yawn Factory, Balaklava - Spiral Cramp, Gazer - Phone Commercial, Metabolismus - Brimborium ,Nerves - Nerves, The Greys - Drift 7-Inch, and the Child Bite/We Are Hex - Split LP.

The Nations Homemaker

Ida Cogswell Bailey Allen was once known (at least on the radio) as "The Nation's Homemaker." She  authored over 50 cookbooks the first of which was in 1916. Back in the 1920s she was a food editor at the New York American. (It was renamed the New York Journal-American in 1937) Four years later she broke into radio. She is one off the claimants to the first radio cooking show. In her 1952 book Ida Bailey Allen's Step-by-step Picture Cook Book she wrote:

"It was my privileged to inaugurate and maintain the first radio homemaking school which presented a radio kitchen with real cooking of foods, broadcast over a major network."

It's a short quote.. but she's claiming the title. By 1929 her program "National Radio Homemakers Club" was being heard over CBS. Members could get a membership card and could sign up for her newsletter. It wasn't just cooking tips. She had an orchestra, and surprisingly serious guests including at least one sitting senator Mr. Arthur Capper [R]. the program was broadcast from their New York studios and her program was sponsored by Pillsbury flour, and Royal gelatin.  Her daytime program started at 10:00 AM and was expanded to two hours in 1929. By 1930 it was airing 5 days a week. Topic included quilting, book repairing, Christmas cookies, washing woolens, fashion decorating, and a recipe for fried chicken and waffles.  You can read an issue of her news letter here.

Her program ended in 1932 when she made a very early jump to television on "Mrs. Allen and the Chef."The program does nto appear to have lasted. But Ms. Allen's career did. She was an editor of Good Housekeeping, and numerous other publications. In the 1930s she had a new role speaking about food conservation and rationing under Hoover. She spoke to citizens groups and with defense councils about waste and the use of then non-traditional foods like soybeans.  She was even writing for the Post-Star Newspaper as late as 1949. She died in 1973 at the age of 88.

Radio Police Automaton

No Comment...

Transcription Mystery Disc #196

This acetate is labeled "White Christmas 1946."  It's an 8-inch, metal-core Capital Pro-Disc. That white bit on the bottom half is a piece of another acetate stuck to it. I tried to remove it with an X-acto knife —no dice. Obviously this portion of the disc is not recoverable. But excluding that blemish, the recording is in surprisingly fine shape. The other side is labeled "NO GOOD" and that's a pretty accurate assessment. It has grooves but no audio data.

White Christmas


This side reveals a nice fluid solo piano performance of "White Christmas." There are no vocals btu the refrain is familiar enough. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time...which is pretty repulsive. Irving Berlin wrote it around 1940 and it's first performance was by Bing on The Kraft Music Hall program on NBC. Bing recorded it in 1942 and you know the rest. This version most have been recorded in 1942 or later. Most Capitol discs of thsi make that I've seen date to the mid 1940s so that's at least congruous.

Police Broadcasting Stations

I recently found a list of Police band stations from 1931. There are of course much earlier published lists. But what makes this one interesting is that it's exactly 10 years after the Detroit police commissioner William Rutledge first used radio equipped vehicles in 1921. That makes this an early picture of the technology adoption curve. It's in an instant in which the word television was still uncommon. Radio magazines still listed those experiments stations as "visual broadcasters."

A decade after that innovation, the whole of America had just over 60 police radios. Today any US city with a population of over 30,000 would have more police radios than that. America now easily has over 794,300 police officers, and with numerous devices per person one can easily estimate a total number in the low millions.

When  Rutledge flipped the switch there were under 70 licensed broadcasters in the nation [Source]. By 1931 the total number of radio stations in the US at the time was just over 640. The 66 Police stations below indicate a ratio change of 1.5% to 10%. That's a really meaningful jump. Some larger metro areas already had multiple stations including New York, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco. More here.

CALLS	KILOCYCLES	CITY	STATE
WPDO	2458	Akron	OH
WPDN	1712	Auburn	NY
KGPJ	1712	Beaumont	TX
KSW	2410	Berkley	CA
WRDU	1596	Brooklyn	NY
WMJ	2422	Buffalo	NJ
WBR	257	Butler	PA
KGOZ	2470	Cedar Rapids	IA
WPDV	2458	Charlotte	NC
WPDB	1712	Chicago	IL
WPDC	1712	Chicago	IL
WPDD	1712	Chicago	IL
WKDU	1712	Cincinnati	OH
WRBH	2452	Cleveland	OH
KVP	1712	Dallas	TX
KGPN	2470	Davenport	IA
WKDT	1596	Detroit	MI
WCK	2410	Detroit	MI
WPDX	2410	Detroit	MI
KGPF	2416	El Paso	TX
WPDF	2440	Flint	MI
WPDZ	2470	Ft. Wayne	IN
WPEB	2440	Grand Rapids	MI
WJL	257	Greensburg	PA
WRDR	2410	Grosse Point	MI
WBA	257	Harrisburg	PA
WMO	2410	Highland Park	MI
WMDZ	2440	Indianapolis	IN
WRDS	1662	Ingham	MI
KGPE	2422	Kansas City	MO
WPDT	2470	Kokomo	IN
WPDL	2440	Lansing	MI
KGPL	1712	Los Angeles	CA
WPDE	2440	Louisville	KY
WPEC	2470	Memphis	TN
WNDA	2440	Miami	FL
WPDK	2452	Milwaukee	WI
KGPB	2416	Minneapolis	MN
WPY	448	New York	NY
WPY	500	New York	NY
KGPH	2452	Oklahoma City	OK
KGPI	2470	Omaha	NE
KHJX	1712	Pasadena	CA
WPDJ	2416	Passaic	NJ
WPDP	2440	Philadelphia	PA
WPDU	1712	Pittsburgh	PA
KGPP	2452	Portland	OR
WPDH	2416	Richmond	VA
WPDR	1712	Rochester	NY
KGPC	1712	St Louis	MO
WPDS	2416	St. Paul	MN
WPDM	2440	St. Petersburg	FL
KGOY	1712	San Antonio	TX
KGPD	1596	San Francisco	CA
KGPD	2410	San Francisco	CA
KGPM	2410	San Jose	CA
KGPA	1596	Seattle	WA
KGPK	2470	Sioux City	IA
WPEA	1712	Syracuse	NY
WRDQ	2470	Toledo	OH
WPDA	2416	Tulare	CA
KGPO	2452	Tulsa	OK
KGPG	2410	Vallejo	CA
WPGW	2410	Washington	DC
WDX	257	Wyoming	PA
WPDG	2458	Youngstown	OH

3D Printed Vinyl Pop Up Store

Digital Music News broke this story but I can't help repeating it. I suppose anything you can hold in your hands is actually 3D. Two dimensional space has produced so few notable recordings. The idea here is that 3D printing technology now allows "instant" limited printings of recordings. Fidelity and durability are limited, but the potential uniqueness still has some value.  Take a look:

Professor Schnitzel Live On Air!

Some coincidences in radioland are just utterly baffling.  There have been two different men who played a character named "Professor Schnitzel" on the radio at different times and places. Both milked a faux Dutch-German accent and behaved like a rural yokel. They have no connection whatsoever and their careers were separated by about 2,800 miles and two decades. There is no reason to think that either was ever aware of the other. One played the character in the late 1920s, on the west coast. The other in the mid-1950s through early 60s in central Pennsylvania. (One could argue that Larry the Cable guy does his own updated version today.)


The first man to portray the character on air was Clarence Coleman. He was a realtor in San Francisco before the great depression.  He created the character "Professor Herman Schnitzel" in 1927 for a bit on the program "Blue Monday Jamboree" which aired  on KFRC-AM. You can see a group photo from the program here.  The program debuted on January 10th 1927 as a 15 minute short and continued to run weekly. It popularity was such that by February it was 2 hours long. They were scrambling for content to fill the time. 

By June of 1930, the program was syndicated across the entire Don Lee Network, and by the end of the year, it was syndicated nationally on CBS. It's emcee was Harrison Holliway. But Clarence Coleman never worked the character into a regular on the Blue Monday Jamboree. Around 1929 he performed the same character on KYA-AM and even the ABC Western Network. More here

The second Professor Schnitzel was played by Theodore L. Rickenbach. He was a Pennsylvania native and grew up in Reading, PA. He did mostly live comedy and is best known for a series of five 45-rpm comedy discs that were recorded for Butch Records from 1961 to 1968. He also did an LP in 1964 that recycles some of that material. You can see his discography here.

Rickenbach started a radio career in 1932 with the program "Schnitz and Earl." Earl was Earl Shappel on WEEU-AM.  In 1950 he changed co-hosts, needing a classic straight-man and the program became "Professor Schnitzel and Al," with co-host Allen Lane on WHUM-AM Radio. They worked 6 days a week, Monday through Saturday starting at 6:00 AM. He died in July of 1969 in his hotel room. More here and here.

Haunted Radio Stations

Some some people believe in ghosts and some don't. This is the kind of topic that old radio men don't usually talk about. We're often engineers and this is not something engineers are prone to believe is real. But some people like to talk about it and that makes sense  It makes for interesting reading and after 100 years, radio certainly has it's share of ghost stories.

Below is a list of a few radio stations that I've heard the claims about multiple times. I can't personally vouch for a single one of them, but we've all worked at least one kind of creepy night shift.

97.7 WGEO-FM
The only FM station Beaverton, MI signed on in December of 1979 as WGEO. they changed calls to WMRX in 1983. For years they have broadcast little more than satellite-fed adult standards and been less than notable. However back in the 80s they broadcast ethnic programming and were much more interesting. They even had live human staff. One of those humans bought the station a mobile home in 1981 for promotional appearances. Poltergeist-like pranks began immediately and many reported seeing phantom children. They ditched the RV immediately. this actually appears in the book Haunted Places: The National Directory by Dennis William Hauck even though the "place" was on wheels and no longer exists.

1360 WIXI-AM
This station have been on air in Jasper, AL since 1946. It was originally built by the Bankhead Broadcasting Company as WWWB. In 1975, the station moved into new studios to a house at 409 Ninth Avenue in Jasper that had been owned by Mercury car dealer George Vines. That house was supposedly haunted by the former car dealer.  The station used the call letters WZPQ starting in 1988. They began using the WIXI call sign in 2005. Various versions of the story use any or all of the three call signs. This one is so infamous that the book Stories from the Haunted South  by Alan Brown spends 4 whole pages of dead trees on it. More here.

1260 KLYC-AM
The McMinnville Broadcasting Company debuted KMCM in June of 1949. The calls changed from KCYX to KLYC in May of 1990 following a change of ownership. The first ghost stories about the station immediately follow this transition. Various sources, (including one "psychic") have claimed the rack room or NOC for the on-site transmitter was haunted.  The station relocated its broadcast tower in 2000 and the former studio building is now a daycare facility. More here.

1080 KWJJ-AM & 99.5 KWJJ-FM
KWJJ was first licensed as KFWV in 1925, founded by radio pioneer Wilbur J. Jerman. the station moved into the Wilcox Mansion, on October 31st, Halloween 1957. The station picked up a roommate from the FM band in 1985 when KJIB changed their call letters to KWJJ-FM. Their house on King avenue was nothing less than a Victorian mansion. It was built in 1893 by Theodore B. Wilcox, a wealthy shipping and banking man.Multiple staff have seen, heard and felt "things" at this creepy facility.  The KWJJ-AM call sign was changed to KOTK in 1997, with a format change to "hot talk". KWJJ-FM continues to air country music and generate the occasional spooked DJ. More here.

105.5 KFMT-FM 
With 1200 watts from Fremont, NE you can almost reach nowhere. They are distantly to the NW of Omaha, and possibly reach some of their outermost suburbs. I've read one account. More here.

106.3 WFMV-FM 
I've also heard vague stories about WFMV but nobody seems to want to talk about it.  People go to the old Blairstown, NJ studios and take pictures. The site has been abandoned for years. More here.

Transcription Mystery Disc #195

This is a 6.5 inch Wilcox Gay recordio. It spins at 78 rpm and has an outer edge start. It's labele din pencil "Old Buttermilk Sky" and with the date 12/6/46. The recording is 67 years old. I recognize the song title as "Ole Buttermilk Sky." It was a Hoagy Carmichael tune a pretty hokey one. It was covered a myriad of times: Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Bill Black's Combo.. etc etc. 

Ole Buttermilk Sky


This version is a piano instrumental. The playing is totally competent and the recording quality is excellent. I edited out a few pops and nary a nanosecond of the original audio needed altered beyond that. I have a date and a song tile, but we don't know the pianist, just a little mystery left here.

Canning Time!

The Ball Brothers "Canning Time" was on air in 1931. I happened upon their schedule but know little more than that it was a 15-minute short that aired twice a week on the following times and stations:

WORC - Worcester, MA - 11:15 - Wed/Fri
WGY - Schenectady, NY - 12:15 - Thu/Fri
WLW - Cincinnati, OH - 8:15 - Mon/Fri
WSB - Atlanta, GA - 8:45 - Wed/Fri
WLS - Chicago, IL - 1:00 - Tue/Fri
KWK - St. Louis, MO - 11:15 - Wed/Fri
KSTP - St. Paul, MN - 12:30 - Mon/Wed
WIBW - Topeka, KS - 11:15 - Wed/Fri
WBAP - Ft. Worth, TX - 9:45 - Mon/Thu
KOA - Denver, CO - 11:30 /1:00 - Mon/Wed
KSL - Salt Lake City, UT - 7:00 - Wed/Fri
KHQ - Spokane, WA - 10:00 - Wed/Fri
KJR - Seattle, WA - 10:15 - Tue/Thu
KGW - Portland, OR - 9:45 - Tue/Fri
KPO - San Francisco, CA - 10:15 - Tue/Fri
KNX - Los Angeles, CA - 11:00 - Mon/Wed

Interestingly, the list isn't alphabetical by call letter or by city. Instead it was listed geographically (mostly)  from east cost to west coast and north to south starting in New England and ending in LA. I guess they didn't have an affiliate in San Diego.  The Mason jar was invented and patented in 1858 by Philadelphia tinsmith John Landis Mason, which is why we sometimes call them mason jars. He sold the patent to the Consolidated fruit jar company. He also did some work for the Hero Fruit jar Company. That  patent expired in 1875.

Ball was founded in 1880 threatening the duopoly of Hero and Consolidated. Ball had facilities to make jars and lids a vertical integration that Hero and Consolidated lacked. In 1903 they debuted an automated jar maker ending their glass blowing requirements. Mason died penniless in a charity ward in Brooklyn. Most of the jars still bear his name.

Ball was never big on radio. A magazine in 1944 ran an article titled "Ball Jar advertising reaches and teaches the home-canners of America." I think that covers the core of the issue.  Because of their limited functional use the jars are only usable by a subset of people that know how to properly store and preserve food. It's unlikely that they sponsored or produced any programming beyond this one season.

Frank W. Mayborn: Mogul

In 1954 Frank Willis Mayborn owned 85% of KTEM-AM and KTEM-FM in Temple, Texas and also was 75% owner of WMAK-AM Nashville, Tenn. (The minority shareholder was the mysterious C.A. Shultz) That does not even include his properties in Television and and newspapers. That picture above this paragraph, that is what a media mogul looked like in 1950. He's also the reason that Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States. So give me a moment and I'll tie all that together.

Frank Mayborn was born in Ohio in 1903. He was born to money and media power, son of  Ward Mayborn, a executive at the E.W. Scripps newspaper conglomerate. Frank was raised in Denver and then Dallas suburbs and attended school at University of Colorado at Boulder. Even in high school little Frank was working at news papers: Dallas Dispatch, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post...etc. Then he became a publisher in his own right. He purchased the Telegram Publishing Company in Temple in 1929. Frank purchased the Sherman Democrat in 1945, the Killeen Herald in 1952 and the Taylor Press in 1959.

Broadcasting started in the middle of all that.  It's survival in the great depression piques his interest in braodcasting and he started Bell Broadcasting. In 1936, he started radio station 1400 KTEM-AM  in Temple, possibly to pair with his stake in Telegram Publishing. He began pursuing an FM license in 1944.  The 180 foot Am tower sat north of Temple, Texas alone until 1947 when it relocated to a 400-foot self-supporting structure what also held the FM radiator for KTEM-FM.

Mayborn got politically active around then and simultaneously began building a media empire. He joined the staff of General Eisenhower as an assistant to the chief of the U.S. public relations office. In 1945, he founded 1300 WMAK-AM in Nashville, Tennessee. The FM station would not be successful but the politics would be. In 1946, Mayborn was elected to the Texas Democratic State Central Committee. He'd made some very powerful friends in Texas.

While on the committee, he cast a vote that had far reaching repercussions. In 1948, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was retiring from the U.S. Senate. After a disputatious Democratic primary, Coke Stevenson had won the primary, but lacked a majority of votes. A run off was held between Lyndon Johnson and Stevenson but it got dirty and Johnson's campaign was accused of fraud. If any of the rumors are to be believed, he was guilty as hell.

Eighty-seven primary votes were in dispute. A state committee was convened to declare a winner. The committee split 28 to 28, Stevenson vs. Johnson. Stevenson has won the popular vote in the first election but he was behind by 87 votes in the run-off. Mayborn was away on a business trip to Nashville, working out of WMAK. He was summoned back to Texas to vote for Johnson. It was Johnson's second attempt at the Senate. Had he failed again, he'd have been banished back to the House of representatives. Instead he became minority leader, and in 1960 Vice President beside JFK, and then president after his assassination in Texas... Hmmmm

Mayborn remained active in politics for the rest of his life but backed out of broadcasting. He did live long enough  to see WMAK stained forever when in 1978, it flipped to a disco format and was known as "Majik 13." Oh the horror.  Disco fizzled and the station went oldies in 1980, On June 22, 1982, it became WLUY, "Lucky 13" airing a tepid AC format. The station went dark in 1983. Later it flipped to christian satellite programming under the ownership of F. W. Robbert. KTEM remains a solid news talker much the way he left it.  Mayborn died in 1987.

The Philco Radio Dial tells All

This is a picture of a nice old Philco I saw at a yard sale. What's interesting about old radio dial presets is that you can use them to determine where the radio came from, and how old it is even without the model number of the radio. The stations listed here are  WOR, WEEU, KYW, WHUM and WRAW.

From even that short list we can limit our time line. 710 WOR-AM signed on in 1922, and is still on air so that's not useful. They encompass the entire consumer-grade history of radio. KYW-AM is in the same bucket. At first I thought WHUM was actually WHOM, but there was actually a WHUM in reading, PA. WHUM-AM changed calls to WAGO-AM in late 1986 and then WIOV-AM in  about 1990. So we know this device had to have been set up prior to at least the mid 1980s. Seems late but you'd be surprised.

The real  deal closers are WEEU and WRAW. There is a 1340 WRAW-AM in Reading today; where they have been since before 1950. WEEU has a tenure in reading just as long.  So what we have here are two clear channels stations audible anywhere in the north east (KYW, and WOR) and three much smaller AM stations providing local service to the Reading area. I'm pretty confident this radio spend most of it's life on a kitchen table in Reading probably prior to 1960.

WJY and WJZ: Fraternal Twins

First of all, WJY technically precedes WJZ. It's incongruous and that's because the first time the WJY calls  were used for only one day. RCA used them on July 2nd, 1921 for the Dempsey Carpentier fight. The transmitter, which had been borrowed from GE overheated in under 4 hours and crapped out. The canonical radio history text Airwaves of New York refers to this event as radio "pre-history."  But history it is indeed.


WJZ came next, a mere 90 days later, signing on October 1st 1921 at 833 kHz. It was the first officially licensed station in New York, though Westinghouse had already established WBZ in Boston and KDKA in Pittsburgh beforehand. Just 4 days later, WJZ aired the 1921 Worlds series played between the Giants and the Yankees. In other words they came out pretty strong.

In May of 1923, Westinghouse sold WJZ to RCA. On May 14th RCA immediately transferred the station from Newark, NY to New York City. Just one day later, time they debuted WJY on 740 AM.  Both stations operated out of operated from a pair of studio on the 6th floor of Aeolian Hall at 29 West 42nd St. Their transmitters fed an identical pair of antennas on the roof.

The original idea was that WJY was to feature more high brown programming and WJZ would feature popular music. But that's not what happened.  WJZ operated 24/7 (mostly) and WJY had to share time with WOR. And while they were sometimes on air at the same time, it confused listeners and WJY became a depository for the dregs that didn't get airtime on WJZ. It left them with an unavoidable second-class status beside the real super-station.

At the end of 1925 WJZ started using their new 50k watt transmitter from a new site in Bounb Brook, NJ. interference complaints left them at reduced power for another 10 years but the transition had begun. In July AT&T transferred ownership of WEAF to RCA as well leaving WJY the runt of the litter. That month it went off air. RCA continued to hold the license, but in 1927 they opted not to renew it. That year WEAF and WJZ moved to 711 Fifth Avenue and the national Broadcasting company was all under one roof. It's where they stayed until a 1942 rule-making by the FCC decided that no broadcaster could own more than one station in a market... time marches on.

Transcription Mystery Disc #194

This is a 6.5 inch metal-core Federal Perma disk. It spins at 78 rpm and is in fine condition. But as per the average, it is wholly unlabeled. The audio is good, no damage, just a few minor pops I was able to easily edit out. The disc is unmarred, unbent and even in the original sleeve. The recording is of piano with a small choir accompaniment. I was even able to identify the song for once.

I Love You Truly


The song is "I love you truly" written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond, it first hit #1 in 1912 as performed by Elsie Baker.  But it's been covered ahundred times by all the usual names: Bing Crosby, Pat Boone, Erskine Hawkins, The Ink Spots, Liberace, Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk and even  Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker in the TV show All In The Family in the 1970s. This recording surely dates to the early 1940s. What version inspired them here I can't say, but I do recognize the lyrics...

I love you truly, truly dear,
Life with its sorrow, life with its tear
Fades into dreams when I feel you are near
For I love you truly, truly dear.

Ah! Love, 'tis something to feel your kind hand
Ah! Yes, 'tis something by your side to stand;
Gone is the sorrow, gone doubt and fear,
For you love me truly, truly dear.

NRI Job Sheets

In 1937, in the waning years of the great depression the National Radio Institute (NRI) began sending out job sheets under the name "Extra Money Jobs And How To Do Them."  They also sent out other very similar job sheets under the name "Radio Servicing Jobs and how to do them."  Both of these "newsletters" were printed on a 8.5 x 11 page, printed landscape on both sides. Many didn't even fill all four half-pages.  They came by mail, folded length-wise, punched with 2 holes and subscribers could bind them into a handy dandy faux-leather binder. Leatherette binders were common in that era. This one had the NRI name melted right into the cover. Sprayberry had a very similar newsletter that they sent out through the mid 1940s. You can download my set of "Extra Money Jobs" below:

HERE

The newsletters cover topics as simple as what tools a "radiotrician" might need, and more nuanced technique articles on soldering. Some more specific articles instruction on the servicing of certain radio models. Below is a sampling of  some of the articles. I have no idea how many there were in the series. I did find a catalog listing their entries as 1-37 in 1939. The newsletters are numbered in the lower right hand corner of each front page as "Job Sheet No. X"  They are numbered 1 through 31, a total of 124 pages which I've scanned and uploaded.

• How Radio Men Service Receivers
• How To Solder
• Overhauling Radio Receivers
• Common Causes for Receiver Failure
• How Radio Tubes are Tested
• How Resistors, Coils,  and Condensers Are Tested in the Chassis
• How Defective Moving Radio Parts are Repaired
• How Vibrations and Microphonic Noises are Eliminated
• Interference Which can be Eliminated with a Wave Trap
• Getting Customers Through Advertising 
• Restoring Broken and Marred Radio Cabinets
• Replacing Burned out Pilot Lamps
• How to Erect an Antenna and Ground System
• How to Erect an All-Wave Noise-Reducing Antenna
• Helping  a Customer Select a Radio Receiver

• Installing Filters for Line Noise Elimination
• How Much to Charge the Customer
• Power Ground and Antenna Lead Extensions
• How Defects in an Antenna System are Detected and Repaired
• Where to Place the Receiver in the Home
• When and How to Install Indoor Antennas and Antenna Eliminators
• Recognizing Receiver Troubles
• How to Add Automatic Bass Compensation to a Receiver
• How to Service a Dead Receiver
• How to Align an All-Wave Superheterodyne
• Developing a Professional Servicing Technique
• Uses for Circuit Diagrams and Pictoral Layouts in Servicing
• Hints for Identifying Stages and Parts
• How Improperly Operating Receivers are Serviced
• How to Service a Receiver Which Hums

• How to Service a Receiver Which is Noisy
• How to Service a Radio Which Distorts
• How to Re-Center a Loudspeaker Voice-Coil
• What to do When a receiver Plays Intermittently
• How to Align a Tuned R.F. Receiver
• How to Neutralize a Neutrodyne Receiver
• How to Align an All-Wave Superhetrodyne
• Service Hints for Universal Receivers
• How to Get Practical Service Experience at Home
• Planning Your Service Bench and Shop
• How to Add an Electron Tube Tuning Indicator
• Replacing the Antenna in a Better Location
• How to Install a Master All-Wave Antenna for as Many as 25 Receivers