The Cambridge School of Broadcasting in New York City was active in 1949-1956. I found a record of their head instructor in 1949 named as Alfred Schneider. In 1949 Billboard listed him as departing for a gig at WOR-AM. It seems impossible but this seems to predate the opening of the main campus in Boston. More here.
The Cambridge school of Radio & TV Broadcasting located at 489 Boylston street, Boston. It was founded in 1951 as Cambridge School of Business. Within 2 years it was advertised at the Cambridge School of Radio Broadcasting. It became Grahm Junior College in February 1968. It had previously been a secretarial school and was taken over by Milton Grahm who added the broadcasting curriculum. Comedian Andy Kaufman actually attended the school in that era. It was later located at 18 Tremont Street,120 Boylston Street and then lastly at Kenmore square. They moved to 687 Boylston street around 1961. The Boston campus even had a college radio station. It was known as WCSB. It was still operating at least as late as 1973. (It had no connection to the real WCSB at Cleveland State University.) The school filed for bankruptcy in 1977, and the school closed in 1979
However, there was once a radio school actually at Cambridge. The Harvard Radio School of Cambridge first opened in April of 1917. The school ended up at Harvard because the radio school the Navy was operating at the Brooklyn Naval yard had run out of space. They started in 1917 with 100 students by the time they ramped up to 400 there was no room left at the inn. Harvard took on 830 students who took over Peirce and Perkin's halls, the Hemenway gymnasium and Memorial hall. By 1919 they had 3,400 students with the school operating in shifts to accommodate them all. Students graduated at a rate of over 150 a week. Between August 1917 and January 1919 they graduated 8,400 new radio men. More here.
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The only location for the school was in Boston. I attended there and although it had a pretty good reputation, it was pretty much a farce---filled with guys trying to avoid the draft. You could tell those who were going to make it and those who wouldn't. I worked a little in radio after it, got disgusted with all the phonies and the low pay and got out, headed West and never looked back. Today, I could not stand to be around those people, back then I didn't know any better.
ReplyDeleteAre their any records of attendance or certificates given at the New York City school? Could a 15 year old African American enroll in the school in 1949? Any records of 1949 grads?
ReplyDeletepleaase send answer to previous questions to bobby3d@bellsouth.net
ReplyDeletePlease link with the Birmingham Black Radio Museum - www.thebbrm.org
ReplyDeleteJust mintues ago from when I'm typing this, I received in the mail a flexidisc I got via eBay. About six inches in diameter, red, and with a rectangular spindle hole. It's in a brown rectangular envelope with the words "Compliments of Cambridge School of Radio & TV Broadcasting" and an address on the bottom: 220 WEST 42nd ST., N.Y. 18, and phone number LO 4-9050. On the opposite side of the "Compliments of..." message it says "Booth #18." So it appears they must have had a booth at some kind of trade show. I wasn't able to play back the record properly -- I suspect it's not a microgroove recording and requires a special stylus that works on old-school 78rpm shellac discs (this record in fact plays back at 78rpm), but from what I was able to (barely) play, it's just a woman's voice (with a noticeable New York accent) reading a sales pitch for the school.
ReplyDelete@Sean C. I suspect that is a acetate recording from a DJ training booth from the school itself. This would be like a transcription disc... Voice--O-graph or recordio disc. Does it have a paper core painted with acetate?
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