Radioshack gets useful

It's really relevant to see Radio Shack catching on to the modern DIY ethic. Dozens of sides like make.com, instructables.com, diy.org, diynetwork.com. They've been headed toward obsolescence for a decade now. but little steps like this give me hope that I wont' be buying my XLR to phono adapters online in the future.

The A&P Gypsies

Harry Horlick's salon orchestra "The A&P Gypsies" were sponsored by the A&P grocery chain. Harry had a very unfortunate surname but he didn't let it hold him back. But first a bit about another name: A&P. It's hard to think of a grocery store today having the mojo to sponsor radio programming but A&P began as The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company and with a name like that you knwo they thought highly of themselves and with good cause. 

A&P began in 1859 as a small chain of coffee and tea shops in new york. By the turn of the century they were the first national grocery chain in America with over 200 stores. It grew 8 fold over the next 15 years to 1,600 stores. By 1930 it was the world's largest retailer. It's decline began in the 1950s and over the next half century bankruptcies and buyouts left it what it is today.

But let's get back to Mr. Horlick. Harry was born in 1896 in Russia and was a prisoner of war in WWI. Family in the US helped him emigrate in the 1920s. And by 1923 his six-piece ensemble was playing on WEAF-AM in New York city. It was there he was seen by an "unnamed executive" from A&P. By March of 1924 they were apart of their sponsored broadcasts on Monday nights.

Today the word Gypsy is the next worst-thing to a racial slur. Ostensibly Harry had studied gypsy folk music while traveling with gypsy bands in Istanbul. it's hard to corroborate knowing he was imprisoned after 1914 and in the US by around 1921 at the age of 25. When that Turkish tour happened... I cannot say.

the A&P Gypsies performed together in 1923 through 1936 and subsequently cut a number of sides for Decca and Brunswick.
Horlick died in July of 1970.

Angst and Cooking at WPAM-AM

This cookbook is titled, "WPAM's Book on Great Radio Cookery," and was compiled by the staff of  1450 WPAM-AM located in Pottsville, PA right in the coal country of Pennsylvania. It was a family affair then as now. Then it was run by John "Bud" Angst, later by Mickey Angst. This cook book is authored and edited by This one credited to Alice and Helen Angst. Alice was Bud's wife. I see a pattern here.

In the late 1960s and 1970s WPAM was owned by The Miners Broadcasting. They owned three stations including  WLSH-AM in Lansford and WMBA-AM in Ambridge. WPAM was a hyper local station airing what was then MOR and is now standards, artists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Ray Confif singers.

I also found another related cook book probably from a bit later in the 1970s.  This one also credited to  Alice Angst and Helen Angst. It also names Billie Schuetrumpf, Theresa Homick and Mary Jane Yeager.  But this one bears two sets of call signs: 1410 WPAM-AM and 1410 WLSH-AM. So I assume the other book precedes the acquisition of WLHS and this one precedes the purchase of WMBA. The trio were owned by Miners as early as 1964... so maybe not.

In in 1971 the Station Manager is listed as Roy Angst, undoubtedly yet another family member. In 1974 Bud is listed as the Station manager at WPPA-AM.  The Angst family seems to be building a coal country media empire. But in 1976 WPAM was was sold to Curran Communications.  Then in 1977, Miners Broadcasting Service Inc. sold WLHS to Pocono-Anthracite Communications passing the station to Mickey as GM, but Bud was involved in the station well into the 1980s. 

In about March of 1998, Curan Communications signed an LMA with Pottsville Broadcasting to handle WPAM. Mickey Angst stayed with WLSH and stayed with radio for 33 years... finally retiring in 2011.  Curran mismanaged WPAM and was fined by the FCC for failure to keep proper records in 2012. Then 1450 reportedly went silent for weeks in both 2011 and 2012.

Side note: the Schuylkill Legal Record indicates that Pennsylvania once sued Bud in 1961. It has something to do with a run for public office. I wish I knew the story there. More here.

Transcription Mystery Disc #215

This week I ripped the other side of the one from last week since it was so damn interesting. The B-side is unexpected to say the least. It's an old gospel song "What A Friend We Have In Mother."  What's odd is that it's the same tune (more or less) as "What A Friend We Have In Jesus,"  which is the version we're all more familiar with. the lyrics are very different obviously but the melody is unmistakable.

But  "What A Friend We Have In Mother." has been covered by many artists: Wilf Carter, the Louvin Brothers, The Peerless Quartet, the Virginia Mountain Boys. The covers of a the Jesus-version are to numerous to mention. The lyrics to the song were written by Joseph M. Scriven as a poem in 1855.  the music was written more than a decade later by Charles Crozat Converse.

What a Friend We Have In Mother

The Mother version dates to at last 1924. Interestingly it's credited on the Victor website to Charles E. Rote. [Source] Now while the Mihalia Jackson version is a totally different song than the Louvin brothers take... it's quite clear that Mr. Rote ripped off Converse and Scriven. While that might have flown in 1924... I know some record labels that would have eaten him alive today. 

Trying a new audio player today.. not working so well.

what a friend we have in mother

Memorial Day Weekend.

I'm taking 4 days off. 

See you next week

When and When not to EAS

In March of last year Millennium Films released the movie Olympus Has Fallen.  the ads were pretty good but the movie was not great. Rotten Tomatoes charitably gave it a 48%. rating. But back to those ads. The first batch of them contained real EAS tones.  This was a no-no. The fines could have been as high as $8,000 per incident. The studio responsibly pulled the spots and even the trailer on Youtube was deleted. [Source] The total bill was as follows:
Viacom - $1,120,000
NBC-Universal - $530,000
Disney/ESPN - $280,000


The FCC policy is completely congruous with their past enforcement. It also just plain makes sense. You don't want people to dismiss real Emergency Announcements because action movie trailers and antacid spots have desensitized them to the alert sound. The whole idea is that we should take seriously that call to action. to quote the FCC "Frivolous, casual, or other uses of EAS Tones for reasons other than their defined purpose can desensitize viewers to the tones and thereby undermine the effectiveness of the system in the event of an actual emergency."

Btu the FCC has also decided recently to grant one waiver to that same policy. The current set of EAS tones we knwo today were only introduced in 2008. FEMA, who oversees some of this mess decided in 2013 they needed to (finally) educate the public about new beepy noises versus old beepy noises. So persuant to said beepy noises, on May 16th, 2013, FEMA requested that the FCC waive the applicable rules to allow the broadcast of  PSAs containing the very same beepy noises. the FCC said "OK" but only for one year.

ON May 21st of this year, (just over 1-year later) FEMA asked for and received an 18 month extension to continue their campaign of beepy noise awareness PSAs.  However, the FCC also said that "leading off a PSA with a WEA Attention Signal, without warning, may be an effective attention-getting device, but it would violate the conditions of this waiver because of the effect that it could have on the listening or viewing public."  In other words.. don't do that. This waiver covers only PSAs, and only PSAs regarding EAS tones, and only if they are don't in a way to educate about EAS without spooking your listeners. Putting them in  Kingsford Charcoal ad  (for example) is still a no-no.

Decca Navigator System

The Decca Navigator System actually was connected to the Decca record label. It was a  WWII-era Allied hyperbolic radio navigation system.  That's the other definition of hyperbole that we use so rarely these days: as in "of or relating to a hyperbola."  Hyperbola?  Yes. A hyperbola is one of those geometry constructs that is easier to define with a formula than words. Despite that I did scrape together some words. A hyperbola looks like two parabolas facing away from each-other. A real definition is as follows

"...is a curve, specifically a smooth curve that lies in a plane, which can be defined either by its geometric properties or by the kinds of equations for which it is the solution set. A hyperbola has two pieces, called connected components or branches, which are mirror images of each other and resembling two infinite bows. The hyperbola is one of the four kinds of conic section, formed by the intersection of a plane and a cone."

 So "hyperbolic" not hyperbole. I could have said that  a hyperbola is the locus of points on the plane whose difference of distances to two fixed points, foci, are constant. But then no one except one or two math majors would have a damned idea what I was saying. Anyway I'm dissembling, let's get back to radio.  the Decca Navigator system consisted of sets of land-based radio beacons arranged in chains. Each chain consisted of a master station and two or three slave stations. These were positioned at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with the master at the centre.

The system used low frequencies from 70 to 129 kHz.  Each master transmitted on a base frequency, and it's slaves on it's harmonics so if the master was on 85 kHz, the first slave would be on 70.833, then the second on 113.333, and third on 127.50. Each station transmitted CW and a navigator could compare the phase difference of the signals from the master and slave stations.  Phase comparison could then identify hyperbolic lines of position.  But even that is not a unique location. Then a "Decometer" was used. This device counted the hyperbolic "lanes" the ship or aircraft crossed. Then knowing the point of departure a unique position could be calculated. GPS it was not. Later they replaced the Decometer with a multi-pulse system that was a bit tidier.

The system was developed over time beginning with the work of William J. O'Brien on location-finding via the phase comparison of continuous wave transmissions. He tried to sell the military on it but they didn't like the complexity. But O'Brien had a friend named Harvey F. Schwarz. He was the chief engineer at Decca Records. Schwarz was impressed and pitched it to the British. Demonstrations were done in 1942. It was deemed superior to the existing Gee system. Decca even tried using it in cars!

After WWII Decca went commercial with the system and sold it in the USA, Japan, South Africa,  Canada Iran.. etc.  The downside was that the receivers were all leased making the system very expensive for users though very profitable for Decca. In the 1980s they dropped that requirement as competitors were making superior receivers. the company floundered the the UK had to take over operating the system. Later in court, The European Union actually forced the UK to end it's subsidies of the system which let to it's shut down in 2000.

After being shut down in the spring of 2000, it has been superseded by systems such as the American GPS and the planned European GALILEO positioning system.

Transcription Mystery Disc #214

This is a red Wilcox Gay Recordio. It's 8-inches in diameter, spins at 78 rpm and has a metal core. There is some damage to the outermost grooves but the audio cleans up in about 30 seconds. The disc is unlabeled and comes from that mystery stack I connect to WIP-AM in the mid 1940s.

The opening song starts with the lyrics "When I was union, handsome and only 17."  The rest of the song continues as you might expect. This could either be a long lost Union organizer song or a long lost Civil war Union army song. The basic gist is that union guys get all the babes. (I've heard the same thing.)

When I was Union


It's followed by a recording of a crooned version of "Let The Rest Of The World Go By."  The singer appears to be Gene Autry, and the narrator is "Gary".   The song isn't a part of a program, it's a part of an advertisement for Doublemint Gum.  The program is probably Gene Autry's Melody Ranch which was sponsored by Wrigley's.

The MiniDisc

On June 30th, 1994 the first promotional MiniDiscs were given away with an copy of Rolling Stone Magazine. It was issue RS 685. I can't say it went down in infamy because for the most part no one cared. The MiniDisc held 1 gigabyte of data, which at the time was decent. The fact that the ATRAC audio was lossy was irrelevant. Consumers were already attracted to MP3s which were even worse. CD-Rs were prohibitively expensive. It was a short time window of opportunity and they screwed it up with copy protection. Yet there remains a reason that it remains more enduring than the DAT ( Digital Audio Tape) and the DCC (Digital Compact Cassette.) But in a 4 way race coming in second is still not the same as winning.

Most sources claim it was marketed starting in 1992 but I think that's a tad premature.  A 1992 article in Popular Science described it as under development at Sony, and described it as a "miniature version of the compact disc."  It's safe to say the advertising campaign began in 1991, there were a number of fluff promotional articles that year. The big promo push began in 1994 with the distribution of promotional comps. Like this one. 

It tanked. CDs won the formats wars. But by 1999 Billboard magazine was calling for a MiniDisc resurgence. Overseas the media had found a new use as a home recording medium.  Sales were up for recording and playback devices. But retail sales for recorded music in that format were bupkis. It took Sony 5 years to sell the first million players.  They sold just as many in 1999 alone. But sales flat lined. In 1999 Billboard magazine called it "pirate-proof." No really "In the age of unprotected, illegal MP3 files floating around on the internet and rampant CD-R piracy, the supposedly "pirate-proof" MiniDisc (MD) is beginning to look relatively benign." 

In 2007 they dropped the copy protection and the device found greater utility for recording... not playback. But it was too late,  by then it was utterly obsolete. The indicators were there. Digital formats were on the rise, and despite the sentimental (and temporary) resurgence of vinyl... all physical formats were doomed. In 2013 Sony announced the end of their production by March of 2013.

The track listing is available here.  The final track is a promotional message that I'd love to hear but I sold my player years ago on Ebay.

CW vs. DW

Let's break out the acronyms today: CW and DW. Unless you are a ham or a radio engineer, these two short acronyms are meaningless. They don't stand for Creative Writing and Data Window. These are continuous wave and damped wave and as you might suspect... they are related.

CW stands for Continuous Wave sometimes written as "continuous waveform."  This describes an electromagnetic wave with both a constant amplitude and a constant frequency.  Rather, that is the text book definition. CW is also the name used to an early form of radio transmission. In CW the carrier wave itself is switched on and off. With this method data is encoded by varied durations of  on and off time intervals. This is a classic implementation of Morse Code.  To further complicate the history of CW these were also called "undamped waves."  Interestingly it has a very modern use as random keyed modulated CW. It is a common source of radio jamming against both radio facsimile and CW transmissions.

DW stands for  damped wave. In DW the amplitude of oscillation decreases over time dropping eventually to zero.  This term also refers to another early method of radio transmission. DW was generated by spark gap transmitters: make/break circuits. These created a series of damped electromagnetic waves. Here information was carried on this signal by telegraphy, turning the transmitter on and off (on-off keying) to send messages in Morse code. Damped waves were the first practical means of radio communication, used during the wireless telegraphy era which ended around 1920. In radio engineering it is now generally referred to as "Class B" emission. However, such transmissions have a wide bandwidth and generate electrical "noise" (electromagnetic interference) which interferes with other radio transmissions.

In nature, amplitude rolls off.  Only in Matlab can we see a hypothetical square wave. So what's the difference again? While CW sounds like it's just perfect Lego™ blocks of RF it's not.  Both waves still have peaks and valleys, but DW has attack and decay. If you look at the two images it's a lot more clear. DW hits and then diminishes like an acoustic wave, CW has more or less equal amplitude until it drops to zero.

Explore the Susceptor

This is a part of the first law of thermodynamics, aka the law of conservation of energy. It states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot be changed. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed only converted from one form to another.  A susceptor merely changes one form of energy into another. A susceptor is a material that can absorb electromagnetic energy (i.e. radio waves) and convert it to heat energy. The most recognizable example of the susceptor in your home is the one presently wrapped around a burrito in your microwave.

It's intuitive when you think about the physics. The heating element in the toast oven operates on a similar principle. When electricity is applied to the element, the electrical resistance of the metal converts some of the current into heat energy. But converting RF is another more nuanced animal. In that same context a susceptor is a lossy material with a resistivity of around 200 Ω/sq. The one which ensconces your Hot Pocket consists of a paper substrate coated in aluminum or nickel and coverd in a layer of polyethylene terephthalate or PET, a polyester film. Similar warmers units might use molybdenum, niobium, or even stainless steel.

Believe it or not, but susceptors do have a use beyond crisping the underside of cheap pizza at your local 7-11. They can be used to apply heat through induction to non-conductive materials. There are situations in manufacturing where a metal surface would interact with the material being produced and a non-conductive container, crucible etc. is preferable. For example, in metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOCVD) a chemical vapour deposition method is used to deposit a polycrystalline film in the manufacture of semi-conductors. In this case a graphite susceptor is often used but carborundum is sometimes also used.

Sometimes radio waves are good for unexpected things...

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

Humphrey Lyttelton was one of those golden people who seemed to strike lucky in everything he did. He was a cartoonist for the Daily Mail Newspaper in 1949. He was a trumpet player active in the British jazz revival and played  traditional and dixieland Jazz with greats like Sidney Bechet, Big Joe Turner and Vic Dickenson. Lyttelton his big radio hit "Bad Penny Blues" in 1956, a single produced by Joe Meek. It was on the charts for 6 weeks. It wasn't a career, but it got him on the BBC where he began doing big band broadcasts. [Side note: he became more versatile as a trumpeter and moved onto bebop, rock and even once recorded with Radiohead.]

In 1967 he began hosting his own jazz program,The Best of Jazz on BBC Radio 2.  The program is everything you'd expect of jazz on the BBC in the 1960s, stiff delivery and a varied playlist. Btu that show didn't make his career either. It was another strange break 5 years later which took his deadpan delivery and put him in the position of host wrangling a cast of hyperactive comedians through a chaotic panel program. That comedy show was the British radio comedy institution "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" (ISIHAC).  I believe it was because of it's iconic success, that his jazz program lasted for 40 years.


The BBC describes ISIHAC as "The long-running, self-styled antidote to panel games."  I use the word institution because it was on from 1972 until his death in 2009 — a run of 37 years. The BBC rebooted the show in 2009 with Lyttelton being replaced by a three rotating hosts: Stephen Fry, Jack Dee and Rob Brydo. We all know Stephen Fry but I don't know the other two blokes at all. Ultimately jack Dee inherited the podium.

The show actually spring form another show called "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again" which was a familiar looking sketch comedy program among whose writers was John Cleese. The BBC had already broken ground on quiz shows with no competition or winner. The show was voted the second funniest radio program ever; beaten out only by The Goon Show. More here.

Transcription Mystery Disc #213

This is a 6.5 Inch, paper-core Wilcox-Gay Recordio. It spins at 78 rpm and has an outer edge start. One side is labeled "Frankie + Johnny." That side is an recording of a woman singing that very song accapella. It appears completely pedestrian The song dates to at least 1905 [More here] Btu the other side is more unusual.

A Birthday at School


Admittedly the audio isnt' great. I used a noise gate and come filtering to help but it's rough going. It's a recording of a whole class of children greeting a child on their birthday. The sing, and they say their names into the microphone.When the kids get too close to the mic it's actually easier to understand them.. but you can make out the woman's questions...  Interestingly.. that sounds like her singing "Frankie and Johnny." School teacher by day, singing songs of lust, betrayal and murder by night...

A One Transistor Transmitter

I really liked this little video. He makes board soldering look simple and elegant, almost like a cooking show except for the jarring sound of tools being dropped to the table. This model operates on a 9V battery and it's pretty simple. But, personally I can't solder that fast without burning my fingers.

Classic Sources of Radio Theater

There have been tens of thousands of radio theater programs. What's striking to me is how much of it is just adapted from the prose of prior decades. While Arch Oboler was writing whole seasons of episode of Lights Out, Wyllis Cooper wrote almost every episode of Quiet, Please... other programs were mining the past. Other programs had dozens of hack and pulp writers on staff or on the draw so to speak. Btu some programs made their name pushing big name known writers.

The result is that there is virtually no end to the list of classic authors whose works were adapted to radio theater. Today I've focused down on a number of science fiction, action, horror and suspense radio programs to hopefully narrow down the authors to establish a pattern. The Programs include: Escape, 2000X, Suspense, Dimension X, Mercury Theatre on the Air, Campbell Playhouse, Black Mass and the CBS Radio Workshop among others. I've listed this by authors first name, then the program. If there were multiple programs that performed the story I've noted both with a slash.

The most popular jump out immediately: Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and H.P. Lovecraft. But there are surprises too. Mark Twain was reworked a number of times as was Ambrose Bierce of all people.

Aldous Huxley
-Brave New World, CBS Radio Workshop
-Jane Eyre, Lux Radio Theatre

Albert Camus
-The Renegade, Black Mass

Alexandre Dumas
-The Second Shot, Escape
 -The Count of Monte Cristo, Mercury Theatre/Campbell Playhouse

Agatha Christie
-The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Campbell Playhouse
-The Witness For The Prosecution,  Mystery Playhouse
-Mystery of the Blue Jar, Mystery Theatre

Ambrose Bierce
-An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Escape
-The Death of Halpin Frayser, Black Mass
-Moonlit Road, Black Mass
-The Boarded Window, Black Mass

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
-The Little Prince, CBS Radio Workshop

Bram Stoker
-Dracula, Mercury Theatre
-The Squaw, Black Mass

Charles Dickens
-A Tale of Two Cities, Mercury Theatre
-The Pickwick Papers, Mercury Theatre
-A Christmas Carol, Campbell Playhous/Campbell Playhouse

Daphne du Maurier
-The Birds, Escape
-Rebecca, Campbell Playhouse

Edgar Allan Poe
-The Fall of the House of Usher, Escape
-The Pit and the Pendulum, Suspense
-The Mystery of Marie Roget, Suspense
-The Green Hills of Earth, CBS Radio Workshop
-Never Bet the Devil Your Head, CBS Radio Workshop
-A Predicament, Black Mass
-The Tell-Tale Heart, Black Mass/Mystery Theatre
-The Man of the Crowd, Black Mass
-MS. Found in a Bottle, Black Mass
-Imp of the Perverse, Black Mass
-Tell-Tale Heart, Mystery Theatre
-The Flying Squad, Mystery Theatre
-Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mystery Theatre
-The Cask of Amontillado, Mystery Theatre

 Edgar Rice Burroughs
-The Moon Maid, 2000X

Ernest Hemingway
-A Farewell To Arms, Campbell Playhouse

Evelyn Waugh
-The Man Who Liked Dickens, Escape

Franz Kafka
A Country Doctor, Black Mass 

H.G. Welles 
-Pollock and the Porroh Man, Escape
-The Country of the Blind, Escape
-Jimmy Goggles...the God, Escape
-The Time Machine, Escape
-The Country of the Blind, Escape -A Dream of Armageddon, Escape
-The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Escape
-The Country of the Blind, Escape/Suspense
-The Time Machine, Escape
-The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Escape
-A Dream of Armageddon, 2000X
-War of the Worlds, Lux Radio Theatre/Mercury Theatre

Honoré de Balzac
-La Grande Breteche, CBS Radio Workshop

H.P. Lovecraft
-Rats in Walls, Black Mass
-The Outsider, Black Mass
-Dunwich Horror, Suspense 

Isaac Asimov
- Pebble in the Sky, Dimension X
-Nightfall, Dimension X
-C Chute, X-Minus One
-Hostess, X-Minus One
-The Liar,  Exploring Tomorrow

Jack London
-A Curious Fragment, 2000X

Joseph Conrad
-Typhoon, Escape
-The Brute, Escape
-Heart of Darkness, Mercury Theatre

Jules Verne
-Around the World in Eighty Days, Mercury Theatre

Kurt Vonnegut
-Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 2000X
-Report on the Barnhouse Effect, Dimension X

L. Ron Hubbard
-The Professor Was a Thief, Dimension X

Mark Twain
-A Learned Fable, 2000X
-Huckleberry Finn, Campbell Playhouse
-Roughing It, CBS Radio Workshop

Philip K. Dick
-The Defenders, X-Minus One
-Colony, X-Minus One
-Made In Avak, Exploring Tomorrow 

Ray Bradbury
-Mars is Heaven, Escape
-The Earthmen, Escape
-Zero Hour, Escape
-Pillar of Fire, 2000X
-There Will Come Soft Rains, Dimension X/X-Minus One
-Mars is Heaven, Dimension X/X-Minus One
-The Martian Chronicles, Dimension X
-And the Moon Be Still as Bright, Dimension X/X-Minus One
-Dwellers in Silence, Dimension X
-The Veldt, Dimension X/X-Minus One
-Marionettes, Inc, Dimension X/X-Minus One
-Kaleidoscope, Dimension X
-To The Future, X-Minus One
-Season of Disbelief, CBS Radio Workshop
-Hail and Farewell, CBS Radio Workshop

Raymond Chandler
Murder My Sweet, Hollywod Startime/Lux radio Theatre
The Big Sleep, Mystery Theatre
Gold Fish, Mystery Theatre 

Robert Louis Stevenson
-The Sire del Maletroit's Door, Escape
-The Young Man With the Cream Tarts, Escape
-Treasure Island, Mercury Theatre

Rudyard Kipling
-The Man Who Would Be King, Escape
-The Drums of the Fore and Aft, Escape
-As Easy as ABC, 2000X

Sinclair Lewis
- Dodsworth, Campbell Playhouse
- Arrowsmith, Campbell Playhouse 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-The Ring of Thoth, Escape
-The Lost Special, Escape

Somerset Maugham
-The Vessel of Wrath, Escape
-The Out-Station, Escape 
Stephen Vincent Benet
-A Tooth for Paul Revere, Escape
-Elementals, Escape
-Nightmare, Dimension X/X-Minus One

Thornton Wilder
-The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Mercury Theatre
-Our Town, Campbell Playhouse

Virginia Woolf
-A Haunted House, Black Mass

Three Generations of Rambling and Gambling

John Gambling was getting up at 2:00 AM to make his 6:00 AM start time for his morning radio show on 710 WOR-AM for decades. But it wasn't just his show, it was his father show and his grandfathers show before him. Rambling With Gambling was the descendant of 3 generations of radio talk show hosts and had been passed down like a homestead, antique rocking chair or rifle. The chrome had worn off but it still worked just fine. It ended an 88-year run for the Gamblings and generated less fanfare than you'd think. More here.

John B. gambling began the program in 1925. The station had been on the air for less than 3 years. This was back when  Bamberger's department store in Newark still owned WOR. The original title was Gambling's Musical Clock. The program and the station endured little change from the inception. In 1927, following General Order 40, WOR moved to 710 from its spot as share-time on 833. It remains on that stick to this day.  John A. Gambling became host in 1959. Clearly determined to continue the dynasty, he started to bring his son, John R. Gambling, to the show as co-host beginning in 1985. When the John A. retired in 1991 John R. Gambling took over as the 3rd Gambling. He'd already been a college radio DJ at Boston University's 89.3 WTBU. More here.

But there was one interruption to the 88-year winning streak. In September of 2000, WOR cancelled the program. Until that moment it was the longest continually-running radio show in America. The second-longest running show was elated to now become the first...the Grand Ole Opry. 770 WABC-AM then hired Gambling essentially re-launching the franchise. But WOR owned the rights to the name "Rambling with Gambling" so the new show became "The John Gambling Show." But even that couldn't last. In January 2008, WABC laid off Gambling!  By all reports it wasn't personal... the station was having serious money problems following it's sale by the Walt Disney Company to Citadel. More here.

But by 2008 WOR found itself in a different situation. Citadel had righted the station and welcomed back it's former heritage program. In 2008 John R. Gambling returned the show to its rightful home. Then just 5 years later Gambling announced he would retire at the end of 2013 and move to Florida with his wife....But that didn't last. Gambling was back on air within a year. Jerry Crowley, a VP at Salem communication wooed Gambling for months. In April they announced that John R. Gambling will be on air 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM in New York. Part of his deal allows that he will be working remotely part of the year from Florida.

Save WRAS!

We are on the verge of losing WRAS to the NPR zombies. Since 1971, 88.1 WRAS-FM also known as "The RAS" or Album 88 has been the 400-lb gorilla of college radio. Since the golden era, we have lost so many stations: KTRU, WAWL, WRVU, KUSF, WXLV, KTXT, WDET, WYSO, KAUR, WLIU, WJHU, WXEL, WZBT, WVBC, and so many others. But WRAS is perhaps the most important signal in all of college radioland. They operate at 100,000 watts over Atlanta a top 10 metro. This puts in them in the top tier for reach alongside WFMU, WSOU, KNON, KCRW... a handful of others. It's loss is incomparable. Below is a quote from their statement:

"Despite the fact that the radio station has always been student run and managed, the university holds the FCC license. This allowed them to negotiate a deal with Georgia Public Radio while keeping the radio station management in the dark. GPB paid the college $150, 000 for a two-year contract that gives them the WRAS airwaves during prime time, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays... Help us get our beloved station back before it is too late. Sign the petition... share this website and stay tuned for updates!"

I cannot overstate the significance of this change for the college radio community. It is inarguable that the dominoes have been falling. We have lost many college radio stations, but we have never lost any one that was so significant. If it is possible to lose WRAS then it is possible for us to lose anything. If it is possible to lose anything, then it is possible to lose everything. To save WRAS is to save college radio.

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Transcription Mystery Disc #214

This is a 6.5-Inch Wilcox-Gay Recordio. It has a metal core and the recording speed is unknown... but it's not 78 rpm. The first side seems to be about 55 rpm the other maybe 60. It's in nice shape even still has a bit of a sheen. The sides are labeled. This one reads "Paul Skippy Piano Boogie Boogie Five (illegible) 12-15-46"  The reverse side reads "Florence + Jerry,  Piano by Flo Story by Jerry 1948 Five Min More, Feb 5th __ Speed"  I was interested.

Skip and Florence


The first side is a cover of Five Minutes More which might have been by Skitch Henderson. The pianist "Skip" is competent. He's probably playing a bit faster than I set the speed but I think I'm within 5%. Around the one minute mark Florence sing three words. Then Mr. Regan plays a short boogie-woogie. The break into a bit of ad lib chatter at the end.  On the other side Florence claims to be at a coal mind interviewing "Mortimer" a dumb coal-miner. It's all just an impression of an early radio program. On the bright side around the 4:00 minute mark they break into a dirty joke. It's followed by a medley of piano tunes and a little laughter.

The engineer clearly was experimenting with different playback speeds trying to get more playtime out of 6.5 inch discs. In this case the audio didn't lose much... at least compared to discs of similar make. This recording has survived 68 years to be heard by us today.

Morse Code is Dead

Samuel Finley Breese Morse died on April 2nd, 1872. The code he devised for the telegraph would last for more than 150 years. Most histories of telegraphy focus on the technological advances. Today let us discuss the code itself. Morse's first version of the Code for use on test equipment dates to at least 1835, and possibly as early as 1832. Not that it lasted unchanged, his first draft only included numbers. Alfred Vail expanded it to include letters and some punctuation. As far as is known Joseph Henry and Leonard Gale who also worked on other parts of the telegraph had no hand in developing Morse Code.  It worked. In 1848, the United States Magazine and Democratic review published an article suggesting that Morse code would reshape the English language to be "terse and condensed". Today they say similar things about Twitter. More here.

Alfred Vail wrote a history of their work that rightly credited some prior advances in telegraphy. However,  in his effort to write Joseph Henry out of history, he reveals a certain bias.  Back in 1832, Morse was a professor of painting and sculpture at the University of the City of New York (now known as NYU.) His knowledge of electricity came largely from lectures given by Professor James Freeman Dana of Columbia College. Joseph Henry, Professor of Mathematics, had suggested the possibility of a telegraph-like device in 1831.  It's hard in that context to credit Morse with the lions share of the technology. But the code was very conceivably his own. One apocryphal story suggests Morse based his system on the quantities of  movable type available at a print shop. To his credit, Vail gives sole credit for the code to Morse.

Since Vail flushed out the code (if it was him) it has changed very little. In December 2003 the International Telecommunications Union added the "commat," a @ symbol to the code. It's rendered as  "· — — · — ·" Prior to that relatively recent change, ITU officials were unsure how long it had been since a change had been introduced. The assumption is that it's the first change since the start of WWII. 

The Modern International Morse code, or continental code, was created by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848. Gerke is said to have changed at least half the letters.  International Morse Code was standardized at the International Telegraphy Congress in 1865 in Paris then endorsed by the ITU.  The original code became known as "American Morse code." In the 1860s, to resolve technical problems on submarine, the dots and dashes were keyed with opposing polarity. Any of those changes, could conceivably have been the next most "recent" update.

The first signs of the end came with the High Speed Telegraph Committee in 1913. The Post master general convened the group to improve efficiency.Overseas duplex and triple duplex configurations were capable of sending more messages on the same cable. Telegraph code books began condensing the messages. Despite that modest improvement the 5-unit Baudot system debuted in 1909 and was better suited to multiplexed lines. (The book History of Telegraphy  by Ken Beauchamp covers this in great detail.) In 1966 ASCII replaced Baudot and Morse began to look a tad archaic. It's use in telegrams had all but ceased as home telephone service was popularized.

Then the endgame: In 1995 the US Coast Guard ceased the use of Morse Code. The The French Navy followed suit in 1997 and Australia 2 years later. In 2003 the World Radiocommunication Conference dropped the Morse code requirement for ham radio licensing. In 1999 the Global Maritime Distress Safety System replaced Morse Code for distress messages. In the US, the last commercial Morse code station KPH/KFS ceremonially sent it's last Morse Code message on July 12th, 1999. They signed off with Samuel Morse's original 1844 message, "What hath God wrought."

New Jersey Shore Trip

Sitting out a rain storm I flipped on the radio in Ocean City, NJ.I did a band scan and was reminded of the fly-over status that New Jersey is stuck with. With radio powerhouse markets on each side of the state they are left with a lot of spill-over.

At the bottom of the dial 88.1 WJPG and 89.9 WJGH simulcast religious talk 24/7. Right now WJGH has a construction permit to bump up the juice form 550 watts to 1500 which would leave the two stations coverage overlapping along the shore line. When I tuned in I could hear both airing some tepid country music. 92.7 WLOM-LP appears to be airing the same program as well but that could have been bleed. A little further up the dial 90.5 WXGN is airing christian rock. They've been on and off air since first constructed in 1996 at Eagle Academy School. The station was off air for most of 2012 due to funding problems. I never caught a station ID or a live DJ, but I did hear a very tasteful Hurricane Sandy ad.

But a chunk of the local radio dial isn't local. Since the sad sell-off of the New Jersey Public Radio chain 89.7 WNJN has simulcast Philadelphia's WHYY and of course 91.3 WRTQ is just a simulcast of WRTI from the same metro as it has since 1993. Up the dial I caught 94.3 WIBG airing oldies and 95.1 WAYV spinning CHR. Nothing new there in a long time. Those are some stable book ends there. 100.7 WZXL was playing the Offspring's "Self Esteem" which warranted a short stop. As a result of that I discovered today that band is still together and has released six albums since the last time I cared what they were up to. The last thing I caught on the FM dial was 103.7 WMGM giving away Alice in Chains tickets at an Electric Factory show in Philly.

Tuning into the MA band I was thrown at first catching the station tag line "Cool 98-3" on 1490 WBSS That's the ID for WTKU on the FM band. The Geator himself still has a gig there. This makes a little more sense when you know that both stations are owned by Longport media. It's a branding faux pas but who listens to AM anymore anyway?  WMIB-AM 1260 was rocking oldies as was 1400 WOND-AM. the rest of the week WOND airs New Talk so it was serendipity. 1020 WIBG-AM was running a strange Spanish tropical program. I am no expert in salsa but I know that Eminem isn't salsa. 

The following morning I caught Champ and Company on 1450 WPGG-AM. The crew was doing a Trivia bit. Very confident and very wrong callers kept calling in and trying to answer questions from half an hour earlier.. guessing wrong. But not just wrong hilariously wrong. Someone actually guessed the bailiff on Night Court was played by Al Martino! This has to be heard to be believed. And to think they only dropped their ESPN simulcast of 97.3 WENJ back in October 2012.

DJ Prince Markie Dee

Mark Anthony Morales is a founding member of the seminal rap group, The Fat Boys. He was not the DJ, he was a rapper and song writer. Under the name Prince Markie Dee with Dee Kool Rock-Ski and Buff Love the group exploded on the scene in 1984. They released seven LPs between then and 1991 when Morales left the group to go solo. By then they'd had three records go gold, and one platinum. The possibility of a runion seemed to die with 28-year-old beat boxer Buff Love in 1995.

Morales was born in 1968 and among the fat Boys he was the thinnest of the three. I can imagine after rapping 7 LPs of fat jokes he might want to do something little more serious. He produced records for Destiny's Child, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige. He had two solo albums "Free" and "Love Daddy" neither of which did as well as his Fat Boys material.  That might be why he tried a new career in radio...

He debuted on 103.5 WMIB with an afternoon drive-time show. That year, Morales won the Best FM Radio Personality award from the New Times of Miami, the cities' weekly newspaper.  In 2008 when the station flipped formats from Urban AC to Urban Morales stayed put. A year later he was bumped to a night slot. But in 2010 when the station flipped to Spanish Hot AC as "Super X" the Cuban-born singer was ousted. Morales mocked the flip referring to it as "Spanish Oldies" via twitter.  He was right, since then the station flipped again to "The Beat" unable to find an identity in the Miami Market. More here.

Morales however had street cred, a resume and radio chops. So he crossed the street. His personal brand was worth something and 99.1 WEDR made him an offer. He remains there today, successful and a little slimmer. Fat Boys reunion rumors have continue but remain unrealized.