Pat Barnes Pablum

Patrick Henry Barnes wrote trite, mundane,  piffle. Correspondingly it was pretty popular. People like trite fluffy crap. Poetry was common radio fare in the content-strapped 1920s.  Really very little of it survived into the golden era.  Pat Barnes was the Program Director of WHT-AM. By all reports he was also the announcer for this show which collected poem he liked and tried to popularize. By all reports, it was all rather flowery and unremarkable... I'll name a few:

A Son's Letter to his Dead Father
The House with Nobody in it
Is there a Santa Clause
Letter From the Trenches
The Beautiful Snow

WHT-AM began in 1925 on 1260, later slipping the day and broadcasting at night on 750 (possibly 720). It became a dayshare on 1480 with WJAZ-AM and WORD-AM starting in 1928.  That was a big year for the FRC who was re-allocating stations trying to put an end to the chaos. That lasted until at least 1931. In that year pleading for an under-served northern Kentucky all three stations were forced off air for WCKY-AM in Covington. They ;later moved to Cincinnati, negating the argument but by then it's 3 adversaries were long gone.  All those call letters were re-used by various entities, WJAZ by Zenith actually... except for WHT.  There is no 1480 in Chicago today, nor is there a 1260... a legacy effect of the frequency shuffling almost a century ago.

In 1930 Radiophone Broadcasting Corporation changed the calls to WCHI-AM on 1490, then changed calls to WSOA in 1931 right before the end. Transmitting from Deerfield, IL the Radiophone Broadcasting Corporation did what they could with the crowded 5,000 watt station. In sum, WHT existed for no more than six years in Chicago land radio history. It was a veritable blink in the context of heritage stations like WMAQ, which started earlier and lasted. In between organ concerts and other local programs Pat Barnes found time to read poetry and essays on the air.  The book was published in 1927.. possibly at the height of the briefly lived station.

Everett Mitchell

I only realized recently that I'd written about Everett Mitchell four separate times and never covered his career. I recognized the name when I bumped into a copy of the book Radio's Beautiful Day: Everett Mitchell's Memoirs of the First Fifty Years of Broadcasting in America by Richard Crabb. He's one of those historical characters who stood too close to bigger and more flamboyant people who overshadowed him. Maybe he didn't have a good publicist.

Everett Mitchell is most famous for his tenure on the National Farm and Home Hour, a NBC program that was on air from 1928 to 1958. Mitchell joined the program in 1932. His trademark line was "It's a beautiful day in Chicago!" He had joined the program after a short whirlwind tenure as a radio singer. He sang on WQJ-AM, WEBH-AM, and WHT-AM all in the Chicago area. WQJ was a short-lived dayshare with WMAQ which was bought out by the latter in bought them out in 1927. WEBH was a short-lived dayshare with WDAP that operated from 1923 to 1928. WHT only was on air from 1926 to 1927. By all appearances that doesn't add up to much experience, but he was also on WENR-AM. More here.

He'd made a small name for himself as a gospel singer, in radio he'd become a lot more. In Mitchells' few biographies it is said that he was first on air in 1923. Most of them fail to note the call letters though it was certainly KYW-AM. The station he would later manage, WENR-AM... signed on a year later. He became it's manager in 1925, he was only 27 years old.

At WENR he had a number of uncorroborated radio firsts: prayer services, holiday programming, children's programming, and what might actually be first first educational program The Air Scouts. Three years later Samuel Insull paid a million dollar for the station. But Insull was in serious money trouble by 1930 and NBC bought the station off him. the great depression had hit him hard, and cleaned out Mitchell as well. the sale was a boon to both. NBC considered Mitchell to be just as valuable as WENR, and put Mitchell in the host chair of National Farm and Home Hour. He stayed with the program for 3 decades.

The Farm Hour was cut to just a small local program called the Farm Forum then incorporated as part of another program Town and Farm. In 1967 the USDA's Great Service to America Award. his replacement Jerry Mitchell (no relation) continued to host Town and Farm for a couple more years. Everett retired that year with his wife to Wheaton, Illinois where he died in 1990.