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.

The Uncle Don story

He's not my uncle Don. I don't even have an uncle Don. I'm speaking of that old urban legend. The one so old, it's rarely told. It's the one you tell to the young DJs to teach them to keep their yap shut in the booth whether they think the mike is on or not.

A flub committed while filming a movie or TV program could be eliminated merely by doing a new take or in the editing room. If someone say's "fuck" you can bleep it. In radio, especially early radio, everything was live and often unscripted. If you say "fuck:, it was already too late. This is such a tale. but let me first say There is no evidence of at all that Don Carney was ever penalized for anything he said as an on-air radio personality. His show was never cancelled. Period. Like Fatty Arbuckle, the whole deal is a humbug.

Don Carney had an incredibly long-lived broadcasting career. he began as an announcer at WMCA in the 1920s. He moved onto WOR where he broadcast six days a week, beginning in 1928 and continuing through 1947. After that, instead of retiring he got a gig at WOR as a DJ with a program of children's music. After that he semi-retired to Miami beach in 1948 and hosted a weekly children's show on WKAT which he did until his death in 1954. Radio Guide called him "a saint, oracle, and pal to 300,000 children." But the legend says there was an incident that marred this kindly purveyor of children's programming. Witness accounts vary, but here is the basic version:

Uncle Don ended each show with Floyd Neal to signing him off, a station break and intrtoduction for the next program. But this week Uncle Don twittered his usual cheery wind-up, and then, not realizing that the mic was still on, thinking he was off the air, he blurted out: "There, I hope that'll hold the little bastards."

Some sources put it in 1939 others in the early fifties. But really the legend preceeds Dons program by several years and appears ealiers with the flub being attributed to "Uncle John" Daggett of KHJ in Los Angeles, John "Big Brother" Keough of KPO in San Francisco and even the lesser known Graham McNamee even Uncle Whip of WIP. According to Snopes the earliest reference might be the 23 April 1930 issue of Variety"

"A wisecracking radio announcer in a Philadelphia station lost his job about two weeks ago as a result of a stern reprimand of the station by the Federal Radio Commission. Announcer had concluded a bed-time story for children and thought the power was off. For the benefit of the control room he added: 'I hope that pleases the little bastards' This went out over the air. Within 10 minutes several telegrams of protest, among them the Federal Radio Commission, had arrived. Others came later in bundles."

But the variety article mentions no data, no DJ and no station. It's utterly apocrophyal. The lack of verifyable details it typical of legends such as these. ... and never has the FCC or the FRC had the ability to respond in writing to a complaint in 10 minutes.... 10 months would be more believable.