RADIO ARTIFACT #86

I bought an LP. It was a savoy 10-inch with the above sticker on the sleeve. This was no ordinary collector tag. I typed his name into Google and it all came together.
He was a DJ in Troy New York, and met his wife there while she attended attended Russell Sage College and at 800 WKDN-AM in Camden, NJ. One article called Harvey Husten "the single most responsible person for keeping jazz alive in Philadelphia..." He taught night-school jazz courses. He wrote reviews for Down Beat Magazine. He wrote liner notes to jazz LPs and hosted a series of jazz concerts at the Red Hill Inn, in Pennsauken, NJ.

The book The Musical World of J.J. Johnson by Joshua Berrettrefers to Husten as a "New Jersey disk jockey and night club owner." It seems likely then that he was at least part owner of the Red Hill Inn. A 1956 issue of broadcasting listed him attached to WKDN with the title PD.

Harvey donated a library of jazz records the the Free Library of Philadelphia. He was a big deal jazz promoter in his day. My LP seems to be a discard from that collection. Harvey passed away when he was only 31 years old, probably in 1957 by my math.

History tells me that WKDN-AM went on air in 1948, so Harvey must have been an early staffer at the MOR powerhouse. The station became WTMR-AM in the early 60s and in 1975 became a religious talker.

I know there's a lot more to this story... maybe someone will fill me in.

Locally Originating Progamming

I dislike non-commercial stations that run exclusively satillite fed syndicated programming. The worst offender in this catagory is the religious broadcaster. (Fybush calls these satcasters) My main objection to is not to the content. It's the source of the content to which I object.

follow me on this detour:
The radio spectrum, like any physical property, or natural resource is finite. Each city can only contain so many broadcasters, so a government body exists to manage the space, the FCC. It's no different from your town council deciding who gets to develop the waterfront property. The point being; if the radio band is the property of a community, then content on the radio that originates from outside the community is, in a sense... stolen from them.

We all know perfectly well that many religious stations receive all programming via satillite. They then time-shift this programming and rebroadcast to meet some obtuse, nominal and ultimately impotent local programming requirement. Let me stop right here and point out that not all religious broadcasters are like this. Right near me is WNAP-AM 1110 who runs almost entirely local programming. http://wnap1110am.com/ It's a fine station who serves Norristown and the surrounding community just fine.

By comparison WKDN 106.9 Camden runs zero local programming. http://www.familyradio.com/index.htm

That RF belongs to the Camden Philadelphia Area, yet zero of their programming content originates locally. The FCC would tell you that somehow they serve our community. I would debate that strongly. That same signal could belong to any civic, religious or community group and serve Philadelphia more fully.

Out of fairness let me examine my local NPR affiliate: WHYY 90.9 FM Philadelphia, PA Look at their schedule Monday thru Friday: http://www.whyy.org

35 hours of BBC between the overnights, the news hour and the world

31 hours of NPR nationally syndicated programming from talk of the nation, morning edition, all things considered, News and Notes, Creators at Carnagie... etc

6 hours of Here and now & Sound Print from MPR

5 hours of Marketplace from American Public Media

1 hour of This American Live from Public Radio International

In the end, only these local programs run Monday thru Friday. Out of a total possible 120 hours 16 originate locally. That's about 14%. It's not a lot. but it's more thant zero. These local shows are:

5 hours of Radio times

10 hours of Fresh air (counting the afternoon rebrocast)

1 hour of Voices in the family

That being said, the WHYY weekends are a smorgasbord of local shows.