View From
The Middle

By Charles Rogers

Fewer And Fewer People Remember Those Radio Days

It is indeed sad when particular entities fade away and become history, especially when they mean many things to many people.

I say this because of the passing last Friday night at midnight of radio station WEVD (1050 AM). As of that time the station ceased to run on its own handle and became an acquisition of ABC Radio, soon to be an all-sports station.

According to David Hinckley’s column in the Daily News recently, the last host to be heard on WEVD will be veteran broadcaster Alan Colmes, who was the final host at the demise of WNBC, another even more historical New York radio station, a few years ago.

The closings of these two landmark stations is very personal to me, and I hope you’ll forgive me and bear with my following scribblings as I tell you why.

I come from a family of broadcasters. My mother and father were pioneers way back when WNBC was called WEAF and the station went on the air right next to KDKA, the Pittsburgh station that claimed the title of the very first commercial station in the U.S. WEVD came in 1927, about five years later.

Although my folks worked out of WNAC in Boston at first (in the "new" media called radio), job opportunities for my dad became scarce during the Great Depression. Since he and my mother (the original piano-playing "Lady of the Ivories") were professionals, they found those opportunities would be better at a radio station farther west, and my father accepted a job as associate musical director at WLW ("The Nation’s Station") in Cincinnati, Ohio.

There are many, many memories of old radio that I have and that my parents told me about that the passing of WNBC, along with WEVD, bring to mind. No, I wasn’t around for the Lindbergh kidnapping or the Scopes trial or Orson Welles’ "War of the Worlds" spoof, but I do recall — barely — a few of the things associated with the broadcasting industry before television came in.

For instance, I always remember going to the radio station with my mother and having to be very, very quiet (Shhh! Your mother’s on the air!") when she would do her show all alone behind a grand piano in a glass-enclosed, sound-proof booth. The show’s director promised me either a candy bar if I kept quiet or a belt in the kisser if I didn’t.

And I remember my father, also seated at a piano, vocal-coaching a very pretty singer named Doris Kappelhoff, who later became Doris Day, and the Clooney sisters, Betty and Rosemary and others of similar distinction.

On network radio there was, of course, the Tuesday Night Lineup, which consisted of Fibber McGee and Molly and Bob Hope and Red Skelton and "I Love a Mystery."

But the story here is about the demise of WEVD’s and the NBC Network flagship station, WNBC. After college and Armed Forces service I was fortunate eniough to have worked at the latter station. Of course, most of the studios at WNBC’s location — 30 Rockefeller Plaza — had been completely converted to television by that time (Channel 4) but there was still that same spot on the 5th floor where the large glass booth featured NBC Radio News On The Hour (for which I wrote news copy) and the weekend show "Monitor." On a local basis, just about every DJ and talk-show host you can think of worked there, from Don Imus to Ted Brown to Robert Alda (Alan’s dad) to Bill Mazer, who eventually worked for WEVD.

Upstairs in that building — on the 9th floor — there was a "museum" of sorts; a place where visitors could join the NBC Tour and see artifacts from the hey-day of radio. I remember the larger-than-life photo of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra; a similar photo of Jack Benny at his peak, and pictures of Bob Hope and David Sarnoff and hundreds of others. There was the interesting sound effects machine, where the sound of breaking glass could be duplicated by, uh, breaking a piece of glass with a hammer; and the slamming of a car door could be imitated by a sound technician, uh, slamming a car door. But the noise of horses’ hooves was done by the same sound man clopping two half-coconuts against his chest. Oh, yes, a crackling fire’s sound was made by crinkling a piece of cellophane next to the microphone.

Because of my personal history, the room on the 9th floor was almost a shrine to me. Interestingly, there was a parapet just off the end of the room (only employees were privy to it) where you could look down on Studio 8-H, the very same studio where Toscanini conducted and where NBC-TVs "Saturday Night Live" set was to eventually stand).

I still have my wonderful, more-than-fond memories of network and affiliate radio. Because of that fondness I feel not enough is being said about the demise of such one-time communications giants as WEVD and WNBC, although I must admit my pride in being at least a small part of the life of one of them. Meanwhile, if you have any feelings about the history of that industry, try to visit the Museum of Broadcasting in Manhattan.