August 17 Radio History

In 1900...a noted commentator from network radio’s golden age Quincy Howe was born in Boston. He was best known for his daily CBS broadcasts during WWII.  He left for ABC in 1947, and retired from broadcasting in 1974, three years before his death from cancer of the larynx at age 76.


In 1943...writer Norman Corwin’s first success debuted on CBS radio. It was Passport for Adams, starring Robert Young who played a small town newspaper editor. Corwin would have many other radio successes. He wrote and produced such radio classics as This is War, An American in England and We Hold These Truths.


In 1963...writer/actor Ed Gardner succumbed to a diseased liver at age 62.  He was best known as the heavily Brooklyn-accented star of network radio’s widely popular “Duffy’s Tavern” (CBS, then Blue, then NBC) from 1941 to 1952, in which he portrayed Archie, the tavern manager.

In 1969…On the final day of the three-day Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, there were performances by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Ten Years After, John Sebastian, Sha Na Na, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, the Band, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. More than 186,000 tickets were sold but flimsy fences and ticket barriers came down on the first day and the organizers announced the concert would be a free event, allowing thousands more to attend.

In 1982...First audio CDs are manufactured (a recording of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony)


In 2011...Longtime Milwaukee radio host (WZUU-FM, WISN-AM) Larry "The Legend" Johnson, who also spent time on the air in Chicago (WIND-AM), Chattanooga and Nashville, died of pneumonia at 78. 

Marge Thrasher

In 2012…Longtime Memphis TV and radio personality Marge Thrasher died at the age of 78. Born into a musical family, Marge began her lifetime love of music as a two-year old singing on KRNT in Des Moines and then performing for War Bond rallies during WWII. She regularly sang duets at church with her mother and choral groups including the Sweet Adelines in Memphis. Known best for her decades long radio and television career in Memphis, Marge was host of such shows as WHER’s Open Mike, WWEE Radio’s afternoon talk radio show and WHBQ’s Straight Talk with Marge Thrasher and AM Memphis as well as being their noon news anchor. She especially enjoyed her interviews with such notables as Elvis Presley, Julia Child, Dolly Parton, Nancy Reagan, and Billy Graham


In 2012…Longtime Denver KHOW personality Charley Martin died of liver failure at 67.

Charley Martin

He was half of "Hal and Charley," the dominant morning team on Denver's KHOW, launched in 1976 and lasting for decades. The two started in radio in Des Moines, Iowa, when Martin was in high school, working weekends with Moore at KSO, a top-40 station.

Martin holds a key place in Denver radio history.  "When humorous deejays were the big thing on AM radio, he and Hal Moore were among the best," said Dusty Saunders, the longtime media critic for the Rocky Mountain News and a current contributor to The Denver Post. "Morning drive time belonged to them," and they regularly scored "enormous ratings," he said.

The duo holds a claim to broader pop-culture history as well: in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film "The Shining," Hal and Charley's KHOW show can be heard on the car radio on the approach to the hotel.

"Hal and Charley, they were the brand, like Huntley and Brinkley. They shaped Denver media in the '70s and '80s," said Chuck Lontine, a longtime radio executive who worked with the pair early in their career.

Martin joined KHOW in 1969 and was paired with various morning co-hosts, including Rosemary Barnwell (on "The Charley and Barney Show") and Marti Martin. The "Charley and Barney Show," with beauty queen Barnwell, scored "phenomenal" ratings, the trade magazine Billboard reported at the time. But Martin would go on to even greater ratings success when paired with Moore.

KHOW dropped the show in 1995 when it switched to a more issue-oriented all-talk format.

After retiring from broadcasting, Martin taught radio and television at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona.