November 29 Radio History

In 1913...actor/announcer Harry Bartell was born in New Orleans. With his rather youthful sounding voice, Bartell was one of the busiest West Coast character actors from the early 1940s until the final end of network radio drama in the 1960s.

He was the Petri Wines announcer who interacted with “Dr. Watson” on 1940’s episodes of “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” and in the ’60’s was the announcer on CBS Radio’s “Dear Abby.”  His TV acting credits include Gunsmoke and Dragnet plus Get Smart, I Love Lucy, Wild Wild West, and The Twilight Zone.

He died Feb. 26 2004 at age 90.


In 1917...announcer George Walsh was born in Cleveland. He became known as the voice of “Gunsmoke” after he introduced the western series on CBS radio for nearly a decade, then followed the show to television as its announcer.  He was a newscaster at KNX-AM (1070) from 1952 to 1986.   Walsh was the voice of “Music ‘Til Dawn,” featuring mainly classical music which aired overnight from 1952 until about 1970.

He died of congestive heart failure Dec. 5 2005 at age 88.


In 1917...country singer/songwriter Merle Travis was born in Rosewood Kentucky.  He was first heard regularly on WLW radio Cincinnati as a member of The Drifting Pioneers.  His writing successes include 16 Tons, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette, & Petal from a Faded Rose.  His big singing hit was the Re-enlistment Blues in From Here to Eternity.

Merle suffered a fatal heart attack Oct 20, 1983 and died at age 65.

In 1918...radio/TV host & humourist Herb Shriner was born in Toledo. He hosted Herb Shriner Time, a quarter-hour daily on CBS Radio in the late 40’s.  He found TV success as host of the 50’s quiz show Two for the Money. He died (as did his wife) in an car accident April 23 1970 when the brakes on his vintage Studebaker failed. Shriner was 51.

In 1927...legendary sportscaster Vin Scully was born in the Bronx NY.

His 60-plus-year tenure with the Brooklyn & LA Dodgers is the longest of any broadcaster with a single club in professional sports history. Scully has called six World Series championships and 14 National League pennants for the club.

Vin Scully cica 50s

After serving in the United States Navy for two years, Scully began his career as a student broadcaster and journalist at Fordham University. While at Fordham, he helped found its FM radio station WFUV (which now presents a Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award each year), was assistant sports editor for Volume 28 of The Fordham Ram his senior year, sang in a barbershop quartet, played center field for the Fordham Rams baseball team, called radio broadcasts for Rams baseball, football, and basketball, earned a degree, and sent about 150 letters to stations along the Eastern seaboard. He received only one response, from CBS Radio affiliate WTOP in Washington, which made him a fill-in.

Scully was then recruited by Red Barber, the sports director of the CBS Radio Network, for its college football coverage. Scully impressed his boss with his coverage of a November 1949 University of Maryland versus Boston University football game from frigid Fenway Park in Boston, despite having to do so from the stadium roof. Expecting an enclosed press box, Scully had left his coat and gloves at his hotel, but never mentioned his discomfort on the air.  Barber mentored Scully and told him that if he wanted to be a successful sports announcer he should never be a "homer", never listen to other announcers, and keep his opinions to himself.



In 1950, Scully joined Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers radio and television booths. When Barber got into a salary dispute with World Series sponsor Gillette in 1953, Scully took Barber's spot for the 1953 World Series. At the age of 25, Scully became the youngest man to broadcast a World Series game. Barber left the Dodgers after the 1953 season to work for the New York Yankees. Scully eventually became the team's principal announcer. Scully announced the Dodgers' games in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles.


In 1929...NBC begins use of the chimes.



The NBC chimes came to their familiar configuration and sound after several years of on-air development. They were first broadcast over NBC's Red and Blue networks on November 29, 1929. However, there are disagreements about the original source of the idea. One story is that they came from WSB in Atlanta, Georgia, which allegedly used it for its own purposes until one day someone at NBC's headquarters in New York City heard the WSB version of the notes during a networked broadcast of a Georgia Tech football game and asked permission to use it on the national network.

NBC Xylophone circa 1930

The company tested the chimes during 1927 and 1928, when it experimented with several possible combinations of notes. The first sequence consisted of the seven notes G-C-G-E-G-C-E. However, since the original NBC chime was an actual set of four-note chimes made by the J.C. Deagan Company, which the announcer would play 30 seconds before the end of every half-hour to signal the end of a program, it was left to the announcers to play this trademark sequence without error, which was unavoidable with such a lengthy cue. The chime sequence was shortened to G-C-G-E and then, on November 29, 1929, the cue was shortened for the final time, and the three well-known notes G-E-C were heard on NBC radio for the first time.

Despite the relative simplicity and efficiency of the new, shorter chime sequence, problems still existed in other musical aspects of the sequence, such as the tempo, rhythm, and volume at which it was played, as well as the musical tone of the set chimes. Therefore the NBC chimes were mechanized in 1932 with a unit that could play the sequence perfectly and consistently. Richard H. Ranger, a former Radio Corporation of America (RCA) engineer who also invented an early form of the modern fax machine, invented the NBC chime machine that generated the notes by means of finely tuned metal reeds that were plucked by fingers on a revolving drum, much like a music box.

The technical purpose of the mechanical chimes was to send a low level audio signal of constant amplitude that would be heard by the various switching stations manned by NBC and AT&T engineers, but not disturb the listening audience. This would serve as the system cue for switching the myriad local stations between the NBC Red Network and NBC Blue Network feeds as scheduled, as well as signalling the pause for local station identification immediately thereafter. In essence, it was the audio equivalent of a traffic signal. Because of fears of offending commercial sponsors by cutting their live network programs off mid-sentence, the mechanized chimes were always rung by an announcer pushing a button in conjunction with the program’s conclusion; they were never set to an automatic timer, although heavy discussions on the subject were held between the Engineering and Programming departments throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

On November 20, 1947, NBC filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make the chimes a registered service mark for identification of radio broadcasting services, the first such audible service mark to be filed with that office. Registration was granted on April 4, 1950; the registration number was 0523616, serial number 71541873. This registration expired on November 3, 1992, as NBC Radio became part of broadcasting history. However a separate service mark registration was made in 1971 for identification of television broadcasting services (serial 72349496, registration 0916522). While this registration is still active, the chime was heard for the final time on the NBC television channel in 1976, the 50-year anniversary of the chime; the chime is now used only for various smaller purposes on the network.

The Fourth Chime

The variant sequence B - D + G = G, based on a G-major arpeggio in second inversion, was known as "the fourth chime". An NBC Interdepartment Correspondence memo, dated April 7, 1933, documents the conception and initial purpose of the fourth chime.

The memo states "In anticipation of the Spring and Summer months, when many in key positions will not always be available at home telephones, the following Emergency Call System will go into effect on Monday morning, April 16."

The memo goes on to say that whenever a fourth tone is heard on the network chimes rung at 15-minute intervals, it will indicate that someone on an attached list is wanted. Upon hearing this fourth chime, all personnel on the list are instructed to call in to the PBX operator to ascertain whether or not the Emergency Call is for them. The chime would continue at 15-minute intervals over stations WEAF and WJZ until the wanted person communicated with the PBX operator. The list contained the names of the following NBC executives:

The "fourth chime" was also used to notify affiliates and their employees of pending urgent programming. This variant saw such use during wartime (especially in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor) and other disasters, most notably the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. According to NBC historians, the last official use of the "fourth chime" was in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. However, according to a handwritten note appended to an NBC internal memo originally dated 1964 on the history and usage of the standard chime, this chime variant was used one final time in 1985 to symbolize the merger with GE.

John Gary

In 1932...singer John Gary was born in Watertown NY.  He got his start singing on Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club on ABC Radio. Gary had his own TV variety show, starting as a summer replacement for Danny Kaye.  He produced 23 albums for RCA. As an inventor he secured two patents on underwater propulsion devices.

John Gary died Jan 4 1998 at age 65.



In 1933...one of the earliest police ‘true crime’ radio dramas Calling All Cars debuted on the CBS West Coast network.  The writer was William N. Robson, who later would be the celebrated producer of Suspense.


In 1941...the passenger ship, "Lurline", sent a radio signal after sighting a Japanese war fleet in the Pacific.

In 1964...Dean "Dino On Your Radio" Anthony debuted on Top40 WMCA 570 AM, New York.  Anthony was one of the famous WMCA jocks from the 1960s, but he spent even more years building WHLI into a fine popular-standards station. He was a host there right up until his death.


In 1969...the Beatles' "Come Together," single went to #1 on Radio.


In 1985...voice actor Bill Scott (Bullwinkle J. Moose, Dudley Do-Right) suffered a fatal  heart attack at age 65. Scott never received an on-screen credit for his voice acting on any of the Ward series

Gene Rayburn

In 1999...Gene Rayburn, host of the TV game show Match Game and a host on the NBC Radio Weekend Show 'Monitor', died at 81.

Before appearing in television, Rayburn was a very successful actor and radio performer. He had a popular morning drive time radio show in New York City, first with Jack Lescoulie (Anything Goes) and later with Dee Finch (Rayburn & Finch) on WNEW (now WBBR). Radio history pegs Rayburn's pairings with Lescoulie and Finch as the first two-man teams in morning radio.  When Rayburn left WNEW, Dee Finch continued the format with Gene Klavan.

Rayburn later landed the lead in the Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie when Dick Van Dyke left the production to star in his eponymous classic sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Listen to an aircheck from 1964 with Rayburn hosting NBC Radio Network's weekend Monitor Show. Click Here.


 In 

2001...Singer/songwriter Beatle George Harrison died of lung cancer at the age of 58. Speaking outside his home northwest of London, Paul McCartney said, "I am devastated and very, very sad." Ringo Starr, speaking from Vancouver, British Columbia said, "We will miss George for his sense of love, his sense of music and his sense of laughter."


In 2008...legendary "Boss Radio" programmer, Bill Drake, died of lung cancer. He was 71.

Bill Drake

Born Phillip Yarbrough, he chose his last name from among his relatives' surnames, because it rhymed with "WAKE", the station in Atlanta, where he worked as a programmer and disc-jockey in the late 1950s.  Later, Bartell Broadcasting, who owned WAKE that he had programmed to number one, transferred him to KYA in San Francisco, which also became number one.

It was later at KYNO in Fresno, California that he met Gene Chenault, who became his business partner. Together, the pair developed highly influential radio programming strategies and tactics, as well as working with future "Boss Jocks".

Drake-Chenault perfected the Top 40 radio format, which had been created by Todd Storz, Gordon McLendon and other radio programmers in the late 1950s, which took a set list of popular songs and repeated them all day long, ensuring the widest possible audience for the station's music. Jingles, news updates, traffic, and other features were designed to make Top 40 radio particularly attractive to car listeners. By early 1964, the era of the British Invasion, Top 40 radio had become the dominant radio format for North American listeners.

Drake streamlined the Top 40 format, using modern methods, such as market research and ratings demographics, to maximize the number of listeners. He believed in forward momentum, limiting the amount of disc jockey chatter, the number of advertisements and playing only the top hits, as opposed to less-organized programming methods of the past. Drake created concepts such as 20/20 News and counter programming, by playing music sweeps, while his competitors aired news. Drake-Chenault controlled everything from the specific DJs that were hired, to radio contests, visual logos, promotions and commercial policy. Drake essentially put radio back into the hands of programming, instead of sales. Drake hired the Johnny Mann Singers to produce the Boss Radio jingles, ensuring a bright, high-energy sound that engaged the listener, while providing a bridge from song to song.



After turning around the fortunes of Fresno's KYNO, Drake applied similar tactics to take KGB, from 14th to 1st in San Diego. KGB's owner, Willett Brown, suggested to his fellow RKO board members, that Drake could turn KHJ around.

In the Spring of 1965, Drake-Chenault were hired to turn KHJ in Los Angeles, from a financial and ratings loser into a success. Drake hired Ron Jacobs as program director, Robert W. Morgan in the mornings and "The Real Don Steele" in the afternoons. KHJ quickly jumped from near-obscurity, to the number one radio station in Los Angeles. Although it was criticized, "Boss Radio" moved faster and sounded more innovative than the competition, making it the #1 choice over competitors in Southern California.



Bill Drake also programmed KFRC in San Francisco, WOR-FM in New York, KAKC in Tulsa, WHBQ in Memphis, WUBE (AM) in Cincinnati, WRKO in Boston and 50,000 watt CKLW, in Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River from the city of Detroit.