March 27 Radio History

Marconi 1899

➦In 1899...Radio pioneer Marconi transmitted a test from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse, England. Marconi set up an experimental base at the Haven Hotel, Sandbanks, Poole Harbour, Dorset, where he erected a 100-foot high mast.  The demonstration was the first international radio transmission.

Fred Foy

➦In 1921...Fred Foy was born (Died at age 88  – December 22, 2010).  He was a radio and television announcer and actor. He is best known for his narration of The Lone Ranger. Radio historian Jim Harmon described Foy as "the announcer, perhaps the greatest announcer-narrator in the history of radio drama."

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1938, Foy began in broadcasting with a part-time position at WMBC, a 250-watt independent station in Detroit. He moved to WXYZ in 1942, but World War II interrupted his radio career. After the war, Foy returned to WXYZ in Detroit.

He took over the position of announcer and narrator for radio's The Lone Ranger beginning July 2, 1948 and continuing until the series ended on September 3, 1954. He understudied the title role and stepped into the part on March 29, 1954 when Brace Beemer had laryngitis.

His long run as announcer and narrator of The Lone Ranger made the Foy's distinctive voice a radio trademark. He was also heard on radio's The Green Hornet and Challenge of the Yukon.

His stentorian delivery of the program's lead-in thrilled his audience for years and helped the program achieve even greater popularity and status. Most radio historians agree that Foy’s Lone Ranger introduction is the most recognized opening in American radio:

Hi-Yo, Silver! A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi-Yo Silver"... The Lone Ranger! With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early Western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoof-beats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!

➦In 1928...KGB-AM, San Diego, California signed-on.

KGB is the oldest continuing radio station in the San Diego Market. The station was granted a license in July 1922 to W.K. Azbill under the call letters of KFBC operating at 10 watts on 1210 kilocycles. This license was assigned to Dr. Arthur Wells Yale in 1927. Pickwick Broadcasting Corporation bought the station in 1928 and installed George Bowles as Vice President and Manager of the station. The call letters were changed to reflect his name as KGB. Under the Pickwick ownership, the station began operating at 1330 kilocycles. Stations used a variety of slogans to promote their identity. Among those KGB uses during this time were "The Sunshine State of California" and "Music for the Sick".

Don Lee, Incorporated bought KGB in 1931. Don Lee died in 1934 and the license was assigned to station manager Marion Harris. Art Linkletter got his professional start at KGB during this time serving as an announcer and program director. The station began operating at 1360 kilocycles in 1942. By 1949, KGB was operating at 1000 watts when Don Lee, Inc was merged with Mutual Broadcasting Company. The station was sold to Marion Harris in 1954 who increased the output to 5000 watts-days, 1000 watts-night.

On the Johnny Mann Singers web site Ron Jacobs said, "Willet Brown of Brown Broadcasting Company purchased the station in 1961 and operated it with his son Mike. Willet co-founded Mutual Broadcasting System, was pals with Howard Hughes, owned a cadillac dealership, a yacht, and his own Greyhound bus.

He expected winners from his assets. By 1963, the station's middle-of-the road (MOR) program format was going nowhere and they began the search for a strong proven programmer. They initially sought out the programmer of KMEN in San Bernardino, but didn't find who they were looking for. (Ron Jacobs had already moved on to make history at KMAK Fresno). His rival, Gene Chenault of KYNO Fresno, was trying to branch out in his new radio consulting business. Chenault became the station programmer after meeting with the Browns. Chenault brought in his partner Bill Drake and several DJs from Fresno that eventually led to KGB leading the San Diego market. They experimented and developed a new format called Boss Radio".

By the end of 1963, a more stylized bi-fold Silver Dollar Survey was being published introducing photos of the DJs as the Station of the Stars. The play list featured artists having more appeal to a younger audience.

In 1974, KGB-FM gave the world a piece of pop culture Americana. The "KGB Chicken," an advertising mascot played by Ted Giannoulas, was hatched that year when employees of KGB-FM hired Giannoulas (then a student at San Diego State University) from off the street to wear a chicken outfit for a promotion to distribute AM and FM Easter eggs to children at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The Chicken, whose antics entertained steadily larger crowds, moved on to features at concerts and sporting events (appearing at more than 520 San Diego Padres games in a row). Conflict emerged between KGB Radio and Giannoulas, and the latter was fired in 1977.

Today, 1360 AM is KLSD and airs a sport talk format and is owned by iHeartMedia.

➦In 1958...CBS Laboratories announced a new stereophonic sound recording that was compatibly playable on ordinary LP phonographs, meaning, monaural. In stereo, on the proper equipment, a new rich and fuller sound was heard. It soon became the standard for record and equipment buyers.It wasn't until September 1958, that Columbia started simultaneous mono/stereo releases. Mono records sold to the general public were subsequently discontinued in 1968.

➦In 1964...Radio Caroline, England's first pirate radio station signed-on.

Radio Caroline was founded by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station which only became formally illegal in 1967.

On a fund-raising trip to the U-S, O'Rahilly reportedly saw a Life Magazine photograph of Kennedy and his children in the Oval Office that served as the inspiration for the name "Caroline Radio". In the photo, Caroline Kennedy and her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., are apparently dancing in the oval office as their father looks on, an activity which O'Rahilly reportedly interpreted as a playful disruption of government.

The Radio Caroline name was used to broadcast from five different ships owned by three different owners from 1964 -1989.

➦In 1977...ABC Radio Network newsman Don Gardiner died. He was one of the talented 27 staff announcers at ABC in the 1960s.

In 1963, Gardiner voiced the first bulletin on the shooting of U.S. President John F. Kennedy aired by a nationwide broadcast network.

This report was broadcast out of the New York headquarters of the ABC Radio Network on Friday, November 22, 1963 at 1:36:50 PM EST, approximately 6 1/2 minutes following the Kennedy shooting in Dallas, Texas.

Milton Berle

➦In 2002...Milton Berle died at age 93 (Born Mendel Berlinger July 12, 1908)  He was a comedian and actor. Berle's career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during TV's golden age.

From 1934–36, Berle appeared regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he attracted publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners.

In the late 1940s, he canceled well-paying nightclub appearances to expand his radio career.  Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale, was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944–1945) could best be described as "slapstick radio" with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges—often directed at host Berle. Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the judge. Berle also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, Brazilian singer Dick Farney, and announcer Frank Gallop. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947 until April 13, 1948.

Berle later described this series as "the best radio show I ever did ... a hell of a funny variety show". It served as a springboard for Berle's emergence as television's first major star.

➦In 2009…Irving R Levine died from prostate cancer at age 86 (Born - August 26, 1922),  He was a journalist and longtime correspondent for NBC News. During his 45-year career, Levine reported from more than two dozen countries. He was the first American television correspondent to be accredited in the Soviet Union. He wrote three non-fiction books on life in the USSR, each of which became a bestseller.

➦In 2016…Dr. Toni Grant, one of the first nationally renowned radio psychologists, whose advice on relations between the sexes was celebrated as refreshingly traditional in some quarters and castigated as appallingly pre-feminist in others, died from complications of dementia  at age 73.

Toni Grant

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Grant was known for her soothing, honeyed voice; her pragmatic approach to listeners’ questions about a cornucopia of delicate subjects — marriage, divorce, sex, dating, cross-dressing, child rearing — and advice that, while it pulled no punches, was far less bellicose than that of some psychologists who followed her onto the airwaves.

She was first given her own show on KABC-AM in Los Angeles in 1975. The show, which later moved to KFI-AM there, was syndicated nationally in the early 1980s. Eventually heard on more than 180 stations, it became one of the first psychological call-in shows to reach a wide listenership.

Dr. Grant, who described her show as “a soap opera that educates,” remained on the air until 1990. After a hiatus, she returned to the radio from 1997 to 2001.

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Actor Julian Glover is 87. 
• Actor Jerry Lacy is 86. 
• Actor-director Austin Pendleton is 82. 
• Actor Michael York is 80. 
• Keyboardist Tony Banks of Genesis is 72. 
• Keyboardist Andrew Farriss (INXS) is 63. 
• Jazz musician Dave Koz is 59. 

• 

  Brenda Song is 34

  Movie director Quentin Tarantino is 59. 
• Bassist Johnny April of Staind is 57. 
• Actor Talisa Soto is 55. 
• Actor Ben Koldyke (“Masters of Sex,” ″How I Met Your Mother”) is 54. 
• Actor Pauley Perrette (“NCIS”) is 53. 
• Singer Mariah Carey is 52. 
• Drummer Brendan Hill of Blues Traveler is 52. 
• Actor Elizabeth Mitchell (“V,” ″Lost”) is 52. 
• Actor Nathan Fillion (“Castle”) is 51. 
• Singer Fergie of Black Eyed Peas is 47. 
• Jazz saxophonist Tia Fuller is 46. 
• Actor Emily Ann Lloyd is 38. 
• Actor Brenda Song (“The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”) is 34. 
• Singer Kimbra is 32. 
• Actor Taylor Atelian (“According to Jim”) is 27. 
• Singer Halle Bailey of Chloe X Halle is 22.