June 19 Radio History

➦In 1912...Narrator and actor Martin Gabel was born in Philadelphia.

His signature work was on May 8, 1945 as narrator on the CBS radio broadcast of Norman Corwin’s epic poem On a Note of Triumph, a commemoration of the fall of the Nazi regime in Germany and the end of WW II in Europe. The broadcast was so popular that the CBS, NBC, Blue and Mutual networks aired a second live production five days later.  He was the most frequent guest on TV’s Sunday night fixture What’s My Line, because he was married to regular panelist Arlene Francis.

He died after a heart attack May 22 1986 at age 73.

➦In 1934...Communications Act of 1934 created Federal Communications Commission

➦In 1960...WMCA 570 began using “The Good Guys”.   Led by program director Ruth Meyer, the first woman to hold the position in New York City radio, this was the beginning of the high-profile Top 40 disc jockey with an exuberant personality aimed at a certain audience segment. With the advent of the Good Guys format, WMCA became more "on top" of new music and started to become known for "playing the hits."

The classic Good Guys era lineup included:

• Joe O'Brien, an industry veteran whose humor appealed to multiple generations. (6am-10am)
• Harry Harrison, whose show was aimed at housewives of that era. (10am-1pm)
• Jack Spector, whose closing line was "Look out street, here I come!" (1pm-4pm)
• Dandy Dan Daniel a lanky, smooth-talking Texan, and his daily countdown. (4pm-7pm)
• Gary Stevens and his "Wooleyburger" bear, aimed at teenagers listening on small transistor radios in their rooms. (7pm-11pm - First show was in April, 1965)
• B. Mitchel Reed, "BMR, Your Leader" Reed was the evening personality on WMCA from 1963–1965. He was part of the team that took WMCA to the top in 1963. He left the station in the spring of 1965, to return to L.A.'s troubled KFWB, where he had worked before WMCA. His on-air hours were the same as Gary Stevens.
• Barry Gray, a talk show host who had been on WMCA before the Top 40 era and continued after it. (11pm-1am)
• Dean Anthony, "Dino on your radio" with his "Actors and Actresses" game (1am-6am).
• Weekends and fill-in, Ed Baer, Frank Stickle and Bill Beamish.
• Owner R. Peter Straus was one of the first station owners to frequently read editorials, commenting on current events.

➦In 1965...Since WINS went all-news in April, New York’s remaining rockers have been going at it - head to head. It’s the WMCA Good Guys vs. the WABC All-Americans.

The post-WINS Pulse ratings showed the stations neck-in-neck - WABC at a 16 and WMCA at a 16.3 rating. But WMCA has about one-third the signal of WABC, so it performs better with no WMCA competition - in the outlying suburbs.

WMCA was running a “Good Guy Derby” contest where you have the guess the WMCA Good Guy who will win his race “in the sport of kings.” Go-Go radio, WABC is doing a “prize of the day” A prize a day goes into the “Go Go Grab Bag” for end-week awarding.

Both stations were battling airplay of the new Beatles album -“Beatles VI” - and both stations were saying they had the exclusive on the album.  Actually, WABC had the album three hours before WMCA did - a rarity. WMCA usually scoops WABC on most records, including the Beatles.

➦In 1966...WOR 98.7 FM said it would drop duplicating talk WOR 710 AM on June 30 and go rock ‘n’ roll - the first FM station to go full-time rock . Robert S. Smith, vice president of both WOR AM/FM stated - “We will not have shouting disk jockeys on FM, but if there can be a quality rock station, that is, what we will be. We’re going after the WABC and WMCA audience.” The change in policy was a result of a recent FCC rule that FM stations in major cities may no longer duplicate more than 50% of their AM affiliates.

➦In 1966...Isaiah Edwin Leopold died from throat cancer at age 79 (Born - November 9, 1886). He was best known as Ed Wynn, noted for his Perfect Fool comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor.

Ed Wynn

In the early 1930s Wynn hosted the popular radio show The Fire Chief,  heard in North America on Tuesday nights, sponsored by Texaco gasoline. Like many former vaudeville performers who turned to radio in the same decade, the stage-trained Wynn insisted on playing for a live studio audience, doing each program as an actual stage show, using visual bits to augment his written material, and in his case, wearing a colorful costume with a red fireman's helmet.

He usually bounced his gags off announcer/straight man Graham McNamee; Wynn's customary opening, "Tonight, Graham, the show's gonna be different," became one of the most familiar tag-lines of its time; a sample joke: "Graham, my uncle just bought a new second-handed car... he calls it Baby! I don't know, it won't go anyplace without a rattle!"

Near the height of his radio fame (1933) he founded his own short-lived radio network the Amalgamated Broadcasting System, which lasted only five weeks, nearly destroying the comedian. According to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod, the failed venture left Wynn deep in debt, divorced and finally, suffering a nervous breakdown.

Ed Wynn first appeared on television on July 7, 1936 in a brief, ad-libbed spot with Graham McNamee during an NBC experimental television broadcast. In the 1949–50 season, Ed Wynn hosted one of the first network, comedy-variety television shows, on CBS, and won both a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award in 1949. Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, and The Three Stooges all made guest appearances with Wynn. This was the first CBS variety television show to originate from Los Angeles, which was seen live on the west coast, but filmed via kinescope for distribution in the Midwest and East, as the national coaxial cable had yet to be completed. Wynn was also a rotating host of NBC's Four Star Revue from 1950 through 1952.

➦In 1973...Wolfman Jack, heard on KDAY Los Angles announced he's moving to WNBC 660 AM, New York.

➦In 1973...93KHJ-AM program director Paul Drew confirmed that the Real Don Steele and Mark Eliot had departed the station.

Billboard 1973

➦In 1973...WLS  890 AM program director Tommy Edwards said the station was expanding its playlist and cutting back on the use of jingles to five key jingles. Plus, - elimination of meaningless chatter by jocks, day-parting of music (more rock at night for example). At the time, WCFL was giving WLS a run in the ratings.

Dixon's Wrecked Auto 

➦In 2005...legendary southern DJ, Mason Dixon, was injured in an auto accident which practically split his car apart.

Dixon suffered a collapsed lung, 2 broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. Dixon has been affiliated with legendary stations including Tampa's WRBQ-FM, where he was still employed at the time of his accident.

When his wife finally showed him pictures of his prized 1971 Dodge Challenger convertible, split in half in a crash over the weekend, there were more tears.

"There were angels watching out for me," he told reporters huddled around his bed at St. Joseph's Hospital. "They wanted me to learn something, and I have. Now, I've got to go back out there and do their work. And I'll be happy to."

Dixon, the-55, whose real name is Jimmie Crawford, was critically injured after leaving a Father's Day promotional event.

➦In 2009…Radio/TV announcer Ken Roberts died of pneumonia at age 99 (Born - February 22, 1910). He was best known for his work during the Golden Age of Radio and for his work announcing the daytime television soap operas The Secret Storm, Texas and Love of Life, each for a two-decade span.

Ken Roberts

His first announcing job was at WMCA in New York lasting three weeks. Next at WLTH in Brooklyn. In an interview for the book The Great American Broadcast, Roberts told Leonard Maltin that he had started at the Brooklyn station in 1930, where his responsibilities included answering phones and sweeping the floors, in addition to on-air roles playing piano and reading poetry.

During the 1930s and 1940s, at the height of the radio era, Roberts' voice appeared widely in live programming to introduce programs, moderate game shows and do live reads for commercials. Despite his Errol Flynn-like good looks and the frequent broadcasts featuring his voice, as often as several times each day, few listeners knew who he was or would have recognized him in public.

Radio credits include The Shadow (including the 1937-38 season on the Mutual Broadcasting System with a 22-year-old Orson Welles starring in the role of Lamont Cranston), the comedy Easy Aces, along with soap operas Joyce Jordan, M.D. and This is Nora Drake. He also announced or hosted a number of game shows, such as What's My Name? and the parody It Pays to Be Ignorant, in which he would pose questions to actors portraying contestants such as "Who came first: Henry I or Henry VIII?" that would be answered incorrectly.

In 1941, he achieved his goal of hosting his own quiz show, with Quick As a Flash on the Mutual network. Among the elements of the program, Roberts would dramatize an historic event which contestants would have to correctly identify. Other prizes were awarded for identifying the common element in three songs played by the orchestra and for solving descriptions of staged crimes.

On television, he was the original announcer for Candid Camera and introduced popular soap operas Love of Life from 1951 to 1980, The Secret Storm from 1954 to 1974 and Texas from 1980 to 1982. On Jan Murray's comedy game show Dollar a Second, Robert's on-air duties included advertisements for sponsor Mogen David wines.

He was also one of the founders of the broadcast performers' union now known as AFTRA.

Ann Wilson is 73

🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:

• Actor Gena Rowlands is 93. 
• Singer Spanky McFarlane of Spanky and Our Gang is 81. 
• Actor Phylicia Rashad is 75. 
• Singer Ann Wilson of Heart is 73. 
• Keyboardist Larry Dunn (Earth, Wind and Fire) is 70. 
• Actor Kathleen Turner is 69. 
• Country singer Doug Stone is 67. 
• Singer Mark “Marty” DeBarge of DeBarge is 64. 
• Singer-dancer Paula Abdul is 61. 
• Actor Andy Lauer (“Caroline in the City”) is 60. 
• Singer-guitarist Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe is 59.
• Actor Mia Sara (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) is 56. 
• “Good Morning America” host Lara Spencer is 54. 
• Guitarist Brian “Head” Welch of Korn is 53. 
• Actor Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) is 51. 
• Actor Robin Tunney is 51. 
• Actor Bumper Robinson (“Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) is 49. 
• Actor Poppy Montgomery (“Unforgettable,” ″Without a Trace”) is 48. 
• Singer-banjoist Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers is 47. 
• Actor Ryan Hurst (“The Walking Dead,” “Sons of Anarchy”) is 47. 
• Actor Zoe Saldana is 45. 
• Actor Neil Brown Jr. (“SEAL Team”) is 43. 
• Actor Lauren Lee Smith (“CSI”) is 43. 
• Singer Macklemore of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis is 41. 
• Actor Paul Dano is 39. 
• Actor Giacomo Gianniotti (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 34. 
• Actor Chuku Modu (“The Good Doctor”) is 33. 
• Actor Atticus Shaffer (“The Middle”) is 25

✞DEATH ANNIVERSARIES

• In 2013..James Gandolfini, Actor (The Sopranos), dies from a heart attack at 51
• In 2013..Slim Whitman, American country singer (Rose Marie), dies from heart failure at 90
• In 2014.. Gerry Goffin, American Hall of Fame lyricist, dies at 75