➦In 1933...Radio's first dramatic "Roses and Drums" show, was heard on WABC 880 AM (then a CBS station) in New York City. It was heard until 1936 and was originally an anthology program drawing its material from American history.
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| 1968 |
➦In 1934...Radio personality Pat O'Day born Paul W. Berg (died August 4, 2020 at age 85). He is probably best known as the afternoon drive personality at Seattle's KJR 950 AM in the 1960s, he would eventually become program director and general manager. He owned KYYX 96.5 FM 96.5 Radio in Seattle in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The frequency is now occupied by KJAQ.
Starting in 1967, O'Day served as race announcer and commentator during Seafair for various radio and TV stations, most recently KIRO TV. The television station, however, announced it was parting ways with O'Day in 2013 and he would not return to broadcast the race. He set the Guinness world record for water skiing non-stop (around Lake Washington) for 4 hours 52 minutes, in 1959.
He is responsible for bringing the Seattle music scene to national prominence.
➦In 1935...CKLW Windsor-Detroit lost its CBS affiliation to WJR Detroit, and hooked up with the Mutual network instead. When the CBC debuted a year later CKLW became an affiliate, but also remained connected to Mutual.
➦In 1942...Glenn Miller ended his Moonlight Serenade radio show on the CBS Radio Network. Miller (March 1, 1904 - presumably December 15, 1944), was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best known "Big Bands". Miller's signature recordings include, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Little Brown Jug", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000". While traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Miller's plane disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found. Miller's recordings are still familiar refrains, even to generations born decades after Miller disappeared.
➦In 1948...U-S citizen Mildred Gillars, known as "Axis Sally" pleaded innocent to charges of treason. She was convicted and wound up serving 12 years behind bars for being a Nazi wartime radio propagandist.
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| Millard Gillars |
By 1941, as the U.S. State Department was advising American nationals to return home, Gillars chose to stay in Germany after her fiancé, Paul Karlson, a naturalized German citizen, said that he would never marry her if she returned to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front, where he died in action.
Until 1942 Gillars' broadcasts were largely apolitical. This changed when Max Otto Koischwitz, the program director in the USA Zone at the RRG, cast Gillars in a new show called Home Sweet Home.
Soon she acquired several names among her GI listeners, including Berlin Bitch, Berlin Babe, Olga, and Sally, but the one that became most common was "Axis Sally".
This name probably came from the time when, asked to describe herself on the air, Gillars had said she was "the Irish type… a real Sally."
In 1943, an Italian-American woman, Rita Zucca, also began broadcasting to American troops from Rome, using the name "Sally". Often the two women were thought to be one and the same.
- Home Sweet Home Hour, from December 24, 1942, until 1945, a regular propaganda program the purpose of which was to make American forces in Europe feel homesick. A running theme of these broadcasts was the infidelity of soldiers' wives and sweethearts while the listeners were stationed in Europe and North Africa.
- Midge-at-the-Mike, broadcast from March to late fall 1943, in which she played American songs interspersed with defeatist propaganda, anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks on Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- G. I.’s Letter-box and Medical Reports 1944, directed at the US home audience in which Gillars used information on wounded and captured US airmen to cause fear and worry in their families.
She remained in Berlin until the end of the war. Her last broadcast was on May 6, 1945, just two days before the German surrender.
Gillars died of colon cancer in Columbus, OH on June 25, 1988.
➦In 1950...Alan Samuel Colmes born (Died of lymphoma at age 66 – February 23, 2017). He was a radio and television host, liberal political commentator for the Fox News Channel, and blogger.
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