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2 NBC TRANSMITTER

DAVID SARNOFF TELEVISION

RCA Laboratories Noran E Kersta

David Sarnoff, President of RCAand Chairman of the Board of

NBC, was given a party by his

friends on February 27 th—the

occasion, his fiftieth birthday.

One week later, Mr. Sarnoff an-nounced that the world’s largest

radio research laboratories will bebuilt by the Radio Corporation of

America, at Princeton, N. J. It will

be known as “RCA Laboratories,”and will be the headquarters for all

research and original developmentwork of RCA, and for its patentand licensing activities. The neworganization is planned to promotethe growth of radio as an art andindustry, and to meet the expand-ing demands of national defense.

A further purpose, Mr. Sarnoffsaid, will be to facilitate the crea-

tion and development of new radio

products and services which will

provide new business and new em-ployment for the post-war period.

Under the impetus of emergenciesintensive research creates new in-

strumentalities, and further re-

search and development are neces-sary to adapt them to use by thepublic.

“To equip our research staff

with the best and most modernfacilities and conveniences, wehave purchased a large tract of

land at Princeton,” said Mr. Sarn-off, “upon which we will erect a

laboratory building which will in-

clude a lecture auditorium and thecombined technical and patentlibraries of the RCA organization.

We hope to have the build'ng com-pleted before the end of this year.

“We believe that this steprriarks a milestone in the progressof radio. Such important fields as

television, facsimile, electron op-tics, wave propagation and ultra-

high frequencies open to radio a

future even greater than its past.

The developments in these fields

will contribute to the creation of

new industries and to the improve-ment of existing services.

“More and more of our researchwork is being concentrated onproblems of national defense. Thenew RCA Laboratories will makeit possible to increase these efforts

and to insure the maximum use of

our research facilities for defense.“The achievements of modern

radio,” continued Mr. Sarnoff, “are

also capable of increasing and im-proving our industrial output in

many lines. By the application of

electronic devices to industrial

processes the Radio Age promisesto electronize modern industry,

just as the application of electrical

devices to industry at the begin-

ning of this century created the

Electrical Age.“By the establishment of the

new laboratories radio quickens its

pace alongside the older industries

—electrical, steel, automobile,wire communications, chemical,metallurgical and others—which,through research, have contributedto the industrial leadership andprogress of this country. It is

through invention and the oracti-

cal applications of research that

American ingenuity has raised the

standards of living in the UnitedStates above those of any othernation.

“No new industry in the history

of this country has made greater

strides than radio, or contributedmore extensive benefits to peoplein all walks of life,” said Mr. Sarn-

off. “Research, which has enabledAmerican industry to develop newproducts, new services and newemployment, has also been the

greatest factor in the continuingadvancement of radio.”

Since the first of the year, theNational Broadcasting Companyhas continued transmitting sport-

ing events from the MadisonSquare Carden and other arenas in

the area, two or three times a

week. Among these sporting

events were basketball, hockey,boxing, wrestling and track meets.Of most importance was a series

of six indoor track meets from theMadison Square Carden ending upwith the K. of C. track meet onSaturday, March 8th. Two otheroutstanding events televised werethe finals of the Golden GlovesBoxing Tournament, and the Tour-nament of Champions from theCarden.

On January 24th, a demonstra-tion was given to the FCC. For thefirst time, the RCA-NBC demon-strated home projection type re-

ceivers with viewing screens13V2x 18 inches. Also, it was theoccasion of the longest radio relay

pick-up of a television program onrecord. The mobile television pick-

up units were stationed at CampUpton, Long Island, where scenesof army life and induction of

selectees were picked up and re-

layed by three radio links to ourEmpire State transmitter. This wasa radio relay path of 62 miles. Theradio relays were developed as a

means of networking television

programs from city to city.

Part of the demonstration pro-

gram was witnessed in the NewYorker Theater on a movie size

screen 15x20 feet. All those whoattended the demonstration ex-

pressed complete satisfaction andsurprise with the results achievedin large-screen television projec-

tion. This demonstration was part

of a study of the television situa-

tion, conducted by the FCC at that

time, prior to hearings which wereheld on March 20th. One of the

issues discussed at these hearings

was the commercial possibilities of

television for the near future. Thetelevision industry is now looking

to the FCC for the new regulations

which will incorporate the Com-mission’s decisions on the prob-

lems of standardization and com-mercialization.

MARCH. 1941 3

PRODUCTION^ CLARENCE L MENSER

Realignment National Production Director

A realignment of the NBC Pro-

gram Department was announcedby Sidney Strotz, vice president in

charge of programs, in which sep-

arate managers were appointed for

the Red and Blue Networks oper-

ated by the Company.Phillips Carlin, former sustain-

ing program manager, was ap-

pointed to head the Red Network,and William Hillpot, formerly of

the Artists Service, was appointedBlue Network program manager.This places both commercial andsustaining activities of each net-

work under one head.Strotz also announced the crea-

tion of a new Program and Talent

Sales Division of the Program De-partment which will include the

personnel transferred to this newdivision from the NBC Artists Ser-

vice. Miss Bertha Brainard, form-erly manager of the CommercialProgram Division of the ProgramDepartment, becomes manager of

this new division.

The New York Production Divi-

sion has been expanded. WilfredRoberts continues as manager andis responsible for the New Yorkcontinuity, announcing and soundeffects sections. Lewis Titterton,

manager continuity section; Pat-

rick Kelly, manager announcingsection; and N. Ray Kelly, managersound effects, report to Roberts.

New York Production additions

include William Wilgus who hasbeen associated with outstandingorchestras and is a new popularmusic director. Charles Schenck,with radio since 1928, comes to

us from Chicago, as does Bruce( Prof. Kaltenmeyer) Kamman. RayBuffem is from Oklahoma City.

Jack Meakin from Frisco handlesmusical shows. Anton Leader, dra-

matic director, was ProductionManager of WMCA. Eddie Dun-ham does the Tommy Dorsey andFirestone programs and spends therest of his time in the Music Divi-

sion.

Mary Kennedy, secretary to theProduction Manager, is leaving

NBC to devote full time to herhome. We wish her every happi-ness. Helen Sweeney, formerlysecretary to Mr. Titterton, takesover her duties.

Clarence L. Menser has becomeNBC’s first National ProductionDirector supervising and coordinat-ing the work of all network pro-

grams, including those at the di-

vision offices (New York, Chicago,Hollywood) and on M & O sta-

tions. Mr. Menser is not new to

NBC, but in view of the impor-tance of his work we think anotherlook at the record is in order.

Mr. Menser was Professor of

Speech at the University of Utahand was closely associated with thework of the theatre there. He later

went to Knox College and estab-lished one of the first Departmentsof Drama in an American College.

The year 1929 he spent in Europestudying the theatre.

PRODUCTION AT 711

When he returned to New York,John Royal brought him into RadioCity as a dramatic director. In this

position he launched a number of

highly successful shows. Amongthe most interesting of his pro-grams was the Miniature Theatre.One of the very first network half

hour dramatic shows, it featuredsuch prominent stage players as

Otis Skinner and Basil Rathbone.He also supervised and collaboratedin the original presentations of

The Goldbergs.

CHICAGO MANAGEMENT

As a reward for his success in

New York, Mr. Royal sent him to

Ghicago to take charge of produc-tion in that division. The resultswere impressive. During the periodthat he served as Production Man-ager of the Gentral Division someof the finest radio players were de-veloped, a considerable series of

successful coast to coast showswere built and Chicago becamemore and more a vital contributorto the networks.

Don Ameche, Raymond EdwardJohnson, Allan Joslyn, ChicagoScript Head Bill Cooper, writerArch Oboler, and among programsVic and Sade, Mary Marlin, IreneRich and Lights Out are but a fewof the names associated with Mr.Menser’s administration.

As an experiment, in May of

last year, Mr. Menser held a daily

class in radio for the period of a

month. It is ample testimony to his

rating with his associates thatmany of the busiest and best es-

tablished artists on the air made a

point of enrolling and attendingthe class despite their exactingschedules.

Before returning to Radio Cityin his present capacity, Mr. Menserwas Manager of the Chicago officeof the Gardner Advertising Gom-pany. He recently returned from atrip to Australia, New Zealand,Honolulu, Tahiti and the South SeaIslands. In the course of his travels

he had occasion to meet all theimportant figures in radio in thatpart of the world. While in Aus-tralia he was entertained by Sir

George Beebe, Chief Justice of theAustralian Court of Arbitration.

Mr. Menser’s work marks an in-

teresting advance in the broadcast-ing industry. The overall planningand coordination of every produc-tion point is designed to producesmoother programming and greaterbenefits to the listening public.The problems of broadcasting in

times of national emergency are

and will continue to be demandingones. The National Broadcasting

Company is proving its fitness andability to function under the mostexacting conditions by lining upits divisions and departments into

an efficient and responsive unit.

4 NBC TRANSMITTER

NAMES I N T H E NEWSRadio City

Juan de jara Almonte has beennamed Night Program Manager of

NBC. Mr. Almonte has long beena gracious host to the distinguished

guests who have visited RadioCity.

Gilbert Martyn has been ap-

pointed to head the announcingschool conducted by NBC accord-ing to Pat Kelly, Supervisor of An-nouncers. Martyn succeeds DanRussell who resigned to becomeassoc i a ted w i th Pan-AmericanGrace Company. Martyn, memberof the New York announcing staff,

has as his assignment the training

of NBC’s future announcers, andtakes over his new duties with a

formidable background 'n the edu-

cational field supplementing his

A.B. and M.A. degrees with a

course at Columbia University

leading to the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy.He is also director of the newly

organized Inter-College Facultyand Student discussion groupwhich embraces colleges of sevenstates, the purpose of which will

be to afford opportunities to mem-bers of the groups to exchangevisits with the respective colleges

and to air their views on modernday education in relation to its ef-

fect on economic developments in

the future.

Hudson Hawley, news editor of

the International Division, andFernand Auberjonois, chief of its

French section were due to appearbefore the members of the HonorsCollege of Wesleyan University,

Middletown, Connecticut, onWednesday, March 26, to tell of

the Division’s work in shortwavebroadcasting of news and opinion.

In late January. Mr. Hawley spokebefore the Faculty DiscussionCroup of Connecticut College,

New London, Connecticut, on free-

dom of radio and the press, andlater before two classes of stu-

dents at that institution on Inter-

national’s personnel and problems.On April 8, he is due to addressthe Bronxville, N. Y. Post, Ameri-can Legion, again on NBC’s “Towerof Babel.’’

Mr. Franklin Butler, graduate of

Dartmouth, AB, and the University

of Michigan Law School, LLB, has

GILBERT MARTYN

recently been added to the legal

staff, replacing Henry Howard, Jr.

resigned. Mr. Butler studied in theSorbonne in France and has beenadmitted to practice in the State

of New York.

Mr. E. Gardner Prime resumedwork as a member of the NewYork Legal Department on Mon-day, January 6th.

Marks Levine, NBC ConcertService, returned Monday, March3rd following a long and serious

illness.

Married: Janet Fitch (Con-tinuity Acceptance) to Edwin C.

Beal, Jr., October 5. Mr. Beal is

struggling for a Ph.D. in Far East-

ern studies at Columbia University,

after several years of teaching in

Japan and China. Graduate of OhioWesleyan University, member of

Phi Kappa Psi.

Miss Ann Morgan has been en-

gaged as Secretary-Stenographer to

Mr. A. L. Ashby, Vice President

and General Counsel. Miss Olive

E. Binz, who was temporarily

assisting in that capacity, is pres-

ently acting as Secretary to Mr. E.

Gardner Prime.Mr. Everett K. Deane, Columbia

College, ’39, has been engaged as

law clerk. Mr. Deane is a secondyear student at the New York LawSchool.

Robert “Bob” Baldwin, assistant

to Harold E. Bisson, Manager of

(CONTINUED ON SEVEN)

th tranzmiter, atenshun editer.

deer ed,

you probly think that i am stukbak heer in th infermashun divi-

shun wachin over my milyuns anall an sort uv out uv tuch withgoinz-on aroun guess relashuns anth male rum. well, such iz not th

case, so, bizzy as i am, ill relate

sum uv the stuf ive herd brootedabowt.

for th benifit uv thoze uv yoo-hoo seldum get into th offis sek-shun, its reely not so bad, wattwith beootiful blons wawkin arounan coca-cola masheens an all. uvcorse we dont hav ar-condishunmg,but i ges yoo cant hav evrythin.

well, as i started to say befor i

inerupted myself, an awful lot hashappend lately, flash! a comuni-kay frum th hi coman sez that doto th increest yoos uv metal by th

guverment, all bras buttins on uni-

forms will be replayst by lether

ones, unflash.

heer we go. amung thoze hoohav discarded there uniforms anwill hav to ware out there owncloze frum now on ar TOM (great-

stuff) DE HUFF, hoo haz gawn upinto saylz promoshun. th utherday he calld down to see if wenew watt size elephant cud be puton th rapper uv a candy bar. it

makz yoo wunder watt they spenthere time doin up stares. EDNELSON will now x-cept continuity

frum eny one hoo haz eny. HARRYBLACK iz in script, so if yoo haveny complaynts, see him. GEORGEWALLACE, hoo yoost to beet pee-

pil off with a club on the g.r. con-

trol desk, is now up in saylz selling

spotz an locals, wattevr that

meens. taking his place on th deskis JACK NEHER, hoo haz discarded

th club idea, he will now shoot onsite enyone hoo asks for a tikit.

JOHN KENNEDY, manestay on th

mez desk for nye on sixteen yeers,

left it for teknikul servis, wich iz a

fancy name for enjineering, i ges.

frum the male rum ELDRIDCEPACKHAM jumpt aroun like oneuv thoze mexican beens, firs to th

muszik divishun then up to muziklibry. heerz a hot one: BILLORANGE replacez JOE JENKINSin genrul servis, hoo replacez JACKLEONHARDT, hoo resined,az asis-

tent pos-master genrul with GENEKENNEDY in th male rum. phew!JIM GUIDER haz taken up rezi-

dense in the awditing dept, he al-

(KONTINYOOD ON SICKS)

MARCH. 1941 5

SKI_PARTY

in the Poconos

LET'S GETACQUAINTED

A total of 58 skiers left NewYork early Saturday morning in 15

private cars, arriving at the Lodgefor lunch. At lunch, arrangementswere made for 21 beginners

to take professional instruction.

About 25 others were taken onnovice trails by Mr. Coodale in

Television and Mr. Jack Melville

—

a personal friend of Mr. GlennPayne’s who volunteered his ser-

vices. The rest went off by them-selves or to Buck Hill Falls wherethere were steeper slopes and a

tow.

There were added attractions of

tobogganing and ice skating to

keep the group outdoors. Thetoboggan slide caused quite a bit

of excitement since it consisted

of solidly packed ice—500 feet

long. A few took advantage of the

opportunity to go dog-sledding.

After dinner on Saturday there

were horse races followed by danc-ing to recordings. Some preferred

to go outside to a village squaredance which was quite a treat.

However, for a Saturday night, it

was pretty much like the night be-

fore Xmas—most everybody wasso tired that long before midnight“not a creature was stirring, noteven a mouse.’’

The stock joke told was thestory about the clerical work as thecarloads were being revised andplanned from day to day. At thetop of the list was the first car-

load, ever unchanging—

“Sniffin-

Sniffin-Stewart and Martin.’’ It

sounded and looked like a lawfirm.

jimmy James and Murry Harris

seemed to be the unofficial

photographers and it was nothingunusual to hear someone yell

“Heh!” and find yourself lookinginto either of their cameras.

All 58 skiers agreed it was oneof the nicest NBC parties yet and,despite aches and pains andbruises, have been clamoring for

the next trip.

As we go to press the membersof the second NBC Ski Club safari

have just returned from two daysat North Creek, N. Y. with tannedhides, Alpine muscles and sometall stories. Reports have it thatlast trip’s beginners were doing

SWEETHEARTof Sigma Tour

Betty Randall, who sings themso warmly on the Blue Network,was inducted as an honorary mem-ber of the NBC Guide Staff. W. C.

Martin, Manager of Guest Rela-

tions, set an example of restraint

and decorum for his men.

five mile treks this time and that

progress in general was so great

that an Army talent scout wantedto sign them on the spot as ski

troops.

There was a genuine “native”barn dance which was liberally in-

termixed with NBCites.

For those of you who put a fine

point on such matters— In theupper right corner coming down at

you are Elaine Martin (Exec.) andGrace Sniffin (Treas.); sliding

down the first stripe we see thefinish of the toboggan, AshtonDunn and Helen M. Korday (Per-

sonnel) with Elsa Rudiger (Rad.

Rec.) in the background; Lucille

Lizotte (Gen. Ser.) taking timeout; and Elaine Martin learning

about dog sledding. ... At theleft end of stripe two, FlorenceMarin (Blue Sales), a guest, andAlice Cook (Television) display

the latest in smiles; Dorothy Lewis(Gen. Ser.) manipulates the skis;

Virginia Kelly (Red Sales) andEvelyn Sniffin (Spot Sales) greeteach other in passing; WalterGiebelhaus and Dorothy Lewis

(CONTINUED ON PACE SEVEN)

The tennis court in back of theHotel du Parc in Vichy is a long

way from Room 302, and the Em-peror of Annam plays a better

game than John Q. Public. Besides,

he doesn’t ask so many questions.

Ask Anita Barnard. She knows.The lady who

sits surroundedby cacklingtypewriters andscreaming tele-

phones, calmlysoothing that in-

satiable bird,curiosity,knows all theanswers. At least

she did, until her phone rang andsomeone asked her point-blankwhy the devil he was seeing tele-

vision in color when nobody else

was.Miss Barnard of the Information

Division of the Information De-partment, as they are wont to call

it, has, in spite of herself, becomea malleable combine of BeatriceFairfax, the Encyclopedia Britan-

nica. Dale Garnegie, and the GallupPoll. Sounds foolish? How else

would you describe somebody whois practically mother confessor to

an average of 38,000 souls a

month? And that’s a conservativeestimate of the number of monthlyinquiries, mail, telephone, and per-

sonal, that pour into the Informa-tion Division.

A haven for the uninformed,room 302, has grown, in its threeyears of life, to the point of

indispensability.

For your mastication and diges-

tion, the Information Division is

comprised of ten individuals, nineof whom are slightly mad. Theirheads bursting with consequentialfacts, they grope their way homeat night babbling, ‘Yagottawritein-twoweeksaheadfortickets !’ Thetenth? Miss B. Four years of rub-

bing elbows with the royal familyof Sweden, sipping tea with Edith

Wharton and Anna Case, musicalsoireeing with Stravinsky, Chali-

apin, Rachmaninoff, and Paderew-ski, and, oh, yes, playing tennis

with the Emperor of Annam, havem,ade her feel quite at home withJohn Public or John Public, Esq.

6

WASHINGTONNBC TRANSMITTER

NBC TRANSMITTERPublished for and by the NBCpersonnel from coast to coast.

VOL. 7 MARCH, 1941 No. 1

EDITOR Charles L. TurnerASSISTANT EDITOR

Herbert Warren WindCIRCULATION MANAGER

Tom De HuffASSOCIATES Steve de Baun

Jim ManillaCharles Norwood

Raine ThomasMargaret Wyvill

Address all correspondence to; NBC Trans-mitter, National Broadcasting Company,Room 465, RCA Building, New York, N. Y.Telephone; Circle 7-83U0. Extension 220.

DEER ED KONTINYOOD

wayz wuz gud at figgers. an muzik-ly speekin, AL BENGTSEN, grad-uut uv th artis servis clas, now haza desk uv hiz very own up in con-sort servis, wile ADDY AMOR iz

a feeld representativ for th servis.

JAGK CRUTGHER haz becum a

tulfleged parlay-vooer in inter-

nashnul. PAUL HUTGHINSON is

informing th publik like mad frumrum 302 insted uv th nynth flore.

a buck (thatz one $ to thozeuv yoo-hoo liv in noo jersy) to eny-one hoo can ges th number uvfellows hoo hav left us for th army,eether by invitashun or vol. notakes.^ 22. amung ar fettered frensar; JOE BURGER, RALPH KEN-DALL, PHIL HARTNETT, JIM(very-few-hares-left) NIX, JAGKREYNOLDS, BILL O’MEARA, KEN(you-no-me-al) FEES, STU BILL-HART, PETE KUGHMY, TOM(did’nt-get-to-bed-last-nite) CAN-NING, JACK MC FALL, BILLWILEY, BOB PARKE, ED (theres-

no-l-in-my-name) ROFF, BILLMIDDLETON, (the) BARONCHANDLER, well, hoo iznt theezdays.^

well, ed, ol kid, i ges ive bentyoor eer long enuf. i hope i showdyoo i hav bin keepin up withthings, evin tho i spen so much uvmy time cownting my milyuns (it

sez heer),that i barely hav time

for a kwik cup uv java durin th

day. hopin yoo ar th same, i amyoor fren,

scoop(x) my sinichur.

Station WMAL has dedicatedand put into operation its newtransmitter located in nearbyMontgomery County, Maryland.The $200,000 plant went on theair the first part of February withan increase in power to 5,000watts day and night. EngineersWadsworth, Fischer, Burg, Sim-mons and Rogers accomplished thetransition from the old downtowntransmitter to the new without a

hitch. Their biggest reward was a

home-cooked meal from thekitchen of the four-room apart-

ment in the transmitter building.

The building is of colonial de-sign and, in addition to the modernapartment, contains a large trans-

mission room, a high voltage room,and a workshop. The new trans-

mitter was appropriately dedicatedwith a special program from the

WMAL studios. Participating wereWilliam S. Hedges, Vice Presidentin Charge of Stations; KennethBerkeley, station manager; Flem-ing Newbold, Vice President of

the Evening Star which ownsWMAL; and representatives of

various community interests.

THE START OF THE MILE

The NBC Washington-EveningStar Mile O’ Dimes campaign wasconcluded on February 1 when co-

directors Announcer Bryson Rashand Star Radio Editor Bill Coyleturned over to Major-GeneralWatson, presidential secretary,

more than $27,000 in dimes in a

special ceremony at the WhiteHouse. This represented an in-

crease of $10,000 over the amountcollected last year. Gredit for the

success of this year’s effort goesto Rash and Coyle, to AnnouncerDorian St. George who contactedthe government departments whichwere the greatest source of con-tributions, to Kibitzers Larry

Marino and Toby David who enter-

tained at the street stand, and to

Auditor Rudy Goldenstroth whohandled the money bags.

WRG-WMAL first launchedtheir Mile O’ Dimes plan in 1939.The Gommittee to Celebrate the

President’s Birthday was so pleasedwith the returns that it borrowed

Tom Knode

Station WMAL’s new transmit-ter, showing the transmissionbuilding correct in Colonial, andthree of the four 400-foot towers.

Night Supervisor Charles Barry,

the director of our first two cam-paigns, to organize similar drives

at other stations throughout thecountry.

BAGATELLES

New faces: Bill Neel, trans-

ferred from N. Y. Press . . . Engi-

neers Nick Close and L. A. McClel-land also N. Y. transferees . . .

Semi-new faces: Engineer JohnStetson, from summer relief to

permanent status . . . MargeBrown, retired front-office secre-

tary, back in re-emphasized musicdepartment . . . Seen at ATE Danceat the Carlton: Announcer DonFischer Washington’s foremostclass lA man, and his financee . . .

Virginia Hawk swinging withoutbenefit of music . . . Around-the-office circuit: Musicman Jim Seiler

with hair bleached a new shade bya Florida vacation sun . . . Sales-

man Stanley Bell with his hand in

that GHA envelope . . . Sales Pro-

motioner John Marshall Dinwiddle(he insists on it all) back from a

“meeting” trip to New York . . .

Hostess Rose Ewell answering fan

letter from Manila. Rose can ex-

pect mail from Tibet now that the

power’s been increased.

MARCH. 1941 7

NAMES IN THE NEWS CONTINUED

Promotion Production was favoredlast month with a surprise send-off party. Bob is a member of theold Seventh Regiment and was re-

cently called into service at CampStewart, Georgia.

Ethel C. Sham of the BudgetOffice is convinced that Charles B.

Bardong is the one and only.

Howard Selger of the NBC Re-search Division was married to

Miss Claire Asplint of Metropoli-tan Life Insurance Company onFebruary 8 at Bergenfield, NewJersey.

Edward Broadhurst of theGraphic Section of the ResearchDivision became engaged to MissGrace O’Neill of Nevins ChurchPress on Saturday, January 1 1. Thewedding date has been set for June14 at the Little Church Aroundthe Corner and the couple planto honeymoon at Cape Cod.

William S. Sampson, formerlyof Lever Brothers, Cambridge,Massachusetts, has joined theranks of the Research Division.

What’s the attraction that drawshim back there weekends?.?.?

Norman Cloutier is in Radio Re-cording as Music Advisor. . . .

Leighton Blood has joined thePress Department as trade publica-tions contact. . . . Harry B. Sum-mers is educational contact in

Public Service. . . . Irene Kuhnjoins Press as a writer. . . . BeatriceEiges is in the office of Directorof Talks William Burke Miller. . . .

Arthur Force may be found in

Special Events. . . . Edward J. Hor-nick and John L. Bauer are nowwith Concert Service. . . . JohnKennedy has entered TechnicalServices. . . . John Tracy draws his

check from Radio Recording. . . .

Maynard Stitt swells the ranks ofPress. . . . Arthur Anderson leavesMail for Reference Recording. . . .

Burt Adams is relating stations. . . .

Otto Brandt likewise (say this

thing is catching on) .... DorothySchute can now tell you all aboutthe Treasurer’s office. . . . Bill Han-na bypasses Duplicating for AirConditioning. . . . Ann Kent SpotsLocals. . . . Bill Neel went fromNew York Press to WashingtonPress. . . . Leslie Vaughan is in

Auditing. . . . make it HowardCann to Blue Sales. . . . Don Camp-bell to Jr. Sales—Blue. . . . An-nouncer Leon Leak is called to thecolors. . . . Phil Falconi (Engineer-

ing) is in the Army where he mayrun into Jack Anderson (SoundEffects)

.

SKI PARTY CONTINUED(Gen. Ser.) are seen near thetoboggan; Dorothy Michel (Traf-fic) takes to the ice; Miss Kordayand Dudley Goodale (Eng.), whoorganized the ski trek, survey theresults of their work. The third

swath finds Dan Schmidt (Rad.Rec.), Helen Gooper (Tele.) andMargaret Wyvill (Red Sales)

exuding joie de vivre; Don Castle(Eng.), Miss Korday and Mr.

Goodale in return engagement;Harry Wightman (Mus. Lib.), a

guest, Mrs. Wightman, anotherguest, and Matt Boylan (Purchas-ing) try seated transportation,Murry Harris is caught in the act.

And if you are still with us, thenext and last band reveals Elaine

Martin again, with Jessie Stewart(Treas.); Charles Wall (Prog.)

doing a little infigurating exercise;one of the day’s visual treats; anddown right it’s Onawa Lodge, in

the Poconos. Down left Alice Brad-ford (Press) and guest MartinRypins embark.

8 NBC TRANSMITTER

CHICAGO

THERE’LL BE SOME CHANCES MADE

Three new studios and eight

new offices are being built at theNBC Chicago studios. Howard C.

Luttgens, Central Division engi-

neer, drew up the plans for thenew facilities, made necessary bythe constant growth of Chicago as

a broadcasting center. J. C. Strang,NBC New York construction engi-

neer, is supervising the building.

In approving the construction,Harry C. Kopf, General Manager of

the division, pointed out that in

1928 the NBC Central Division

headquarters consisted of one stu-

dio and two offices putting on oneprogram a day. “Now, when thenew studios are completed aboutApril 1,” Mr. Kopf commented,“we shall have 13 studios in whichwill originate more than 1,800programs a month.”

The new offices will providequarters for the Radio RecordingDivision, Program Traffic, Com-munications, Night Manager, andMusical Director. All the new stu-

dios and offices will be completelyair-conditioned. Plans also call for

expansion of the present Radio-Recording facilities and for thecomplete renovation of Studio A.

WE ARE SEVEN

Seven WENR veterans whocame to NBC with that station onMarch 1, 1931, celebrated their

tenth anniversary with the com-pany at a special luncheon. Amongthose present were Paul McCluer,Red Sales manager; Ed Boroff, BlueSales manager; Engineer HaroldJackson; B. C. Swift of the Pro-

gram department; and OrganistsLarry Larsen and Irma Glen. All

seven— last of the band which in-

vaded the studios in the Merchan-dise Mart a decade ago—regaled

each other with tales of the pio-

neer days.

Goincidentally enough, the cele-

bration of this tenth anniversarywas preceded a few weeks by the

sale of the old WENR transmitterproperty at Downers Grove to the

Great Lakes Garbon Gorporation.The new owners plan to convertthe “Voice Of Service” building

into a research laboratory.

WENR and WMAQ joined with

Kissing The Boys Goodbye:Evelyn Lynne, congenial NBGsinger, blows a goodbye kiss to

three Ghicago employes “off to theservice”.

the Ghicago Daily Times in run-ning the “Mile O’Dimes” campaignin Ghicago. At the end of thedrive, NBG turned a check for

$16,538.40 over to Herbert Lor-ber, Ghairman of the Gook GountyGhapter of the National Founda-tion. Special Events manager K. D.

Fry, George Bolas, and JohnThompson handled most of the de-tails of the successful campaign.

Judith Waller, Educational Di-

rector for the NBG Gentral Divi-

sion, has been honored on twooccasions since the publication ofthe last NBC Transmitter. Her first

honor came when the SchoolBroadcast Conference presentedMiss Waller the First AnnualAward of Merit “in recognition of

her services to radio education”.Following on this. Theta Phi Eta,

the national professional speecharts fraternity, elected her to hon-orary membership and initiated herat Northwestern University.

IN THE SPRING, YOU KNOWDurwood Kirby, popular stooge

for Ransom Sherman on the NBCClub Matinee and NBC CentralDivision announcer, caught therhythm of St. Valentine’s Day andbecame engaged to Mary Paxton,

Dan Thompson

pretty radio writer and announcerof the Stack Coble Agency. Kirbywas encouraged to take this stepby Announcer Dave Carroway whomarried Miss Adele Sawyer onFebruary 1 5, and by AnnouncerHenry Cooke who sauntered altar-

ward on February 19 with MissMary Fickes.

PERSONAL PARADE

Frank Blatter of Sound Effectshas a second child now, a boy. He’scomparing notes with W. J. Mc-Edwards, Local Sales, who had his

second, a girl, during the holidayseason. . . . Grace Beeby, Agricul-tural department secretary, had a

chance to display extra-specialNBC service recently when a farm-er and his wife came all the wayfrom Arkansas with their 2-year-old son to see a broadcast of theNational Farm and Home Hour.Youngsters of that age aren’t ad-mitted to broadcasting studios, soMiss Beeby promptly dropped pen-cils, papers, and program schedulesand set about entertaining thebaby while mama and papa sawthe big network show. Miss Beebywas once a baby herself. . . . Hit of

the year in Wheaton is Special

Events manager K. D. Fry’s singingwith the P-T-A double-quartet.None of the boys at NBC knew hehad a musical note in him, for all

they ever hear is “No!”. . . . How-ard T. Crissey, NBC Chicago engi-

neering stock clerk, swaggersaround these days. Crissey bowleda perfect 300 while showing off

before NBC Champs Ed Davies andGeorge Bolas. That Press gang, in-

cidentally, is still trying to learn

to bowl, but the secretary of theoutfit is regularly bribed to hide all

scores. . . . The envy of the Engi-

neering department is Curt Pierce

who spent six weeks in Miamimonitoring the Dr. I. Q. show.Irma Glen, Agnes Seward, Fort

Pearson, Bob Brown, Ray Neihen-gen, and Adele Crawford wereothers who went south for spring

training.

So you can see that Spring finds

Chicago flexing its muscles andlooking about a bit expectantly for

new red and blue fields to con-quer.

MARCH. 1941 9

ATHLETIC ASSOCIATIONBASEBALL

The NBC baseball team, disre-

garding the recent heavy snowfall,issued plans this past week for thecoming diamond campaign.

"The prospects of a champion-ship nine this Summer is no longera mere possibility”, according to

Jack Wahlstrom, playing-managerfor the past few years. "With suchreturning veteran stars as ConnieNicholas and George Flood, formerVillanova College battery mates.Bill Little, Manhattan College in-

fielder for the past four years, andthose reliable NBC campaignersFrank Crowley, Jack Garland, Ed-die Nathan, Dorm Albert and thehard hitting Pete Bonardi return-ing once again to the diamondwars, our outlook seems the bestin recent years.”

Again this year NBC will enterthe race for the New York FilmLeague crown. The league includesour friendly rivals. RockefellerCenter, and the other usually

strong clubs. Paramount Pictures,

MCM, Consolidated Film, Simplexand Skouras. Arrangements will

also be made to play our brothers,the strong RCA Camden team in a

home-and-home series.

Although at present handicap-ped by bad weather, the boys areshaking off that Winter lethargyin gyms around the city. And fromall indications they are gettingthemselves into condition for

NBC’s biggest year on the diamond.

BOWLINGFrom 75 to 80 people have been

bowling regularly every Thursdaynight. Over 100 are registered.

The bowlers are proud of their

record, feel that they are truly themost active 100% AA group, sinceyou have to be a member of AAto join.

There are twelve teams, rep-

resenting nine departments. All

are men except one team of ladies

who, at this point, have won ex-actly as many games as they havelost in competition with the men—33.

The season ends April 10, andplans are being made for the an-nual dinner which will probably beheld April 17, at which time prizes

will be awarded. New bowlers arealways welcome. Get in touch withthe Captain of your departmentalteam or call George Milne in En-gineering—Ext. 371.

Mr. McElrath, Engineering No.2, Room 517; Mr. Nicol, Auditing,Room 600; Mr. Lowell, GeneralService No. 1 ,

Room 317; Mr. Bur-holt, Sales Research, Room 300;Miss Michel, Ladies Team, Room560; Mr. Mack, Program, Room400; Mr. Kost, Sales, Room 412;Mr. Berrien, Guest Relations,Room 573; Mr. Hayes, GeneralService No. 2, Room 317; Mr. Mat-hew, Traffic, Room 560; Mr.Facer, Artists Service, Room 500.

DANCINGMary Coyne says that dancing

classes at Arthur Murray’s Studiosbegin their new series on Wednes-day March 1 ,

from 6 to 7 P.M. Thevote so far is very heavy on therhumba, conga side. Anyone still

interested in coming call her onExt. 561. $5.00 for the ten les-

sons. Excellent chance to brush upfor the NBC AA Spring Dance.

RIDINGWhen we asked Mr. Van Hou-

ten for news he revealed that theNBC Riding Club had been ready-ing a "spring announcement"about the second week in Marchwhen You Know What happened.Although it postponed the notice,

it did not prevent those of thegroup well stocked with capsulevitamins A, B, Bl, C, D86, andV69 from digging out and enjoy-ing their regular Saturday after-noon jaunt in Jersey. For, dis-

believe it if you will, many of theboys and girls have been in thesaddle all winter.

While continuing the regularSaturday afternoon ride, there arepossibilities that a beginners groupwill be started to bring the neo-phytes up to the old liners pro-ficiency.

Daylight Saving Time may makepracticable a long evening ride andif there are enough insatiables theafternoon group may continue un-abated.

Under the new Athletic Asso-ciation arrangement, AA members

will have part of their riding ex-penses defrayed. Present rates area dollar an hour, but Mr. Shower-man has assured Mr. Van Houtenthat within a very short time thenew arrangement will be in effect.

SOFT BALLAttempting to formulate plans

for Spring season right now.Would like to have anyone whois interested write Steere Mathewin room 560 or call him on ex-tension 695. Last year enough menwere interested to form two goodteams, from which one very goodteam was chosen. They beat thepicked WCY Schenectady boys atthe outing and journeyed to Sche-nectady where they were beatenin turn.

This year Mr. Mathew wouldlike to have at least four teams sothat the men could get in someLeague competition. Also he wouldlike to arrange for the games to beplayed nearer the RCA base, andwill start working on it as soon ashe knows how many are interested.

SKATINGSince the last issue of the Trans-

mitter there have been eight ice

skating parties arranged by MaryZostant of the Research Division,

one of which was a combinationice skating, dining and dancingparty.

Mary Zostant says that amongthe regular skaters, a great im-provement has been noticed; mostof them having abandoned the"Figure Eleven” for the "FigureEight”. All this great enthusiasmfor fancy figures is no doubt due to

an envy for the perfect form of

J. L. Hathaway of Engineering.He flies into space — comesdown on his feet

We can’t help admit he’s grace-ful and fleet.

To see him you think of a bird

on the wing.To watch the others, oh well,

why say anything?Since the season is fast drawing

to a close, we would like to urgeeveryone to take advantage of thelast few parties being arranged for

their pleasure and to come out andskate with their NBC friends.

10 NBC TRANSMITTER

WHAT DO DENVERYOU KNOW^

If you’ve been with NBC threemonths you should be able to an-swer correctly five of the followingquestions; if you’ve been with us

a year or so you should know the

answers to at least ten of thesequestions, but if you’re an old-

timer— say, three or more years,

you shouldn’t have to turn to pagetwelve at all for the correct an-swers.—And if you’ve been with NBCless than six months and you knowall the answers come to the NBCTRANSMITTER office or send us a

picture. We want to look at you.

1 . What do the following standfor: FCC, IBU, NAB. BBC. BBD& 0 ?

2. How many NBC affiliated

stations are there?3. What are the titles of Phil-

lips Carlin, Margaret Cuthbert,

Janet MacRorie?4. What is contained in the

NBC THESAURUS library?

5. How many NBC studios are

there in Radio City?6. In radio production, what is

the meaning of nemo; on the nose?7. Where are the transmitters

for WEAF, WjZ, W2XBS located?

8. Define carrier wave. Clear

channel.9. Who is chairman of the

board of NBC?10. Iconoscope and coaxial cable

are terms relating to what?1 1 . Who sponsors the Metro-

politan Opera program on Saturdayafternoons?

12. At what time do the NBCnetworks in New York open andclose?

13. Dish-pan, ribbon and tomatocan are terms to describe what?

14. Explain the following termswhich have been used in the radio

section of Variety: loop, juve, P.A.,

spieler, wax.

NBC newcomers are cordially

invited to take the NBC StudioTour as the best and quickest wayof seeing and learning about the

broadcasting plant in Radio City.

Present your employe’s pass at the

Guest Relations Division, Room254, for complimentary passes for

the NBC Studio Tour.

It’s “Welcome to Denver’’ for

Grade Fields, British Relief emis-sary, whose warm, from-the-soil

humor means to the English whatWill Rogers’ meant to Americans.Miss Fields is the first blonde fromthe left.

IN THE FOCUS

Tor Torland, one of KOA’s crackannouncers, takes the first bow.Tor recently led the Golorado teamwhich participated in the Jeffers

Gup Ski Tourney at Sun Valley. . . .

Grade Fields, the famous English

comedienne, was warmly welcom-ed at the airport when she arrived

to present a local program for

British War Relief. General Man-ager Lloyd E. Yoder, Assistant

Manager Owen, and Mr. Jack Ly-

man were on hand along with a

number of Denver socialites andpublic figures. . . . Ruth Ghatter-ton of the stage and screen wasinterviewed by Starr Yelland in a

special broadcast while she was in

town starring in the road show of

“Pygmalion”. . . . General ManagerLloyd E. Yoder has been appointedto the Rodeo Association of Amer-ica as a member of the NationalPublicity Gommittee along withSports Editor Harry B. Smith of the

San Francisco Ghronicle, WalterBrown of Boston, John Bruener of

the Gheyenne post of The Associ-

ated Press, and others who are

keenly interested in horses of dif-

ferent cholers. . . . Don Martin es-

tablished a splendid record of com-plete newspaper cooperation in the

recent KOA Mile O’Dimes Cam-

Evadna B Hammersley

paign, and this greatly con-tributed to a successfuldrive.

COMINGS AND GOINGS

A new announcer hasbeen added to the KOAstaff, Martin Tobin of

Kansas City. . . . Virginia

Anderson of General Officeis back at work after a

leave of absence due to ill-

ness. . . . Al McClelland,Transmitter Engineer, hasbeen called to active dutyon the West Coast withthe U. S. Naval Reserve. . . .

Starr Yelland attended a meetingin Kansas City of announcers fromstations carrying programs for Nu-trena Mills. . . . Newcomers to KOAare Betty Brown, who will succeedGeorge Mathews when he joins

the Army, and Jeanne Carter, whowill take over the post of recep-tionist and switchboard operatorformerly held by Thelma Ericksonwho has resigned.

STATISTICS VITAL AND NEARLY VITAL

Stan Neal of the KOA ControlRoom is now the papa of a brandnew baby girl tagged Janet Louise.. . . Andrew Gainey, soloist on theRed Network show “Serenade ToLoveliness” and a member of theGuest Relations staff, was marriedon January 20th to Miss CeorgeneMichael, who has played dramaticroles on KOA programs. . . . KOAannouncers faced a near disaster

during the recent National West-ern Stock Show when a wildBrahma steer in the arena chargedthe microphone. The red cloak of

the clown, Holmer Holcomb, di-

verted him in the proverbial nick

of time. Shortly afterwards, a wild

horse got his head and forefeet

over the chute rail and sent Pro-

duction Manager' jack Lymanchasing for the fence to escape the

flailing hooves.

Recently Program Director Clar-

ence C. Moore recorded his 12th

year as Toastmaster for the 4-HClub District Banquet.

Next time you’re out Denver

way drop in and pay KOA a visit.

It’s a grand bunch.

MARCH, 1941

CLEVELANDBob Dailey

STATICALAN KENT

and STEVE DE BAUN

THE FIRST IN THE SERIES

The new NBC series, “AmericaIn Defense”, got off to a vigorousstart in late February, with thefirst program coming from Cleve-land, a center of the machine tool

industry. Production Man Paul

Dumont and Announcer Milo Bol-

ton came out from Radio City to

work with WTAM staff membersand Larry Hammond of the Na-tional Association of Manufactur-ers for the initial broadcast. HalMetzger, WTAM Program Direc-

tor, and S. E. Leonard, Engineer-in-Charge, worked out the details of

the complex show. When it wasover, some simple logarithm dis-

closed that the following membersof the WTAM staff had takenpart: Announcers Tom Manning,Wade Barnes, and John Hicks;Production Men Fred Wilson andWaldo Pooler; and Engineers JohnDisbrow, Jesse Francis, ThomasCox, Grant Makinson, and FrankWhittam. George Milne, NBG di-

vision engineer from New York,was on hand to make observations.

SPOT NEWSWTAM announcer Harry Burge

is the man behind the cheery ma-tutinal greetings heard daily on theprogram called “Ghanticleers”.This feature of the Red Network is

produced at WTAM and spotlights

the orchestra of WTAM’s MusicDirector, Lee Gordon.

Manager Vernon H. Pribble andAnnouncer Tom Manning headedinto downstate Ohio several weeksago. Pribble addressed an educa-tional forum in Columbus on“Radio and the Press in Defense”.Manning’s mission was more extra-curricular. He spoke at a testimon-ial dinner in Massilon for PaulBrown, the new football coach at

Ohio State University.

Five members of the VvTAMstaff orchestra journeyed to NewYork recently to play at CarnegieHall with The Cleveland SymphonyOrchestra. They are Ben Silver-

berg, Paul Cershman, Sam Willis,

Bob Morris, and John Coffey.

Announcer Wade Barnes had a

somewhat disturbing experiencewhen he invited a nine-year-old

HARRY BURGE

prodigy to appear on his musicalquiz show, “Know Your Notes”.Young Kenneth Wolfe (9-years-9)not only knew the answers to all

the questions, but he also pipedup before any of the adult “ex-perts” could collect their thoughts.

RIBBON VELOCITY

Production Director Fred Wilsongoing around the studios with his

left hand in a sling. A gas heaterblew up in the basement of his

home, thoughtlessly. . . . News Re-porters Harry Burge and TomFields both getting new automo-biles on the same day. . . . MarianHercik, head of the Steno depart-ment, wearing a pearl engagementring, on the right finger. . . . Kath-ryn O’Connell, of the AudienceMail department, and Emily Brick-son, of the News Room, makingfrequent trips to Toledo andYoungstown to see friends. . . .

Mildred Funnell, secretary to Man-ager Pribble, having “before-and-after” pictures taken while work-ing out in a downtown women’sgym. . . . Announcers Tom Man-ning and Wade Barnes screeningnewsreels for the opening of a newTelenews Theatre. The openingshow also had some good shots ofManager Pribble, in depicting theCleveland radio stations and news-papers.

PACE: Wears blue citation cordon left shoulder, chip on right

shoulder. Can dial ext. 780 blind-folded with both hands tied behindhim. Is the only human extantcapable of decoding a rehearsalsheet.

QUIZ PROGRAM: ‘The Passing of

the Third Floor Buck’.

AIR CONDITIONING: Once upona time someone dropped one mil-lion dollars ($1,000,000.00) onthe tenth (10) floor; the result

was an air-conditioning plant for

delivering seventy-two (72) de-grees of controlled air. It seems to

us that one million ($1,000,000)is a lot of money to spend for a

draft, especially today, when somany of us are getting it free. If

all that was wanted was a draft,

why didn’t someone wave fifty

dollars ($50.00), disguised as a

fee, around the Announcer’sRoom? The resultant bare-fangedrush for the scratch would havecreated a draft that would haveundoubtedly circulated for years.

And when that had died out Con-cert Service would still be creatinga mild typhoon trying to put thebite on their proteges for their

customary ten per cent.

VICE PRESIDENT; One ear to theground, one eye on the budget, a

nose to the grindstone, one shoul-der to the wheel, one hand on thepulse, one finger in the pie. Mixwell with one upper lip until stiff.

Sweeten to taste, garnish withchopped memos. Excellent as anentree.BOARD MEETING; Censored.DIRECTORY: Wherein can befound all telephone numbers (ex-

cept correct ones),all departments

(except important ones), lunchservices, blind dates, and Hurley’s.

MUSIC LIBRARY: The only library

in the world where they don’tcram ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’

down your throat.

OFFICE; Can usually be identified

as belonging to any one individual

by the constant absence from its

confines of that one individual.

Has, as equipment, one large filing

cabinet and one small filing cabinet(which are interchangeable) ; onelarge wastebasket and one smallsecretary (not interchangeable)

.

12 NBC TRANSMITTER

ON THE SHELF EXCHANGE ANSWERSIn Our Library

NBC’s news room boss, A. A.Schechter, has turned out a vol-

ume called “I Live on Air,”* whichwill do for a radio Bible until somenew James, John, Peter or Paulcomes along. (And bring a sponsor!)

“I Live on Air” deals only withAbe Schechter’s work; news andspecial events. The news sectionis the history of radio’s struggle to

remind newspapers that there wasa Town Crier before anyone start-

ed printing news. It’s the history

of how newspapers fought newsvoices, the modern Town Crier, andhow Abe Schechter and his long-

distance phone worked aroundtheir strict boycott. A solutionwas finally reached, and that bat-tery of teletypes in NBC’s newsroom is the result.

Special events Schechter recordsin full, from the epic Graf Speescuttling and the Scoop of Munichdown to the Singing Mice contest.The book moves as fast as Schech-ter, which is fast. Don’t expect a

sociological study of What RadioMeans to the World Today. In “I

Live on Air” the accent’s on “live”—bustling, racy, vivid stories of

the “air” we all live on.

*“l Live on Air,” Frederick Stokes—$3.75.

FOR SALE— 17 miles from GeorgeWashington Bridge— Hudson

River waterfront property— 8rooms, 3 baths, garage—beautiful

grounds, water-fall, brook and pool—zoned village. Sacrifice. Gall

Ext. 231.

SHARE SUNNY apartment. With-in walking distance of Radio

City. Inexpensive, pleasantly ap-pointed. Call Kathleen Goddard,Ext. 613.

FOR SALE—L. C. Smith GoronaPortable A-1 condition. Price

$30. Gontact A. Frank Jones, Gon-cert Service.

THREE ROOMS—4th Floor Walk-up. Sunny and pleasant. Four

closets. $55. Unfurnished. Subletuntil October 1. Call Ext. 431.Cordon Vanderwarker. 336 East

71st—71st and First Avenue.

FURNISHED APARTMENT— Six

rooms, two bedrooms, 34 foot

living room with natural fireplace

and baby grand piano. Five blocksfrom station. Reasonable. Address92 Bayview Avenue, Port Wash-ington, Long Island. Or call JackWahlstrom—Guest Relations NBC.FOR SALE— Plymouth Coupe—

’36 model. Motor recently over-

hauled. Passed New Jersey Test.

Swell for Spring. BertSchlanger, CR.

To questions on page ten

1 . Federal Communications Com-mission.

International BroadcastingUnion.National Association of Broad-casters.

British Broadcasting Corpora-tion.

Batten, Barton, Durstine & Os-borne.

2. Two hundred and thirty.

3. Red Network Program Man-ager.

Director of Women’s and Chil-

dren’s Division.

Editor of Continuity Accept-ance.

4. Recordings or electrical tran-

scriptions, for broadcasting.5. Thirty-one.6. Broadcast originating outside

the studio facilities.

Perfect timing— program onschedule.

7. WEAF—Port Washington, L. I.

WJZ—Bound Brook, N. J.

W2XBS—Empire State Bldg.

8. The carrier wave is a continu-ous number of constant vibra-

tions (or a wave) betweenwhose limits the broadcasttravels. In short, the carrier

wave “carries” the programfrom the transmitter to the re-

ceiver,

A clear channel is one whichis used by only one station

within a certain area. (i.e.

WJZ is always at 770 kc.)

9. David Sarnoff.

1

0.

Television.

1 1 . The Texas Company.12. Normally 8;00 A.M. to 1:00

A.M. (Locals 6:30 A.M.)

.

1 3. Microphones.1 4. Loop—network.

Juve—juvenile.

PA—press agent.Spieler—news commentator or

announcer.Wax—record or electrical tran-

scription.

MARCH FIVE YEARS AGOThe millionth tour guest ex-

pected soon. Company dance onthe 20th in the Hotel Great North-ern’s Grystal Room featuring RudyVallee and his Gonnecticut Yan-kees. ”01 Sporting Life” Al Walkerbought the first ticket. P.S.—cash!

POSTAGE DUEFrom NBC's Information Division

Dear Sirs:

I wrote you a letter about two weeks ago, to which I havereceived no reply. If you did receive it won’t you kindly reply? Onthe other hand, if you did not receive it, let me know and I will

write again.

Yours truly,

I write to ask how much you offer for news featuring how I

pulled my own back tooth and how I pull out my corns on thebottom of my foot.

Yours very truly.

Believing that small fellows can have suggestive ideas, I submitthe following to you . . .

Guest Relations Manager Jerry Martin received these

—

The National Broad Casting Companyand

The Quest Relations Deportment30 Rockafellow Plaza

MARCH. 1941 13

WINE OFCHOICEON ACTIVE SERVICECompany Sergeant Major

Mark Casel 53038No. 3 Armoured Car Co.South Africa Tank CorpM.F.F.; U.D.F.Army P. O. Nairobi18 XII 40

Dear Sirs:

Your programme featuring re-

lays from the Metropolitan OperaHouse has afforded the men of myCompany a tremendous amount of

pleasure.

Situated as we are, hundreds of

miles from civilization in the cen-tre of Africa’s blazing desert, it

was a relief to listen to somethingdifferent from the interminableblaze of propaganda punctuatedby ill-chosen dance music that is

poured from every station day andnight.

Your commentator painted aninteresting and vivid picture of thescenery, and though tired and hot,

the commentary held us through-out the performance. It was a

night well spent, and we are look-

ing forward to the next broadcast,“Don Pasquale.’’

In such times as these, musicand more so the music of the opera,provides the one sane haven of

refuge in this world of turmoil.

Congratulations to your sponsor,and our appreciation to all con-cerned.

Yours very sincerely,

C. S. M. Mark CaselLance Corporal E. V. R. KingLance Corporal I. A. FischStaff Sergeant Max

Colin-Twersky

Co. “C” 155th Infantry (r) Reg.,

31st Division, A. P. O. No. 31

Camp Blanding, Florida

I should like to take this meansof telling you how much I appre-ciate the opportunities the NBCoffers for hearing good music.

I am a young man who is nowserving his year of military trainingand since I have been in camp, theradio has been my only contactwith the best musical literature.

Cood music is the one thing I havemissed most during the last twomonths. At home . . . our small

Victor record library has been a

number of years in the makingand limited funds have forced usto make careful selections. How-ever, I believe that we can boastthe very “cream” of musical re-

cordings among our thirty someodd albums and approximatelythree hundred single records.

But it is not about my family’scollection of recordings that I in-

tended to write. I mention themjust to give you some idea of howmuch I appreciate the opportuni-ties for hearing good music.

There are many programs whichI should like to mention. Numberone program is the broadcast everySunday morning by Dr. CharlesCourboin and this is followedclosely by the NBC Symphonybroadcast on Saturday night andthe Metropolitan Opera broadcaston Saturday afternoon.

I have written you this ratherdisjointed letter because I am in-

formed that the National Broad-casting Company desires to knowthe likes and dislikes of its listen-

ers.

I feel that your company is do-ing something that is greatly ap-preciated by music lovers in thebroadcasting of good music. I sin-

cerely hope that as time goes onthere will be more demand for this

type music, for I know that theNBC will keep oace with the musi-cal development of the listening

public.

Sincerely yours,

A D W

PERSONNEL GROUPThe NBC Discussion Croup or-

ganized by Personnel ManagerAshton Dunn has been featuringunusual opportunities for roundtable discussion of all aspects of

the industry with virtually everyexecutive of the company. Plans

are already under way for a newtwo year cycle to begin this Fall.

Contact the Personnel Office at

any time.

RADIO RECORDINGTemple Black joined the sales

force during February. . . . Bill

Cartland was drafted and is in themedical detachment at Falmouth.Mass. . . . Bill Ogden took joe Pep-per’s departure for an entrancecue. ... Ed Ehrich found March a

swell month in which to get

married.. . . Barry Schenck is one

of the most recent additions. . . .

C. Lloyd Egner is displaying proofof the Florida sun.

NEW MEN IN G. R.

Promotions within the company,and the drafting of many of ournumber into various branches ofour National Defense program,have brought about many changesin the personnel of NBC NewYork. From January first to theend of February, 35 men from al-

most as many walks of life havejoined the Guest Relations division.

"QUOTATION MARKS”“I have been told that radio in America is ‘utterly commercial-

ized,’ but commerce did one great thing for radio— it took it awayfrom centralized authority on the one side and from the esthetictyrant on the other.”

—DEMOCRACY by Gilbert Seldes, GOSMOPOLITAN, 1937.

“Surely we need not fear the influence of false philosophy on theminds of our own people if we look toward the new horizons of

industry which our inventive genius, our research, and our natural

resources disclose. The security which we can build makes thesecurity offered by dictatorship look pale by comparison. Theimagination and skill of our scientists, our engineers, and our workerscan be directed toward raising the living standard of all our people:toward creating a better life for ourselves instead of plotting a worselife for our neighbors. Our security will be attained by adding to

human liberties, not by subtracting from human rights.”

—NEW HORIZONS OF INDUSTRYSpeech by David Sarnoff

January, 1941

14 NBC TRANSMITTER

HOLLYWOODNoel Corbett

BUSINESS AND PLEASURE

No grass grew under the feet of

Don E. Gilman, Vice-President in

charge of the Western Division,

during January. On a tour of thePacific Northwest, he addressedthe Ad Club in San Francisco, theChamber of Commerce banquet in

Seattle, and the Rotary Club in

Portland. In between businessconferences and his talks, Mr. Gil-

man managed to find the time to

get in a little golf along the waywith advertising men. Accordingly,

he missed several short putts.

It was a small RCA Family get-

together at Music City recently

when the Press department ar-

ranged for Dinah Shore to visit the

record shop across the street andautograph her Bluebird recordings

for her Hollywood fans. Carroll

Tornroth of Talent Sales, your re-

porter, John J. Coyle and Victor

Ralston of Victor, and Harry Mey-erson of the RCA ManufacturingCompany alternated in reachingfor the blotters.

A couple of lads who’ll bemissed around Hollywood RadioCity for the next twelve monthsare Karel Pearson of Traffic andJohn Margraf, page, who recently

left for government training camps.

MOON, JUNE, MISS CALHOUN DEPT.

Two of our pages, Eddie Lippert

and Ernie Brashear, have turnedsongwriting-team, and are doingrather nicelv. Their first tune,

“Why Love?’’, has already beenpublished. Other tunes which BudDant has orchestrated for Lippert

and Brashear—pardon us, it’s Rich-

ard Loring and Steven Cross whenthey go into their keyboard ka-

tharsis—are “Vision of You’’ and“Spendthrift In Love’’.

Nathan Scott, another piano-

pounding page, has been doingwell, all right himself. His “JohnScotter Trot’’ was played on a re-

cent Kraft Music Hall broadcast bythe orchestra leader of almost thesame name. Scott has written an-other piece, “You Ain’t Kiddin’’,

with Ed Helwick of |. WalterThompson supplying the lyrics.

Helwick and Carroll Carroll writethe Kraft show, Mr. Crosby’s poly-

syllabic push-over.

The septet above is preoccupiedwith projecting a composite Hula.Reading in the usual order, theCrass Shackers are Elaine Forbes,Ben Byers, Mary Tyner, Phyllis

Murphy, Blanche Davies, HaroldHaklik, and Richard Brooks. Read-ing from right to left, just to varythings, their positions are conduc-tor of “Sidestreet Vignettes’’,Traf-fic, Secretary to Lew Frost, Press,

Secretary to Sam Hayes, Press, andSales.

Here’s Buddy Twiss with a fish

story out of the Northwest. Notsalmon or trout this time, butsmoked white fish. Three yearsago Birt Fischer, manager of

KOMO, told Buddy he would sendhim a goodly supply of the fish. Nofish came. Buddy wrote him sev-eral follow-up letters, but still nofish, no smoked white salmon.Finally Buddy asked Syd Dixon to

remind Fischer and, if possible,

bring back the finny haul on his

return from Seattle. Dixon faredforth staunchly — and broughthome the fish, he did. Theyweren’t unsavory. As a matter of

fact, the fish were so good that

Buddy is motoring North nextmonth to put in his bid for moreof that smoked meat. He has hopesof receiving this shipment shortly

before the Buck Rogers’ era.

Alec Retry and William LeroyMarshall, who started in MusicRights together back in New Yorkeight years ago, are having a lot of

fun these days seeing California

with their wives. Mrs. Retry, theformer Mary Hunter, worked in

the San Francisco office of NBCuntil she and Alec were married a

short while ago. Their home is in

Hollywood Hills.

Another chap who is getting a

kick out of touring around thehinterlands of Los Angeles thesedays is Bob McAndrews, head of

Sales Promotion, recently transfer-

red from Frisco.

Jim Lyman, who started outwith NBC in San Francisco severalyears ago, is now with Bob Schuetzin the Radio-Recording Division.

Lyman passed the cubebs onVVashington’s Birthday after an-nouncing himself the proud parentof a 7 pound, 7 ounce baby boy,since named Richard.

HIKE, READY—SHIFTMore changes on the staff: Max

Hutto from Program Traffic, to

Assistant Night Program Super-visor . . . Bob McWhinney fromMaintenance taking his place . . .

George Hatch to Maintenance . . .

Carl Schaele to that departmentalso, with Bruce Anson taking overhis duties in Ticket Distribution. . . Al Gage and Herbert Fearn-head from Guest Relations to Au-diting . . . Miles Auer now assistantto Ralph Stephen on the parkinglot . . . Bill Brandt taking overAuer’s spot in Maintenance.

Quick pix: Bill Andrews, headof Guest Relations, doing a sootof jury duty these days . . . NadineAmos and Blanche Davies arestudying Spanish at the BeverlyHills Night High (to be able to

orobe the subtler corners of “ForWhom The Bell Tolls”) . . . KayHarris moving into her new home. . . A. E. Saxton, Division Engineer,going over plans with his West-wood builder . . . Dave Laslev dick-ering with builders out La Canadaway . . . Dresser Dahlstead has a

new home in the hills over LakeHollvwood. Next door neighbor is

|oe Kay . ..Johnny Frazer moving

into his place in the Valley. Ahouse goes with the swimmingpool.

Ed. Note—For some time nowNBC Hollywood in the person of

Noel Corbett has been carrying ona resistance breaking campaign of

luxuriant pix. We’d like to knowif it’s really true what they say

about Dixie-on-the-Pacific.

MARCH. 1941 15

SAN FRANCISCOKay Barr

THE OMAR KHAYYAM GANG

San Francisco has not had a

chance to forget either the Side-

walk Superintendents Club or the

Dainty Dozen since these two or-

ganizations were launched at the

ground-breaking ceremony for the

new NBC Building on November14. George Mardikian, presidentof the association of incurable

kibitzers, has been a most active

executive, giving hundreds of newmembers the official kibitzer’s

obligation. Some of these havetaken the form of club luncheonsand meetings—everything fromthe Daughters of the AmericanRevolution to the Feather Mer-chants Club.

Then George has amplified theidea by signing up Tommy Har-mon, Rudy Vallee, Fanny Brice,

Tallulah Bankhead, and othercelebrities who visited his OmarKhayyam restaurant for Shish Ke-bab dinners (and thou) . The Har-mon and Bankhead pledges werethe feature at a dinner the KGO-KPO announcers gave for Tommywhile he was in San Francisco for

the East-West football game. Everypatron joined in with the two no-tables in taking the oath.

Twelve pretty girls from theNBG stations donned red andwhite striped overalls for theground-breaking. In appreciationfor their assistance. General Man-ager Al Nelson gave the girls a

luncheon at which President Mar-dikian ordained them the DaintyDozen vice-presidents of the SSClub. The girls will receive newand uniform frocks for use whenthey are called to put in an appear-ance at public functions.

GOLDEN, GATES!Veterans who have been identi-

fied with San Francisco business35 years or more were honorguests at the annual dinner of theNational Association of Manufac-turers on February 12. KCO per-formed an outstanding publicservice for the 800 guests as wellas for the radio audience by con-densing the city’s history duringthe past century into a rapid-fire,30-minute resume, in narrationand dramatic bits. Sam Dickson

Front rows were not bald headswhen KCO celebrated its 17thbirthday. These 22 studies in facial

expression should inspire any stageshow.

wrote a brilliant script. Ricardoprepared special music, and BobSeal handled the production.

Another high spot in publicservice during the past quarter wasthe “March of Dimes’’ broadcaston january 8. Milton Berle actedas master of ceremonies, and thespeakers included Mayor Angelo j.

Rossi of San Francisco and notablesof the stage and screen. Cliff

Engle was the announcer, johnRibbe produced.

Classes in more than 100 SanFrancisco public schools were sus-pended on February 1 1 and 21 tohear special Lincoln and Washing-ton programs from KPO. JenningsPierce, director of public healthservice broadcasts, handled thearrangements.

At this annual building season,KCO is watching the actual con-struction of a new family home. It

was Producer Bob Dwan’s idea,and it’s clicking. Mr. and Mrs.john Edwards and their three chil-dren, jack, Sam, and Florida

—

known on the air as “The FiveEdwards”—make up the family.The house is being built actuallyon the south slope of Mt. David-son. Two broadcasts each weekfollow the construction and the

solution of all the bothersomeproblems involved in the realiza-

tion of a dream home. Some of

the broadcasts emanate directly

from the site, and the public is in-

vited to these. Question-and-an-swer sessions follow the broadcasts,

so that other families who areactual or potential home-buildersmay have the benefit of the Ed-wards’ advice.

STORK CLUB NEWS

Three new babies at KCO-KPO'Ray Rhoads, Sales, passed cigars

and candy on December 12 for

Elizabeth Louise who had the nick-name of “Betsy Lou” as soon as

she received the more formalhandle. . . . Announcer Frank Bar-ton became a daddy to little MissSharon Barton at 12:26 AM, Feb-ruary 3. Engineer Don Hall as-

sumed the same status for youngDonald Finch Hall just four minuteslater. Even the proud papas haveall recovered by this time.

Mary Hunter, Music Rights, re-

signed in mid-january to marryAlec Petry, formerly of the NewYork and San Francisco NBC of-

fices and now in the Music Rightsdivision of NBC in Hollywood.Mary and Alec are now at homeat 2520 Dearborn Drive, Holly-wood.

Will Aubrey, “Bard Of The By-ways”, Glenn Hurlburt, blindpianomaster, and Lew Dunbar,comedian, furnished part of theentertainment for the huge NewYear’s Day party which WardenClinton Duffy gave the thousandsof involuntary guests at San Quen-tin prison. Altogether, it was a

four hour show. “Wotinell’s theuse of living if you don’t do somegood, some time, for someone?’’,opined the “Bard Of The Byways”.

Al Nelson, general manager ofKCO-KPO, has been elected to theboard of directors of the San Fran-cisco Better Business Bureau, thefirst radio man ever to receive thatdistinction.

Jennings Pierce went to Chicagoto attend a conference of educa-tional directors. He spent five

days in a Chicago hospital. Flu.

And by that time the conferencewas all over.

16 NBC TRANSMITTER

PROGRAM PRODUCTION GROUP

There is every reason why RadioCity should be the center of train-

ing in all phases of radio produc-tion. The concentration of ambi-tious young men and women of

sound background in the midst of

New York’s intensive productionschedule and with the finest of

facilities should logically producethe reinforcements in an expand-ing industry. But the amazing in-

fant medium, maturing in the brief

span of twenty years, was too con-centrated in the strenuosity of ex-pansion to have time or breath for

such considerations. True, therewere a number of attempts at dra-matic training, a class for actors,

meetings, etc., but these were in

almost every instance short lived.

One outstanding exception is

the announcers class. Sponsoredby Pat Kelly and under the direc-

tion of Dan Russell it grew in fameover a period of years and furnish-ed announcers for stations in virtu-

ally every part of the country. It

is now under the energetic direc-

tion of Gilbert Martyn and bearswatching.

The Program Production Groupwas organized in August of 1940to provide the needed training in

all phases of radio production andto give those who might possessspecialized ability a chance to dis-

play it. Designed for practical re-

sults, each position or work assign-

ment is carefully planned to matcha comparable function in the com-pany itself.

A regular schedule of produc-tion provides for a half hour re-

cording each week.The director draws his cast from

those on the regular company pay-roll who are interested in acting.

Announcers are assigned as a re-

sult of competitive auditioning in

Mr. Martyn’s class. Sound effectsare produced by a staff sound manand an apprentice working underhis supervision. The writing of

original music and dramatic under-scoring is a valuable part of thework. A library of original musicis being assembled for the group’suse.

The basic idea of the group to

sponsor and develop original talent

is further carried out in the pro-

duction of new scripts. To watcha script undergo the test of pro-

duction is the finest training pos-

sible for a prospective script

writer. There is as much if notmore to be learned from the pro-

duction of an uneven or partially

inadequate script as from the pre-

sentation of the works of radio’s

top writers. To this end fifteen outof twenty-seven productions havebeen scripts not previously heard.

Directors, announcers, soundmen and composers all benefitfrom working against deadlines

and under broadcast conditions.Writers discover what happenswhen other personalities come in-

to contact with their words. All

learn to think in terms of radio.

In the six months of its exis-

tence, the Program ProductionGroup has made steady progressin the solving of its problems andthe extension of its possibilities. It

has proven itself a healthy organi-zation which has produced results.

Stanley Miller, one of its origi-

nal directors has since become As-sistant Program Manager in Chargeof Production at WMRN, Marion,Ohio.

Charles F. Hill, who composedthe original music for the first fif-

teen productions, joined NBC’smusic division. Eldridge Packham,the Croup’s present musical direc-

tor, followed him into music, jimBeardsley, Gillette Malcouronne.Sanford Doremus, Bill Roche andHoward Flynn have gone to outsidestations with additional experi-

ence gained as actors, announcersor production men.

One of the most encouraging as-

pects of the Production Croup is

the noticeable maturing of the

work of many of its people over a

period of months. The assuranceand poise which come only fromfamiliarity and participation are

unmistakably emerging whereoriginal talent lay.

NBC TRANSMITTER

2 NBC TRANSMITTER

NBC ATHLETIC

SEAWANE, June 18.

The NBC Athletic Associationheld its fifth and largest outingthis date at the Seawane CountryClub, Hewlett, Long Island.

Buses left the 50th Street NBCStudio entrance. Radio City, at

9:15 AM and 9:45 AM. NBC cabsmet Long Island RR trains at Hew-lett station on schedule from 10:30AM until 6:01 at night.

Private cars found markers onthe Grand Central Parkway, South-ern State, the new Belt Parkwayand other main roads leading to

Hewlett. In fact, only the Trans-mitter staff couldn’t find the way.

Mr. I. E. “Chick” Showerman,in a statement to the Transmitter,said, “It’s the biggest outing we’veever had and it gets bigger everyyear. The A. A. Outing is for theranks. The executives are welcome,but it’s essentially for the NBC em-ployee and it’s for fun. Last yearwe broke all records in tennis andgolf. This year exceeded even thoserecords.”

The chairman of the social com-mittee, responsible for the splendidorganization of the Outing, waslovely Marian Ayer. Her assistants

at making things happen wereMary Coyne, Helen M. (M for

Mm-m-mm) Korday, Frances Bar-

bour, Al Protzman and Al (Hi-ya!)

Walker.The Outing began with 9:00 AM

Coif and finished with 1 :00 AMDancing to Irving Miller’s orches-tra, minus a celeste, but all very

melodic nonetheleste.

It was the 22nd Golf Tourna-ment for NBC. The Seawane courseis 6500 yards, with a par of 72 anda lot of water out by the 1 6th hole.

The number one golfers of the

day found Bill Johnson of Sales

Service out in front with a lowgross of 77-81-158. Runner-up wasa guest. Jack Purcell, with a lowgross of 80-87-167.

Henry Meyer of Engineering tookthe Men’s Handicap with a score

of 99, a handicap of 33, giving hima net of 66. Lathrop Mack of Newsand Special Events was runner-upand close, with a score of 99, hand-icap of 32 and a net of 67.

Hugh Seiler took the Members’Consolation Round. Dorothy Millerof Blue Sales played 36 holes to

take the women’s championshipwith Helen Winter of the Treasur-er’s office runner-up.

Ray Kelly of the rain-makingmachine and other sound effectsdrove, from an approach drive, to

four feet of the 8th hole, winninga prize. A leather traveling bag it

was.Notice we’ve given up listing

scores? That’s because we stand in

awe of Jim McConnell. The Mc-Connell of Spot and Local Salesmanaged a 96 for the first nineholes. Just to prove that he coulddo it again, Jim up and scored ex-actly 96 for the remaining nineholes, bringing the grand total to

192.

At 10:00 AM, 1:30 PM and3:30 PM, D. B. Van Houtan led

horseback riders on three 2 hourrides. Nineteen horses were at thedisposal of NBC equestrians and,at the conclusion of the 3:30 ride,

games were held.

The first event was a potato raceon horseback. Dick Berrian won,with Mathew Boylan and EdWeille placing second and third.

The second riding event had to

do with nightshirts. The riders

dashed to the far end of the field,

dismounted, donned a nightshirtand then galloped furiously for thefinish line.

Selma Wickers of ProgramSupervision got into her nightshirtfirst, but Al Patkocy, on the maddash for the finishing line, passedher and on the left side, too.

The tennis courts were crowdedto capacity as the largest turnoutever responded to Chairman BobFine’s efforts.

Helen Korday of Personnel cameaway with the honors in the Wo-men’s Singles.

Bob Fine scored over Paul Rit-

tenhouse to take the Men’s Singlesafter a superb exhibition of tennis.

Both Fine and Rittenhouse placedtheir shots with championship ac-

curacy and in the cool afternoon,their match was something to see.

Dorothy Schutt accepted the sil-

ver softball statuette for her team,defeating a fighting ten led by MissAshmead.

Claude Barrer of InternationalShort Wave made a clean sweep of

the swimming honors winning bothevents for men.An obstacle race was the most

amusing. Old Guest Relation uni-

forms were worn and then discard-ed in the water, which is a goodtrick if you can do it. Even out of

water.The second race was something

with a spoon and a ping pong ball

which Dorothy Lewis of GeneralService won in the women’s divi-

sion. Lucille Lizotte, a desk awayfrom Dorothy, took the obstaclecontest, C.R. uniform and all.

SEEN GOLFING: Vice PresidentStrotz of Program; C. Lloyd Egner,Vice President in charge of RadioRecording; Vice President MarkWoods; Colonel Davis of R.C.A.

Program Manager Phillips Car-lin; Television Program ManagerTom Hutchinson; Clarence Men-ser. National Production Director;

I. E. Showerman of Red Sales;

Keith Kiggins of Blue Sales.

Wilfred Roberts, New York pro-

duction head; George Milne of

Engineering; Ray Kelly of SoundEffects; Bob Close of Air Condi-tioning; Bill McClancy of Traffic;

Irving Miller, Scrappy Lambert,Burke Crotty and Jean Caval.

“Bud” Barry was on the course.

That man from Washington played16 holes of golf. Didn’t finish theother two because he’d alreadytaken 4 hours and 1 5 minutes, andbesides, wasn’t there a creek at the16th hole?

Birger Hagarth and Bill Cardenof Tours, both sliced so far to the

right they began playing on the

18th green instead of the first.

Herb Wind stepped up, reset the

tee a foot to the left, then drovestraight down the fairway, whichproves plenty.

A thundershower, one of thethreatening sort, threatened too

much and caught Evelyn White,

JULY, 1941 3

ASSOCIATION OUTINGJosephine Torres! and Eve McCul-lough in a rumble seat.

The 1 :30 riding group left in

deep apprehension but the darkclouds turned out to have moregrowl than gale and some 19 riders

enjoyed the wooded Hewlett coun-tryside from the saddle.

The storm set badminton backtemporarily, but after the passingshower had showered, all birdlife

was once again taking its featheredlife into its hands by flying too lowover Mary Lou Irvine and AlWalker.

Present at the Outing, and ourspecial guests, were the chief engi-

neers of NBC from coast to coast:

Curtis Peck of San Francisco; H. C.

Luttgens of Chicago; A. A. Saxtonof Hollywood; Ed Leonard fromCleveland; Robert Owen of Den-ver; A. E. Johnson from Washing-ton, and George Milne of NewYork.

Coming in on the first bus, JeanCaval, NBC artist, gave things a

carnival spirit. Later that evening,the singing Frenchman teamed upwith one of the Singing PowersModels in a rhumba that was a

neat bit of harmonizing.

Ray Forrest, television announc-er, arrived at 3 :00 PM, said he wasjust going to loaf through the day,and then placed second in themen’s swimming events.

There was a little difficulty find-

ing the beach. Les Smith and RossMacPherson went bicycling for

three hours and all they could find

resembling water was a puddle onthe golf course.

The Transmitter staff found it-

self on the way to Jones Beachagain, but on the way back collid-

ed with Hewlett Beach Club just in

time to discover that it was MissBrainard’s birthday, thereupon of-

fering our very best congratula-tions.

At the beach were Helen Moore,supervisor of Stenographic; Ade-laide Piana of Research; Mrs. VanHoutan; Virginia Kelly; Elliott

Mesnick carrying bathing beautiesashore from row boats, Grace Cun-derman being one of the beauties;Bill Orange; Lucille Lizotte; Dor-othy Lewis and Walter Ciebelhaus.

Dick Berrian, winner of that rid-

ing event mentioned elsewhere,had to leave soon after dinner.Dick is stationed these days at theShort Wave Listening Post at Bel-more, Long Island, and had to beon duty at midnight, working until

8:00 AM.

That was not a razor strop FredSpires went riding with, but a

gaucho riding crop. That’s his story.

We say it’s a fly swatter.

Bert Schlanger, on hands andknees, remarking, “Horseback rid-

ing doesn’t bother me a bit.’’

The informal moment beforedinner was one of the nicer parts ofthe day. Everyone gathered on thefront lawn in groups, discussingthe day’s event, Jim McConnell’sscore, and swapping stories.

Arriving at 6:00 PM to spendthe evening were Vice PresidentMorton of Television; Vice Presi-

dent O. B. Hanson; Clay Morgan,Assistant to the President; JuneHynd of Public Service.

SEEN AT DINNER: E. C. Horstmanof Chicago; Lewis MacConnach ofRCA; Sidney Strotz; “Happy Birth-

day’’ Miss Brainard; Marian Ayer;Ed Evans; Mary Coyne and, at their

own table, most of the riding clubincluding Mr. and Mrs. Van Hou-tan; Helen Korday; Claire Max-well; Virginia Black; Al Patkocy;Lucille Lizotte; Fred Spires; Doro-thy Lewis; Walter Ciebelhaus andMatt Boylan.

Frank Jones, golf chairman, wason the course until the last minutebefore dinner checking the winnersof the day’s events.

Over 150 people went throughon golf. At the conclusion of din-ner (and very nice steak, too) ,

“Chick” Showerman, chairman of

the Athletic Association, compli-mented Miss Ayer on her success

as social chairman and thankedFrank Jones for turning out thelargest attendance at golf, largerthan ever before.

Frank Jones awarded the prizesto the various winners of the day’sevents.

Bill Johnson received a barome-ter, Dorothy Miller a forged silver

plate. Henry Meyer took homeeight cocktail glasses and LathropMack a folding serving tray.

Hugh Seiler won a toaster, HelenWinter a salad knife and fork setand Jim McConnell took home“The Golfer’s Prayer.”

Al Patkocy, winning that night-shirt horse race, received a veryfine pair of boot-trees, and DickBerrian a classy covered dish.

Claude Barrer, the swimmingchamp, received a clock. Lucille

Lizotte and Helen Korday, for

swimming and tennis, each re-

ceived a Kodak reflex camera.Shades of Wynn Wright.*

Door prizes, donated by RCA in-

cidently, went to Edith Boyd andAl Walker. Both received RCAVictor Personal Radios.

That harmonizing after dinnerwas Joe Jenkins, Bill Carden, Bill

Orange and, we suspect, Birger

Hagarth and Charlie Horn. Sopranoand alto was taken alternately byJeanne Bradley. Not bad, gang. Notgood, but not bad.

PASSING PICTURE: “Doc” Mor-ton, Alice Cook, Tommy Cannon,Virginia Lennon, Al Protzman,Catharine Ross and Lorraine Sag-win all listening to the Louis-Connfight on “Doc’s” Personal Radioand very excited too.

AFTERMATH: The following col-

lection of lost articles have beenfound. Kindly communicate withLost and Found, Guest Relations,

Ext. 625, concerning the following;1 tan jacket, man’s; 1 white sweat-er, woman’s; 1 pair brown andwhite saddle shoes; 1 scarf, blue;1 silk handkerchief; several un-mentionables. All communicationswill be kept strictly confidential.

*See Chicago outing.

4 NBC TRANSMITTER

RADIO CITY

TOUR HISTORY IS MADEOn May 29th, the two NBC

Tours in Radio City became one.The Studio portion now takes 45minutes, leaving a quarter of anhour for Television.

The “all-inclusive” tour’s newtitle is now “The Radio City NBCTour.” The 55c tour rate, formerlythe single charge for either Studioor Television, now applies to both.

The combined tour used to be 90c.NBC Radio City has been the num-ber one tour attraction throughoutthe country since 1932. With this

new streamlining of the NBC Tour,it is believed that Radio City nowhas the greatest tour bargain as

well.

The tours will leave, as before,

at ten minute intervals from 9:00AM to 1 1 :00 PM every day in the

year. The four millionth guest is

expected this summer for the av-

erage number of people passingthrough NBC has been a half mil-

lion a year.

NEWS STUDIOSThe need for more adequate stu-

dio space has long been felt in

Radio City. Increasing demands of

actual broadcasting, rehearsals, au-

ditions, international broadcastsand Radio Recording have shownthat our present facilities, large as

they are, are not sufficient.

When the studios here wereconstructed, the sixth and seventhfloors of our studio section wereleft vacant to provide for the in-

evitable need for expansion. Thatfar-seeing policy has proven its wis-

dom. Construction has been started

on these floors to meet the present

demand for more space.

Two large auditorium type stu-

dios, seating approximately 450people each, are under way. Thesetwo studios, which will at somefuture date be known as 6Aand 6B, are similar in construction,

both having ramped or inclined

floors. This will afford each mem-ber of the audience a full view of

the entire stage.

Equipped with specially built

seats, the studio will remain at a

constant acoustical balance wheth-er there is an audience in atten-

dance or not.

The stages, which will be at thewest end of the studios provided a

difficult problem. Their construc-tion necessitated the removal of

the steel structural framework andthe substitution of an entirely newframe to permit the 40 foot long,

two story-high, stage opening.These tons of new girders wereraised from street level to the sixth

floor by crane where they weretaken in through a window andplaced in position. To cut the ele-

ment of danger as far as possible,

this work was all done in the early

Sunday morning hours when traffic

and pedestrian travel was at a min-imum.

The remainder of the two floors

will be given over to dressingrooms, an artists foyer, a new cli-

ent’s audition room, a receptionfoyer, and some new, much need-ed, office space. Adequate provi-

sions will also be made to enableus to provide our guests on tour

with a back-stage glance at ournewest additions.

When the work is completed onOctober 1st, NBC will possess twoof the most modern studios in thecountry. Studios which will be a

fitting tribute to the years of re-

search and experience that havehelped make them possible andwill represent another milestone of

achievement.

NAMES IN THE NEWSPaul Rittenhouse, assistant man-

ager of Guest Relations, and GerryBicking who recently moved fromTraffic to International as secre-tary to Mr. Elwood, will wed July1 2. . . . Otto Brandt of Station Re-lations by now has wed Miss Thel-ma Beulow in Detroit. . . . Clemen-tine Torrell became Mrs. HughJames as you doubtless know, andalthough few of the details areavailable, we understand thatHoward Gardner of Sales Promo-tion, took that fatal step. . . . Fran-cois Pelletier of C. R. and Val Bor-ger. Hunter Stall, and Joe Kane ofthe Mail Room all have receivedwedding congratulations. . . .AllenBengston of Concert Service mar-ried Miss Florence Buckley of Sum-mit, N. J., in June. . . . Russell Stre-

tel, of Traffic became a father for

the first time on June 1 6th. A babydaughter. . . . Blue Sales held a

christening in May. The depart-ment’s semi-official “dope-sheet”was christened “Blue Points” as

Ruth Guthrie and Bert Hauserbroke a bottle of Roget 1914 overthe manuscript. Ruth and Bert, bysimply thinking of the same name,each won $25.00. Edgar Kobak,who is $50.00 poorer, tells us that

the next time he won’t say “Dupli-cate prizes will be awarded in caseof a tie.”

Mr. John Elwood is the newmanager of International ShortWave, replacing Mr. Yandell who,in turn, has moved to Blue Sales.

. . . From Washington, D. C.,

came Charles “Bud” Barry to look

over the New York “Mile o’

Dimes.” He liked it so well in Man-hattan, he stayed on. You’ll find

him assistant Program Manager to

the Blue Network. . . . William“Bud” Mattern is Blue Sales con-tribution to the Navy. . . . TheWest Coast sends us Cliff Englefrom Announcing in San Franciscoand Jack Wormser of Sound Effectsfrom Hollywood. . . . Bob Joneswent from Research to Station Re-lations replacing Bill Whitfieldwho is now Chief Clerk in SR re-

placing Bill Davidson, now with J.

Walter Thompson’s agency. . . .

Horace Hagerdon may be found in

JULY. 1941 5

WEAF National Spot and Local

Sales. . . . Robert Morris is nowBusiness Manager of Radio Record-ing, replacing John MacDonald nowAssistant Treasurer. . . . WilliamFelundy moves from Stenographicto Engineering. . . . Arthur Cooperand Robert Prescott are our new-est sound technicians. . . . GeraldMayer is a writer in Press. . . .

Charter Heslip, is a writer in Spe-cial Events and Hugh Beach trans-

fers from Press to Sports underBill Stern. . . . Cordan Weber hasbeen shifted from Press to RadioRecording as a production director.

. . . Doris Corwith now assistant to

Public Service Counselor. . . .

Thomas is an assistant director of

Public Service Programs. . . . jackMcPhaull is now operating a dupli-

cating machine for Uncle Sam. . . .

Returning to New York for a

visit, Tom Severin and Carl Can-non, both doing well at WSCN,Birmingham, North Carolina, re-

ceived a big send-off when theyleft New York City. Microphones,posters and a general turn-out of

all the ex-C.R. fellows once in

uniform with Tommy and Carl,

turned Pennsylvania Station into a

carnival. See George Olenslager for

complete details. . . . Herb Ritter,

Ernest Stanger, Bob Jones, BobMiller, Reed Lighten, George Mack,Peter Kutchmy, Bob Hoffman, PeteBass, Andre Yedigaroff and Bill

Middleton have all answered their

country’s call to service since thelast issue.

Guest Relations, in the last fewmonths, have advanced these men;Bill Patterson and Robert Adams to

Information; Ralph Perry to Inter-

national; Robert Meyer to Conti-nuity Acceptance ;

Norman Cash to

Radio Recording; Charlie Turner to

Press; Terry Ross is now in NightProgram; Ed Stearns to Special

Events; Charles Woodford to Press,

and George Fischer to Engineering.

The Production Department hasacquired five new directors; Cyril

Ambruster; Theodore Corday; Ray-mond Buffom

;Bruce Cameron and

Edward S. King.

THE PROGRAM PRODUCTIONGROUP

THAT FELLOW TURNERCharles Leroy Turner is now in

the army. No draftee. Turner hasenlisted for the full three years andis, at present, stationed at Fort

Monmouth, New Jersey.

A motion picture man throughand through. Turner is returning to

his first field of endeavor, for he is

now serving, at Fort Monmouth, as

a film editor preparing official

army films.

Turner found himself in radio

by accident and yet, as he leaves

NBC, he can look back to beingeditor of the Transmitter, presi-

dent of the NBC Film Society andhead of the Program ProductionCroup.

The last mentioned was consid-ered generally to be impossible. Toorganize and sustain, over a periodof time, a company group withinsuch a large organization was re-

garded as folly. Critics cited prev-

ious conspicuous failures and pre-

dicted a similar fate for the Croup.It hasn’t come to pass, however.

By the simple procedure of re-

maining “out of people’s hair,’’ theProgram Production Croup will, in

August, enter into its second yearof activity.

From this point on, it must chartits course without the advice andaid of the softly spoken, quiet

young man from Washington, D. C.

The remaining members of thegroup’s governing board are meet-ing, as this issue goes to press, to

select a new head, not to replace

Turner, but rather to continuewhere he has now left off.

NBC without Turner is quite a

thought for a lot of people. He hasmade and held friends from coast

to coast. Whether Charlie returns

to radio at the end of his period of

service, or continues further in mo-tion pictures, we’ll still considerhim a gentleman and a scholar.

Best of luck, Charles.

THE CROUP ITSELF

The situation in the ProgramProduction Croup as Charlie Turnerleaves NBC is worth mentioninghere.

The young men in Guest Rela-

tions and Mail Messenger divisions

who direct the Croup’s produc-tions, can not and do not expectany recognition as prospective di-

rectors with the regular NBC Pro-

duction Division.

The same situation holds truefor announcers. The turn-out of

men from the Announcer’s Classand the Production Croup find,

when they have landed a position

out of Guest Relations, that theyare no longer with NBC. Their po-sition is invariably with some out-

of-town station or one of thesmaller outfits here in New York.That is, if their job is that of an-nouncing or producing.

Whether this policy is the best

to be found is still being talked

about by some folk. There are twoschools of thought on the subject.

One side maintains that, in orderto train men correctly in yourmethods of work, you must takethem in early as apprentices anddevelop their talents under the

guidance of established authorities

in the field.

The opposite, and prevailing idea

in NBC, is in keeping with the

present day, efficient factory idea.

Briefly, it’s the belief that menworthy of holding down NBC pro-

duction and announcing jobs mustcome to this company from other

stations with complete, impressive

backgrounds.The argument used most fre-

quently against this method is that

such men are as scarce as the pro-

verbial flies and an impressive

background doesn’t always tell the

complete story.

Knowing this situation to exist,

men still apply for the opportunityto direct the Croup’s shows. At the

last count there were over thirty

applications in for guest directorial

assignments.Despite the promise of nothing

concrete in the way of advance-ment, still these young men find

something in the Group worth seek-ing. The chance to work under ac-

tual broadcasting conditions and so

improve their chances for outsideadvancement is enough to keep in-

terest in the Croup alive and active.

It is the only goal held out to

Program Production people, andyet it seems to be enough.

6 NBC TRANSMITTER

WASHINGTONNBC TRANSMITTER

Published for and by the NBCPersonnel from Coast to Coast.

VOL. 7 JULY, 1941 No. 2

EDITOR Roy Pascal

ASSISTANT EDITOR Roy Dent

CIRCULATION MANAGERRobert Schroeder

Address all correspondence to; NBC Trans-mitter, National Broadcasting Company,Room 465, RCA Building, New York, N. Y.Telephone: Circle 7-8300. Extension 220.

MEMOIn the office of the Transmitter

there are three items that gener-ally make up the policy of this

staff. The first is a reprint of theDeclaration of Independence. Thesecond is a picture of an eye float-

ing bodiless in space. The third

item is a quote, “Help Us Build a

Greater Kansas.”

The Declaration of Indepen-dence is the most obvious. We arenot a reissue of a stockholders re-

port or a dramatized tour manual.The Transmitter has always gottenits own news and printed it ac-cordingly.

The “all-seeing” eye, staringfrom the ceiling, is a reminder to

treat our elders with respect, butnever to forget that we will beelders ourselves some day. It’s a

reminder of responsibility.

The quote, “Help Us Build a

Greater Kansas” impressed us asimportant. It brings to mind thatNBC spreads from coast to coast.If you’ll glance at page 12, you’ll

see that it goes far beyond theseborders.

Every station on the NBC net-works will always find considera-tion and space in the Transmitter.We’ll help build a greater Kansasany time we can.

There you have it. The Trans-mitter has always endeavored to

say something. It is, too, entirelysympathetic to its superior’s sug-gestions and company policy. It hasalways bent a listening ear to theout-of-town stations, big or little.

It all adds up to this: in the pastand in the future we want theTransmitter to be worth reading.

NBC WASHINGTON

Two NBC Washington studiosare undergoing changes. Studios“N” and “O,” through which mostWMAL and WRC programs travel,

are being reconstructed to allowadditional space for studio engi-neers and turntables. Beginninglate this Summer, engineers will

play all records and transcriptionsused over the two stations. The an-nouncers are pleased, of course,but don’t be surprised if the de-mand in Washington for engineersfar exceeds the supply on hand.

Congratulations from all to ChiefAnnouncer Bryson Rash and PageDon Collier. Bryson has receivedhis LL. B. and is preparing for thebar examination. Don was gradu-ated summa cum laude from Cath-olic University, and has won a

three-year scholarship to Princetonand a medal from the AmericanChemical Society.

Vacations are making inroads onthe staff of WRC-WMAL. FredShawn, Assistant Manager, is stay-

ing close to town, just in case. . . .

Auditor Ruby Coldenstroth is see-

ing the sights in Atlantic City,

New York and Williamsburg. . . .

Harold Thomasson of Commercialis planning a trip to Canada. . . .

Bess Dees, Traffic, entrains soonfor the great Northwest. . . . RalphPeterson is in Florida for sand andsun while Announcer Dorian St.

George slushes through the sloughs

and bayous of Ole Mississippi. . . .

Martha Cosgriff of Commercial is

off for Cape May, and Eva Cluff,

front office secretary, is puttering

around her new house. . . . Lookingback to vacations are Assistant

Manager Carleton Smith, whospent his time on tees and greens

and in front of the new baby’s crib

;

Mary Mason, who has just returnedfrom Havana; Don Fischer whomade his a vacation-honeymoon.

ODDS AND ENDS: Now workingfor Uncle Sam are ex-NBCers Mar-garet O’Neil with the Defense Sav-

ings Staff and Betty Bissonette at

Camp Meade. ... A total of 123news programs and commentaries

Tom Knode

Mary Mason, Director of WRC’sHome Forum, doesn’t like picnics.Ants, mostly. But one day last

month she solved her problem. Shegathered together twenty of herhome economics friends, in Wash-ington for the National NutritionalConference for Defense, took themout to Washington Airport and en-tertained them at lunch, aloft,

aboard two American Airlines Flag-

ships. just before the flights,

Cousin Mary originated her HomeForum from the airport, interview-ing her sisters of the skillets andskeins. Here’s Mary with three ofher friends just before the take-off.

eminate from NBC’s Washingtonnews room each week. . . . Bill

McCall of Sound Effects, on theRed Cross network show, fell flat

while pretending to be a man run-ning and needed a bit of first aid

himself.

Among newcomers to W R C -

WMAL is Joan Harding, formerlyof WHEC and WHAM, Rochester.Joan has a regular program for theladies at 9:35 each morning onWMAL. Other new faces . . . HildaKirby, Commercial . . . FlorenceCox, Program . . . Virginia White-head, Radio-Recording . . . Phil Jo-achim and Pete Cousins, News . . .

Stuart Finley, Announcing . . . andKatherine Richards, Traffic. . . .

JULY. 1941 7

CHICAGODan Thompson

CHICAGO HAS ITS DAY!A record number of 270 NBC

Cities turned out to make the Fifth

NBC Athletic Association Outing,at the Medinah Club, near Chicago,a rousing success. The entire NBCCentral Division was representedand general credit for the splendidorganization of the Outing belongsto President Lynn Brandt, DorothyMasters, social chairman and FredKlein, treasurer.

Activities divided themselvesinto golf, softball, ad lib swimming,tennis, horseshoes, dancing, horse-back riding and just plain loafing.

Climax of the day’s events wasthe dinner at which prizes wereawarded by President Brandt andGolf Chairman Frank O’Leary.

Larry Dutton, engineer, won theCurt jonatat Cup from Singer EdDavies. Three consecutive wins are

necessary to obtain permanent pos-session of the trophy. The sad partof the story is that Ed Davies hadtwo wins on it, with a low gross

of 78.

Guide Captain Warner Holm-gren won the Breakfast Club Cup,which was awarded for the first

time this year.

L. j. Edgley, assistant continuityeditor, took the ’’ConfusionTrophy.” The famous tin can fun-nel cup was suitably engraved byFred Klein for the fifteen strokesMr. Edgley found necessary on the1 8th hole.

The three fair ladies with thethree excellent scores, winning this

and that, were Harriette Hansen,Laura Satterwhite and TereseLauer.

The NBC Ball Team with RudyNeubauer on the mound, won thechampionship from the Artists, theATE nine, and the Musicians. In

the first game with the Musicians,the NBC team came through witha 3-2 victory.

The Musicians then trouncedATE, 28 to 18. NBC sank the Ar-tists, 6 to 2, and in the play-off,

NBC came through with a sensa-tional 1 5 to 3 blitzkrieg over thecocky Musicians.

Pitcher Phil Shukin was knocked

out of the box and his successor,Pianist jerry Marlowe all but suf-

fered a similar fate.

The Big Moment came whenSalesman Gil Berry hit a home runwith three men on base. GeorgeBolas pulled a ’’hidden ball” trick

on second to put two men out andGeorge Diefenderfer showed Big

League style in right field as didFreddie Kasper on first base.

Near-tragedies of the Outing in-

cluded Curt Mitchel’s dive fromthe back of a horse, Sam Kaney’sdeparture at 4;00 PM, and WynnWright’s loss of his camera.

Stellar horseshoe pitchers wereNBC Central Division ManagerHarry C. Kopf and Salesman JimMcEdwards. Stories vary on thechampionship style of these ’’ring-

ers”, but most reliable informationhas it that Engineers joe Alusic andW. O. Conrad defeated the Kopf-McEdwards combo consistently for

some 30 or 40 games, then gavethem a big handicap for the ’’play-

off” and the boys won.

Cashier Irene Shields and Chair-

man Paul ’’Tarzan” Millen stayedin or near the water for four hours,

starring in the strictly ”on yourown” swimming events. Irene wona very nice sunburn and took it

home with her.

Door prize winners were ByronSpears, Dorothy Bowser, John La-

gen, John Carasalla, Loretta Cooneyand Dick Sample.

Movies of last year’s Outing wereshown at the conclusion of the

dinner by W. F. Lanterman.

Free lance photographers includ-

ed Frances Morton, Gale Swift,

Judith Waller, Emmons Carlson,

Fred Klein and, of course, poorWynn Wright who can no longer

prove it. Not with his Kodak Re-tina anyway.The photo exhibit of the Outing

will be prepared under Carlson’s

direction. By just glancing to yourleft you can see that a grand timewas had by all and 270 NBC Cities

covers a lot of grand time.

8 NBC TRANSMITTER

NBC ATHLETIC

JULY. 1941 9

ASSOCIATION OUTING

X

r

.TUf*^..

10 NBC TRANSMITTER

ON THE SHELFBy FRANCES SPRAGUE

CONTROLLING BROADCASTINGIN WARTIME.By C. J. Friedrich.

A tentative public policy. Pamphletprepared by the RadiobroadcastingResearch Project at the Littauer

Center, Harvard University, 1940.

THE EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS INTHE CARIBBEAN AREA.By R. R. Platt et al.

American Geographical Society.

1941.

Strategic importance, industries,

government, resources and otherdata.

HANDBOOK OF BROADCAST-ING.By Waldo Abbot.

McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1941.2nd ed.

Written especially for students,teachers, and speakers, but equallyhelpful to those interested in all

phases of broadcasting.

OUR CONTEMPORARY COM-POSERS.By j. T. Howard.

Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1941.

Present-day American musiciansand music.

RADIO ENGINEERING HAND-BOOK.Edited by Keith Henney.

McGraw-Hill Book Co. 3rd ed.

1941.

All phases of engineering practicesbrought up to date.

REPORT ON CHAIN BROAD-CASTING.

Federal Communications Com-mission.

Government Printing Office.

1941. Official text.

THIS IS LONDON.By E. R. Murrow.

Simon & Schuster. 1941.Selections from his broadcasts early

in the war.

WAR ON THE SHORT WAVES.By H. N. Graves.

Foreign Policy Association.Headline Book. 1941.

CLEVELANDBob Dailey

INCIDENT AT CROSSE ISLE

Announcer Tom Manning, Spe-cial Events Man jack Fern andManager Vernon H. Pribble werecovering the WTAM broadcastfrom the Naval Air Training Baseat Crosse Isle, Michigan, duringNaval Aviation Week.A young man broke out of drill

line and rushed across the paradeground. It was Buzz Lloyd, formerWTAM office boy, so excited atseeing someone from Clevelandthat he forgot all about drilling.

Lloyd almost had a two hourtraining penalty to work out, butManager Pribble explained the sit-

uation to Lloyd’s commanding offi-

cer and Lloyd got off with only a

reprimand. He’s a full-fledged fly-

ing cadet now at Lakehurst, NewJersey.

DOUBLE DATEThere is one anniversary in the

life of Chester Zohn, WTAM’snight manager, that is faithfully

celebrated year after year. Moreaccurately, it is a double anniver-sary, for the date of his wedding is

also that of his joining the WTAMstaff here in Cleveland.

just recently, it was his 15thwedding anniversary and the 1 1thcelebration of his years at WTAM.POET LAUREATE OF THECONTROL BOARD

Bert Pruitt has found new pathsof poetic glory. A national newssyndicate is angling for Pruitt to

Cracie Fields, England’s numberone comedienne, appeared recentlyon WTAM’s “Women’s Club ofthe Air.’’ Here she is, shown in aninformal pose with jane Weaver,right, conductor of the program,and Mildred Funnell, center. MissFields has the distinction of beingthe highest paid performer in theentertainment world.

do a bit of verse daily for its news-paper clients. If the deal goesthrough, the series would start in

the Fall.

This broadcast engineer’s poetrynow appears frequently in Cleve-land, Detroit, Columbus, Indian-apolis and Philadelphia newspapersand in several nationally circulatedmagazines.

Pruitt has been at WTAM for 1 1

years, but he began writing verseonly 16 months ago. At that timehis poetry was mere relaxationfrom difficult mathematic prob-lems encountered in an advancedengineering course.

It is a lot more than relaxationnow. Bert turns out from ten to

twelve poems a week. MostlyPruitt’s subjects are the common,everyday happenings and emotions.Occasionally, however, he borrowsfrom his colorful background of six

years spent with the United StatesNavy in far-away ports.

The WTAM engineer is hardly a

Keats or Shelley in appearance.Bert Pruitt is over six feet tall andtops the scales at 190 pounds.

ITEMSThe first WTAM staff member

to be drafted is Claude Moye,known to thousands of Ohio listen-

ers as “Pie Plate Pete”. . . . An-nouncers Wade Barnes and JohnHicks both spending their vaca-tions in New York State. . . . An-nouncer Tom Manning donning apainter’s cap to do a stroke-by-stroke version of a house paintingderby. . . . Katharine Holgan andSally Ruple joining the staff asswitchboard operators.

ED. NOTE: And Bob Dailey ofNews and Press is the proud fatherof a seven pound baby girl. It’s theDailey’s first. Congratulations, Bob.

JULY, 1941

DENVEREvadna B. HammersleySTRUCTURAL CHANCES

Additional equipment has beeninstalled at KOA to facilitate the

switching of both the Red and the

Blue networks.Denver has become a pivot point

in handling the new switchingoperation, formerly done by thetelephone company.

Remodeling of the Master Con-trol Room will make it consider-ably larger and completely air

conditioned.Latest type continuous recording

equipment is being installed. Acar-penter knocked down a piece of

plaster onto a turntable in use thefirst few days. The needle duginto the plaster and only the quickaction of Control Engineer StanNeal kept KOA on the air.

A 5-KW auxiliary unit has beeninstalled at KOA to keep thingsrunning In case of local power fail-

ure. It recently had a good work-out when, during a severe electrical

storm, KOA experienced its first

“blackout.” Lights went out all

over the building and Martin Tobin,reading a newscast in Studio B hadto do some fast thinking before theflashlights arrived. The new auxil-

iary unit kept the station on theair, however, without a hitch.

ODDS AND ENDSBundles from heaven have ar-

rived for the Ivan Schooley and theWerne Andrews households. Girls

in both cases.

Has anyone an alarm clock andcalendar to spare? Please send sameto Tor Torland. Tor woke up theother AM not quite sure of thetime or the day. He called theoperator and got the correct timeall right, but when he asked whichday of the week it was, the opera-tor replied, “Sorry, we’re not al-

lowed to give out that informa-tion !’’

Miss Leone Leigh, Night Recep-tionist, has resigned to take upbeing a housewife. Lilyan Schofieldsucceeds her. . . . Glenn Glasscock,control engineer, is now with theNavy on active duty. . . . D. D.

Kahle takes Glasscock’s place and

GLARENCE MOORE

Howard Johnson comes in for Sum-mer relief duty. . . . Genial DuncanMcGoll has been elected Directorof the Lion’s Glub. . . . Lloyd E.

Yoder, KOA General Manager, act-

ed as General Ghairman of the“President’s Ball” during the Ro-tary International Gonvention in

Denver recently. . . . James Mac-Pherson, manager of National SpotSales, tried to lead a heifer to waterand was dragged through a barbedwire fence for his trouble. . . .

Glarence Moore, whose picture is

directly above, came back fromEstes Park, scene of the Red Net-work “Nature Sketches”, with a

nature sketch in the form of a neatsunburn on the top of his head. . . .

Miss Beverly Ward has taken overMusic Glearance and will assist

T. E. Stepp in Transcriptions. . . .

Virginia Anderson, KOA steno,has resigned and is probably mar-ried by now. . . . Jack Lyman wascalled in on amplification arrange-ments for the Denver-owned moun-tain amphitheatre at Red RocksPark. Lyman’s experience at threeWorld’s Fairs has made him a rec-

ognized authority on the subject.

. . . Perry Perregrine has been a

flower lover for years. This yearhis tulips were particularly beauti-ful, so he invited friends to an in-

formal exhibition. Two days beforethe exhibit a hail storm struck Den-ver. Result: No tulips, no exhibit.

1 1

EXCHANGE

FIVE ROOMS— Apartment avail-

able, with roommate, $25.00 a

month. Located near NBG on49th St. off Sixth Ave. See KenShaw in Room 254.

WANTED—One roommate in ex-

change for one leaving July 1.

Attractive locality, convenientto NBC, 25 W. 51 St St., oppositeAP Building. See Frank Owens,Room 41 6.

ONE ROOM—Lots of light, plenty

of space, kitchen privileges if

desired, convenient location. SeeM. Little, Room 304.

C. E. TABLE MODEL RADIO—Eight inch speaker for use withAC current only. Original cost,

$90; now at bargain. See FrankOwens, Room 416.

GALLET STOP WATCH—Sevenjewels, easy to read. See FrankOwens, Room 416.

LARGE ROOM TO RENT—Boy or

girl. Modern apartment house.

51st St. between 7th Ave. andBroadway. Phone Magaret Mac-Laren, Circle 6-1339.

GUEST RELATIONS STATISTICS

Did you know that since January

1, 1941, there have been 51 menhired for the Guest Relations staff

and these half-hundred men are

still working for NBC? This figure

does not include those who werehired and have since left the com-pany. At the present time, there

are 96 men working for C. R.

Since the first of the year, 25men have been permanently trans-

ferred to other departments. Seven-teen men have been drafted or

joined the ranks of the UnitedStates Army, Navy, Air Corps, or

the Marines.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The entire

Transmitter staff, not only here in

New York, but every one of ourrepresentatives from coast to coast,

was very glad to hear of Miss Ham-mersley’s recovery from a recentillness. She’s too swell a person to

be out of action that way.

12 NBC TRANSMITTER

INTERNATIONALRALPH PERRY

International Broadcasting has its studios in Radio City and broad-

casts seven days a week to Europe, South America, Central America and,

in fact, to the rest of the world, via two stations, WRCA and WNBl.

In 1939, letters received in New York from points outside the United

States, totaled 39,149 letters.

In 1940, the letters received totaled 46,500.

More than fifty men and women, who speak at least two languages,

comprise the ever growing staff of NBC’s International Division, which

had its modest beginning in 1937 when two or three Spanish language

broadcasts were made weekly to South America. It now broadcasts six-

teen hours every day, seven days a week and has its own live talent shows.

Some of the artists and leading personalities featured on International

broadcasts include General Camacho, brother of the President of Mexico;

Professor, Doctor, Madame Angelique Panayotatou of the Scientific Staff

of the University of Athens; Princess Mare De Bourbou; the President of

the Senate of Peru; the Brazilian Admirals and Aviators; Rouben Mamou-lien and Leo Carillo of Hollywood; Xavier Cugat; Olga Andre; GuyLombardo and Sammy Kaye.

NBC Personnel has made ar-

rangements, or have you heard,with William Saroyan for employ-ees of NBC to see his latest crea-tion, “The Beautiful People” at

special reduced prices.

Every night except Monday andmatinees Wednesday and Satur-day. That’s the set-up and here arethe prices;

$3.30 Orchestra $1.652.75 Balcony 1.382.20 Balcony 1.10

Mr. Saroyan will contribute 15per cent of all monies received to

the NBC Athletic Association,which is good enough for us.

Arrangements had also beenmade to give NBC people a dis-

count on Orson Welle’s “CitizenKane” at the Palace Theatre.

Jeanne Bradley in Personnel is

the person to see for discounttickets to “The Beautiful People.”

On Thursday, June 12, Ted Ma-lone referred to the day as “Friday”on three occasions. Twelve phonecalls came in in as many minutes.

BOWLINGThe NBC Bowling League ended

its season with this success: Thereare over 100 members in this AAgroup and every Thursday night at

least 60 active members make up12 teams. There is an enthusiasticcheering section of other members,not playing that night, who comecome over to the alleys and root

for their department.General Service 1, the winning

team for the season, took 60 gamesand lost only 21. The high gamescore was 933 and the averagescore for the season was 821.

Engineering 2 finished in secondplace by winning 59 games out of

81 . Their high game score was 958and their average, 809.

Auditing wound up in third po-sition winning 55 games and los-

ing 26, with a high game score of

962 and an average of 800.Heitmann, General Service 1,

was the highest individual scorer of

the season with an average of

174.22, based on 81 games. Rubin,Auditing, placed second with anaverage of 170.55, based on 77games. Nicol, also of Auditing, took(Continued in column 3, page 13)

"THE HOMEWARD SCENE"Have you ever traveled homeward.When the sun was falling fast.

And the colors dyedThe countryside

That slid so smoothly past?

On a train that’s clicking swiftly

O’er the ruddy rail ahead

As the quiet light

Of coming Night

Spreads o’er the gravel bed.

With such pensive folk around youNodding with the swaying train

In its violent

Flight, as silent

Shadows sweep the country lane.

Far away, the City TowersDwindle miniature and mist.

In the gloaming

As the homingMortals keep their evening tryst

With the station platform’s still-

ness

When the train has sped its wayHear a cricket

Voice a thicket.

Turned to blue with closing day.

Now the station lies deserted.

Sprawled in solemn state and drear

While the glistening

Rails lie listening

For the Night to disappear.

Pasc.

JULY, 1941 13

chiding, inquiring and offering

some humorous slants.

A laundry in Brooklyn, person-

ified by a gentleman with a broadnon-Aryan accent, called to informTed Malone that “you are saying

in New York it is Friday. In

Brooklyn it is still Thursday.”Another gentleman held forth

that after hearing Ted’s assurancethat it was Friday he was outragedbecause he hadn’t received his

salary.

One of the newest NBC AA ac-

tivities is the Swimming Club. Un-der the direction of Elliott Mesnickit’s gaining impressive support fromNBC folk.

Organized in May, the club, in

two months, boasts a membershipof 70. The place is the Park Cen-tral Hotel where the group not only

has the use of the pool but the

gymnasium as well.

The charge is thirty-four centsper person when the club swims as

a unit and forty cents at any othertime for members individually.

Elliott Mesnick of the MailRoom and Walter Ciebelhaus of

General Service are the lads to beconsulted for further details.

"QUOTATION MARKS"

“I believe that the American system of free institutions—throughwhich the fruits of individual effort and foresight and sacrifice are best

protected—offers to mankind its greatest hope that individual security

can be attained.”SCIENCE AND SECURITYDavid Sarnoff

October, 1940

“In the all-out effort we must make to defend democracy, radio

stands as a great national asset. Broadcasting’s present efficiency derivesdirectly from its freedom. In the living patriotism which we need to

make our arms strong and our will indomitable, radio can play a signifi-

cant part. This war has shown that people can be bombed by air withwords as well as with high explosives!”

RADIO AND NATIONAL DEFENSENiles Trammell

January, 1941

“It may spread eastward to Turkey and Russia. The Germans may,for a time lay their hands on the granaries of the Ukraine and the oil wellsof the Caucasus. They may dominate the Black Sea. They may dominatethe Caspian Sea. Who can tell?”

COMMENTING ON THEBALKAN SITUATIONWinston Churchill

April 27, 1941

POSTAGE DUELetters From NBCs Information Division

Gentlemen

:

I have a very interesting act. I do shadowgraphs with myhands. My act would have to be done in front of an audience able

to read “APPLAUSE” which we could flash on a screen when wewanted it.

This would be of GREAT interest to the listening public . . .

they would hear the applause.If the public didn’t care for it . . . TO !

I would require $5,000 a week and the installation of a whitesheet to throw the figures on. If we wanted a change in programwe could play leap frog or do some magic.

Can you suggest a sponsor?Sincerely,

Dear Sir:

What I would like from Hitler is some different than I haveyet heard requested but here it is: I have ten 100,000 MarkReichsbanknotes of February 1923 issue. They were given to meand the children. My husband is in the hospital and I need moneyto pay off the mortgage and back taxes on this farm. If Mr. Hitler

would just cash these notes for me I could straighten things outswell

!

(Don’t tell him so but it would also put me in a position to

give another son to Uncle Sam.)

Here’s hoping

—

(Continued from col. 1, page 12)

the third position with an averageof 170.48, based upon 74 games.

Steer Mathew, chairman of theBowling League, has announcedthat the Fall season will open Sep-tember 12 at the Riveria BowlingHall, 1 16 West 50th Street.

The increase in bowling interestand popularity comes from the lad-

ies of NBC. They comprise about20 per cent of the group everyThursday.

New bowlers are always wel-come. If you have any ideas con-cerning the League, drop a line to

Steer Mathew, Room 560.

TENNIS

The regular NBC Tennis Tourn-ament, held every year, will takeplace in August. Contests will bethreefold. A men’s singles, a wo-men’s singles and the mixed dou-bles.

Trophies go to the winners, so

send your letter of interest to BobFine, Room 254.

14 NBC TRANSMITTER

SAN FRANCISCO

up a conference call on the switch-board and Madeline was greeted bysix young ladies, when she pickedup the phone, harmonizing “Hap-

py Birthday.”

Reed Browning, who joined theannouncing staff in March, passedcigars April 6. Reason; Little MissWendy Laurel.

Announcer Jimmy Mathews outeight weeks with a migratory strep-

tococcus infection.

Gladys Cronkhite, KPO’s “Inter-national Kitchen,” presented a p.a.

description of a horse show at theElmhurst Lions Club Picnic, June 8.

She also exhibited two thorough-bred hunters.

Jimmy Coffis left the Mail Roomto work in the U. S. Mint, whichis a good trick. Frank Olsson tookJimmy’s place.

Claire Valpey, Script, christeneda new submarine net tender andreceived a platinum-diamond wristwatch from the Navy officials.

Sales Manager William Bernard“Bill” Ryan was elected presidentof the San Francisco AdvertisingClub.

Temperance Smith, former edi-

torial assistant of “Time”, replacedEthel O’Kane in Continuity whenEthel resigned to become a hap-pily married young lady.

Marion Hansom, secretary to

Chief Engineer Curtis Peck, re-

signed in June to join her husbandin Southern California. She was re-

placed by Lola Camaches of Sales.

TIME MARCHES ON!

KGO’s A. E. “Shorty” Evans,

engineer in charge of the KCOTransmitter, and his crew havehung up a brand new record.

Out of 6,406 hours and 53minutes of air time. Shorty andthe boys lost only 31 seconds.For this bit of doing, they havereceived the annual plaqueawarded by General Electric for

the most nearly perfect recordin the matter of time off theair in 1 940.

0. B. Hanson, vice-presidentand chief engineer of NBC andJoe Arnone, architectural engi-neer of NBC, were special

guests at a luncheon broadcastcelebrating Shorty Evans’achievement.

As a feature of the program.Producer Gene Clark presented theshortest dramatic skit in radio his-

tory. It was exactly 31 seconds in

length.

OLD HOME WEEKFour former San Francisco alum-

ni, now with NBC at Radio City,

threw a welcome party for Cliff

Engle and Grant Pollack, both ofwhom have transferred to NewYork. Hosts were Announcers BobWaldrop and Nelson Case, Pro-ducer Joe Thompson, who is nowin the Army, and Sound EffectsMan Jerry McKee.

ROMANCEAnnouncer Floyd Farr and Jetta

Baker knew each other in highschool. Their school day romanceresulted in a marriage May 4.

Announcer Eddie King and Sally

O’Connell followed suit May 10.

The nuptials took place in Reno, ofall places.

Mary Milford, NBC dramatic ac-tress, and Frank Schlessinger, man-ager of Allied Advertising, ex-changed vows May 9.

PERSONALITIES

General Manager Al Nelson hasbeen elected to the Board of Di-

rectors of the San Francisco Festi-

val Association.Madeline Attabit, Traffic, had a

birthday. Bessie Atkinson hooked

Kay Barr

GOING UP!

All thoughts, words anddeeds at KCO and KPO in SanFrancisco these days have to

do with the new NBC Building,

now well under way at Taylorand O’Farrell streets.

April 16th, previous occu-pant started moving out andpower shovel digging beganMay 1. Last walls of the old

building crashed May 5. Exca-' vation was finished and work-

I

men started pouring concreteJune 4. All the footings, by

i

June 10, had been poured up to

I the basement floor levels.

Special broadcasts from thesite of the improvement, at

least once a week, will increaseas work progresses.

A “Speechless Mass Meeting”of the Sidewalk Superintendent’sClub was held. The official Side-walk Superintendent’s song wasintroduced as well as the official

cheer of the club and it markedthe first appearance of the DaintyDozen, 12 pretty KCO-KPO girls

in tricky costumes.War and weather permitting.

General Manager Al Nelson in-

tends to dedicate the new “MillionDollar Home of KCO and KPO”January 1 5, 1 942.

Florence Larsen moved fromTyping to Sales. Girls of the staff

gave Marion Hanson a farewellluncheon at the Sir Francis DrakeHotel.

General Manager Al Nelson hasbeen elected honorary director of

the California Rodeo, held annu-ally at Salinas in July.

Announcer Hal Wolf and Pro-

ducer Dick Bertrandias led an NBCsoftball team that beat the net-

work off a CBS outfit with a scoreestimated at 16 to 13.

Three weeks later, the Actor’sClub dethroned the champs 16 to

13, all of which proves the boysgot a lot of exercise.

FOOTNOTEAddition of an Associated Press

printer gives the KCO-KPO NewsDepartment all three of the newssyndicate services, AP, UP and INS.

JULY, 1941 15

H O L LY W O O DNoel Corbett

GOLF NOTESThe NBC AA chose the pic-

turesque Palos Verdes CountryClub for their third annual golf

tournament this year.

Staff Trumpeter Bob Kimicshot low gross of 78 to win.Sax player Dick Eckeles wassecond with a 79. Bing Crosbyand George Hatch, the defend-ing champ, tied for third place.

Low net honors went to BobBrooke of Engineering, fol-

lowed by John Wald of theRichfield Reporter program.Sperry Newscaster Sam Hayestied with Lew Frost for third.

The most handsome prize ofall was carried off by GeorgeVolger. All Ceorgie had to dowas to take his time between eachhole, running up the highest grossscore. Ceorgie pointed out thatwinning the swell Daily Varietycup didn’t surprise him at all, be-cause he’s getting all the luckthese days. It was only a couple of

weeks before that Mrs. Volger pre-sented him with a baby girl.

Tracy Moore’s inauguration as

head man of the Ad Club of LosAngeles means that the WesternDivision Blue Network Sales Man-ager is the first radio man ever to

hold both the vice-presidency andpresidency of the Ad group.

The season’s highlight in radiocircles was jack Benny’s 10th An-niversary party at the BiltmoreBowl, which was attended by overa thousand important radio people.Eastern NBCers who were there in-

cluded President Niles Trammell,Sidney Strotz, John Royal, ClayMorgan, Bertha Brainard and EdHitz.

New to Alex Robb’s Programand Talent Sales Department is

Leo B. Tyson, formerly of KMPC. . . Robb’s new secretary is NormaRinehart and Honor Holden is nowDepartment Auditor. . . . AleneButcher and Dorothy Daniels, bothnew to that Department. . . . Mar-garet Kent is now Lew Frost’s sec-retary, taking the place of BlancheDavies, vacated when she resignedto go to San Francisco and become

a full time housewife. . . . VavaBowers has taken a leave of ab-

sence (expecting the stork) andGrace Leddy has taken her placeas Bill Andrew’s secretary in GuestRelations. Aubrey Ison is now shuf-fling tickets in Andrew’s depart-ment. . . . Traffic Department per-sonnel notes included; HaroldHaklik now Night Traffic clerk . . .

Bud Spencer, Day Telegraph super-visor . . . Lefty Lefler, Night Pro-

gram transmission supervisor . . .

Miles Auer and Don Smith, bothnew to the Department. . . . ErnieBrashear now in Music Rights andNathan Scott into Music Research. . . Bruce Anson now a junior an-nouncer . . . Florence Cidley into

Press, taking the spot Phyllis Mur-phey left open when she went to

Auditing . . . Frank Hall now onthe parking lot.

QUICK PIX . . . Don E. Gilman,Sidney Dixon, Red Sales manager;Tracy Moore, Blue Sales managerand Bob McAndrews, Sales Promo-tion manager, will attend thePACA Convention at Santa Barbara,

June 29. . . . Abbott Tessman, an-nouncer, gave himself the hot-footwhen he fell asleep under a beachumbrella with naught but the bot-toms of his feet exposed to thesun’s rays. . . . Hal Brock, Presshead, had a new rancho out pastVan Nuys in the Valley. . . . NBCSoftballers took on Kay Kyser’schamps; score lost on the wayhome. . .

. j. R. O’Kelly, field engi-neer, out for seven weeks with a

broken jaw. . . . Bob Schuetz, head

Vice-President Don E. Gil-

man lunched the HollywoodPress Department in the Amer-ican Room of the Brown Derbyin honor of their topping off

Billboard Magazine’s AnnualRadio Exploitation Survey for

the second year.

Left to right, Noel Corbett,Catharine Schall, Dorothy Wak-nitz. Matt Barr, Martha Sher-win, Hal Bock, Press head, andClay Morgan, standing.

Mr. Gilman, Frances Scully,

joe Alvin, Nell Cleary, Phyllis

Murphey, Art Carter, photog-rapher, and Ben Byers.

of Radio Recording Division, touredthe Northwest. . .

. John Swallow,Division Program manager, also ona northern business trip. . . . TheAlex Robbs and the Hal Bocks cele-

brated their wedding anniversariesthe same day. The Robbs are 1

5

years up on the Bocks, however.. . . Bob Moss and Dave Elton aremotoring East together. . . . An-other going East for a new car is

Martha Sherwin of Press. . . .Wen-dell Williams and his wife, theformer Helen Buchta of New York,will vacation at Priest Lake, Idaho,after which she will vacation in

Gotham. . . . William’s secretary,

Kathleen Kelly, will vacation in

Yosemite. . . . Wynn Rocamora ona business trip to New York. . . .

Wally Boone had his tonsils

yanked. . . . Nell Cleary of Press

and PBX Operator Bill Clevenger,both sporting canes; bad ankles.

. . . Nadine Amos, Mr. Gilman’ssecretary, still industriously study-ing Spanish. . . .

MEMONow that Charlie Turner is in

the army and we have a new edi-

tor there is no longer the danger of

out-of-town correspondents beingfrightened by memos signed Phtho-lognyrrh.

Unraveled, that spells Turner,believe it or not. The explanationfor this bizarre orthography is as

follows;

phth, as in phthisic, is Tolo, as in colonel, is URgn, as in gnat, is Nyrrh, as in myrrh, is ER

16 NBC TRANSMITTER

THE NBC RIDING CLUB'S PAPER CHASE

The paper chases are fast be-coming an institution with the rid-

ing group. Its most recent one washeld Saturday, May 17, underthe able and original direction ofMr. D. B. Van Houten, Ridingchairman.

Color movies of the entire eventwere taken in perfect sequence.The photographer preceded theriders enough in advance to photo-graph them at key spots on theride. His sequences numbered pinegroves, wooded lanes, fields of

fern and crossing streams, whereeveryone hoped it would be theother fellow whose horse wouldbalk at going knee deep in coldwater.What is a paper chase? There

are several definitions. The ortho-dox one being a treasure hunt withpaper confetti clues on the trails

which lead to a hidden letter, thefinder of which is the winner of

the prize.

One of the newer riders on May17, contributed a slightly differ-

ent version. She assumed it was a

ride in which everyone hopped onand off their horses, trying to pickup small bits of paper strewnthroughout the woods and the oneable to collect the greatest numberof paper bits won the chase.

As usual, Mr. Van Houten pre-

ceded the riders by a half hour onthe trails to set the clues. Mrs. VanHouten and Dick Van Houtenjoined in the chase. Dorothy Lewisof General Service had Mascot andeveryone agreed she looked like a

circus rider for Mascot has that

same slow, graceful canter, so

beautiful to see. Helen Korday, in

Personnel, felt that she had beengiven the horse Good Luck becauseshe hadn’t been on a horse sincelast Fall.

Al Patkocy, of Duplicating, gaveeveryone a qualm when his horsetried to throw Al over his headwhenever he approached water. Al

managed to stay dry but developeda few blisters doing so.

After one hour of riding, Claire

Maxwell of C.R. and Virginia Blackof Blue Sales exchanged horses.

We wonder whether it was a ques-tion of matching costumes.

Ed de Salisbury of Sales Promo-tion was late. Just as the group wasmounting, up dashed a cab with thetardy Ed. Shame.Edme Logan, Stenographic, and

Paul Rittenhouse of Guest Rela-

tions kept to the rear. Paul, savinghis fire for the final stretch, fooledeveryone, including himself, bywinning the prize.

After the ride, an outdoor fire

was built and 32 people indulgedin frankfurters, hamburgers, cakeand coffee, prepared by Mrs. VanHouten, the guardian angel of all

the riding picnics.

The gods were with the group.While the morning was sultry, thesun shone brightly all afternoon.

Not until the fire was out and thegroup piling into the cars, prepara-tory to calling it a day did Old Sol

hide behind the clouds and usherin a real Spring storm.

j' t, ,, •!1 - T •££

NBC TRANSMITTERNATIOi'v'*! broadcasting company, iNCi

OCTOBER ^ glneral library^ J 9 4

1

80 ROCKEF&LLtR PLAZA, NEW YORK, N. im

2 NBC TRANSMITTER

INTERNATIONALOnce an obscure, hopeful offspring of domestic radio,

it took a World War 1 1 to expand NBC’s International Di-

vision into a most vital branch of broadcasting today.

From the 70 acres of the Bound Brook plant in NewJersey hum the 50,000-watt signals as they send six dif-

ferent languages from sixteen to twenty-four hours a dayto over 80 foreign countries and possessions.

Originating, for the most part, in Room 21 1 in RadioCity, these programs carry with them the greatest respon-

sibility yet known to broadcasting. Out of the “futurepossibility’’ dream that still cloaks television and fre-

quency modulation, has emerged International Broadcast-

ing into the very real present. In 1925, the trail-blazing

began. Raymond Guy, radio facilities engineers for NBC,reports that in 1925, in a 20- -

minute broadcast from Station

5XX in London, England, only oneminute was intelligible. In 1940,International had grown up and re-

ceived its commercial license.

Today, 92 stations in over 20Latin American countries havesigned contracts with NBC to formthe largest single Pan Americannetwork ever developed.A useful service to Latin Ameri-

ca, South America and Europe re-

quires daily transmissions in six

different languages: Spanish, Eng-

lish, German, Portuguese, Frenchand Italian. Transmissions in eachof these languages require separate

staffs. Radio City is merely the

headquarters; foreign representa-

tives and contacts are scattered

throughout the entire world.

Over a half -hundred people

make up the International Division

in New York. Under John W. El-

wood, energetic and likeable, the

company spirit that exists there

today is the finest example of

people working together. Young,vital, this division of NBC is mak-ing the world sit up and take

notice.

Throughout Europe, thosecaught listening, in oppressedcountries, to the news broadcasts

of NBC are heavily penalized.

Nevertheless, an audience exists of

such proportions as to redouble

the efforts of those on the Euro-

pean staff.

American news continues to be

the best and often the only source

of unbiased, complete news heard

in European cellars, under Amster-dam beds and in Belgian closets.

When International takes theair, all concerned subtly show thatthey feel their responsibility. Forin Europe, at present, with theexceptions of Switzerland andSweden, all news filters throughthe Dr. Goebbels’ propaganda ma-chine before it reaches the popu-lace of Germany and the occupiedterritories.

Sticking strictly to objective,

clear-cut news and commentary,NBC rightly surmised that the con-trast to European colored informa-tion would have the desired effect.

From travelers, officials and fromsmuggled letters have come thereplies. A few such letters are

published, for the first time, onthese pages.

Early this year, NBC inauguratedtwo new 50,000-watt transmitters

so that both WRCA and WNBIbeam abroad by means of new di-

rectional antennas just twice their

former strength.

NBC’s task in Latin America is

of equal importance. Today,WNBI and WRCA are the mostwidely listened-to stations belowthe Rio Grande. Some four years

ago, it was a different story. Ger-many, at that time, had thestronger signal.

Propaganda, as we know the

word today, is a powerful force.

The best practicable weapon to useagainst it is facts, presented factu-

ally. Having conquered our Rockiesand the Great Plains, this nation

has just discovered the frontiers

that still remain. Radio is both themusket and the plow.

NTERNATIONAL FIRST

. . . First American Network to en-gage in international broadcasting.. . . First Network to have full timeforeign correspondents.. . . First Network to receive pro-

grams from foreign sources anduse them in a commercial program.. . . First Network to send commer-cial programs to foreign countryfor rebroadcasting.. . . First Network to tie in a num-ber of foreign stations to transmitthe same program.. . . First Network to receive and to

rebroadcast from

:

Europe.Central and South America.Hawaii and South Sea Islands.

Australia and New Zealand,japan and China.Philippines.

Dutch East Indies.

Siam.Africa (North, East and

South)

.

Near East (Palestine).

Bathyosphere—2500 ft.

depth.Stratosphere— 13 miles.

m. Ships at sea.

n. Clipper flying Pacific.

o. Graf Zepplin.

p. Battlefield— Floyd Gibbonsfrom Manchuria.

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

g-

h.

k.

I.

THIS ISSUE’S GOVER:WRCA and WNBI, Inter-

national Broadcasting’s new50,000 - watt Transmitters at

Bound Brook, New jersey. 70acres of the most highly valuedproperty in the world today.

OCTOBER. 1941 3

LETTERSHelsingfors, Brando.

"On board of this ship 1 haverepeatedly heard your broadcasts.

. . . The rest of the German-speak-ing world could hear more of thefate of the Baltic peoples. ... In

the Baltic there is now much less

freedom than under the formerregimes, which by far were notdemocratic.

The material situation of the

workers has catastrophically be-

come worse, the prices of goodshave risen 3, 4 and 5 times in com-parison with the much advertisedrise in wages.”

Beograd, Yugoslavia.".

. . When Laval was dismissedfrom his office ... I listened to

another American broadcastingstation from 6:15 to 6:30 p.m.,

and it did not give this news, butwhen I listened to your newsbroadcast one minute later, theabove-mentioned sensation wasannounced. That same evening I

tried to check this news throughany one of the European broadcast-ing stations, but in vain; it onlybecame general news on the fol-

lowing day.”

This letter was smuggled out of Germanyby an emigrant and brought to Colombia,South America, via Russia, Japan and overthe Pacific. The letter was mailed fromMedellin, Colombia, on Feb. 17, 1941, andreceived by the International Div. March11, 1941.

Berlin.

September, 1 940."It will take several months be-

fore you will receive this letter . . .

The time of your broadcast andwave length is a quietly-kept secretof very, very many . . . We havetwo big favors to make of you:

1 . Most of our radios have a

short wave dial beginning only withthe 19 meter band . . . GermanHour, if possible, use the 31 meterband.

2. Please change the broadcasttime of your news period to theend of the hour, as the GermanRadio Station broadcasts the newsat 8:00 p.m., to which we mustlisten, so one at least knows thenext day, what Dr. Goebbels hadto communicate to us.

BROADCASTINGJohn F. Royal, Vice-President in charge of International Relations,

has flown more than a half-million miles over most of the world’s air

lines looking after NBG’s far-flung broadcasting interests. Returningfrom a 20,000-mile air tour of all the Republics below the Rio Grande.Mr. Royal brought with him signed contracts with 92 stations in the

20 Latin American countries. This step by NBG, in extending its PanAmerican network, results in the largest single network yet developedby any major American broadcasting company.

Mr. Royal, on returning, said, "This is another step on the part of NBGto cement the social, commercial and cultural ties with the people of

the United States and our South American neighbors. In completingthis extension of our Pan American network we have dealt separatelywith every one of the countries instead of considering the ‘South of the

Rio Grande’ as a whole.We have followed this plan since each of the Republics has radio

problems and circumstances of a local nature which had to be considered

PROGRAMS"GUGAT FOR GAMELS”—the

Red Network show featuring Xa-vier Gugat, Garmen Gastillo, Lina

Romay and Miguelito Valdez is

sent simultaneously to Latin Amer-ica. Rafael Herrera performs theneat trick of listening to BertParks, via earphones, while an-nouncing in Spanish the same com-mercials from a soundproof, glass-

enclosed booth in the studio.

"FASHIONS IN MANHAT-TAN”—beamed abroad to Europeon Wednesdays. Designed to give

helpful hints and constructive ad-vice to the women of England who,war or no, keep up with the latest

fashions. The broadcasts describetrends in design and stress the pos-sibilities of dressing smartly undertrying circumstances.

"BETWEEN THE BOOKENDS”—Ted Malone, heard regularly

over the Blue, is now beamed to

Europe five days a week.

"MEN OF MUSIG”—featuringserious music and interviews withfamous composers, singers andmusicians. The artists performduring the program while theworks of the composers are beingplayed. Frank Nesbitt, head of theEnglish Section of International,interviews.

"FOR AMERICA WE SING”—the Blue Network show featuringDr. Frank Black and the NBC Or-chestra, Helen jepson and FrankParker, is heard in England onMondays via delayed broadcast.

before any thought could be madein the direction of an extendedPan American network.”

All of the 92 NBC affiliates in

the 20 Pan American countriesnow have the opportunity of pick-ing the best programs of the NBCBlue and the NBC Red networks.American firms, doing business in

any of these countries, will be ableto sponsor commercial programsdirected to Latin American con-sumers as well as exchange ideas

and new techniques through thefacilities now made possible by this

extended NBC network.

The type of station signed byNBC varies from 1,000 watts to

200,000 watts with one or morestations in each of the 20 LatinAmerican countries.

A part of the picture was Mexi-co’s largest network of 21 stationsbecoming affiliated with the PanAmerican Network of the NationalBroadcasting Company. Mexico’slargest station, XEW, recently in-

creased to 200,000 watts, is thekey station in the group and, withits increase, is now the most pow-erful radio station in the WesternHemisphere.

Through Mexico and CentralAmerica alone it is estimated thata vast radio audience of 28,000,000people today can be served withthe best programs of both the Redand Blue networks and the spe-cially-built programs of the Inter-

national Division, receiving theseprograms through their own sta-

tions. In the words of John W. El-

wood, general manager of NBC In-

ternational, this opens "a new erain international broadcasting.”

4 NBC TRANSMITTER

RADIO CITY

PUBLIC SERVICEThe new RCA Alert Re-

ceiver, the modern Paul Revere,is an important innovation in

broadcasting. Pictured on this

page are Mayor Fiorello La-

Cuardia, National Director of

Civilian Defense, and DavidSarnoff, president of RCA, in

the first test of the device, as

a nationwide audience listened

in over the Blue Network.The receiver turns on auto-

matically when a special, in-

audible signal is flashed froma broadcasting station. A bell

rings, summoning listeners.

The demonstration tookplace at LaCuardia Airport.

Word that “enemy” airplanes

were sighted over Long Island wasrelayed from Army officers at

Mitchel Field to a Civilian De-fense Officer in an NBC Studioat Radio City. He immediatelypressed a button, sending the robotsignal riding across WJZ’s wave.Within a few seconds, the impulsesturned on the Mayor’s RCA AlertReceiver in the AdministrationBuilding of the airport, notifying

him that the NBC Blue Networkwas ready, from coast-to-coast, to

broadcast any message he mighthave as Director of Civilian De-fense.

The device can be incorporatedin standard broadcast receivers andtelevision sets to make them alert

to the robot signal.

Developed by RCA engineers to

more closely affiliate broadcastingwith national defense, it stands as

still another example of radio per-

sonnel being invaluable to the

average American community.

DISCUSSION CROUPWith a new idea running

through the set-up, the PersonnelDivision’s new series of Discus-

sion Croups will begin Wednesdayevening, October 15, and continueevery two weeks thereafter duringthe winter season.

In the past, almost every depart-

ment head has, at one time or an-

other, discussed his individual

department, its organization, op-

eration and the type of personnel

engaged. These past discussions

are all on file in the Personnel

offices and it is believed by AshtonDunn, Personnel Manager, that the

story is complete.Since the ground has been cov-

ered and, it is hoped, cultivated, a

new approach may be taken at this

time. Having inspected the de-

partments as individual units, the

idea behind this new series is to

discuss these same units as con-tributing to the whole. Why doesNBC need each division bearing its

name? How does each departmentmake up the entire picture of theNational Broadcasting Companyand thus, broadcasting in general?

This general knowledge of radio,

instead of general knowledge of

some one part of radio, should in-

terest all throughout and not a

succession of different groups of

varying interests. At the conclu-sion of the series, those participat-

ing may consider themselves as

intelligent about the entire com-pany and not just phases of thepicture.

NAMES IN THE NEWSBill McClancy resigned as head

of Traffic to enter defense industry

with the Eaton Manufacturingoutfit.

E. B. Lyford and john Murpheyof Traffic presented their depart-ing boss with an engraved silver

cigarette box in the presence of

Niles Trammell, president of NBC,and almost every other departmenthead in the company, in the plush

surroundings of the RockefellerLuncheon Club on the 67thfloor of the RCA Building.

Charles E. Phelps celebratedhis 10th Anniversary and wedidn’t record it last issue,

bringing the justifiable wrathof Blue Sales down upon us.

Forgive us, suh.

Even more sadly neglected is

Roy Sharp of Traffic. We notonly failed to mention his mov-ing from C.R. to Traffic all of

a year ago but, more important,we are only now reporting thatRoy married the former MaryParsons 12 months back. Con-gratulations on your first anni-versary, eh?

Harry Woodman, from StationRelations, from KDKA, from Traf-fic before that, resumes his postin Traffic, replacing Bill McClancy.. . . Birger Hagerth, Tour Super-visor, married Miss MarielouiseWilkens at St. George’s EpiscopalChurch, August 9th. . . . WilliamCort Miller, senior guide, marriedMiss Doris Love Kirkland at theVander Park Church, August 10th.. . . Franklin Butler of Legal wedMiss Maxine Marie Baribeau at St.

Michael’s Church, Grand Ledge,Michigan, July 23rd.

Miss Mary Sheppard of Produc-tion is now secretary to Mr. HenryLadner of Legal, replacing Miss Iva

Singer. . . . also of Legal, MissHelen M. Hartman is secretary toMr. Swezey ... as is Miss EvelynV. Schmidt, secretary to Mr. Prime.. . . Miss Olive E. Binz has trans-ferred from Legal to Radio Record-ing. . . . Transfers into Televisioninclude: C. G. Alexander fromG.R. to Programs; Dick Dinsmorefrom Recording to Production;Garry Simpson from G.R. to stagemanager; Walter Glarke, Ed Na-than and Stoddard Dentz fromG.R. ; Felix Ghirlando from GeneralService; Henry Mallen from Main-tenance and john Allen from theMail Room.

Walter Law and Herb Matticktransferred from Guest Relationsto International. . . . Irene Kuhnwent from Press to Sales Promo-tion and Gene Hamilton movedfrom Announcing to Production.

OCTOBER, 1941 5

BELLMORE LISTENING POST

NEW YORKThe National Broadcasting

Company’s new short wave Lis-

tening Post at Bellmore, LongIsland is considered the moststrategically located radio ears

in America today. Listening in

to the radio waves of the worldtoday is one of the most im-portant functions in Americanbroadcasting and representspublic service in its purestform.

Operation of the post is

under the supervision of A. A.Schechter, NBC News and Spe-cial Events Chief, with Jules

Van Item in direct charge. Topromote the highest efficiency

in the NBC search of the world’sether waves, an entire corps of

engineers and foreign language ex-

perts has been moved to the newlocation.

Linked to the growth of NBC’sInternational Division, the Listen-

ing Post’s expansion is a direct re-

sult of World War 1 1 and its spreadto Eastern Europe, the Middle East

and Africa.

A battery of the most sensitive

short wave radio receivers has beeninstalled at the former site of

WEAF’s transmitter. The staff of

foreign language news expertsdaily maintains 24-hour watch onthe world’s airways, tapping Eu-rope’s main sources of significant

news stories. Situated far from thetowering steel-ribbed buildings of

Manhattan, ideal receptionis found.

The Listening Post is linked

with the NBC Newsroom at RadioCity by three direct lines. One is

a microphone line enabling any of

the shortwave experts to take theair from Bellmore at a moment’snotice. The second line serves a

teletypewriter circuit which relays

the translated news from the LongIsland outpost to Radio City. Anauxiliary telephone circuit makesit possible for short wave monitorsand news editors to check incom-ing news bulletins.

Two electrically - operated re-

corders and playback devices havebeen installed to insure accuracyof translation.

The news of Germany’s assorted

invasions of Russia, Yugoslavia andGreece, all significant events in

the development of our foreign

national policies, are representative

of the type of news these NBCshort wave monitors pull out of

space and pass on to listeners andnews agencies on this side of the

Atlantic.

The 24-hour vigil at the ear-

phones is no easy stint. Reporting

what they hear with complete ob-

jectivity, these men must obtain

the news in spite of atmosphericdifficulties, twisted facts and the

fog of propaganda.

Since the time the war of nerves

became a war of reality, the in-

creasingly important NBC role in

the gathering of foreign news fromthe shifting centers of hostilities

has kept this staff functioning ona watch-around-the-clock sched-ule on all foreign broadcasts.

Behind the vine-covered build-

ing at Bellmore, a formidable array

of equipment hums away as it

catches every phase of the foreign

news coming in via short wave.

A bank of receivers, a battery of

dictaphones for recording impor-

tant dispatches, telephones, type-

writers and teletypes complete

the array.

Jules Van Item, responsible to

A. A. Schechter for the short wavemonitoring staff, was born in Hol-

land. He is now an American citi-

zen after having lived abroad

principally in Germany, France,

Rumania, Hungary, Spain, Por-

tugal, Argentina and Uruguay,and speaks a half dozen lan-

guages fluently as a result.

This staff must know a mini-

mum of four languages, sensepropaganda from policy trends,

facts from lies, be able to

write, preferably from news-paper experience, have had a

European education or havelived abroad for several years.

As an aid, any program com-ing over the short wave can berecorded at the touch of a

switch. The first account of

Marshal Petain’s announce-ment of the capitulation of

France was obtained in this way.Listening to a speech from Bor-

deaux, the static was so bad that

the NBC man couldn’t make it outand recorded it. Listening to thecylinder over and over again, it

finally gave up its message to himand the news made history.

The Listening Post is daily ac-

complishing what it was designedto do: bring the United Statespublic, at the earliest momentpossible, the story. Whether it

takes place in the far reaches of

Asia or the capitals of war-tornEurope, still the average man in

America must know, has the right

to know, and NBC has providedanother service to sustain thatright.

HOLLYWOODLocated in North Hollywood,

NBC has established a Pacific

Coast Listening Post to supplementthe listening activities carried onat the large Eastern plant at Bell-

more, Long Island.

This sensitive radio ear is tunedin to the Orient’s war of words andfollows a pattern of operation es-

tablished at Bellmore. Relaying

news to Los Angeles and other

West Coast newspapers as well as

the Hollywood headquarters of

NBC for broadcast over the doublenetworks, the new Hollywoodplant will be manned by a staff of

foreign language experts as highly

proficient at interpreting foreign

news as the men in the East.

6 NBC TRANSMITTER

NBC TRANSM ITTERPublished for and by the NBCpersonnel from coast to coast.

VOL. 7 OCTOBER, 1941 No. 3

EDITOR Roy Pascal

ASSOCIATES Robertson Schroeder

Arthur Bellaire

Charles Pinckney

Address all correspondence to: NBC Trans-mitter, National Broadcasting Company,Room 465, RCA Building, New York, N. Y.Telephone: Circle 7-8300. Extension 220.

SUGGESTION SYSTEMThe long hoped-for Suggestion

Plan has been announced to NBCPersonnel.

In nearly every office of theEastern Division, boxes are nowinstalled. In each of these maybe found suggestion blanks and en-velopes. Employes are asked to

mail, to the Suggestion Committee,their ideas for greater efficiency

of operations and for programmaterial.

The Committee has for its chair-

man Ken R. Dyke, Director of

Promotion and Advertising. Theother members are Vincent Gil-

chur. Director of General Service;

William S. Hedges, Vice Presidentin charge of Stations; John H.MacDonald, Assistant Treasurer;George McElrath, Operating Engi-

neer; Glarence Menser, NationalProduction Director; Roy G. Wit-mer. Vice President in charge of

Red Network Sales, and AshtonDunn, Personnel Manager.The Personnel office will receive

and record all suggestions submit-ted, turning the suggestions overto the committee. The committeewill then act on each idea, with-out knowing who submitted it. If,

after a study of the idea, it is

deemed worthy of acceptance, anaward of from $5.00 to $100.00will be authorized and the authormade known to the committee. In

this way, all ideas and suggestionswill be judged on their worth alone.

Everyone is eligible for receivingawards except department headsand officers of the company.With the adoption of this sys-

tem, now, more than ever before,

we all have the ability to share in

the operations of our company.

WASHINGTON

ANNIVERSAYEdwin Rogers, dean of Washing-

ton announcers, last month cele-

brated his tenth anniversary withNBC. He has served the entire

decade at WRC-WMAL.Ed first announced the call let-

ters of the two stations on Septem-ber 28, 1931. Today, at WRC-WMAL, Ed has assumed commer-cial importance as a newscaster, in

addition to his regular staff duties.

He is the Senate Beer and Ale re-

porter on WMAL, four times a day.

Ed’s first appearance before a

microphone was in 1923 when hesang at station WDAR, Philadel-

phia. Later, while studying for his

A.B. at Columbia University, heperformed a number of times overWjZ and WEAF. He also appearedin several New York musical showsand was on the staff of WOR andWTIC in Hartford, Connecticut.

PROMOTIONWRC-WMAL has a new promo-

tion manager and a new announcer.Hugh Higgins, for the past four

years engaged in public relations

work at Creighton University,

Omaha, is the promotion man. Ken-neth Banghart, manager of thelocal Cooks Tour travel agency, themike man.

GOLF STORY

Keith Williams, WRC-WMALengineer, reveals a unique story of

having missed a hole-in-one by 30seconds.

Keith, preparing to drive from a

Rock Creek golf course tee, noticed

a workman on the green, but paid

no attention to what he was doing.

However, when he approached the

green, the workman, an Italian,

excitedly pointed and stuttered,

“You justa miss . ..you justa

miss!”Investigating, Keith found that

his ball had stopped dead in the

center of a little round piece of

new turf, the former position of

the cup which the greenskeeperhad just moved several yards away.

Keith says if he’d driven his ball

30 seconds sooner—yep, he’d havemade a hole-in-one . . . if . . .

Tom Knode

ED ROGERS

ODDS AND ENDS

Our odds and ends will include

no vacation bits, which is morethan our other correspondents cansay, no doubt. . . . Fritz Balzer,

Music Supervisor, plays viola in the

studio band in his spare time. Thisyear he’s been promoted to the

first row. . . . George Wheeler,production department, is thebouncing father of a brand newbaby boy, at seven pounds ten

ounces. . . . Auditor Rudy Golden-stroth is slightly incensed that theTRANSMITTER should spell his

name Ruby . . . (ED. NOTE; !)

. . . Walter Salb is WRG-WMAL’snew studio organist. . . . Busiest

announcer: Steve Douglas, doub-ling in brass for Ray Michael,sports; Larry Marino, Kitbitzers;

and Bill Grago. ... Is that RayMichael looking at that windowfull of wedding rings? ... Jim

Seiler, former promotion man, re-

ports from Panama Gity that he

and John Hurley, announcer, are

enjoying their tour of duty with

the Navy, but oh, that rain—that

incessant rain! . . . Our congratu-

lations go to Mr. John Hartley and

the former Miss Maxine Cook whowere married the 9th of Augusthere in Washington. . . . Mary Ma-son, Director of WRC’s Home For-

um, is the newest member of the

100 thousand mile Mainliner Club.

OCTOBER, 1941 7

CHICAGODan ThompsonNEW SPACE

Expanding offices and studioshave now brought practically theentire 19th floor of the Merchan-dise Mart Penthouse into use for

the NBC Central Division. Threenew studios, modernistic in designand beyond-the-minute in con-struction, will be in operation bythe time this appears in print.

Roy Shield, Musical Director ofthe Division; the CommunicationsDepartment under C. V. Olmstead;the Program Traffic Departmentunder Frank Colder; and the RadioRecording Division under Frank E.

Chizzini have moved into new of-

fices opposite these studios.

New observation facilities werearranged for the Transcription De-partment on the 20th floor, whichnow takes over space formerly oc-cupied by the Program Traffic, theCommunications and the NightManager’s departments.

Completed and in operation in

August was the newly redecoratedand redesigned Studio A, largestof the NBC Chicago audiencestudios.

WEDDING BELLSNBC Chicagoans celebrated

twice on Saturday, August 16.

Once when Miss Frances Morton,secretary in the Engineering De-partment, married Hubert Abfalter,NBC Chicago studio engineer;again when Miss Violet Colliander,secretary in the office of Harry C.Kopf, NBC Central Division generalmanager, married Robert K. Mc-Elroy, student in engineering atPurdue University.

Eric Danielson, Program Traf-fic; Newsman C. Clinton Youle;Vic Brown, Program and TalentSales; Virginia Rabe, Sales; An-nouncer Durwood Kirby; DorisJakeway, Music Library; LucilleHagen of Continuity and MarionLoomis of Spot Sales have all

marched to altar since the last

check-up.

MOVIE CRITICISMThe NBC Athletic Association

Camera Committee listened tomingled catcalls, whistlings, stamp-ing of feet, cheers and applausewhen “The 1941 NBC Follies”—

a

40-minute film record of the last

Central Division Outing—was re-

leased as “the most stupendous,colossal, super-special film of theyear!” in Studio D, before an as-sembled audience of some 200NBChicagoans.

Bribes were offered on everyhand in an attempt to obtain dele-tions from the film which nowgoes into the Athletic Associationarchives and may be borrowed forprivate showings at ones’ homes

—

which many of the celebrants said,

“is just the trouble.”

PRODUCTION TURNOVERWhen Lloyd C. “Bucky” Harris,

long-time NBC production director,decided to leave NBC to join theGrant Advertising Agency, hestarted something. Earl Ebi,

“heart-throb” of the department,decided to leave NBC for the luresof Hollywood; Ted MacMurray de-cided he wanted to free lancedirect; Tom Hargis yielded to theblandishments of the Seed Adver-tising Agency and headed forRenfro Valley as director of threehill-billy shows, to be broadcastdirect from that Kentucky town;and Arch D. Scott, long anxious tojoin his family in Hollywood, wastransferred to the production staffof Hollywood, Radio City.

Maurice Wetzel replaces Harrisas assistant production managerand new men in the departmentinclude; Howard Wiley, Ed King,Alan Fishburn, and Martin Magner.

Gilbert McClelland, news editorof the NBC Central Division PressDepartment, has been transferredto the NBC Central Division SalesPromotion Department as assistant

to Mr. Emmons C. Carlson, man-ager of the department.

ORCHIDMiss Judith Waller, Director of

Public Service for the NBC Cen-tral Division, began her 20th yearin radio this year. The GeneralFederation of Women’s Clubsnamed her among 53 women in 30occupations in the United States asrepresenting the “great strides

made by women in the past 50years.”

One of the best known and bestliked figures in radio today. MissWaller joined the staff of theChicago Daily News to organizeand operate Station WCU, nowStation WMAQ, in 1922. All NBCis justly proud of her.

CHANCESMiss Kathryn James replaces

Miss Herbes who resigned as Secre-tary to Mr. Joseph A. McDonald in

Legal. . . . Miss Annamae Dormeyreplaces Miss Seward as Secretaryto William Ray, manager of thePress Department. . . . Miss Sewardwas one of the oldest employes ofthe company, resigning aftertwelve years of service. . . .

NOTESGladys Ferguson, Blue Network

Sales secretary, won the summertennis singles, besting semi-finalerMarian Cooper of Production. . . .

Glenn Webster, engineer, got his

new title of Control Relief Super-visor and a brand new daughter onthe same day. . . . Col. C. V. Olm-stead of Communications reportedthat his 5-year-old son, Ned, bowl-ed 51 in a match play game withhis Dad. . . . Raymond F. Snyder,George A Creech, Ed Weber andPaul H. Clark have left us thesemany months for the colors. . . .

Elizabeth Whitney, former secre-tary in Radio Recording, accepteda Civil Service Commission ap-pointment in the Navy Departmentand left us for Washington, D. C.

8 NBC TRANSMITTER

NBC TELEVISION

NBC is just rounding out thefirst two months of commercialtelevision, operating the first andonly television station, WNBT,during this period. All eyes, there-

fore, are directed to NBC as theproving ground of this new radio

service.

Speaking commercially, the first

question that comes to mind is

—

how many advertising accountshave been signed on during these

first two months? The answer is

eleven, five of which are on for

1 3 weeks or longer, and the others,

for one-time broadcasts.

Accounts that have been signedfor 13 weeks or longer are: AdamHat Stores Inc., Bulova Watch Co.,

Botany Worsted Mills, Blooming-dales and Abraham & Straus.

Advertisers that have been onfor one-time broadcasts are: FrankH. Lee Hat Co., Lever Bros. -Spry,

Missouri Pacific Railroad, Proctor

& Gamble Ivory Soap and the SunOil Co.

Of the series, Bulova and AdamHats have already started. Botany,Bloomingdale and Abraham &Straus are to start this month.Bulova has been continuously onthe air lanes since the first com-mercial broadcast.

This success may sound like

sudden activity out of a clear sky,

but it is just as much a part of thestory to recall that, during the twoyears prior to July 1, the NationalBroadcasting Company transmittedsome 1400 different television

programs, totaling approximatelyI,000 hours of air time.

These programs ran the entiregamut of entertainment and edu-cation from live talent studio pro-

ductions and film programs to

instantaneous pick-ups of sportingand special events in and aroundthe New York area.

These facts reflect experiencein television broadcasting. Theyalso show that television broadcast-ing is not a new and untriedmedium of public entertainmentand information.

During these same two yearsNBC Television made itself knownas an advertising medium. Over200 advertisers were kept inform-ed of television’s progress. Adver-

tising agencies were invited to

send representatives to watch this

new medium grow.The Federal Communications

Commission foresaw the wisdomof permitting experimental televi-

sion broadcasters to seek the co-operation of advertisers, who area major factor in the broadcastingstructure. NBC exercised this op-portunity to the extent of enjoy-ing the cooperation of 125 differ-

ent advertisers, representing 21

diverse industries, in the produc-tion of over 300 commercial-typetelevision programs.

During the two months of Julyand August, there were approxi-mately 15 hours of programmingper week. They consisted of

45.6% outdoor pick-ups, 32.7%Studio, and 21.7% film transmis-sions.

A few of the outstanding pro-grams were the Brooklyn Dodgersbaseball games; professional fight

pick-ups from Ebbets Field; theweekly Monday evening amateurbouts from Jamaica Arena; theintroduction of a new type of waranalysis called, “The Face of theWar” by Sam Cuff; a series of

civilian defense programs; a wo-man’s afternoon hour, “Radio CityMatinee’’; and the televising of

some of sound radio’s popularshows such as: Lowell Thomas;“Truth or Consequences”; “UncleJim’s Question Bee”; Paul Wing’s“Spelling Bee”.

Due this Fall are wrestlingmatches, football games, an OperaWorkshop series and a continua-tion of the most popular shows ofthe past two months.

With the start of commercialtelevision programming on July 1,

NBC’s weekly postcard survey of

audience reaction was resumed.Through these surveys, each mem-ber of the audience has the oppor-tunity to register his opinion of

each program on the basis of “ex-cellent”, “good”, “fair” and“poor.” For the purpose of tabula-tion, numerical values 3, 2, 1, and0 respectively, are assigned to

these ratings.

For the first two months, theaverage of all programs transmittedwas 2.07%. This represents the

Noran T. Kersta

average opinion as 7 units above“good.” It is interesting to notehere that the average of August,2.12, is above the average for July,

which is 2.03. As operations getinto full swing, it is expected thatthese averages will show an im-provement with each month.The number of receivers in the

field and their performances are,

naturally, very vital factors in ourservice. As commercial broadcast-ing opened, there were thousandsof television receivers that had to

be adjusted to new industry stand-ards.

The television receiver manufac-turers immediately began convert-ing these existing receivers to meetthe new standards. In the last weekof July, the audience rated “tech-nical reception”, on the basis men-tioned above, at 1 .99, which is

just below “good.” Four weekslater, during the week of August18-24, they rated it 2.25, which is

considerably above “good.”

In the field it was found that,in the evening, it is rare to haveless than 80% of receivers turnedon. In the daytime, the average is

around 55%.In the evening there is an aver-

age of 5.8 viewers in the home andan average of 22 per receiver in

public places. Applying these aver-age-per-receiver figures to the percent turned on out of the 4,700estimated receivers in the field, thetotal actual number of individualsviewing in the evening, is broughtto something over 30,000.

Naturally television, like all

other industries, in recognizing theorganization of this country’s re-

sources for defense, must, for themoment, be satisfied with its pres-ent rate of steady progress. Onall sides, it is recognized that tele-vision will grow to be a service to

the public supplementing our pres-ent day sound broadcasting.

As a pilot industry during this

national emergency and as a re-

covery industry after the war, tele-

vision takes on the added role ofabsorbing some of the economicand labor surpluses which will re-

sult as national defense construc-tion is eased off when the worldsituation clears.

OCTOBER. 1941 9

COMMERCIAL

t

10 NBC TRANSMITTER

LET'S GETACQUAINTED

CLEVELAND

There are only one or two things

that Clarence C. Alexander can’t

do. One of them is to deny that

he’s been an essential part of thetelevision picture; the other, to fit

a hippo through the doors of Studio3-H—and he could probably dothat, if he had to.

Young, worried, outspoken,Alexander holds down the admit-tedly “worst job’’ in the new art.

But he has the knack of gettingthings done and, when television

went commercial, the first man re-

called from his comfortable berthas general manager No. 2 in GuestRelations was “Alex” Alexander.

Today, he soothes temperamen-tal actors, while seeing that they’re

properly made up; he herds anylivestock on the show in and outon cue (try that some time) ; hesees that the sets are properlydressed—and therein hangs a tale.

His order sheet for one daycalled for; butterfly net, elephantgun, Gaucho outfit, quinine tab-

lets, bow and arrow, bag of pea-nuts, copy of “Cone With theWind’’, jug of moonshine, waterwings, life preserver, one subwayturnstile, two daggers, a stuffed

deer, sled or toboggan, several

petunias and a sweet potato in

bloom.The man who doesn’t blink an

eye at all this was born and raised

in Pittsburgh, Pa. His academicstudy majored in civil engineeringat Carnegie Tech.

Before discovering NBC, he wasmaintenance manager of the Com-monwealth Trust Company underhis father. Root, Clark, Bucknerand Ballantine and the ArlingtonCorporation both knew his services

before this restless, hard hitting,

young man broke into NBC as

assistant building maintenancemanager some four years ago.

His interest in his work is pro-

digious. His aversions; people whocan’t make up their minds, for healways can; things that happenwithout warning, for they threatenthe perfection this fellow’s everafter; no time, for too much left

to chance is dangerous. “Alex”Alexander never leaves things to

luck when he can make them cer-

tain.

JACK FERN

NIGHT PROGRAM MANAGERNOW ANTIQUE COLLEGTOR

Ghet Zohn, WTAM’s NightProgram Manager, dropped downto Medina, Ohio, recently to at-

tend an auction sale at a farmhouse there. He picked up an oldsea chest for two dollars, a pumporgan for two and a half, and 176books in three boxes at 25 centsa box. Total expenditure; $5.25.

Zohn then went to work to find

buyers. He got an offer of 30 dol-

lars for the sea chest, 25 dollars

for the organ and three dollars

apiece for three first editionsamong the books. Total amount of-

fered: $64. Profit, when and if

Zohn sells: $58.75.Zohn, you see, is holding out for

better prices. Meanwhile, Ghethas his antiques stored in the base-ment of his home where his eight-

year-old-son, johnny, is also keep-ing a six-foot black snake.

Mrs. Zohn, who won’t go nearthe basement these days, insists

that the family either move into a

larger house, equipped with zooquarters, or hang out a sign, “An-tiques and Snakes, For Sale.”

NEWGOMERSAnnouncer Irving Waugh, from

Nashville, Tennessee, is a new ad-dition to the staff. Ditto BerthaWolfe, who is a bookkeeper.

Gharles Day is a newcomer in

the Stenographic Department. In-

cidently, Madeline De Paola, of

Bob DaileyNEWSMAN TO ARMY

Jack Fern, of the News staff, hasbeen inducted into the army and,at present writing, is stationed atBolling Field, Washington. Fernhad been at WTAM for nearly a

year, working previously for NBGas a newsman in Denver andChicago.

Replacing Fern is Al Orrick. It’s

really a homecoming for Orrickwho was in the WTAM news roomup until last October, but who hastransferred to Denver, Hollywoodand back to Cleveland since then.

Orrick is married to Helen For-sythe, formerly of the WTAMNews Room, and the couple is ex-pecting an addition to their familyabout the time this edition of theTRANSMITTER leaves the presses.

Steno, is flashing an engagementring.

LATE VACATION NOTESManager Vernon H. Pribble and

Program Director Hal Metzger bothselected the state of Maine fortheir vacationing ground this year.

Engineer-in-charge S. E. Leonardhad the time of his life pulling in

strings of fish at Put-in-Bay, Ohio.. . . Mail Clerk Katherine O’Con-nell also stayed at Put-in-Bay. . . .

Dorothy Cogswell, of Music Rights,in Florida. . . . Emily Brickson, ofthe News Room, to her home townof Minneapolis. . . . Women’s Di-rector Jane Weaver and her hus-band took another ocean cruise,this time to the West Indies. . . .

Engineers Harry Caskey and Tom-my Cox both went to Michigan forthe fishing. . . . Engineer BertPruitt spent a few days visiting

Cecil Bidlack, who left the WTAMcontrols when Uncle Sam calledhim to active service as a first lieu-

tenant at Fort Knox, Kentucky. . . .

Salesman Russell Carter improvedhis golf and Salesman Harold Cal-legher and family went up intoOntario for the fishing. . . . MildredFunnell, secretary to the manager,spent most of her vacation on thegolf course. . . . Production ManWaldo Pooler visited relatives in

the East. . . . and Announcer WadeBarnes divided his time betweenNew York and Sandusky, Ohio.

OCTOBER. 1941

DENVEREvadna B. Hammersley

Don Martin at the

Mike and VerneAndrews at theControls broadcasting

from top of Arapahoe

Glacier near Boulder,

Colorado, over Sta-

tion KOA.

PARAGRAPHSKOA Staff Members are re-

covering slowly from hazards en-

countered in broadcasting from thetop of Arapho Glacier near Boul-der. Announcer Tor Torland lost

the running board from his car.

Public Service Director ClarenceMoore came home minus a fenderand a headlight, Assistant Man-ager Bob Owen lost a bumper andDon Martin his temper when Tor-land got himself lost and failed to

show for the broadcast. Tor waslike the bear who went over themountain, only he went over thewrong mountain.

James MacPherson of KOA SpotSales has purchased a new car to

celebrate his wife’s return homefrom the hospital where she hasbeen ill with a throat infection.

Thelma Erikson, former KOAsecretary, pinch-hit as receptionist

while Jeanne Carter took her vaca-tion. . . . California was vacation-

land for Ed Sproul, Mr. and Mrs.

Jack Lyman and Mary Morti-

mere. . . .

Al Crapsey and Mrs. Crapseyspent two weeks at their mountaincabin near Evergreen. . . . BeverlyWard, of Music Rights, attendedthe Fiesta at Santa Fe, New Mexi-co. .. . Ace Roberts enjoyed thesights around Carlsbad, NewMexico. . . .

Duncan McColl, KOA AccountExec., vacationed in New Orleanswhere he attended the Lion’s In-

ternational Convention. . . . Fisher-

man T. E. Stepp and Mrs. Steppidled away their vacation anglingin Rocky Mountain streams. . . .

The Ivan Schooleys, ClarencePeregrines and Joe Rohrers enjoyedthe mountains. . . . Mary Keller

spent her two weeks on a guest

ranch in the Rockies. . . . HelenLoucks journeyed to the Pacific

Northwest, Vancouver and Prince

Rupert Island. . . . Tor Torlandwent home to Seattle. . . . GeneAbernatha, KOA Guest Relations,

was married August 25 in Taos,

New Mexico, at Verona Ghurch.

KOA has cornered the marketon football broadcasts in the RockyMountain region this Fall. On thedotted line are nine biggest gamesof the year to be played against thevarious foes of Golorado University

and Denver University.

Lloyd Yoder was recently ap-pointed Ghairman of the RadioSection of the GommunicationsGommittee of the Colorado De-fense Council.

Word reached KOA recently

that its June 5th broadcast of

“Rhapsody of the Rockies’’, RedNetwork release, was heard that

day in a town called Palemburg,Sumatra, Dutch East Indies, byNorman B. Sauve, formerly of

Denver.

Chief Engineer Robert Owen an-nounced the appointment of Wil-liam Kumpfer to the position of

Studio Engineer, succeeding Bill

Williams who transferred to Holly-wood recently. . . . Stan Browntakes Bill Ratigan’s place as KOAContinuity writer. Bill No. 2 hasalso been transferred to Holly-wood.

1 1

EXCHANGE

CAMERA—Kodak Senior Special—Self Timer—6.16 Film—f45lens—Carrying Case. Good Condi-tion. Call Wilbur Welsh. Ext. 681

FOR SALE—Sacrifice. Must dis-

pose by October. Blue over-stuffed chair. Four-shelf walnutbookcase— 12 inches wide. Elec-

tric (AC) vacuum cleaner w. up-holstery attachment. Iron meshfireplace screen w. brass trim. Call

Lou Reader. Ext. 607.

FOR SALE OR SWAP—JewellFlush Mounting AC meters,

0- 1 5V. Pattern 74. Also 0- 1 5 AMPPattern 74. Also D-lOO RF Cur-rent Squared Thermocouple TypeGalvanometer Pattern 64. Call MelGreene. Ext. 275.(EDITOR: !)

FURNISHED ROOM—with PrivateFamily — 2 Windows — very

large closet—hardwood floors

—

steam heat—adjoining tiled bathw. shower—hot water alwaysavailable—nicely furnished—tele-

phone—room serviced. Gonvenientto 6th, 7th & 8th Ave. subways.Price—$7.00 per week. 2 PerrySt., Greenwich Village. Gall Ade-laide Piana. Ext. 580, for furtherdetails.

FAREWELLLieutenant Jack Tartiere, 26,

former NBG guide, decorated five

times as a liaison officer in theFrench, and later, the Free Frenchforces, died in a Jerusalem hospitalof wounds sustained in fighting at

Damascus.Relatives in New York, includ-

ing Ernest Byfield, NBG guide andstep-brother to Tartiere, were in-

formed by General Gharles deGaulle, commander of the FreeFrench Army. Tartiere is survivedby his widow, whom he marriedwhile in the United States.

Born and raised in Paris, Tartiereplayed opposite Michele Morganon the French stage.

Among his five medals for ser-

vice, with the French Army andwith the Free French ranks, wasthe famed Croix de Guerre. Tar-tiere participated in Dunquerque,Narvik, Brest and Greece.

12 NBC TRANSMITTER

PROGRAM PRODUCTIONIn a two hour conference with uniformed men interested in radio pro-

duction, Mr. Clarence Menser, National Production Director, analysedthe situation confronting young men seeking futures in NBC New Yorkas producers.

The most important point made by Mr. Menser directly refers to the

Croup article in the last issue. Mr. Menser asserted that no doors are

closed to ability, but proof of that ability must be established.

A young man’s capabilities, Mr. Menser pointed out, in Script or An-nouncing are at once apparent. In Production, the method of judging menis more complex. Only trial and error tells the story. As expense immedi-ately enters, a novice must have the two essentials, background andspecific training, to justify the gamble.

Since Mr. Menser believes that NBC should be the ultimate, compar-able to a first place ball team, the training ground would seem to besomewhere other than Radio City. Just where, is the hitch. To remedythis, Mr. Menser has long been formulating plans for an eventual farmsystem, similar to baseball. Promising material may, in this way, be giventhe chance to develop before assuming the responsibility of an NBC net-

work show.

With the Program Production Croup and the Announcer’s School underCilbert Martyn, still the only definite steps taken, to date, toward de-veloping future program executives, the Croup members are delightedwith Mr. Menser’s welcomed offer to have a production man assignedto supervise the Croup’s productions from time to time, realizing that

this might bring them a step nearer Mr. Menser’s needed farm system.

SPECIAL MENTION

NBC young ladies, 26 in all,

have completed a six week eveningcourse in air raid precaution work.The special mention is their col-

lective average of 97 percent,establishing a class record higherthan any previous company or pri-

vate group.

In the final examination, de-signed to baffle even professionalfirefighters, none of the studentsscored less than 90 percent andthere were six perfect papers.

Members of the American Wo-men’s Voluntary Services, whohave trained more than 5,000American women since March, thegirls, all NBC employes, receivedtheir diplomas and the company’scongratulations from Mr. NilesTrammell, president of NBC.

RECORD BREAKERNBC may well claim another

record breaking achievement, but

BOWLINGThe NBC Bowling League,

under Chairman Steere Mathew of

Traffic, will begin competitionearly in October on the recently

constructed alleys at 1680 Broad-

way.

The new site of this winter’s

matches is the last word in moderndesign and comfort. Although the

official entry list had not beencompiled at this writing, the roster

of teams was expected to resemble

last year’s set up.

Engineering 1 and 2, General

Service 1 and 2, Guest Relations,

Traffic, Treasurer’s, Artist Service,

Program, Sales and Auditing will

all be represented. A Ladies Teamwill most certainly be present.

New members for the most popu-lar team see Dorothy Michel.

Any NBC employe interested in

entering competition, contact anyof the following:

Charles Facer, Alexander D.

Nicol, George Milne, George Mc-Elrath, Edward M. Lowell, Lathrop

Mack, William E. Kost, Robert

Burholt, Steere Mathew, Birger

Hagerth, Henry Hayes.

All bowlers must be members of

the NBG Athletic Association to

compete in the league.

POETRY BY PRUITTAfter reading Bob Dailey’s column, last issue, on Cleveland’s ’’Poet

Laureate”, we asked Bert Pruitt to send us a suitable verse for the Trans-mitter and, if he would, we’d print it. He did and we did and here theyare, for Bert sent two and we couldn’t choose between them. Bert lives

in Lakewood, Ohio, is an NBC engineer, over 6 feet tall and has hadverse printed in newspapers in five cities.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll see my boss

About a raise in pay.

I’ll tell him that my food and rent

Are going up each day!”

I put a shine upon my shoes.

Then straightened up my tie.

‘Til get a raise today,” I thought,

“Or know the reason why!”

I loudly knocked upon his door.

With confidence to spare.

“Gome in,” he said, quite friendly

like,

“And grab yourself a chair.”

“You’re just the man I’m looking

for,”

He told me right away.

“I’d like to borrow twenty bucks,

— I’ve had a cut in pay!”

“Dad,” she said, “I mowed the

lawn

While you were down at town.I also sprinkled it becauseThe grass was getting brown.

I picked the flowers that were out.

I oiled the mower too.

I started work at 9 o’clock

And finished up at 2.

The sun was mighty hot,” she said,

“While I was working there.

But children need the summer sunAlong with healthy air.

And Dad,” she said, “although I

had

A fairly easy time,

I somehow feel the work I did

Is worth, at least, a dime!”

—Bert Pruitt.

OCTOBER. 1941 13

this time, instead of radio or en-gineering, it’s the story of Bumpus.

Bumpus is owned by Vice Presi-

dent O. B. Hanson, Chief Engineerfor NBC. You see, Bumpus is a

dog, but not the ordinary kind.

Here’s the story:

Bumpus was cruising aroundwith Mr. Hanson out on Long Is-

land Sound, where there’s plenty of

room for cruising, and dove off his

master’s yacht, "The Phantom,’’for a short dip in the drink.

Bumpus had done this sort of

thing before. But on this spree, thenext time Bumpus felt a deck be-neath his paws, it was that of a

motor launch. Still nothing un-usual? The motor launch merelyhappened to be five miles from thepoint of immersion.

Bumpus has done something un-equaled in dogdom. His five mileswim is unique. It 'impressesBumpus not in the least we’rehappy to say. He knows his masteris proud of him, but all that con-cerns him now is his return to thesolid comforts of home.

"SQUADS LEFT"

The news on the defense front is the organization of the New YorkCity Defense Recreation Committee. NBC has taken a leading role in thecommittee’s work to provide hospitalization and recreation for men in

the armed forces on leave in Manhattan.

More than forty NBC girls have volunteered as hostesses, serving at

the dances and various other functions for the service men run by theCommittee. Any other NBC girls who qualify by being single, between21 and 35. citizens of this country and are interested, may learn moreabout it from Miss Lucille Claus of Central Files, who is Assistant Chair-

man of the Committee of Hospitality and Welfare.

The program originally was not scheduled to start until October, butthe great necessity for such an organization altered original plans andoperations began by mid-summer.NBC has further aided by making between 800 to 900 tour and broad-

cast tickets available each week for the men on leave. These tickets are

distributed to the men by the Committee.

MEMOS—Bill Wells returned to NBC on leave, and his fellow C. R.

pages and guides didn’t recognize him in uniform, on the third, eighth,

ninth and mezzanine floors. Bill transfers to San Diego Naval TrainingSchool from Rhode Island. . . . Charlie Turner, former Transmitter editor,

now a film editor in the signal corps at Fort Monmouth, still manages to

make the revivals at the Museum of Modern Art Film Library showings.. . . Tom Canning of C.R., in the Air Corps, cracked up a plane but walkedaway from the wreck.

"POSTAGE DUE"Letters from NBC’s Information Division

Program Director—Sir:

Perhaps you need a new announcer—or another one.

I would like to come over to where you are and get in backof one of your micro-boxes.

Maybe you’ll like what hits your ear and we could get

together—or no. Yes?Thanks.

N.B.C.:

Listening to your radio I heard this new song "Sylvia” and I

thought you should know that the words are not original. I read

the words in the library. Please inform your songwriter.

Very truly.

Gentlemen

:

I am 34 years old, 5 feet 2 inches and weigh 1 1 5 poundswith medium brown hair, green-gray eyes. My disposition is

very changeable and dreamy, romantic and ambitious.

I have a daughter 15 years old and have been married 16years.

1 have been a waitress for about seven years and did office

work for 3V2 years lately. I must admit 1 have just found outhow dumb 1 am and believe I could do a sketch on the radio

like jane Ace with little training so decided to write and askif you would consider giving me a job on the radio.

Truly Yours,

BASEBALLThe NBC Baseball Team lost a

closely contested game to their

RCA Camden rivals recently. Thecontest was bitterly fought here in

New York.

A return match had to be can-celled because of the NBC team’scommitments in the Motion Pic-

ture Baseball League of New YorkCity. Despite the RCA set-back,NBC has advanced to the semi-finals and is slated to meet thestrong Universal Pictures team atthe George Washington HighSchool Stadium.

The NBC-RCA Camden en-counter marked the third year theteams have met. Until this recentclash, RCA led by a single game.

SEALS AND PENGUINSIt’s about time someone put a

stop to Prometheus and the friendshe brings home. First it’s seals,

then it’s penguins splashing in thefountain and not a secretary in theRCA Building getting any workdone.

Now if they had Bumpus swim-ming around, it would really besomething.

14 NBC TRANSMITTER

SAN FRANCISCO

BUILDING UPSan Francisco people are refer-

ring to it as “Our new NBC Build-ing.” Taxi drivers are alreadypointing it out as one of the showplaces of the Bay City. The wholetown is conscious that somethingis happening to the communityand that radio is responsible.

Of course, the builders are just

pouring the concrete on the thirdfloor as this is written. There is

much work to be done. But thepace is good and Al Nelson, gen-eral manager of KCO and KPO, is

aiming at next January 15 as Dedi-cation Day.

PICNICIt was all-out for KGO-KPO per-

sonnel August 5, the day of theannual staff picnic. Bob Seal,

president of the NBC AthleticClub, planned the day but had tohave a lot of help in the handlingof all the races, games and othercontests. Harry Mayhorn, trea-surer, collector of the wampum,was a very important aide.

As usual, the day was spent atthe Beresford Country Club. Golf,swimming, tennis, badminton,softball, ping pong and other day-light activities brought trophies tothe winners. Dinner and a ribbing,roasting. Gridiron Glub sort of program ended the fun festival.

FAIROne of the features of the Cali-

fornia State Fair, in Sacramento,was the dedication of a new Radioand Press Building, August 30.

More than 60 radio folk fromstations in the San Francisco areamade the trip as guests of the FairAssociation. Those from KCO andKPO were Jim Pool, Helen Sten-son, A. E. “Shorty” Evans, ReolaJamison, Neil Lyons, KathleenMoore, Mr. and Mrs. Byron Mills,Beth Gardner, Neal Shafer, JackUlrich, Mr. and Mrs. Syd Dorais,Edwarda Pickett, Jo Elletson andFlorida Edwards.

RODEOIt required a fleet of private

cars, in addition to a big Grey-hound bus, to carry the San Fran-cisco radio crowd to Salinas, Cali-fornia, for the annual Radio Dayat the California Rodeo.

Talent presented informal pro-

grams after the noonday luncheonand the evening dinner. Theparade, the rodec and a cocktail

party filled the afternoon and a

carnival wound up the evening.Larry Keating em-ceed the

luncheon program, presenting thefollowing NBC artists: GladysSimpson, Camilla Romo, ElizabethRussell, Sonia Shaw, Ruth Sprague,Florida Edwards and Yvonne Peat-

tie.

Others from KGO-KPO wereMrs. Keating, John Wolfe, JackEdwards, Jr., Caren Puente andJuan Trasvina.

SUPER MARKETOne of the greatest promotion

jobs in the history of Oakland,California, was the joint effort of

KCO and the 22 Lucky StoreSuper Markets.

Although it was strictly a com-mercial activity all the way, theBig Show in the Civic Auditoriumnot only attracted more than 30,-

000 people but won a wealth of

good-will for the promoters.There were 12,500 in the main

auditorium, another 2,500 in theopera house section of the hugebuilding. Rain did not drive 7,500away from the speakers outsidebut did discourage some 10,000who were unable to get into theplace.

Prime movers were CharlesCrouch, manager of the LuckyStores, and Al Nelson, generalmanager of KGO and KPO. Bob

Kay Barr

Seal prepared and produced thetwo-hour program, half of whichwas broadcast. Ricardo had an aug-mented orchestra of 40 pieces andthe parade of talent was most im-pressive.

NOTESJack Bennett, formerly of the

KGO-KPO production department,has been made announcer in

charge of programs going out overthe Asia beam from the GeneralElectric short wave station KGEI.

Sonia Shaw, native of Russia,popular singer at KGO-KPO, be-came a citizen of the United Statesin August.

Frank Mason, Vice-President in

charge of Information, and A. A.Schechter, Director of News andSpecial Events, NBC New York,visited San Francisco in August.

Fred Schilplin, editor and pub-lisher of the St. Cloud (Minn.)Daily Times, which operatesKFAM, visited the San FranciscoNBC stations in June and attendedthe Speechless Mass Meeting at

the new NBC Building.Three clowns, including Felix

Adler, a wild animal trainer, a

slack wire performer and thekeeper of Gargantua, the giantgorilla, all from the RinglingBrothers and Barnum & BaileyGircus, put on a free show andbroadcast from the new NBCBuilding Monday, September 8.

William Kingstone Emery, headof KGO-KPO Guest Relations,

married Lucy Ellen Grofoot of

Porterville, Galifornia, August 31.

Upton Glose, NBC analyst of

news from the Far East, was honorguest of the San Francisco Press

Club, August 29.

George Mardikian, president of

the S. F. Sidewalk Superinten-dents’ Glub, was speaker at theOakland Advertising Glub lunch-eon, September 2.

Announcer Larry Keating wastransferred from KGO-KPO to theNBG staff in Hollywood and wasreplaced by Douglas Gourlay of

KDYL, Salt Lake CityGene Grant, KGO-KPO Sales,

was seriously hurt in an autocrash when he turned out to avoid

a head-on collision and smashedinto a tree. Improving.

OCTOBER. 1941 15

HOLLYWOODNoel Corbett

LISTENING POSTThe tension in the Far East

has provided NBC with the in-

centive to create a powerfulshort wave “listening post”

near the Hollywood studios.

A. A. Schechter, Director of

News and Special Events in

New York, came West to get

the new station under way.Don E. Gilman, Vice-Presidentin charge of the Western Divi-

sion of NBC, dedicated the

new post August 1 5.

QUICK PIX . . . Mr. and Mrs.Lew Frost (he’s assistant to

Vice President Don E. Gilman)have just returned from a motortrip through the northwest and into

British Columbia. . . . Now it’s his

secretary’s turn to vacation andMargaret Kent is off for twoweeks in San Francisco. ... It will

be a November wedding for Her-bert “jock” Fearnhead of Audit-ing and Miss joy Carolyn Richards.

The pair announced their engage-ment when the bride-to-be wasgraduated from UCLA last june.

“jock” is late of Southsea, Eng-land. . . . Hollywood’s newestbenedict, Ray Schultz of Guest Re-lations, is back on the job follow-

ing his Ghicago honeymoon. Rayand the former Gretta jane Lock-wood were married August 2 at

Wilshire Methodist Ghurch. Thebride is a USG graduate. . . . En-gineer Murdo MacKenzie partedwith his appendix and is now re-

cuperating at home. . . . A. H.

Saxton, head of Engineering, andKen Hicks of the same depart-ment, both moved into their re-

spective new homes during their

vacations. . ..jack Parker of Pro-

gram Talent Sales resigned to re-

turn to his home in Portland,Oregon. . . . Alene Butcher, secre-tary to Leo Tyson and GharlieSmith, has been entertaining hermother from East Orange, Newjersey. . . . Miss Dorothy Knight is

the new secretary to Mr. R. H.Graham in Legal, replacing MissGilligan who resigned August 15.

. . . Tracy Moore, Blue NetworkSales Manager, regretfully badefarewell to his secretary of five

years standing, Helen Aldrich, whoresigned to accept a secretarial

position at Mather Field, the AirGorps base in her home town of

Sacramento. First time Helen'sbeen back home in fourteen years.

. . . Vava Bowers, secretary to Bill

Andrews in Guest Relations, is theproud mama of a baby girl, bornAugust 7. The baby has beennamed Nadine and tipped thescales at six and a half pounds at

birth. Vava returns from her leaveof absence this month and pinch-hitter Grace Leddy returns to herhome in New York for a visit. . . .

Ben Byers of Press and Virgil Rei-

mer of Sound Effects spending all

their spare time and/or dollars in

flying lessons. . . .john Swallow,

Program Manager, showing off a

34-pound salmon sent him by DickKeplinger at KOMO in Seattle. . . .

The Wallows and the BuddyTwisses both celebrating weddinganniversaries September 12. TheSwallows have ticked off six years,

the Twisses 1 6. ... Ed Wulzen,of the Music Library, leaves the

company to join KVEG at San LuisObispo as an announcer. He’ll bereplaced by Gharles Sergeant ofGuest Relations. . . . Newcomersto the Guest Relations departmentare Victor Livoti, Louis Onofrio,William Adams and Alfred Ather-ton, while among those transfer-ring to Hollywood are ArchieScott, formerly a Ghicago pro-ducer, and Marjory Moline, for-

merly of the File Department in

New York, who is now in GentralStenographic. . . . And now yourreporter bids you adieux. Afterhandling Transmitter news fromHollywood ever since he trans-

PIGTURE

Seeking improvement in

service and facilities, nineradio station owners and man-agers of the National Broad-casting Gompany Pacific Coastbasic Blue Network, held a

precedent shattering meetingat Hollywood Radio Citv. Theregional meeting, the first of

its kind in radio, was called byDon E. Gilman, Vice President

in charge of the Western Divi-

sion of NBC.Those attending are pictured

here in this order: (standingleft to right) Hal Bock, Press

Manager for the Western Di-

vision of NBC; john Swallow,Program Director for the WesternDivision of NBC; Clyde Scott,

Sales Manager for KECA, Los An-geles; Louis Wasmer, President ofKGA, Spokane; Birt Fisher, Gen-eral Manager of KjR, Seattle; LewFrost, assistant to Don E. Gilman;Tracy Moore, Blue Network SalesManager for the Western Divisionof NBG; Howard Lane of the Mc-Glatchy Network; Arden Pang-born, Manager of KEX, Portland;Bob McAndrews, head of SalesPromotion for the Western Divi-

sion of NBC; (seated) CharlesStorke, Manager of KYMS in SantaBarbara; Tom Sharp, President ofKFSD in San Diego; Don E. Gilman,Vice President of the WesternDivision of NBG; Harrison Holli-

way. General Manager of KECA,Los Angeles; Keith Kiggins, BlueNetwork Sales Manager for NBC;and Al Nelson, Manager of KCOin San Francisco.

ferred from San Francisco severalyears ago, his other Press Depart-ment duties force him to relin-

quish the job. Beginning nextmonth, your Hollywood notes will

be written by Martha Sherwin.

ED. NOTE: Noel’s been a veryswell correspondent and we’resorry to lose his work. We wel-come Martha Sherwin though andwe’re sure that she can equal thefine caliber of Noel Corbett’scolumns.

16 NBC TRANSMITTER

FREQUENCY

The hullabaloo that launchedFrequency Modulation (FM)sound broadcasting has subsided a

little, leaving the new method to

progress strictly on its public ap-

peal.

Practically everybody has heardof FM. Thousands have heard FMbroadcasts. And some have boughtFM receivers in those areas wherethere are FM stations.

NBC, applying its policy of fur-

thering any development thatpromises to better radio service,

established an FM transmitter at

New York in 1939. The station,

W2XWC, now broadcasts eighthours a day, five days a week. Thestation’s power is shortly to beboosted.

There’s a lot of curiosity aboutFM. The initials themselves carrya suggestion of mystery and theclaims for it intrigue some personswhose morning listening is rudelyshattered at times by the neigh-bor’s electric razor.

Frequency Modulation, as a

broadcasting service, is new. As a

method of radio, it goes back to a

patent applied for in 1902. It ex-tends through patents in practi-

cally every year between that yearand this. A lot of engineers havehad a hand in its development. Butdevelopments in the last fewyears, both in the use of ultra highfrequencies and in FM itself, havemade the system practicable for

broadcasting.Practically all of radio the world

over uses amplitude modulation(AM). With this system, thetransmitter’s carrier wave remains

unchanged. Only the amount of

power radiated by the transmitteron its carrier wave varies from in-

stant to instant.

In FM the radiated power re-

main's constant, but the carrier

frequency changes in accordancewith the sound being broadcast.That’s the way O. B. Hanson, VicePresident and Chief Engineer,would put it, except that he woulddraw a few illuminating diagramsthat would pretty much clear upany further confusion.

Mr. Hanson agrees that FM is

an improved method of modulatinga carrier wave and that FM results

in noise-free reception at lowersignal strengths than is possiblewith AM. Frequency Modulation,he says, gives greater fidelity, part-

ly because it is less noisy and partly

because the Federal Communica-tions Commission has set asidechannels 200 kilocycles wide for

FM stations. This enables broad-casting to escape the constraintsof the 10-kilocycle band. It’s

simply a matter of getting moreof the overtones into the trans-mission to give the programgreater richness.

A good deal of FM’s static-free

quality is due, according to ChiefEngineer Hanson, to the fact thatFM stations use ultra short waves.These are practically free of

natural static. NBC’s experimentalUHF stations, using frequencymodulation, cut blithely throughterrific thunder storms with nomore than a faint click in the re-

ceiver.

Frequency Modulation has one

. . . that the rugs in NBC areshampooed? Soap suds and all.

. . . that the Wilson sign onBroadway, featuring those veryamusing silhouettes, is actuallytelevision in its early form?. . . that the second floor ofNBC is regarded by theatrical folkas the successor to the front of theold Palace Theatre?. . . that not every NBCite knowsthat the NBC Studio-Television

Tour is the number one tour at-

traction in the country?. . . that the worst air condition-ing problem is encountered in thecontrol rooms? Seems every agencyman has six assistants.

. . . that Lorin Maazel, Frenchyoungster who conducted the NBCSymphony Orchestra at the age of1 1 ,

first conducted at 8 years, hasabsolute pitch, rehearses and con-ducts without a score?

MODULATION

distinct advantage over AmplitudeModulation, Mr. Hanson says.

That is the effect of the “limiter.”

action in the receiver. This is a

gadget that keeps out all the peskyman-made noises that occasionallydisturb AM reproduction.

Vacuum cleaners, the afore-mentioned electric razors, dia-

thermy machines, electric coils,

transformers—the last are thoseblack boxes you see situated at

regular intervals on telephonepoles—all disturb AM reproduc-tion often enough to be very an-noying. Under FM, they amount to

nothing. Tube hiss also is held to

a minimum.How fast ultra-high frequency

broadcast services, making use of

this new method of modulationwill spread is still an unansweredquestion. To take advantage of thegreater fidelity that is possible

with FM, the receiver has to havea speaker unit capable of reproduc-ing, without distortion, the widerange of sound frequencies. Conse-quently, the prices of quality FMreceivers will be relatively high.

That’s just about the problem,greatly simplified, that FM faces.

It may grow along with television.

Both use UHF and television soundis FM.

Meanwhile, NBC will continueto operate VV2XWC; it will beW51NY when it goes commercial.A Chicago station will be built in

that future. When demand for FMspreads, NBC will apply for per-

mission to establish still other FMstations in still other parts of the

country.

DID YOU KNOW?

. . . that Personnel interviews

approximately 18,000 people a

year seeking positions with NBC?. . . that NBC people have seenmore of the Rockettes across the

way than any one else?

. . . that WEAF broadcast its

first commercial on September 7,

1922?. . . that 500,000 pounds or 1 1

carloads of rock-wool insulates

this building?