Broadcasting (Oct 1931-Dec 1932)

PAUL WHITEMAN will leave the NBC Chicago studios early in January for a five weeks tour of RKO theaters. He will open Jan. 8 in St. Louis. Besides his orchestra Whiteman will have with him two radio stars, Mildred Bailey and Jack Fulton, Jr. The "Whiteman group also will play in Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland and will return to the Edgewater Beach Hotel late in the spring. PAUL LUCAS, chief announcer of WTIC, Hartford, is conducting the auditions of the Connecticut station. He is still announcing "The Travelers Hour," two-year-old feature sponsored by The Travelers Insurance Companies, however, and gives a weekly informal chat on studio activities entitled "Behind the Scenes." MORTON DOWNEY was welcomed back to New York after a two weeks' vacation in California with a dinner party given by the CBS at the Hotel Elysee Dec. 7. JOHNNY WALKER, announcer of KOIN, Portland, Ore., has been assigned to the weekly program of KHJ, Los Angeles, and the coast Don Lee chain known as "Your Host on the Isle of Golden Dreams." THE THREE CO-EDS, onetime vocal trio at KFI, Los Angeles, will hereafter be heard from KHJ, Los Angeles, as the Bluettes on the present Resinol series of programs. MARY WOOD BEATTY, soprano at KOA, Denver, for the last four years, has gone to San Francisco to become a staff artist of the NBC Pacific Coast network. Everett Foster, KOA baritone and announcer, and Forrest Fishel, tenor, were transferred to California a short time previous. BETTY WORTH does a "songs of the southland" period for KTAT, Fort Worth, each Saturday. SID GOODWIN, formerly announcer at KGW, Portland, Ore., and lately on the NBC staff in San Francisco, has returned to Portland as production manager for KTBR. MATHEW MURRAY, known to radio audiences in the west as "The Ambassador of the Air" during his daily talks at KMPC, Beverly Hills, Cal., and later at KGFJ, Los Angeles, will soon publish his inspirational talks in book form. FRED HOWARD and Nat Vincent ™™ a~ the "HaPPy Chappies" at KMPC, Beverly Hills, Cal., have just written a new song, "On the Old Black Mountain Trail." Their "When the Bloom is on the Sage" made them known nationally. PETER DIXON, author of "Radio Writing," who with his wife, Aline Berry, acts in the Wheatena skit, Raising Junior," over an NBC-WJZ network, may soon have their sketches published in book form. Dixon writes the continuity. PHILLIPS LORD and his "Seth Parker" troupe, who have been touring the country in personal appearance engagements, but continuing their Sunday night "hymn songs" over NBC, have extended their tour six weeks. On Dec. 13 they were scheduled to be in Miami. From Dec. 20 to 27 they will be en route to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal. They will be heard from Los Angeles on Jan. 3, after which their radio appearances include Kansas City, Jan. 17; Chicago, Jan. 24, and New York, Jan. 31. They will appear in Baltimore Jan. 30. GEORGE O'BRIEN is the new program and production manager at WLWL, New York. He is a singer and has participated in numerous network broadcasts over WEAF and WJZ. Born at Branford, Conn., during a world war offensive a frightened German prisoner knocked out all of his front teeth with the butt of a gun, which was not so good for a singer. An Austrian dentist performed a perfect adjustment. DON CRAIG, who conducts the "Radio Gossip" column in the Washington Daily News, on Dec. 10 turned over the authorship of his entire column to Arthur Godfrey, announcer of WRC, Washington, and the NBC, who has been bedridden for three months due to an automobile injury. In the column, Godfrey pays his respects to Ted Husing, CBS sports announcer, as "the best sports announcer even if he is on Columbia." He regards "Arabesque" on CBS equalled only by NBC's "Moonshine and Honeysuckle," and he picks the following as his choices of the best announcers in radio: For classical programs, Milton Cross; for regular commercials, Graham McNamee, James Wallington and Davis Ross, and for special events, Herluf Provensen and George Hicks. MARDIE LILES and Sol Fleischman, announcers of WDAE, Tampa, Fla., have been achieving considerable fame on sports and commercial programs lately. Liles comes from the operating staff. Fleischman drew considerable fan mail for his recent coverage of the Florida-Kentucky football game. JOHN W. HOLBROOK, NBC announcer who won the 1931 Diction Medal, will be married to Katherine C. H. Renwick, actress, in the Church of the Messiah, Brooklyn, Dec. 31. Their romance began in the New York NBC studios about six months ago. IN THE CONTROL ROOM LESTER BOWMAN, formerly master control supervisor of the CBS New York studios, has been promoted to assistant division engineer. Bradley Libbey is now master control supervisor. HARRY R. LUBCKE, director of television for KHJ, Los Angeles, and the Don Lee system, on Nov. 21 addressed a meeting of the Sutro-Seyler Music Club of that city on various aspects of the visual art. LIEUT. MALCOLM P. HANSON, of the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington, who was chief radio engineer of the Byrd Antarctic expedition, on Nov. 30 addressed a combined meeting of the Atlanta section of the Institute Radio Engineers and the Atlanta Radio Dealers Association. T. F. JOHNSTON, formerly with the Bell Laboratories, has joined the staff of the New York office of the Department of Commerce radio supervisor as inspector. H. R. DYSON, formerly with the Westinghouse plant at Chicopee Falls, Mass., is now a radio transmitter engineer for RCA Victor at Camden, N. J. J. M. CARMENT, formerly with WORD, Batavia, 111., is now chief engineer of WCHI, Chicago. D. R. CANADY is now chief engineer of the Canady Recording Equipment Co., Cleveland. J. CLAYTON RANDALL, plant engineer of WTIC, Hartford, was recently host to 700 members of the Connecticut division of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers who inspected the 50 kw. transmission plant on Talcott Mountain on the outskirts of Hartford. JAMES F. J. MAHER, of the engineering staff of WOR, Newark, and Fred Muller, of the Tropical Radio Telegraph Co., were nominated for president of the Veteran Wireless Operators Association at a meeting held Dec. 2 in New York. Ballots have been mailed to the membership throughout the world and returns will be announced at the annual meeting Jan. 6. The association's annual banquet, proceeds of which will be given to the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, will be held in the Hotel Astor, New York, Feb. 11. Broadcasts to Germany Every Other Friday PRACTICALLY unknown to the American radio audience, but widely known throughout continental Europe, are the bi-weekly talks on "What America Talks About" being broadcast to Germany by Kurt G. Sell, Washington correspondent of the Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau, which is the German counterpart to the Associated Press. Mr. Sell, a distinguished journalist of worldwide experience, has been speaking in German every other Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock, EST, since last Sept. 4, his speech being carried from the NBC Washington studios by telephone line to Schenectady, where it is relayed via short wave to Germany. Heard at 8 p. m., European time, his talk is picked up by a short wave station at Beelitz, whence it is sent to the key station of the Reichs Rundf unk Gesellschaf t, or German Broadcasting Corporation, Berlin. It is heard not only over the German network but also over stations in Norway, Austria and Switzerland which asked and received permission to carry them. Mr. Sell's fan mail has come from those countries and from Den mark, Holland, Czechoslovakia and Danzig. The German journalist discourses frankly on subjects which he knows to be of paramount current interest to his European audience. His topics have included the Cleveland air races, the flight of the DO-X to New York, the American depression, the tax problem, wheat sales to Germany and China, the American political situation, disarmament, M. Laval's and Signor Grandi's visits, war debts, disarmament and other subjects. As he explains it, he does not take sides but strives to give unbiased pictures of the American attitude with the thought always of fostering better understanding between the New World and the Old. For the most part, reception in Europe has been very good. After each talk, Mr. Sell enjoys a short chat with Chief Engineer W. Schaeffer of the German Broadcasting Corporation about the quality of transmission. NBC engineers have been watching these broadcasts closely as tests of the technique of international relay programs. KNX Intersperses News With Timely Questions QUERIES on timely topics are being used by KNX, Hollywood, to liven up its new broadcasts, which are put on the air four times a day. Recently a poll was taken to ascertain the listeners' views as to the best motion picture they had ever seen. Votes on prohibition and other issues are planned for the winter. Surprisingly, the recent talkie productions were not much in the running. No Douglas Fairbanks picture was in the forefront, and only one of Mary Pickford's films was on the list of those that received more than 40 votes. Even Charlie Chaplin placed only one picture in the contest and that, not for his acting, but for his directing. No comedy was included in the selections. The ten pictures receiving the greatest number of votes are: The Birth of Nation, The Covered Wagon, The Ten Commandments, King of Kings, Byrd at the South Pole, Cimmaron, Desert Song, Miracle Man, Way Down East and Disraeli. I. R. E. Convention THE SEVENTH annual convention and parts exhibition of the Institute of Radio Engineers will be known as the Twentieth Anniversary Convention in commemoration of the founding of the Institute in 1912. It will be held at the Hotel William Penn, Pittsburgh, April 7, 8 and 9, 1932. Plans are being prepared for a program of technical papers by prominent engineers as well as trips of educational interest. Two CBS Hookups CBS WAS divided into two networks for football the afternoon of Nov. 28, when WABC, New York, "keyed" the Army-Noti-e Dame game for 46 stations while WMCA and WPCH, New York, which are not regularly members of the network, carried the YalePrinceton game to New York and 18 stations. The special hookups were arranged ta meet the great demand for the New Haven contest, especially in the Southern states. Page 20 BROADCASTING • December 15, 1931