Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1956)

This month marks our 12th month in business. During our first year we worked hard and developed top facilities . . . acquired an outstanding staff of experts . . . and produced pace-setting TV commercials and shows with a new kind of creativity. If you would like to see the fruits of our year's labor, please write for a sample reel of TV spots. The staff of Fred Niles Productions extends warm wishes for a very happy Holiday Season. i . ■ ' ■ ■ ■ ■ ' , I ■ .3 I I -1 FRED A. NILES Productions, Inc. Films for theatre, TV & industry 22 W. HUBBARD ST., CHICAGO 10 In Hollywood: RKO-Pathe, Culver City our respects to PAUL JOHN MILLER AT THE TIME Paul J. Miller moved to Wheeling, W. Va., 25 years ago, he already had spent more than a dozen years in the entertainment and business ends of radio dating back to 1918. Today, the Storer Broadcasting Co. vice president and managing director of WWVA-AM-FM Wheeling is sometimes known as Ohio Valley's "Mr. Radio," having spent the greatest part of his lifetime in radio in that region. Paul John Miller, who was born Oct. 24, 1904, in Pittsburgh, knew more about radio as a high school lad of 14 than he did about the sketchy rules governing it when in 1918 an older fellow amateur warned him that World War I security efforts prohibited the operation without a license of his spark coil transmitter. Not long afterward he again was on the air with his amateur W8AGX and later held broadcast licenses for WMBU and WCBF Pittsburgh, both short-lived efforts because of lack of financing. Upon his graduation from high school in 1922, he went to KQV, a pioneer station in Pittsburgh, to begin his commercial broadcasting career. At KQV, Mr. Miller was operator, announcer and entertainer and he did everything around the station from tuning up the transmitter to announcing and playing the piano. When the station went on a commercial basis in 1926, he knew enough about engineering, although he had not completed studies at Carnegia Tech, to build the transmitter. Mr. Miller continued to operate his W8AGX, and it was one of the few stations in the world that was heard by WNP, the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, in its explorations near the North Pole in 1925. During those days one Pittsburgh newspaper said about him: "There may be more versatile individuals in Pittsburgh radio circles than Paul J, Miller of KQV, but we don't know them. Paul can perform almost any duty that arises around a broadcasting station. He plays the saxophone and piano and sings. . . . He designed the control panel in the new studios . . . and he has worked in the commercial end of the business, selling both time and receiving sets. In addition to all this, he is the station's principal sports announcer." This sports chore was one of Mr. Miller's loves and he set out to make KQV a sports station. As one of radio's first sportscasters, he originated ideas that since have become standard in broadcasting. He began regular broadcasts of college football games played by Carnegia Tech, Duquesne and Pitt. When he couldn't attend games personally, he "recreated" broadcasts from the wires of Western Union, and with addition of band music and crowds cheering they sounded so much like the actual thing that his followers bet each other on whether he was actually at the field of play. He also had a pioneer quiz broadcast with prizes and made a broadcast from an Ohio River steamer. He became manager of KQV in 1928. In 1931 he went down the river to join WWVA Wheeling, which had been on the air several years, as an announcer and entertainer, and helped originate the station's still-popular Inquiring Mike. There he met Vivian McDonald, then doing an organ program on WWVA, and married her. They live across the Ohio River at Martins Ferry. At WWVA, the "Friendly Voice," he also worked in engineering, announcing and entertaining and continued until a few years ago to conduct the station's Ohio Valley Football Reporter. He later became production manager, then assistant managing director, and in 1953 was named managing director. A year ago he was elected a Storer vice president. A past president of West Virginia Broadcasters Assn., active in the Masonic organization and in almost all local civic affairs, Mr. Miller plays a golf game in the high 80s. He is a believer of the "personal touch'' approach in broadcasting and is known throughout the business as a master of mail order advertising. An example of the WWVA mail pull is a recent announcement on the station's Saturday night WWVA Jamboree (7:30 p.m.-midnight), which drew 10,000 pieces of mail from 550 counties in 23 northeastern states. Mr. Miller appeared as announcer and entertainer on the first Jamboree program 23 years ago and a week ago last Saturday the show counted its two millionth member of the studio audience. For his quarter-century in area broadcasting the Wheeling Advertising Club presented Mr. Miller with a giant certificate honoring his 25 years of service to the Ohio Valley community. Page 20 • December 10, 1956 Broadcasting • Telecasting