Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 8 60 Who's Who in Radio Education No. 13: Judifh Waller When the School Broadcast Conference selected Judith Waller for its first annual award of merit in 1940, it turned the limelight on a quiet, unassuming person who has labored for many years in radio’s educational field. To the hundreds of persons who know Miss Waller personally, her selection seemed a just recognition of her influence and effect upon education in radio. As a radio pioneer, who from the very beginning felt that radio should offer something more than entertainment, Miss Waller made arrangements for hundreds of informative lectures over Station WMAQ, of which she was director from 1922 to 1932. It was she who suggested that actual pickups of classroom lectures at Northwestern University and at the University of Chicago were feasible and desirable. It was she who arranged for what was very likely the first music-appreciation hour, a program which made its debut on October 12, 1922, with Mr. and Mrs. Marx E. Oberndorfer as commentators on the work of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was she who pioneered in the children’s field with a Hearing America First musical series, Miss Georgene Faulkner’s Story Lady series, Russell Pratt’s Topsy Turvy Time program, and a thriceweekly program presented in collaboration with the Chicago public schools. It was she who not only conceived the idea of the celebrated University of Chicago Round Table, but who also saved it from possible ob Judith Waller, NBC public service executive in Midwest. livion by persuading the National Broadcasting Company to retain it when Station WMAQ joined that network in 1931. It was Miss Waller, too, who worked out the plans for the NBC-Northwestern University Summer Radio Institute which has been conducted annually since 1942. But Miss Waller’s experience in radio has not been confined to education by any means. As director of one of Chicago’s most enterprising stations for ten years, she has so many “firsts” to her credit that she has forgotten many of them. Yet it was her personal interview with William Wrigley, Jr., that led to the first play-by-play broadcast of a major-league baseball game from Wrigley Field. True, the World Series had been aired in the fall of 1924; but no one, so far as is known, had ever thought of broadcasting a play-by-play description of a regular game until Miss Waller booked the first game in the late spring of 1925. Miss Waller also booked the first play-by-play account of a football game — that between the University of Chicago a n d Brown University in 1924. Her station was the only one in Chicago to broadcast the inauguration of Coolidge on March 4, 1925. Prior to that, it had been one of the few stations to broadcast the Democratic and Republican national conventions by land wire in 1924. Miss Waller was responsible also for booking such diverse radio programs as the first Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcast and the debut of Amos ’n’ Andy. She recalls considerable misgivings regarding the addition of Amos ’n’ Andy to her WMAQ staff. “They wanted $25,000 a year,” she says, “and my budget from the Chicago Daily News for all other program talent was exactly that figure. Frankly, I didn’t know how much of a gamble it would be to try to make stars out of a team that had acquired a certain amount of fame as Sam ’n’ Henry, but which would have to change that name on my station. Luckily, they proved their worth in short order.” Another “first” which Miss Waller recalls with a chuckle, because of the furore it created at the offices of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the first international broadcast ever made — t h e broadcasting of a telephone conversation between John Gunther, Chicago Daily News correspondent in London, and Hal O’Flaherty, then foreign news (Continued on Page 62)