NBC Transmitter (Jan-Nov 1945)

6 NBC Transmitter FLYING SPORTSCASTER KVOO’s John Henry Wings Way in Own Plane to Sports Stories That Thrill Oklahoma Listeners TULSA, OKLA.— That ancient admonition about being careful where you put your “John Henry” is a hollow warning when it comes to being heeded by the one and only John Henry of KVOO, NBC’s Tulsa affdiate. This genuine John Henry is liable to be “put” in a different state each day of the week as he wings and records his way across Southwestern skies, literally and figuratively to “air” his nightly “Sports Call” program. KVOO calls it “John Henry’s Sports Call,” and the realistic ringing of a telephone bell invariably finds John “in,” or at least “on the line” at 10:30 every night. But despite his presence in the studio, or on the “call” originating there, Henry more than likely will be talking from somewhere in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas or Texas, or perhaps from some suburban Tulsa golf course or neighborhood bowling alley. As a matter of fact, it’s about as easy for John Henry to zoom in from a sports huddle in some neighboring state, as it is to wend his way through the thick traffic se])arating Tulsa’s suburbs and KVOO’s studios ato]) the Philtower skyscraper. For John, taking a tip from another Henry— Henry IV, as quoted from a certain William Shakespeare’s works— long ago decided that “he who rides high and at high speed and with his pistol, kills a sparrow flying.” So John Henry flies at high speed, as his own airplane pilot, and with his recorder, bags many a “bird” of a sports story flying. But lie’s definitely not a “flyby-nighter,” except on one rare and recent occasion wben he almost answered another kind of a “call” in his Cub plane, designed for daylight flying. Assembling sjiorts news largely tbrough his own channels, Henry seeks to cover that ]iortion of KVOO’s vast emjiire extending from the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas to Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. Recent reaction to his nightly programs has included after-broadcast personal “calls” from fans as far away as Laredo, Texas, down on the Mexican border, and from as far north as Omaha, Nebraska. Winging out of Tulsa on the slightest ON THE GO-KVOO puts its John Henryin as-well-as on the air. John Henry (yes, that's his real name) is pictured ivith the cub plane he personally pilots in scouting half a dozen states in behalf of his nightly “Sports Call" series. whim or hunch, Henry within a single week recently has commuted to Kansas City, Missouri, to broadcast the big NCAA tourney by remote control; to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to “look up” Oklahoma A. & M.’s seven-foot basketball “wonder boy,” Bob Kurland; to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to interview Coach Glenn Rose and his football squad in their final spring training; to Wichita, Kansas, to have a huddle with Hap Dumont, jjresident of the National Baseball Congress of semi-pros— not to overlook recordings featuring such colorful personalities as Tulsa’s own one-armed All-American guard, Ellis Jones, and National League umpire George Barr. Semi-pro or caddy on the golf course, expert or pin boy at a bowling alley and high school and sandlot peewee baseball activity are as eagerly covered by Henry if there’s a special novelty or thrill to record and report. But there’s one recent “thrill” Henry experienced, hut did not record for the benefit of his multi-state audience. Returning from a recording mission at Fayetteville, his plane was caught between two violent storms, and forced to remain aloft for agonizing hours to keep from landing in the hazardous jackoak hills of Arkansas or in a black sea of illimitable miles of inundated Oklahoma lowlands. But somehow, with wing and prayer, but no lights either on his plane or at the blacked out private airport where he parks it, he flew blindly, but safely into port, shortly before his 10:30 deadline. To KVOO staff members, and his waiting audience, Henry merely, but mysteriously explained: “This is not the first ‘call’ I’ve had tonight. I broke some kind of a record myself today, but despite hill and high water here’s a record I didn’t break.” And speaking of records, Henry expects to visit every community in KVOO’s vast listening area of the Southwest to obtain local color and sports thrills. Meanwhile, he hopes that in the wake of the telephone bell and announcer’s introduction, all thrills on the “Sports Call” will continue to be recorded — and recounted—6_y and not about John Henry. KGW, Portland, Bans All Wartime News Commercials PORTLAND, ORE. — Following the elimination of middle commercials from NBC newscasts, KGW, of this city, has gone one step further. It has eliminated all middle, beginning and ending commercials. In short, commercial sponsors are out for the station’s own news broadcasts, and the news will come purely as a KGW feature. “At this crucial time of history-in-themaking by the minute we believe news broadcasting is more than ever a public service,” Arden X. Pangborn, managing director of KGW said. “News is different from other normal radio fare, and as such must meet the test of different programming standards. “We believe it is our duty to listeners to recognize their very close personal interest in news and in every way possible to serve this interest. We feel that in the past our news program commercial copy has been of the highest standard. At the same time, as the war swings to the West, and conies even closer home, our sense of responsibility to anxious mothers, wives and sweethearts impels us to eliminate any interruption whatevei in locally originated news periods.”