NBC Transmitter (Jan-Dec 1937)

JANUARY, 1937 5 ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION GRANTS SPECIAL RADIO FELLOWSHIP Allen Miller, head of the University Broadcasting Council of Chicago, has been named the recipient of this year’s fellowship for observation and training in network procedure here at NBC granted by the General Education Board, a Rockefeller foundation, according to a recent announcement. Miller’s fellowship became effective January 15 and was granted under an arrangement by which university students and representatives of broadcasting stations are assigned by the General Education Board to NBC for study. This research privilege includes a month’s work at an NBC branch station and five months work in NBC radio studios. Before taking his present position two years as head of the University Broadcasting Council of Chicago, Miller served six years as director of University of Chicago broadcasting activities. The University Broadcasting Council of Chicago represents three universities, De Paul, Northwestern and the University of Chicago. The Council sponsors the famous Round Table Discussion series and "Science in the News,’’ a weekly feature presenting Dr. Arthur H. Compton, Nobel Prize winner. The Council’s studios are in downtown Chicago with a direct line to Mitchell Tower on the University of Chicago’s campus from where the Sunday morning Round Table program has originated every week for the past four years. Recipients of the first two fellowships, William Friel Heimlich of Ohio State University and a member of the staff of WOSU, Columbus, and Miss Leora Shaw of the University of Wisconsin and a staff member of WHA, Madison complete their training on February 15. During the last five months they have been carried through all phases of broadcasting including intensive studies in continuity writing, production and programming. However, Miller’s fellowship differs from the first two granted in that the arrangement is extended to an executive. His training period will be shorter and more intense. He comes direct to Radio City instead of first spending a month in an NBC station. Dr. Franklin Dunham, NBC’s Educational Director, is in complete charge of the project and is responsible for making the necessary arrangements to provide each of the fellows ample facilities for observation, study, research, and training. ALLEN MILLER NBC BOSTON AND SPRINGFIELD by Edward B. Hall On December 27, 1936, a daughter was born to Jack and Virginia (Hamilton) Wright at the Faulkner Memorial Hospital. Jack Wright, WBZ’s capable young production manager, says his daughter will be christened Linda. Latest bulletins give assurance that both Linda and her mother continue to thrive. Jack, however, is still convalescing. i i i Robert E. (Bob) White, studio director of WBZA and mentor of the popular WBZA Players, has established a free public school of the drama which meets weekly at the Hotel Kimball studios in Springfield. This venture serves the twofold purpose of making new friends for WBZA and of developing fresh talent for Bob’s radio players. Some 30 Springfieldians regularly attend the Friday evening classes in the studio. i i i Bob Halloran of the WBZ Accounting Department has what he believes may be a unique cover from the Union of South Africa. It bears a strip of three onepenny stamps of the issue printed in commemoration of King George the Fifth’s Jubilee in 1935. The center stamp shows a decided plate scratch which runs diagonally through the King’s head. At first glance it would appear as though a mask had been placed over the Sovereign’s face. Bob would be delighted to hear from any fellow philatelist who may happen to know the history of this curious Jubilee imprint. 1 1 i The peace which passeth understanding has descended upon WBZ since D. A. Meyer banished his anvil chorus of carpenters and painters. For weeks these industrious artisans made days and nights hideous with their bedlam. And for more than a fortnight the place was a shambles, as piles of lumber littered corridors and buckets of whitewash tettered precariously from jittery scaffoldings overhead. But out of that chaos has emerged a new order. No longer must harried executives—now hermetically sealed in their offices— involuntarily eavesdrop on their colleagues in adjoining cubicles. The Press Department’s news room, formerly a morgue for unused equipment, has been purged and the outraged dignity of the Fourth Estate redressed in oak panels and fresh paint. Ill What do announcers and operators do in their leisure moments? At WBZ they go down to the Hotel Bradford alleys— and bowl. This pastime has recently taken root among the staff and promises to flourish. Many and bitter are the contests waged below-stairs between NBC announcers Art Feldman and Charles Nobles against Westinghouse operators Bob Duffield and Elmer Lantz. Duffield is consistently a high individual scorer. But all concede to Nobles the distinction of talking the best game. It is likely, however, that NBC and Westinghouse may temporarily bury the hatchet to join forces against the cohorts of an upstart radio station in this city, whose emissaries have defiantly flung down the gauntlet to WBZ. ATTENTION MR. RIPLEY (Continued from page one) paring for his next tour when he talked to the NBC field man via the Morse code. Because his son, Kenton, couldn’t leave his job with an oil company and business prevented the elder Johnson from leaving San Francisco, the two haven’t seen each other face to face but they expect to meet soon when the magician goes to Los Angeles to embark for the Philippines to fill contracts for appearances there and in the Orient. "I’ve pulled many a white rabbit out of a silk hat,” Valdemar the Great told "Mac,” but you performed a trick that I was afraid was impossible.” He and his son will continue their nightly talks by short wave pending their reunion. Louise Landis, NBC, San Francisco Gordon Ewing, NBC Sales Manager in Boston, has ventured a dangerous experiment. His two latest accessions to the Sales Department, Jameson S. Slocum and Frank R. Bowes, are products of Princeton and Harvard respectively. Not only that, Mr. Ewing has had the temerity to place them at adjoining desks, within convenient reach of each other’s academic throats. So far, all has been peaceful. In fact. Messrs. Slocum and Bowes have been lunching together with no apparent indications of imminent mayhem. Associates fear the worst, however, may come next October when the Tigers meet the Crimson team on the gridiron. Jay Slocum, Princeton ’22 has been New England Representative for the Curtis Publishing Company and for Conde-Nast. Frank Bowes, Harvard ’30, comes to NBC from a New England network. Both are avid sports enthusiasts.