NBC Transmitter (Jan-Nov 1942)

10 NBC TRANSMITTER SPORTSCASTER EXTRAORDINARY Bill Stern's Sensational Rise Is Like an Alger Story • At 35, Bill Stern is the biggest name in sportscasting. Director of Sports of NBC, he is also the intimate friend of famous motion picture stars, celebrated ring cbampions, baseball players, golfers, football stars and coaches. On his sport programs. Stern has played radio host to worldfamed celebrities; Bill bas parried words with ring champions, glamour girls, movie stars, All-American gridiron heroes, adventurers, tennis luminaries, baseball stars and other national celebrities. His concentration and bis interest in his job are great indeed. He is an indefatigable worker when it comes to putting over a program. Everything is minutely planned. Everything must be “just so.” Nothing is left to chance. Stern’s sport announcing career really started with a sentimental gesture. Back in 1933, Stern worked as a stage manager at Radio City Music Hall. As a sideline, he would do some football announcing for the National Broadcasting Company. The money was not much, but Stern loved the work and his talent did catch some favorable attention in the newspapers. Eollowing a serious automobile accident which hospitalized Bill for a considerable time, he showed up at NBC in the Eall, was given another trial at football announcing and reached the choice “high salary” brackets. Before long Stern was placed in complete charge of all NBC sport broadcasts. He was as they say in sports, “no flash in the pan,” for he proved that he was not only a most refreshing football announcer, but a shrewd and capable business executive as well. As NBC sports director, be built up the department to the biggest sports unit in radio, handling exclusively the broadcasting of most of the important athletic events in the United States and doing an annual business of well over .$1,000,000. Summer and Winter. Stern’s schedule hits a terrific pace. On Mondays, with his writer, Mac Davis, he begins work on the “Sport Newsreel of the Air.” For hours they work at a feverish pace, pruning, fixing, writing and rewriting the material, as Stern shouts, pleads, demands. BILL STERN argues, criticizes, praises, and sweats until the script is finished. Meanwhile, the phone on Stern’s desk had jangled 30 calls to the hour, the secretary had popped in and out with important messages, and visitors and executives from other departments had dropped in for quick talks on various matters. At 6:45, five times weekly. Stern rushes into a studio to broadcast his daily sport show, often speaking the full 15 minutes without a prepared script. After the Monday night show, he jumps into his car and drives to his home for a quick dinner with his wife and two-year-old son, Peter. Then at 9 o’clock, he is back at work at the Metro-Goldwyn studios doing the voice narration for the weekly newsreel. The job usually ends at three in the morning. The rest of the week, besides doing his nightly sport broadcast, and directing tbe numerous activities of the NBC sports department, Bill Stern may do any of the following: Hop a plane to Cleveland to broadcast a figbt, return to the office, for a few hours, then hop another plane for a couple of days at Augusta, Georgia, to broadcast the professional golf matches. Or, he may fly out to Hollywood for two days of work before tbe cameras. Then, a weekly show at some Army camp, a dozen personal appearances at luncheons and dinners, a few special shows and guest shots on other programs, a track meet in Iowa, a tennis tournament at Newport and maybe a split week on the stage in Hartford. In the Fall, Stern zigzags about the United States to broadcast important football games. Nights before games are spent not in sleep but in poring through records, writing out reference cards and memorizing the names of the players. At Penn Military Academy, Bill Stern was a good polo player and a fair quarterback on the football team. After college, be tried his hand at many trades. He was a saxophone player in a band, an usher in a motion picture theatre, a laborer on tbe RKO movie lots in Hollywood, a clothing salesman, a stage director and now the “voice of sports” to the NBC-RED audience. For the past two years, he has topped all four major popularity polls — those conducted by the Scripps-Howard newspapers, Radio Daily, Movie and Radio Guide and Motion Picture Daily. He is the only sport announcer in the history of radio to make a grand slam and win all important popularity polls in the same year. Radio Guide recently took an extensive popularity poll of all sport announcers in the country. Bill Stern scored 63.2 out of a possible 100. His nearest competitor and runner-up in that poll had a score of 14.6. Bill Stern talks like a runaway express and lives like one. But his frenzied living and popularity has jacked him up from an obscure, part-time announcer to America’s best-known sport commentator. —MAC DAVIS Organic Matter • The advent of the NBC Transmitter in its new format brought forth a reminder that several affiliated stations have their own local house magazines. WMBG, NBC-RED outlet of Richmond, Virginia, has a four-page monthly paper — the WMBG Transmitter — which has just celebrated its eighth birthday. It’s a live little paper containing a “tear-off” tab of program bighlights and news and pictures of NBC-RED and local programs.