Radio daily (Feb-Mar 1937)

4 RADIO DAILY Thursday, March 18. 1937 ft Chattel ft STATIONS Cr AMI IH A Highlights in the Development of Outstanding U. S. Radio Stations: No. 12 of a Series. UIDBJ— Roanoke, Va. 930 K.C.— 5,000 Watts Daytime, 1,000 Watts Night R. P. Jordan, Gen. Mgr. f . D. Kesler, Com. mgr. llfDBJ, born as an amateur short wave station, is owned and operated by the Times» " World Corp. As 3BIY, it was just a hobby of F. E. Maddox, an employee of Richardson-Wayland Electrical Corp., when his bosses purchased it. Today it has become one of the leading stations of the south, and it services regularly some of the richest markets in the country. ESTABLISHED in 1924, WDBJ is now celebrating its thirteenth anniversary in a new $105,000 building which houses two modern studios and executive offices. In the not-so-distant Colonial Heights, on a 14-acre plot, stands the 312-foot vertical antenna and a two-story building which houses a new RCA high-fidelity transmitter, emergency studios and engineer's quarters, modernized to air-conditioning. WDBJ's station manager, R. P. Jordan, was the first person to play a fiddle over WDBJ. That was 'way back in 1924 when the station was struggling along on 20 watts and was operating on 1310 kilocycles. That first broadcast of his was a mechanical triumph for the whole station. For the first time, WDBJ was heard as far away as seven miles. Today, operating on 5000 watts daytime, and 1000 watts at night, WDBJ is heard many hundreds of miles from Roanoke every broadcasting hour. It became affiliated with Columbia Broadcasting System in 1929, and in 1931, already considered one of the nation's leading stations, it was purchased by the Times-World Corp. WDBJ's list of national advertisers is impressive. Chevrolet, Gulf Oil, Texas Co., Gillette, Lever Bros., R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Campbell Soup, Liggett Cr Myers Tobacco, Chrysler, Nash Kelvinator and A. Cr P. are only a skeleton of the actual list. Among the artists heard regularly over the station are Eddie Cantor, Kate Smith, Phil Baker, Burns Cr Allen, Hal Kemp, Jack Oakie, Milton Berle, Vincent Lopez, Dave Rubinoff, and Jan Peerce. In addition there is a daily schedule of programs that runs continuously from 7 a.m. to midnight. WILL A. PATTON, commentator of the "Women in the News" daily program which began Monday over WRGA. Rome, Ga., under sponsorship of the local Coca-Cola bottling plant, received a big send-off for the program in the form of a full-page ad in Sunday's Rome News-Tribune. Patton's picture was right in the center of the page. Lee Sullivan, NBC tenor, and Neila Goodelle have just completed the first of a series of six Educational film shorts. The rest will be completed within the next few weeks. Virgil V. Evans of WSPA, Spartanburg. S. C, is only awaiting word from the FCC before starting work on a new station in Gastonia, N. C. Hearing on his application was held recently. Gwendolyn Farrell, a W B I G (Greensboro) feature, has been signed for 13 weeks for Norge, over the Greensboro regional, WBIG. Two new groups, the Lang-Worth Military Band, and a mixed quartet, have been formed by Langlois and Wentworth. Both groups have already started recording at the RCA Victor studios, the band under the baton of Bert Hirsch, and the quartet under the direction of Ralph Wentworth. Discs will be released to all stations suscribing to the Lang-Worth Planned Program Series. Add situations: Gene Stafford, Copy Chief of Langlois and Wentworth, and writer for several shows, trying to look nonchalant in the same studio with his wife, well known radio actress. Pair have been married since last summer but she uses her maiden name and the directors whom both serve don't know it. Visiting Kansas City radio stations Reggie Martin, station manager KFAB-KFOR, Lincoln, accompanied by several members of the staff, including Lyle DeMoss, program director; J. Gunnar Back, continuity chief; Bill and Don Larimer, sales force; Jack Hanssen, special eventer; and Bud Cherington, salesman. Tour covered KMBC, WHB, and KXBY. Phillips H. Lord, back from his three weeks' vacation, will resume his duties on Gang Busters on Wednesday, over CBS, replacing Colonel H. Normayi Schwarzkopf, who has been presenting the program during Mr. Lord's absence. Orders for 52 more scripts, each complete and all set in an India background, have been received from a Canadian company by Sidney Northcott, Omaha, local radio writer. This is the third order Northcott has received from this company. R. M. Hetherington, young salesman and nephew of J. Chris Hetherington, formerly of WTMV and now with WBBM-CBS has joined the WTMV sales staff in East St. Louis. Tom Johnson, Oklahoma City salesman, is recovering from an operation. Jack Shelley, assistant in the news department of WHO, Des Moines, was thanked for his "diligent, informative and faithful services in connection with the Hardware News broadcasts" in a resolution passed by the Iowa Retail Hardware Ass'n at its annual meeting. Conrad Thibault, goes on a European jaunt this summer. Ty Tyson, WWJ's popular main-inthe-street, is making radio listeners cookie-conscious. His sponsor, the Lakeside Biscuit Co., of Detroit, reports that the February sales of its Buttermaid Cookies surpassed those of November and December combined. Walt Framer, Pittsburgh free lance movie scribe, celebrates fourth anniversary on the air this week. Movie spieler started with Hollywood Show Shopper program, independent movie theaters sponsoring, and has since branched to 25 programs weekly. Shorty Hobbs and Grandpa Jones, who met recently at the WWVA Jamboree, Wheeling, W. Va., are having a "feud" along Haifield-McCoy lines, all because Grandpa Jones sent candy and flowers to Cousin Emmy. "Lasses White," which was a famed minstrel troup some years ago, held forth over KYA, San Francisco, and the California Radio System one night last week as the "Lasses White California Minstrels." Vernon A. Trigger, formerly sound engineer of WBZ, has opened the Lyric Theater, Springfield, Mass. Jack Zoller, after two years of radio acting in New York, is back in Cincinnati, at WLW, where he has been assigned a role he created three years ago, that of Danny Stratford in "The Life of Mary Sothern," being | ANNOUNCERS MIKE GALLAGHER, staff announcer at KTAT, Ft. Worth, declares that radio leads to motion pictures, even if it is only in a small way. Gallagher, who handles a daily remote from the New Isis Theater, was asked by the manager of the | theater to prepare a speech of appreciation to deliver to the show's patrons on the occasion of the theater's first anniversary. When Gallagher appeared with the speech he found that instead of facing an audience he had to perform before cameras and make a short short to be used on the New Isis screen. BILL KARN has joined the announcing staff of KOMA, Oklahoma City. Karn comes to KOMA from KPDN, Pampa, Texas. He will assist the KOMA News Bureau in preparing and delivering the five news periods broadcast daily. CARLTON KADELL, announcer of the "California Hour," is scheduled to make a series of minute recordings for the sponsor of this program when the contract for the present air series has been fulfilled. CLINTON BLAKLEY has joined the announcing staff of WBIG, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Two Southern Gentlemen In New Series on WMCA Two Southern Gentlemen, Bob Mason of St. Petersburg, Fla., and George Dixon of Wilmington, N. C, discovered by Charles Wilshin, director of WMCA's artist bureau, will start a thrice weekly series over WMCA and the Intercity network, next week, airing Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 10:45-11 a.m. Program is musical, with Dixon reading an original poem at each session. heard at 4: 15 daily except Sunday over WLW and the MBS net. Pick and Pat do their Monday nighti WABC commercials in blackface, butl leave off the cork for their Molasses 'n' January characterizations on t WEAF's Thursday night "Showboat."\ Alan Roberts, WMCA's "Prince oft Song," is a student of Chaucer and knows hundreds of old English folk songs and ballads but his air pro > grams consist mostly of Tin Pan Alley creations. Bill Gillespie's secretary, an alum-l nus of the University of California ( and University of North Carolina, ism doing Ethyl Hill's Page on the Brown-l Dunkin Tabloid every morning, over\ KTUL, Tulsa. Every afternoon shex broadcasts Fashion Chatter, the latest * fashion news direct from the United) Press wires. On Sunday mornings she takes part in Uncle Bill's broad-* cast of the Tulsa Tribune Funnies, She uses the radio name of Cathryn Carlyle. ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW JACK HASTY "Radio producers should be most careful in the use of background sounds, and orchestra leaders should not come in so soon that the music drowns out the final words of a speaker or an actor. There is a tendency on the part of many conductors to 'jump the gun.' More thought too could be given to the emphasis on single words. Lines should be over played rather than under played."