Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

41 WFAA— Dallas, Texas YOUNG Texans are very precocious. An early morning program on Station WFAA, invites correspondence from children. The week's letters developed that writers only six-months old used excellent English and wrote in clear round hand. And little folks only two and a half years old were proficient in the use of the typewriter. And an advertisement on Station WFAA indicates that a number of workers equivalent to about half the population of Texas is engaged in a single factory making a single product. Yet in Texas, the site of the factory is not reckoned as a particularly large town. The place is Waxahachie and the workers, bees. Advertising on the popular Early Bird Orchestra Hour, with Jimmie Jefferies as Master of Ceremonies, frequently presents publicity for as many as six communities in Texas in the forty-five minute period. And the mail received comes commonly from not fewer than a dozen states of the South and Southwest. District Audition for the Atwater Kent Foundation, held at Station WFAA for five states of the Southwest, besides Texas, which is rated as three states, presented eight young women and eight young men, champions of their respective states. The audience was asked to vote its choice. More than 4,000 pieces of mail were received, some of them large parcels containing as many as fifty votes, made out and signed separately. As listeners were asked not to vote unless they had heard the entire number, there would seem to be many thousands of listeners who held on through nearly two hours of singing. Apparently it is the unusual that attracts the attention of the radio listeners. A survey taken recently in Dallas indicates that an amazingly large proportion of the listeners have their set going a large part of the time. The things to which they react most potently seem to be contests of physical prowess. Football games always draw immense numbers of inquiries for results. But wrestling matches and boxing contests, local or elsewhere, always keep many trunk lines busy seeking outcome. One of the contests recently that attracted many calls to ascertain the winner was the National Corn Husking Championship. And in many of the cases, as in that of the Huskers, contests and results were broadcast. All of which indicates that listeners need pencil and paper right at hand to put down the things they hear and would like to remember. Teams of women, singing and chattering, appear to have a large following among radio listeners. Jean and Joan, a station feature at WFAA for some /'"'HARMING and petite, the Paxton sisters, Frances and. Virginia, find a comparison \s of microphones both interesting and amusing when they paid a visit to the new high power transmitter of WBT, Charlotte, N. C, to see what makes their voices tick over the air. Frances, at the left, cornered the justly famous lapel microphone while Virginia acquired control for the moment, of one of the prized relics of the Southern station — the very first radio microphone used by WBT back in the days when it was one of a few broadcasters in the world. The limitations of the telephone mouthpiece as a radio mike were realized — and from that realization was developed the carbon affair that Virginia finds so amusing. time, was taken off to allow the sisters to go away on a little vacation. Scores, or more, letters from "fans" demanded their return. Elise, Ruth and Jane, the Vitz Sisters, have a stunt, simple but diverting, that has been offered on WFAA for several months. It is afternoon presentation. Recently, the sisters had to devote more than the usual attention to school work, for they are still undergraduates, and a couple of program periods passed without them. And was there a squawk? Letter-writers, in many instances, expressed themselves as if they had been denied a personal right to have the sisters for the accustomed time. Evidently stars must have fixed orbits, none of the meteor or comet stuff! Ewen Hail, lyric and operatic tenor, for some time a popular performer for Station WFAA is now a featured performer on the Big Amusement circuits. He is a matinee idol and society favorite and even in his home town he has 'em in the aisles. And he's still so young ! Karl Lambertz, whose forebears. Ear away back, were Wagner's fellow-countrymen, is assistant to Orchestra Director Alexander Keese. at Station WF \ \.