Variety (Jul 1946)

94 RADIO Wednesday, July 17, 1946 CIRCLING THE KILOCYCLES Cincinnati — David E. Partridge stepped up last week as director of sales promotion lor WLW, succeed- ing/Bob Savage, who took leave for Chicago's radio pastures. Since last 'fall, when rejoining the Crosley 50,000. waiter after three years of Navy duty, Partridge edited the sta- i ion's merchandising paper, Buy- Way, for distributors of WLW-blur- bed products. Rochester, N. Y. — WHAM has added David E. Kessler, former managing editor of the Rochester News and newscaster for Planters Peanuts for nearly five years, as supervisor of the station's news broadcasts. Step recognizes changed status of news following the war, aims to keep WHAM in the fore- front in the field and proposes to emphasize local news. Kessler will continue his own daily broadcast ■while altering current news pro- grams and creating new ones. Third Army, was program director of WFIL before entering service four years ago. Prior to that he was program director of WIP. nadian-American baseball league games to be played by.the Schenec- tady Club. It Is the first time a na- tional ■ advertiser has been a spon- sor since professional baseball was revived in Schenectady this spring. Ed Flynn, program manager, and Bill Carpenter do the play-by-plays. Lincoln—Stan Sicvers, studio su- pervisor at KFOR, was given full credit for keeping the station oper- ating nearly normally Tuesday (9) " when all power in the 10-story Stuart building which houses the station's studios and control rooms failed suddenly and stayed off for over two hours. Power failure was caused by a short in elevator wiring and local power company workers were two hours 'finding and fixing the trouble. KFOR staffers went on the net at 2:30 'p.m., less than three minutes after being forced off the air. Charlotte—FCC has granted en- ginering approval and construction permit to Southeastern Broadcasting Co. for a FM station with a radiated power of lOOkw. Charles H. Crutch- field, sec'y-trcas. of Southeastern and general manager of WBT, Char- lotte, announces, that transmitter building and tower for the new sta- tion will be erected on Spencer Mountain, located in Gaston County, 16 miles from Charlotte and recently purchased by Southeastern for this purpose. Antenna will cover a' listening area of 27,600 square miles. Des Moines—Richard B. Hull has been named director of WOI, Iowa State college, succeeding W. I. Grif- fith, who had directed the station for 21 years. Hull has been with the station for seven years, two of them as program director. He is presi- dent of- the Iowa Radio News Edi- tors. Nashville—WSM's program direc- tor. Jack Stapp, and manager of the script dept., Eddie Birnbryer, com- pose the new production-writing team on the R. J. Reynolds "Grand Ole Opry." .-'■'■ Philadelphia—James T. Quirk, re- cently discharged from the Army, has been named acting promotion manager for WFIL, succeeding Art Schofield, who resigned to join the staff of FM Business mag in New York. Quirk, who served as lieu- tenant-colonel with Gen. Patton's Kansas City—KCMO, ABC local outlet, has announced the addition of announcer. Jim Lantz. ex-para- trooper. Lantz comes, to KCMO from Colorado Springs and KVOR. New announcer at WDAF, NBC basic, is Al Christy. Former an- nouncer at KCKN,- Capper-owned indie, Christy recently returned from service in the armed forces. He fills a gap made by departure of Paul Nesselroad. San Antonio—New series of wire recorded program has made its de- but here over KTSA with Bob Hol- eron, KTSA director of special events. Program is titled "Meet Your Neighbor" and three times each week, Holleron goes out to some home, women's club meeting or civic meeting and interviews the people regarding current questions of interest. Dallas—Ken Lowell is now. m.c. of the WFAA "Early Birds" program, replacing Jimmie Jefferies. Lowell was former general sales manager here for the Taylqr-Howe-Snowden radio sales. Minneapolis. — News staff of WCCO, Twin City CBS outlet, is no'w^covcred by a union contract in accordance with an agreement signed between the American' News- paper Guild and the station manage- ment. Contract, negotiated by A. E. Joscelyn, WCCO manager, with an ANG representative, calls for an 8- hour, 5-day week and new minimum salaries with graduated increases based on length of service with CBS. A three-week vacation is also provided for in the pact. Inside Stuff-Radio .' * Anent last week's reference to WCKY*s "Music to Read By" stealing late hour listeners in the suburban New York area, further check points ui>- some significant facts and supports the argument of the boys-who maintain that when it comes to through-th'e-night programming via a clear-channel station you're practically going network and can't think in terms of merely slanting a show locally. The Cincinnati 50,000-watter, for example, announced for five nighls on the air.lhat.it was considering changing its soft music format to jazz. Actually, it was just to feel out if the people really liked the show. A breakdown of the 1,068 letters received and states from which the.y came follows: Ohio. 425; Indiana; 63; Kentucky, 70; Alabama, 37; Canada, two; Washington' D. C, six; Florida, 40;. Georgia, 28; Illinois, 57; Louisiana, one; Maryland, seven; Massachusetts, one; Michigan, 43,. Mississippi, four; Mis- souri, 26; New York, 10; New Jersey, one; N. Carolina, 64; Pennsylvania, 40; S. Carolina, 10; Tennessee, 28; Texas, two; Virginia, 24; W. Virginia, 76; Wisconsin, three. Schenectady—Hudson Coal Co. (D. & H. Anthracite) has picked up sponsorship, via WSNY,. of 20 Ca- BUSY! BUSY! BUSY! VERA MASSEY Mistress of Ceremonies . . . "Glamour Manor" Mon.thru Fri.. ABC—12 to 12:30 p.m. ★ Singing and Acting "Angostura" Program Every Saturday, WOR—5:45 to 6 p.m., EDT ★ Singing, Acting Elizabeth woodward's "Teen-Ages" Every Saturday, ABC—11 to 11:15 a.m., EDT ★ Featured Singing Star "Vera Massey Songs" Every Sunday Night. ABC—11:15 to 11:30 p.m. EDT ALSO . Exclusive Recording Singing Star Diamond Records GUEST SINGING STAR July 18th, CBS "SOUND-OFF" SHOW with MARK WARNOW Exclusive Management BEN B. LIPSET 1350 Broadway. New York CHickering 4-2468 FM Lay-Away = Continued from, page 27 merits on the merits and attacked the legality of holding back fre- quencies. NAB; J. Ted Picrson, for the Yankee Network; Zenith Radio Corp.; and Hoyt Haddock of the CIO's National Maritime Union took this position. Don Petty of NAB and Pierson' argued that section 307 of the Radio Act required the FCC to assign frequencies to qualified .applicants so long as the frequen- cies were available. A campaign to enlarge the FM band was launched by NAB, Zenith and CBS. Zenith tried to revive the old fight over a second band for FM .around the 5p-meg region. CBS, which wanted to lop off some video- slots for FM, was stymied when FCC ruled that any testimony on reshuffling the present spectrum assignments would have to be given at an allocations hearing. Those who favored the lay-away plan included: the American Veter- ans Committee; National Council of Farm Cooperatives; Potomac Broad- casting Corp:; Morris Novik, repre- senting radio applications for the International Ladies Garment Work- ers Union; the National Grange; the National Farmers Union; the Tele- vision Broadcasters Assn.; Allen B. Dumont Labs; and ah all-vet FM company, the Pcnn-Allen Broad- casting Corp., of Allentown, Pa. The Novik Plan Novik, consultant on public serv- ice programming for the ILGWU's six FM companies, endorsed the reservation plan for all. areas of the country except New York,City. In the New York areas, he argued, where there are 18 applicants bidding for a possible five FM channels, it is hard to conceive of any group ap- plying-for a stationw hich directly or indirectly is not already repre- sented in one of the applications. Nine of the N. Y. bidders are AM licensees; assuming five of them win FM permits, Novik said, FCC will have barred all newcomers from radio. And in New York City, according to Novik* the vet problem is unique since few have enough dough to finance a station in the big city. His solution for the Manhattan area was for FCC to' require the 11 existing licensees of FM stations to compete with the 18 new appli- cants for the city's 20 channels. A similar plea was made by ILGWU attorney Marcus. Cohn at an FM al- location hearing here last January. Henry Mofgenthau, 3d, for the. New York Veterans and Russell Nixon of . the CIO's United Electri- cal, Radio and Machine Workers of America, were slated to appear in favor of the reservation plan, but failed to show. The trend to devote an entire day's (in some cases a week's) program- ming to one specific public service was given renewed impetus last Sunday (14) by New York Post-owned WLIB. Station built its entire Sunday sked around the theme of peace, titling the output as "Operation Peace." If was a schedule sensibly conceived and well carried out on'the whole. Some of the pieces, like one in which a prominent N. Y. cleric talked, were a bit on 'the dull side. A forum on the United Nations, featuring Asst. UN sec-geril. Ben Cohen, Eli Culbertson and a couple of others, was. more exciting. There was one show in which Eugene O'Neill, Jr., acted, as narrator and Sen. Brien McMahon . was brought in by transcription. Frank Sinatra also came in via the dubbing route for a 15-minute stanza that was made for good listening. Program director Leonard Carlton was all over the lot as writer, producer, and general maestro, as was producer Lee Morrison. Between them, and with the station's entire staff as col- laborators, they drove the day's point'home—peace is the. desideratum. Technically, Carlton showed how a station can use live voicing, and tran- scriptions sensibly and effectively—a trick he helped develop when he was with OWI's overseas radio setup. "Juvenile Jury," WOR-Mutual's new .Sat. 8:30. p.m. moppet show, , will make eight shorts for Universal. The pix, each a 10-minute one-reeler, will be filmed exactly like program on the air, with Jack Barry, show's originator and owner, as emcee, and various' kid guests participating. Filming will start second week in August, for mid-Sept, distribution. ' William Forrest Crouch, head of Filmcraft Studios. Bronx, N. Y., where shorts will be Aimed (with Universal releasing), will be exec producer. Dan Ehrenrcich, show's radio producer, will assist. One of the unusual students at N. Y. U.'s summer radio- workshop Is Leopold Szor, 23-year-old ex-newspaperman, who is on the staff of Radio. Cracow in his native Poland. Szor, who worked in the underground move- ment during the war, is here for a stay to study radio methods.' After the six-week summer course, he'll join CBS until the end of the year to learn the ropes a little more thoroughly, then return to Poland. The contract which the Radio Directors Guild in Hollywood will seek from the networks will be uniform, it's stated. The RDG is now working out the details of the agreement it will seek.. The same standard ticket- will hold for .CBS, NBC and" ABC the only exception being a special clause in the CBS contract to cover "contact producers." The nets will also be dealt with jointly, according to RDG plans. WNEW. N. Y., is preparing to go all-out in celebration of the tenth anni of Benny Goodman's band on July 24. Station will plug Goodman on most of its important musical shows, and has tied in with Compton agency and Columbia Recording Co. for the promotion. Feature of the day's activi- ties will be a guest appearance by Dinah Shore who will do her WNEW spot from her dressing room at the Paramount, N. Y., where she will be appearing that week. NAB Mulls Public Relations Washington, July 16. NAB public relations executive' committee met Friday (12) to set up recommendations to be presented'to the NAB board on a long range public, relations policy. Ed M. Kirby, former NAB publicity chief, has the program in tow. The broadcasters plan to improve the quality of printed publicity ma- terial and to encourage preparation of independent magazine and news- paper articles covering the construc- tive part played by broadcasting in U. S. cultural and economic life. Bella Spewack Turns ABC Overseas Gabber Bella Spewack, the playwright, be- comes-an overseas radio commenta- tor* beginning tonight (Wed.); with her first broadcast emanating from France. She was pacted by Robert Kintner, ABC's news and special events boss, to do a three-month once-weekly series on the acute hunger situation overseas. She'll tour France, Czechoslovakia, etc., wind- ing up at the forthcoming Peace Conference. Mrs. Spewack will live with a French family for several weeks. She'll turn over to the family what money she would have normally spent in the U. S. for food, but live on their rations, comparing costs, etc. Mrs. Spewack will also do a. Life mag series on her experiences. everybody knows WHIG means good broadcasting 50i» WATTS DAY & NIGHT colufflbto affiliate gftemboro, n. c. repreienltd by Mlingboey HUCKSTER Wanri, Soft Job—Big Pay—Why Should I Be m Exception? IIOX 121. VAHIKTY 104 W. 4(ltll Mtrrd, Nrw York IP, N. Y. "Crimson would be State University, blue and white Is Tech., and orange and blue ... why, that's Wheatles!"