Category Archives: Listener Comments
They, Too, Covered the 60’s
The recent posting by former WNEW News Director Alan R. Walden, recalling newsroom personnel during the 1960’s, inadvertently excluded some staffers. With this resubmission from ARW, the missing persons are back where they belong. ECB
The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor
Read more about Billy Taylor
http://wnew1130.com/music-2/staff/q-r-s-t/billy-taylor-2/
Billy Taylor videos
“Here Comes The Bride . . . but first this message”
Nat Hiken, creator of the hit TV shows, The Phil Silvers Show and Car 54, Where Are You?, died in 1968 at age 54. His widow, Amber, passed more recently. Their daughter, Dana, going through some family memorabilia, came up with a published notice of her parents wedding in 1941, adding a small but telling fragment to the newlywed’s history and the WNEW story, even though the notice got Nat’s first name wrong and miss-spelled his last name.
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How did it come to pass that we should have received the above wedding notice from Bill Diehl? Bill got it from Nat Hiken’s daughter, Dana, whose married name is Buscaglia and whose husband, Frank, is the brother of Bill’s wife, author, Lorry Diehl. That’s how. Frank was in broadcast engineering at both WNEW and ABC.
To read more about Nat Hiken, click on link below.
http://www.philsilversshow.com/nathiken.html
To read more about Lorry Diehl’s most recent book, Over Here! New York City During WWII , click on link below.
http://www.bklynpubliclibrary.org/events/exhibitions/over-here-new-york-city-during-world-war-ii
Just In From Philly
Gary McDowell, who was WNEW Operations Manager ( 1971-1974) sent along this photo of himself in the middle of Bill Hickock, Gene Klavan, Dick Shepherd and Julius LaRosa. He dates the photo to 1971, soon after answering the call from WNEW GM George Duncan, to give up his job as Program Director of WIP, Philadelphia (a Metromedia station) to become Big W OM.
Jerry Graham
Jerry Graham, Former
WNEW PD/GM, dies at 78
By Bonnie Horgos -Santa Cruz Sentinel
New Comments added — Andy Fisher, Alan Walden, Nat Asch, Al Wasser — immediately below Horgos story
For life-span pictures of Jerry Graham, visit:
http://jeffersongraham.net/bay-area-tvradio-personality-jerry-graham-dead-at-78/
Posted: 04/30/2013 06:17:23 PM PDT
SANTA CRUZ — Jerry Graham, former host of KRON’s “Bay Area Backroads” and Sentinel columnist, died of a heart attack Monday at his Santa Cruz home. He would have turned 79 Tuesday. Graham, a Santa Cruz resident since 1995, put himself on the Bay Area map with his award-winning TV series “Bay Area Backroads,” which featured Northern California’s hidden gems. KRON produced the series for 28 years. “The concept was that we live in this great spot, but we’re all in such a hurry, that we drive by things without looking and don’t even notice what’s around us,” Graham told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008.
New York City Radio
A Book Notice from Bill Diehl
New York City Radio by Peter Kanse and Alec Cumming. Published by Arcadia. It’s a fun read from the early days of NYC radio right up to an Internet Radio Station in the East Village. Some photos we’ve seen before along with station promotion ads. But a few are new to me.
Broadcast historian Peter Kanze, who has worked at WHN and the ABC Radio Network, also produces WABC “Rewound.” And with his background, there’s lots of WABC in the book. Co-author, Alec Cumming, is billed as a pop historian and television writer/producer who has worked for NBC, USA, Syfy, the History Channel, Rhino Records and Nickelodeon. Currently, he serves as a history consultant for NBC Universal. In the back flap notes, Kanze, a lifelong collector of broadcast memorabilia, writes that he culled many of the images in this book from his personal collection and a good number I had never seen before.
News gets short shrift in the book, and I guess that’s understandable considering that it’s geared more to ‘personalities’ who became so popular on New York City radio stations. However, near the end of the book’s 126 pages, there’s a shot of three of what’s billed New York’s “Legendary hardworking radio newscasters,” Rich Lamb, (WCBS) Stan Brooks (WINS) and Mitch Lebe (WBBR) WNEW is represented with a few photos including, of course, William B. Williams, Martin Block, station GM John Van Buren Sullivan (don’t you love that name) and station manager, Bernice Judis.
From the early 60’s. Pete Myers is on hand in a car. There are a good number of shots of WABC personalities, WMCA, WHN, WMGM, WINS and WOR. There’s a chapter on the FM stations and their personalities, some of whom like Alison
Steele moved over from the AM side. Some shots of WINS newsroom (on the eve of it’s transfer to all news–April 18, 1965) Also photo of Jim Donnelly and Lou Adler on the air at WCBS. There’s Imus, Howard Stern…of course.
I got through the book in less than half an hour…photos have some captions and a bit of background. The cover by the way is Long John Nebel broadcasting his all night WNBC talk show out of NBC’s ultra-modern Monitor studios, also known as Radio Central on the 5th fl. at 30 Rock. Nebel’s real name, which I did not know til I read the book, was John Zimmerman.
Anyway, quite a bit to chew over…definitely worth the price if you like to add a book like this to your collection. B.D.
More on H.V.K. and Hitler
H.V. Kaltenborn’s round-the-clock reports on the Munich crisis of 1938 established him so firmly in the public mind as the voice of crisis from abroad, it’s recalled by his biographers that many American radio listeners were not fooled by Orson Welles’ panic-inducing “War of the Worlds” broadcast because Kaltenborn was not on it and surely would have been had the crisis been real.
Like many American correspondants who investigated reports of Nazi brutality as Hitler came to power, such as beatings of Americans who wouldn’t give the Nazi salute, Kaltenborn was known to suspect that the reports were exaggerated. Some biographers suggest his mind was changed when his own son suffered such a beating. H.V.K. acknowledged in later writings that he was slow to alter his view that Hitler was too radical and unstable to achieve power or long hold it.
Among the few American journalists to interview Hitler in the early 1930’s, Kaltenborn was the only one to interview Hitler several times. A few photos from Kalenborn’s book “Fifty Fabulous Years,” published in 1950 by G. P. Putnam Sons, and sent along by Bill Diehl, were recently published on this site. Bill has now sent a long a few pages about those Hitler interviews. Here they are.
End of excerpts from “Fifty Fabulous Years”
H.V.K. On His 80th
