Princess Pet, Pt. 3

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Princess Pet on Radio Was Memorable Program During Early 50s
Box Cox

Volume 2 concluded in a “they lived happily ever after” fashion: “From high up in the sky over the castle, the Ice Cream Star looked down and smiled a special smile, for it was plain to see, Goodness would live forever in the Kingdom of Princess Pet.”

Storylines from the series include “A Dragon Has Been Slain,” “Ice Cream Star Seeks Yellow Forest,” “Evil Duke Plans to Get the Golden Thread,” “Pet Brown Mule and Pet Brown Bear are Hiding” and “The Princess Dreams of Prince Gallant.” The plot for Volume 2 entails Brown Bear and Brown Mule helping Princess Pet when some evil characters try to harm her. On one page, her majesty bestows membership in her Regal Court upon a little boy.

Youngsters like me eagerly tuned their Bakelite radios to the next broadcast each Saturday morning, at the sound of the clanging bottles, to follow the antics of Ms. Pet and her fantasized court. Situations always seemed to turn out right for the good guys and wrong for the evil ones, a condition all children fervently demanded.

If you have even a hint of memory of this long-ago radio program, please drop me a note and share it with me. boblcox@bcyesteryear.com

- This article first appeared in the Johnson City Press, Tennessee on January 1, 2008 and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Princess Pet, Pt. 2

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Princess Pet on Radio Was Memorable Program During Early 50s
Box Cox

In addition to the weekly radio programs, the company published two 36-page, eight-chapter, color/b&w booklets titled “The Adventures of Princess Pet,” Volumes 1 and 2. Each volume contained a list of the “Royal Commands of Princess Pet” to her youthful listening audience, offering one per month such as always tell the truth, bring home a good report card, keep your room neat, look both ways before crossing a street; and regularly attend Sunday School.

An introductory page presented a short synopsis of the plot: “This is the story of some of the strange and wonderful things that happen in the beautiful Kingdom of Prince Pet in the Land of the Ice Cream Star. Nearby lies the Black Forest, a wicked, wicked place. The ruler of the forest is the Wicked Duke, who many years ago placed a curse upon the forest because Princess Pet’s mother, the Queen, refused to become his bride. If even the tiniest shadow of Black Forest falls upon you, you become enchanted.”

The most dazzling sketch in Volume 1 was a full color page offering a panoramic view of Ice Cream Star. The text contained a colorful description of the frozen fantasyland: “Layers of soft, filmy clouds floated and sparkled in the warm sunlight. Everywhere around them were lakes of rich, fresh cream, rivers of bubbling chocolate and mound after mound of cherries, nuts, pineapples, peaches, coconuts and strawberries.” The tiny elf-like workers, dressed in bright jackets, were “hustling and working everywhere – churning and turning, hopping and chopping, icing and slicing – making delicious Pet Ice Cream.”

- This article first appeared in the Johnson City Press, Tennessee on January 1, 2008 and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Princess Pet, Pt. 1

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Princess Pet on Radio Was Memorable Program During Early 50s
Box Cox

I recall a delightful Saturday morning children’s program over WJHL radio from about 1951 to 1953 titled The Adventures of Princess Pet. The sponsor was Pet Dairy Products, a Johnson City-based business that began operation in 1929 at 106 S. Boone Street. The company produced 111 delightful 15-minute episodes.

I attribute my attraction for the radio series to my fondness for Brown Mules, vanilla ice cream bars coated with chocolate, and Brown Bears, solid chocolate ice milk bars. Both were produced on a splinterless wooden stick. I favored the stubborn hybrid work animal over the shaggy carnivorous mammal but eagerly wolfed down both. The frozen delights each cost a nickel - half of my weekly allowance.

In addition to the weekly radio programs, the company published two 36-page, eight-chapter, color/b&w booklets titled “The Adventures of Princess Pet,” Volumes 1 and 2. Each volume contained a list of the “Royal Commands of Princess Pet” to her youthful listening audience, offering one per month such as always tell the truth, bring home a good report card, keep your room neat, look both ways before crossing a street; and regularly attend Sunday School.

- This article first appeared in the Johnson City Press, Tennessee on January 1, 2008 and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Remember Crystal Sets? Pt. 3

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Anyone Remember Crystal Radio Sets?
Ned Norris

Now I understand I needed to pay much more attention to installing a good antenna –– a 50-foot piece of wire outside the house and as high as possible –– and that I needed a good ground. But as a 13-year-old, I simply wanted to listen under the bed covers in the dark to my favorite old time radio radio thriller.

It almost didn't matter what the program was. Each had the compelling signature music, sometimes just single musical notes, the voices with their sense of urgency, the suspense, the climax, the scripting formula. I also remember the screech of car tires in chase scenes. It was pretty gripping stuff for a small boy.

Remember how shoes were always soled in hard leather? Rubber didn't make enough noise. Doors always squeaked; silent ones would not have been much use on radio. And do I remember correctly that detectives were always men and that secretaries were always women?Today, when I recall those days long ago, I remember the crystal radio set with its finicky connection that would fade to almost nothing at the crucial point in the story. Then it would come back just as the announcer was saying something like: "So long! See you next week."

- Ned Norris is the webmaster of www.rusc.com

Remember Crystal Sets? Pt. 2

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Anyone Remember Crystal Radio Sets?
Ned Norris

Radio Shack sells starter kits too. Describing a project for "beginning experimenters" at http://www.thebest.net/wuggy/rs99fun.htm one reviewer said "the Radio Shack crystal radio kit Cat. No. 28-178 is a pretty fair starter set. It does work, and some simple modifications will enhance its performance." When he wrote four years ago, the price was $9.99. After some modifications, which he describes, he was able to listento New York, Netherlands Antilles, Cuba, Charlotte NC, Chicago, "and a few others". What a difference acoil of wire for an antenna makes!

For some fascinating photographs, you might want to take a look at http://www.schmarder.com/radios/crystal With their knobs and dials for tuning in a favorite station they make me positively envious!

There was no simple method for tuning my set. I remember there was a contact of some sort, and that by moving this minuscule distances across the crystal you could, with much patience, tune in a radio station. Usually, it was faint. Fiddle with the contact and the signal would be lost and found again many timesbefore a signal strong enough to enjoy came in. And it would often disappear in the middle of a show for no obvious reason.

"He aims and fires, but he misses……and that was his last bullet. The killer reaches for him, the axe raised in his other hand, and ……" fizzle, crackle, silence. Mutter, mutter (the latter being me)!

- Ned Norris is the webmaster of www.rusc.com

Remember Crystal Sets? Pt. 1

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Anyone Remember Crystal Radio Sets?
Ned Norris

Like many people of my generation I was brought up under strict conditions. Bedtime was at a certain rigid time every night. Lights out meant no reading; it meant sleep. It certainly did not include listening to radio broadcasts.

But as a child of thirteen, I discovered the delights of the crystal set. It was probably what started my love affair with old time radio. But it was a frustrating affair. The workings of my crystal radio set have remained a complete mystery. How, I wondered then, could a lump of gray mineral possibly capture radio waves and do so without a battery?

Now, several decades later, the answers are easy to find on the Internet –– here I quickly discover that crystal sets, and the parts to make them, are readily available today –– even though they look vastly different from the crude thing I had. In comparison, today's look . . . well …positively modern.

To my amazement, according to Google there are 245,000 pages that contain the phrase "crystal set". There is even The Xtal Set Society http://www.midnightscience.com which says it is "dedicated to once again building and experimenting with radio electronics." It advertises books, parts and kits. One kit is called the Quaker Oat Box Radio Pack. It contains one roll of 24-gauge hook-up wire (100 feet), one germanium diode, one 47,000-ohm resistor, one alligator clip, and one crystal earplug. Sounds just about as basic as my old set……but I don't remember the otherinstructions that come with this kit: "You will need to provide your own antenna wire and oatmeal box. "The advertised price is $8.95. Do some reverse inflation calculations and you will know better than I now remember roughly how much I paid for my set back in 1947. Any money I had in those days was 'earned' by not spending my lunch money at school, so I know the set I had was dirt-cheap.

Curious George, Pt. 2

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Curious George

In researching Invisible Stars, Halper learned that women were welcome in radio in the 1920s, when the amateur ethic prevailed and there wasn’t much money to be made. But as the decade drew to a close and the medium became more commercial, women were cast aside, or ghettoized on women’s shows.

Yet Halper argues that, in a sense, things are actually worse today. The women’s shows may have emphasized domestic bliss, she says, but they also served as “an electronic community” where topics such as feminism (before it was even a word), birth control, and greater involvement in public life could be discussed. “It wasn’t all recipes,” she says.

Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, though, most of the country’s 10,000 radio stations have fallen into the hands of just a few giant media conglomerates, resulting in the loss of scores of jobs. These days, Halper notes, smaller markets may not have a single locally based radio station; programming frequently pipes in by satellite from a distant headquarters. “Before, you were channeled into the women’s shows,” she says. “Today you’re just not hired. And that worries me.”

As Halper notes in Invisible Stars, there is one bright spot for women in radio: National Public Radio, whose most popular and respected news personalities are women such as Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and Susan Stamberg. NPR even has its own female hack purveyor of conventional wisdom (my characterization, not Halper’s), Cokie Roberts, showing that women can equal men in mediocrity as well as excellence.

And though Halper laments the devolution of commercial radio into “shock and vulgarity,” she retains a nostalgic affection for the medium. “I was a very lonely kid, and radio was my companion,” she says. “Those DJs were my friends. And while other girls might have dreamed about marrying them, I dreamed about being one of them.”

- Donna Halper is a lecturer and broadcast consultant based in Quincy, MA. Her love of radio history is evident in the way she captures the essence of her subjects.

Curious George, Pt. 1

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Curious George

Donna Halper arrived on the campus of Northeastern University in the fall of 1964, determined to be a disc jockey at WNEU, the university’s closed-circuit radio station. “I was told, ‘We don’t put girls on the air,’” she says. “That was not the answer I had expected.” But Halper was used to being an outsider, having grown up as the only Jewish kid in her Roslindale neighborhood. She persisted, and finally got her own show in 1968.Now, after more than 30 years of working in radio (her consulting business is on the Web at www.donnahalper.com) and teaching broadcasting at Emerson College, Halper has written a book. Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting (M.E. Sharpe, 331 pages, $39.95) pays tribute, she says, to the women who came before her in an industry that has never been particularly accepting of women.

If Invisible Stars has a central character, it is Eunice Randall, who grew up in Mattapoisett and who, in 1918, was hired by the American Radio and Research Company to do technical drawings for engineers. The company also operated a radio station known as 1XE (later a commercial station, WGI), in Medford. Soon Randall – later Eunice Randall Thompson – was doing everything from building radio equipment to volunteering as an announcer to climbing the station’s tower and repairing the antenna. She stayed active in ham radio into the 1960s.

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 9

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

Another incident Cormack recalled is the night a small orchestra played for the KDN microphone. There wasn’t enough room in the operator's shack for the orchestra, so they stationed themselves on the roof while Cormack positioned his microphone in the doorway. Just as the broadcast got under way, it began to rain. But, the show must go on, and the little group played its entire concert in the downpour, although, as he recalled, the violins sounded a bit "soggy" towards the end.

At one point in the station's history, Mayor James Rolph and several officials of the Matson Line visited the station. A new luxury cruise ship was beginning its maiden voyage that date, and the men's' speeches were picked up by the ship and piped to the passengers through the P. A. system.

In later years, KDN broadcast regular programs of Rudy Seiger's Fairmont Orchestra through a line that had been installed down to the hotel's ballroom for remote pick-ups. In February of 1922, the station built a 50 watt transmitter, and the old five-watter was relegated to standby use. However, the station was still mainly a vehicle for phonograph records and news reports.

Several things finally brought about the demise of KDN. The first was the death of Sheldon Peterson, the driving force behind the station. Mr. Meyberg, the company President, was an older gentleman whose primary interest was in the sale of lighting fixtures and associated electrical equipment. He had little real interest in the station, and lost the desire to operate it after Peterson's death. In addition, a new station, KPO, had installed a remote amplifier to pick up the orchestra programs from the Fairmont, and KPO's 500 watts would provide reception of the Rudy Seiger broadcasts over a larger area than KDN could provide. So, KDN quietly left the air in early 1923.

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 8

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

6XG went on the air in June, 1921. It was first operated by the Meyberg staff, but this soon became difficult, and the company hired a young radio operator who had just returned from sea. His name was Alan Cormack, later to be Chief Engineer of KFRC and KCBS. Cormack recalled his task was to go to the Sherman-Clay music store daily and pick out records for the programs that evening. These would be borrowed from Sherman-Clay in exchange for mentioning the store as the source of the music. After selecting his records, he would go to the Meyberg offices on Market Street where he would pick up the weather and market reports, "mostly butter and egg prices". He would then go to the station and put the program on the air.

All programs went on the air through the single telephone-style carbon microphone connected to the transmitter. Besides announcing into the microphone, Cormack would hold it up to the phonograph to pick up records, winding it occasionally to keep the music up to speed. Or, he related, "I used to hang the microphone at the back of the piano, put on a roll, and sit down and pump it." Programs of this nature were on the air between one and two hours daily.

After a while, the station began receiving calls from listeners requesting different types of programs, and KDN started branching out. Some notable special programs broadcast on KDN include a broadcast by a quartet from the Scotti Grand Opera Company, September 29, 1921. This group was staying in the Hotel, and accepted an invitation to sing over KDN. Cormack led them up the tiny wooden stairs to the roof, where they sang into a microphone rigged to the end of a phonograph horn. Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, an internationally-known opera singer of the time, also sang over the KDN microphone one evening. Cormack recalled that she was "big, hefty, very German, and very emotional. She was pretty much overcome that her voice was going over the air, to the point where she shed quite a few tears."

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 7

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

6XG/KDN
Perhaps the most popular early Bay Area station was 6XG, later KDN, operated by the Leo J. Meyberg Company, a wholesale electrical firm. KDN was one of a long series of stations to broadcast from the Fairmont Hotel, atop San Francisco's Nob Hill, which had always been considered a prime radio site due to its height. The first Nob Hill station had been an experimental telephone transmitter operated by the Dewire Wireless Telegraph Company about 1910. This station, and another in the Fruitvale District of Oakland, were the two experimental radiotelephone stations of the short-lived company.

Another Fairmont station was operated by the National Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, and operated by San Jose experimenter Doc Herrold. It coincidentally had the same call letters as the later Meyberg station, 6XG.

The Meyberg operation was established by Sheldon Peterson, Manager of the company, and Gerald M. Best, a phone company engineer. It was situated in a small wooden shack on the roof of the Hotel, right next to the time ball that was used to signal ships. Equipment consisted of a home-brew five- watt transmitter, a Victor phonograph for music programs, and a player piano. A flat-top antenna was strung between two fifty-foot poles on the roof.

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 6

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

The installation of the station in Oakland was completed in record time. Shaw desired to have the station on the air Christmas Day, and this gave the crew just over a week to complete the installation. The antenna was to be 135 feet long, suspended between two tall masts. However, Shaw's property was not big enough to accommodate both masts, so it was decided to put the other on a neighbor's property, directly up the hill. This property, it was found, was owned by a Santa Barbara man. Telegrams to Santa Barbara determined that the owner was on vacation and could not be reached. In desperation, Shaw sent Fred Anderson to Santa Barbara, where he learned the owner was vacationing in Los Angeles. Anderson drove on to Los Angeles the same day, found the man and had him sign an agreement for the use of the property. He returned December 18th and construction was begun the same day. The first test transmissions were made just four days later, and the station went on the air at midnight, Christmas Day, 1921. The initial program consisted of several hours of Christmas carols, and closed with an official announcement of the opening of the station.

KZY's facilities were quite elaborate, by 1921 standards. The radio room, which housed the DeForest transmitter and a receiver, opened onto a large music room where concerts of large groups could be held.KZY, the Rock Ridge Station, became one of the best-known coastal stations of the period. It had a large and loyal following in the Bay Area, and could be received clearly at night across all of the Western states. Live and recorded music programs were supplemented by news reports supplied by the "San Francisco Call" and the "Oakland Post-Enquirer".

On March 24, 1922, KZY made national history when the station's receiver picked up broadcasts from WGY, Schenectady, New York, marking the first time radio signals had been transmitted across the continent. The Rock Ridge station's programs continued for only about a year before the company lost interest in maintaining the station and it ceased operation. The City Council of Oakland considered the possibilities of obtaining the station and establishing an Oakland "municipal station". They had hoped to establish it as a publicity agent for the city, as well as to broadcast descriptions of criminals at large to police departments of other cities. But, the concept apparently never took hold, and KZY passed quietly into oblivion after a brief but colorful history.

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 5

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

This station was notable for many reasons, in addition to the fact that it was established by DeForest. 6XC was in daily operation over six months prior to KDKA in Pittsburgh, and it broadcast regularly scheduled programs composed entirely of live music at a time when the few "radio concerts" on the air consisted entirely of phonograph records. In addition, while most broadcast transmitters of the time operated at between five and fifty watts, DeForest had installed a thousand watt transmitter, though it seldom operated above half its capacity.

6XC broadcast over 1,500 daily programs from the California Theater between April, 1920, and December, 1921, at which time the new regulations went into effect requiring it to obtain a Limited Commercial License. At that time, the station was transferred from Lee DeForest, Incorporated, to the the Atlantic-Pacific Radio Corporation, which was the Western representative for the DeForest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company. The new license required a modification of the transmitter to allow operation on the new broadcast frequency of 360 meters. The transmitter was moved to the home of Henry M. Shaw, President of the company, located on Ocean View Drive in the Rock Ridge area of Oakland. With its new license in hand, the station became KZY, "The Rock Ridge Station", operated by the Atlantic-Pacific Company.

Early Broadcasting in the Bay Area, Pt. 4

Originally published in the March, 2009, Old Radio Times.(http://www.otrr.org/pg07_times.htm)

Early Broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stations that Didn’t Survive, 1920-25
John F. Schneider
Seattle, Washington Copyright 1997

6XC/KZY
One of the most prominent early stations in the San Francisco area was 6XC, operated by the renowned radio inventory Lee DeForest. DeForest had been operating a pioneer experimental broadcast station in New York, known as 2XG. However, the radio inspector there shut the station down due to a technical infraction. So DeForest had the transmitter shipped to San Francisco, and it returned to the air in April of 1920 as 6XC.

DeForest installed his thousand watt transmitter at the California Theater, Fourth and Market Streets, and strung an antenna to a mast on top of the nearby Humboldt Bank Building. The equipment was located in a small concrete room in the "fly galleries". The station broadcast music by the theater organ, and by Hermann Heller's Symphony Orchestra live from the stage., DeForest installed receivers in several area hospitals to pick up the concerts.

The most prominent recollection of those who remember tuning in to 6XC is that it broadcast on an extremely low frequency. Early broadcasts were on 1450 meters, but this was soon changed to 1260 meters (238 kHz).

DeForest employed a full-time station operator to broadcast the concerts, Charles Logwood, who had been an assistant to the early San Francisco radio experimenter Francis McCarty in 1905. Logwood operated the transmitter and audio equipment during the frequent concerts. Weekdays there would be three half-hour concerts per day, plus the Heller Orchestra concerts every Sunday morning. To pick up the music of the orchestra, a microphone was attached to the end of a large loudspeaker horn, and the entire assembly was hung from the ceiling in the back of the theater.