This blog was written by my brother, Jeff Hall, after recently seeing an old picture I had taken of him at the NH radio station he was working at:
This is me “on the air” in 1973 at WBNC AM in Conway, NH. It must be the morning show because I look tired. This photo was taken by my brother Dave who was visiting from NJ, probably up to do some skiing. Nice mustache and mutton chops, AND I had hair! Looks like winter because I had a turtleneck and silk scarf on. I’m sure I was headed out to ski as soon as I got off the air.
To my left is the active turntable playing a 45rpm record. These turntables were larger than normal and could also play 78rpm vinyl. I better get something cued up on the right turntable or there’s gonna be “dead air” (which there was a lot of when I was on! Ha!)
Above and to the right are two wooden dowels. After you played a 45, you transferred it to the other dowel. That let the next DJ know you’d already played that. When the next guy (no women DJ’s in those days) came on for his shift he immediately went through the “already played discs” and began playing those again – which was totally against the rules! We got yelled at by the boss (Skip) for replaying the most popular songs, but it was hard for him to police which songs got more play than others!
The two tape machines to my left resembled 8 track tape players. There are a couple of tapes or “carts” as we called them (short for cartridge tapes), just in back of the microphone. The carts were where we stored our commercials. We had a rack of 50 to 100 carted commercials to my right – one advertiser per tape. (There were always more commercials during the ski season and summer/fall tourist seasons.) Each cart had an ID number like “A-13”, plus a label of what it was, for instance, “Cranmore Ski Area, (3) 60 second ads, last broadcast April 1st.” The label might also have an “out cue”, which were the last words spoken on the ad. The DJ would listen for those words to know when to start the next ad or song. If there was more than one ad on a tape, the first ad would play and then stop, all cued up for the next ad, so the ads would rotate evenly. For live commercials, “reads” by the announcer, there was a three ring binder in front of the DJ (below the 45 dowels.) The Program Log, which told you what to do for each 15 minute segment, is barely in view at the upper right. We checked off the shows and commercials as we aired them and signed the bottom of each page of the program log. In those days we had to take transmitter readings every half hour which involved going into the transmitter room adjacent to the studio. We’d normally fill out the entire log at the end of our shift. I was told of only one time, during Danny Delrossi’s shift, where an actual FCC official came into the studio to make sure we were operating within the law. Danny had filled out the transmitter readings for the entire shift beforehand. I think the station got cited for that one. Anyway, back to the transmitter room. It was always literally humming in there because of the large amounts of power being consumed. The old AM transmitter had huge glass tubes about 8 inches tall and 4 inches in diameter - kind of like an old tube TV, only the tubes were much, much bigger! The transmitter had a sliding glass door on it and you could look in and see the tubes glowing an eerie blue. I was told by the morning newsman, Fred Gardella, that a previous morning announcer, Bill Clapp, was deathly afraid of going in the transmitter room - but that was part of the job. When he would have to turn on the transmitter, he put on a leather glove to flip the switch. Fred thought that was pretty comical! Like a leather glove would really protect him from a thousand watts of electricity! Years later a summer intern at the station (and a student at M.I.T.) said to me he was majoring in plasma physics. I said I thought the study of blood was interesting. He said, “No, not that kind of plasma.” He explained that plasma was a gas of ionized particles. He said the blue glow coming off the tubes in the transmitter room was a good example of plasma! That blue glow went straight through the glass about a half an inch outside the tube. Maybe old Bill Clapp wasn’t so paranoid after all!
Anyway, carrying on with the tour…Below the two cartridge tapes & behind the mic are 3x5 cards with lost and found announcements which we had to read every morning. I hated reading them because it was always the same idiots calling in that hadn‘t put a collar or tag on their dog! Plus you were trying to be a cool DJ and the lost and found segment just took the wind out of any music momentum you had managed to generate that day (which usually wasn’t much for me! Ha!) We would get the occasional person calling in to report a lost animal that would have terrible problems like one eye, one leg, mangy fur and 18 years old. Someone really hadn’t lost such an animal. They just wanted to see if we were stupid enough to read it on the air - which of course I was!
At the top of the photo (in the background) hung 7 inch reel-to-reel tapes which contained longer syndicated shows, usually for evening play. We always played the 30 minute show Studs Turkel, a Chicago based talk show. Also we broadcast old radio shows on Sunday nights like “The Shadow”……..announcer: “Only the Shadow KnOOOOWs…..whoha…ha…haaaaa……” Now all these shows are downloaded by satellite or the internet. In those days the reels came in the snail mail and after playing we had to mail them back! You can still hear some of those on NPR radio.
All of our national commercials came on small reel to reel tapes as well, like McDonalds ads which we finally got in North Conway in the late 70’s. Duncan Donuts was the first franchise in town & McDonalds was the second as I remember.
Note the black phone to my left. I think there were three lines. One for the studio (447-5166) and two for the office (447-5988 and 89.) Requests, nuts and complainers would usually call us on the studio number! Helen Knute, an 80-something former English teacher was usually good for a couple of calls per year to correct something I’d said. I remember a morning DJ, Bob Burke, used the slogan “Mayhem in the AM”. Helen called Skip the owner and complained, stating the actual definition of mayhem was “willful and permanent crippling, mutilation or disfigurement of a person!” Skip came into the studio while I was doing the afternoon show, his head buried in a dictionary. He looked up and said, “She’s right… I guess he can’t use that phrase anymore!” That was pretty tough censoring in those days. God forbid you should say “hell” or “damn”!
Danny Delrossi, a very popular morning man was once doing a live read of the Eating House Restaurant at the base of Mt. Cranmore. He suggested that while dining you would have a great view of the little red and green cars rolling off the tracks. Pretty funny, we thought. He was fired after we got a call from the owner of Cranmore, Herb Schneider. Danny was so popular he was fired and rehired at least 2 or 3 times! He ended up moving to Australia with his Aussie wife and became a very successful DJ for the Australian Broadcasting network. Danny was probably the most entertaining and funny DJ in the station’s history! Other DJs included George Cleveland, grandson of President Grover, Rich Grey and newsman Frank DiFruscio.
But getting back to the black phone. This was also the phone in which we talked to the weather observers each morning at 7:50. First it was a guy from Maine (can’t remember his name) but he was replaced later by Briggs Bunker. The second half of the show after playing a White Mountain Nation bank spot was a live report from Mt. Washington Observatory. After talking to Briggs, I’d push the button for the commercial, hang up the phone, quickly dial the observatory, get them on the line and wait for the commercial to end, then say “we now bring you up to Mt. Washingon Observatory with Joe Dodge. Good Morning Joe!” He was a crusty old guy and very fun to listen too. The weather was always dreadful up there and was known for the world’s worst weather. It was not unusual to have 70 to 100 mile per hour winds with a temperature of below zero. I suppose a book could be written about Joe Dodge, the mayor of Porky Gulch. He was quite the outdoorsman and cussed like a sailor but always managed to watch his language on the air. One day on my show he announced he was going fishing and wouldn’t be reporting the next day. That was more than true as he died the next day at his home. His replacement at the Observatory was Guy Gosslien (sp) who had a booming announcer voice and was always Mr. Serious on the air. You could always chit chat with Joe but Guy was all business on the air and he made for a pretty dry report after that.
Also in the photos you’ll see a bunch of dials in front of me. This was called “the board” and the dials or volume controls were called “pots”. Don’t ask me why. Must have been a term used in the old days. Anyway the far left pot controlled my mic volume. In order to go on the air you had to toggle a switch above the pot, turn up the volume and then you were LIVE. When you were done speaking, it was the reverse. The toggle was a safety to totally disengage the volume control. If you left the toggle on and didn’t turn down the dial all the way something might be said in the studio that was not appropriate to go out over the air! Lots of swearing, complaining and gossip went on in the studio with the news guy and the sales guys who occasionally wandered in to chat. Of course, things that were said occasionally DID go out that were not supposed to be heard, but with live programming and no recording of it you could deny it every happened! About the worst thing I ever said was a “JESUS CHRIST” when something malfunctioned. My volume was about half, but it definitely went out over the air. Oops….
Loud talking by employees just outside the studio was a minor problem too. Every time our mic was on there was a red light outside the studio that alerted everyone not to come crashing in or talk. There was another door leading to a small room of 33 rpm vinyl records. That is where sales people used to congregate and tell dirty jokes and complain about the boss. The room was pretty sound proof and away from the main office where the boss might be lurking. (God forbid anyone should be seen in the office having any sort of fun!) So the DJ would be reading the live ad for maybe the specials at Hills IGA. “This weeks Hills has bananas for only 16 cents a pounds….rib roast, only 87 cents a pound…” The louder the joke teller got the faster and louder the DJ spoke… trying to cover up the joke teller’s voice. At the punch line of the joke would be a burst of laughter which the listeners definitely heard! At this point the DJ would turn down his mic pot and shout something like “shut the fuck up out there!”, only to discover he hadn’t turned the volume down far enough and that too went out over the air!!!! Yikes!!! Deny, deny, deny…..Sometimes you were the DJ and sometimes you were the joke teller. We were all guilty of both!
Anyway, getting back to the board. The other dials or pots were for the newsroom mic in the next studio, two pots for the cart tape players, two for reel-to-reel players: one an old brown Ampex and the other a state of the art Revox two channel - OOOOUUUUU…….Skip kept his reels of old jazz on the Revox. I think we were supposed to play a jazz cut every third song - good luck to that. There was a pot for outside feeds that came in by an upgraded phone line (which by today’s standards was pretty piss-poor audio quality) The Live Metropolitan Opera feed from NYC on Sunday afternoons was one of those shows. They still broadcast the opera on NPR, I think. Milton Cross was the long time announcer for that broadcast. I can’t remember who was after Milton. Help me here, fellow radio alumni!
Also Alumni: name some of the Star Date hosts for me. Debra Byrd was one.
Lots of memories from one photo! Lots more not here…
Other topics: Feel free to post a story of your own on these or any other topic. E-mail em back to me (jeffhall@fltvproductions.com) and I’m sure more stories will come from your reminders.
Possible topics:
Reading news live…..rip and read……mispronunciations…..Skip & Joan stories…..Remotes….drug use……sex in the studio……Nutty callers….memorable news events……Skip’s music…Joan’s driving….Fred Gardella…..infamous sale people.
I think all of the things we took for granted back then, like a cartridge tape or a program log, would be fun to look at now. Everything is computerized including the music and spots. When Skip cleaned out the barn over the garage he had hundreds of jazz 78 records. I remember him asking me if I wanted some. Boy, I wished I’d taken some now. What would a Billy Holiday 78 record be worth today?
