Re: adios WARE

["Daniel Strassberg" <Dan.Strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

Thanks, David. I stand corrected. I remember visiting the WHOM studios CA
1943-44 (I was eight or nine). We lived in the Bronx and trips to Manhattan
didn't occur all that often. WHOM was still licensed to Jersey City (IDed as
WHOM Jersey City with studios also--usually pronounced ollso--in New York).
After a day of shopping downtown, my mother and I were on the block with the
ollso studios and I dragged her up there. The program that was airing (or
was being recorded on 16-in. electrical transcriptions) was in Italian, and
everyone in the place was speaking Italian (far as I could tell). I asked a
man who wandered through the lobby if we could watch. He spoke English and
he told us to stand there and watch through the window into the studio. My
mother wanted desperately to leave immediately because I guess she was tired
and everyone talking in a language that she didn't understand made her
uncomfortable. We did leave in short order. It seemed to me that whenever I
tuned to 1480, I always heard Italian, but I really didn't listen very much
to any of the stations past 1280. Except for WQXR (AM) and WBYN Brooklyn
(later WNJR Newark) everything at that end of the dial was in languages I
couldn't understand.

--

Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
Phone: 1-617-558-4205, eFax: 1-707-215-6367

-----Original Message-----
From: David W. Harris <dwh@totalnetnh.net>
To: dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>
Cc: BostonRadio <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Date: Tuesday, November 16, 1999 6:44 PM
Subject: Re: adios WARE


Mr. Strassberg wrote about ethnic radio in 1940s New York:

> WHOM (now WZRC, I believe)
> broadcast full-time in Italian.
>
Maybe, but that's not reflected in the Radio Annuals handy to me.  In
the 1941 book, WHOM speaks of Jewish, Italian, German, and Polish
programming.  In 1945 and 1948 it's Italian, Polish, and English.
Jumping ahead to 1955, the WHOM ad spells out the following: 62 hours a
week in Spanish, 18 hours in Italian, 18 Polish, 12 German, 4½ Russian,
3½ Ukranian, "plus 21 hours a week devoted to our large Negro
following."