Talk shows through the ages

[Dan.Strassberg]

If I had to guess at the name of the host of the two-way telephone
talk show in Philadelphia that I hypothesize became Jerry Willians'
inspiration for the format when he got to Boston, it would be Steve
Allison. I never heard Steve Allison and I still don't know for sure
which Phildelphia station he worked at. I think it was WIP but I have
no proof. Allison may have been one of the Philadelphia air
personalities who were involved in a scandal of some sort around the
time that Williams left for Boston. I don't know the nature of that
scandal but my understanding is that Williams was in no way ever
implicated. Nevertheless, the timing of Williams' departure provided
plenty of grist for the rumor mill up here.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Glazer" <hmglaz@worldnet.att.net>
To: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>; "Dan.Strassberg"
<dan.strassberg@att.net>; "Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@gmail.com>; "Doug
Drown" <revdoug1@verizon.net>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 1:53 PM
Subject: Re: Talk shows through the ages


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>
> To: Dan.Strassberg <dan.strassberg@att.net>; Kevin Vahey
> <kvahey@gmail.com>;
> Doug Drown <revdoug1@verizon.net>
> Cc: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:12 PM
> Subject: Re: Talk shows through the ages
>
>
>> At 12:07 PM 8/28/2007, Dan.Strassberg wrote:
>> >I'm pretty sure that two-way telephone talk had been tried
>> >(successfully) before WMEX and Jerry Williams did it here.
>>
>> I've got research on this that says some experiments with it were
>> done in the 1940s.  I believe Barry Grant was one who did those
>> experiments in New York, circa 1946.
>>
>
> WENN Pittsburgh, the fictitious station that was the setting of the
> wonderful American Movie Classics series of several years back,
> "Remember
> WENN," devoted an episode to the day WENN "invented" telephone talk.
> The
> show was set in 1938-39. Having noticed several other anachronisms
> in the
> series (re-creating horse races by reading from what was obviously a
> recent-vintage copy of the Daily Racing Form was one of them), I
> doubt any
> research was done into the existence of telephone talk radio in the
> late
> '30s before that episode was produced.
>
> Howard
>
>