enjoying the new Jerry Williams book

[Dan.Strassberg]

I guess the young announcer was hired by CBS, all right, but not right
away in New York; he remained in DC for several years. I don't know
whether the WJSV calls gave way to WTOP before, after, or coincident
with NARBA (3/31/1941), which was when the DC station moved up from
1460 to 1500. (Around the time of NARBA, WTOP also increased to 50
kW.) But when I was a kid growing up in New York City in the '40s,
Godfrey's AM-drive program at first orignated in DC and was heard on
both WTOP and the old WABC 880 (now WCBS (AM)). After a while (still
in the '40s), Godfrey moved the show to New York. At that point, I
don't know whether or not WTOP still also carried it. But Godfrey
himself was most assuredly still heard in DC (and on WTOP) because by
then he was doing at least one show on the CBS network in addition to
the AM drive show in NYC (and maybe also in DC). Now, curiously, CBS
may not yet have owned WTOP at that time, but it very definitely was
the CBS affiliate for DC, northern VA, and parts of MD. All of the
networks were handicapped by the FCC's ownership limits, which
prevented them from owning more than six stations nationally (later
expanded to seven and then to seven AMs and seven FMs).

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <kvahey@comcast.net>
To: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
Cc: "(newsgroup) Boston-Radio-Interest"
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: enjoying the new Jerry Williams book


> BTW we have had this discussion before of who as the first to put
> callers on the air and the book hints that it happened in 1934 at
> WJSV
> in Washington which I assume would later be known as WTOP. The
> station
> put a young man in a studio at the transmitter and he invited people
> to call in so he could find out how far the signal went. He would
> hold
> the telephone up to the mike so listeners could hear the callers.
> Walter Winchell heard him at a party and called in himself at 4:30
> AM
> and then mentioned the show in his newspaper column which was said
> to
> be read by more people than anyone. The announcer was quicky hired
> by
> CBS in New York. His name? Arthur Godfrey.
>
> On 3/9/08, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:
>> Donna Halper wrote:
>> >
>> >> Scott wrote--
>> >> Agreed! I'm reviewing that book, as well as another with more
>> >> tangential NERW-land ties ("The Buzzard," by John Gorman, about
>> >> WMMS
>> >> in Cleveland), in Monday's NERW...
>> >
>> > So did I get a mention in that WMMS book? John, bless his heart,
>> > had a
>> > tendency to take credit for things that other people on his team
>> > had
>> > done... 8-)
>>
>> There are several pages worth of Donna in there, including the
>> story
>> (with full credit to Donna) of the discovery of Rush (the band, not
>> the
>> talk host!) on this side of the border.
>>
>> s
>>
>>