Conv-MemoriesPast

From: Mike Jackson

Date: July 14, 2015

Subject: Old Radio Terms

And then there was Reverend Ike. If you gave him everything you had, he'd take care of you. He had a gold Cadillac, huge home with lots of chandeliers and lots of young women "assistants." But he never missed a payment to the station. Never.
MikeJ

From: Frank Rogers

Date: July 14, 2015

Subject: Old Radio Terms

I was in the record library when I heard a strange sound during the morning preacher's talk. He thought he had turned off his studio mike and was blowing his nose profusely.
My first station manager told me of a live baseball broadcast in the early 50s, when language restrictions were very stiff, the announcer got excited at an error by the local team and blurted out, "The goddamn son of a bitch dropped the ball."
At FEN Tokyo, one Army DJ would turn off his mike, blurt out five obscenities, then turn it on again. I don't remember him making a mistake and putting himself on-air.
Re: Bishop S. C. Johnson ... Our station in Covington Georgia ran his taped program. In answering one of his questions from a man who worked for a TV company, he shouted, "Ouit yo' job! You're working for lusts of the eye." He had a choir of white girls called his "White Angels." He justified his lavish life style as necessary because he was "serving the Lord." Church members had to endorse their paychecks to the church, which took ten percent tithe, gave back the rest, but contributions had to be made from that 90%. Church member girls were not allowed to wear any makeup, could not cut their hair that had to be combed back straight away from the face or in a bun and had to wear long dresses. A boy in my ninth grade class, maybe 15 years old, who played guitar at the church's "holy roller tent meetings," married the local preacher's daughter, got a church job, nice car and big brick house. He quit school. From our classroom we could sometimes see him, as his new, big house was across the street from the high school. So much for incentive to study hard.
Frank

From: David Pinto

Date: July 13, 2015

Subject: Old Radio Terms...Roger

Jumping in here ...
This item appeared a few years ago in the New Scientist magazine.
There are some things you cannot do with CDs, fortunately.
A few years ago, a music enthusiast was lecturing the Birmingham Jazz Record Society on the music of the avant-garde French jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. A local audio buff provided a record player and put on a selection of vinyl LPs, while the expert expounded. At 10 pm, with supposedly another hour to go, all the records had been played. The expert wound up the talk early, took some questions and said goodnight. It was only when the audio buff was packing up his equipment that he noticed that the record player had been set to play the LP discs at 45 rpm instead of 33 1/3 rpm. No one in the audience, let alone the Ponty expert, had noticed that there was anything unusual about the music.
We got this story from jazz enthusiast Alan Purslow, whom the audio buff had sworn to secrecy until after the Ponty expert's death. "Till his dying day," says Purslow, "he never knew why he had finished his recital so early."

From: Steve Zeigler

Date: August 5, 2012

Subject: Old Radio Terms...Roger

Not only at small stations - - - This true story happened on 610-WIOD in Miami, Florida and I was the engineer/board-op. It was another Sunday night and 67 year old Rev. Huffman came in with Bible in hand and sat down in the talk studio. 10:00PM NBC News, followed by Rev. Hoffman at 10:05PM. This was live radio with listener phone calls. So there we were, just the two of us in the entire station - one on each side of the glass. Come Monday there would be at least 40 staffers running around - but this night, just the two of us. In the back room were the two AM transmitters, one stand-by FM transmitter and the huge automation system for WIOD-FM.
All was going well with the talk show until I got an alarm from the automation system that 4 of the 5 reels of music had run out and the 5th deck had only a few songs left on it. I left the AM console, with the monitor speakers turned up, and ran quickly to the back room to reload the 4 empty decks with fresh music. It wasn't more than 45 seconds later that Rev Hoffman got a phone call and he put it on the air immediately. I could hear the AM program coming from the Control Room as I was cueing-up the reels. The caller, we'll call "Mr. S.", could only say one word, but he was able to repeat himself - "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit". I bolted back to the Control Room and dove for the "Dump" button - but it was way too late--7 seconds came and went in a flash--and the good Reverend. was so mortified that he could hardly talk, much less press his "Dump" button. His face was red and sweat was popping out of every pore. He slowing managed to eek-out a deeply, heart-felt apology. All of South Florida could have heard Mr. S. and his one word vocabulary, but I prayed that everyone was having sex or something - anything but listening to the radio - especially station management.
I wrote-up a long, type-written report on the incident, trying to put the best spin on what happened. We had forms (multi-layer forms) for "any reportable incident", simply called 'Discrepancy Report'. I was scared "shit-less", fearing that I may lose my job.
The fallout was not much more than a few bad jokes from fellow staffers. Management may have filed a formal report to the FCC - I don't know, but they had little to say about it to me, anyway.
I can still hear Mr. S. in my audio memory, even to this day. Come to think of it, I was sweating bullets, myself, back then. I was 27 then and I ended up working there for 27 years.
Steve Z
PS: Often I would have to fade the good Reverend out and run the closing cart, ID cart and join NBC News at 11:00 PM. I felt so bad about fading him out in the middle of his final prayer.

From: Steve [Not sure which one]

Date: August 3, 2012

Subject: Old Radio Terms...Roger

WSIZ (late 1950s) sold Sunday AM time to "Bishop J. Johnson, Senior Bishop and Founding Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Inc.” He was a nice black guy who wore farmers bib overalls, a Roman collar, and pince nez glasses on a yoyo. Actually quite an interesting figure. One time he gave me his personal blessing and that may be why I’ve been so lucky in succeeding years. At least I don’t want to dismiss that possibility.
Didn't every small station have one of these guys?
Steve

Memories Past--Good and Bad

August 2012 & July 2015

For some reason this items are from a series of messages titled "Old Radio Terms"

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