Radio Articles

By popular request we print the picture of Betty Jane and Virginia Holman, 17 and 19 year-old daughters of Mrs. Jane Holman of 142a East Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves, who were chosen recently by Paul Whiteman during his appearance in St. Louis, as the first of his “finds” in his nation-wide search for radio talent.

The Holman  Sisters have won wide distinction through their broadcasts over KMOX as a piano team.

The selection, coming after the “Jazz King” had listened to nearly five hundred applicants, entitled the sisters to personal appearances with the Whiteman Orchestra during its theater engagement in Cincinnati a week ago and a place on the Pontiac program over the National Broadcasting Company’s hookup last Friday night.

Whiteman expressed himself as delighted with the success of his first contest. “From my experiences in St. Louis,” he said, “I firmly believe that we shall discover some real radio headliners during our talent search, which will be conducted in each of the cities where I play during my vaudeville tour.

“I was amazed at the great amount of talent uncovered in St. Louis. While many of the contestants were not ready for network programs, there were several who, with a little training, could compete successfully for places on the major broadcasts.”

The Holman Sisters are to have further auditions later in the studios of NBC in Chicago.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 1/23/32).

Holland E. Engle, announcer for KMOX, is the son of Olive and Harry E. Engle, pioneer residents of Fairmont, West Virginia. He comes honestly by his natural vocation which is entertaining, and his avocation, which is writing, having inherited these inclinations from his father, who was a newspaper man and vocalist.

Like many of our noted stars of radio, Holland Engle started his career as a child actor in 1910, when he played the juvenile lead in “The Little Wedding.” In 1912 when five years old, young Engle was playing a guitar before swinging doors for pennies, graduating finally into the inner “company rooms.”

Like other ingenious little boys of the time, Engle became fascinated by the radio when he was fourteen years old, and so he constructed a station of his own and broadcast from it.

Since that time he has performed over more than one hundred individual radio stations in the United States and Canada, and over the networks of the National and Columbia Systems several times. There are no outside hobbies for this radio enthusiast. He concentrates both serious and recreational interests in radio. His spare time is spent talking operators about the resistance in an antenna coupling condenser, or with continuity writers about “stunts.” His great ambition is to become affiliated with the Columbia Broadcasting System and win the Diction Award for five consecutive years.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/9/1932).

When he was a wee lad of three Ken Wright started playing original compositions – too original, some of them – on the piano. Then he graduated to a three-quarter violin to suit his childish chubbiness and thence to adept piano playing and finally to concert organ work.

You see, he was designed for a musical career even some twenty-two years ago when he gladdened his mother’s heart by playing these delightful three-year-old bits on the piano. She was a music teacher and it was just in that field that she hoped he would finally land.

He hails from Great Bend, Kansas, a village of some 6,000 souls, and it was there that he received the greatest part of his education both musical and educational. When he was eighteen, he decided that he would rather play an organ than anything else and in less than a year he was the rage at church and was sought after to open theaters in various cities in the great state of Kansas.

After he had achieved all honors that could be accorded to one young man in his home state, he landed in Menominee, Michigan, in a theater, and was there and thereabouts for four years.

He was featured in theaters as a master of ceremonies where he led an orchestra and introduced acts and played the organ. In his spare time he learned to play the accordion since it was easier to carry about than a piano or organ. His first radio work was done while he was there when he played from a theater for remote broadcasts, and he is given credit for having originated the novelty type of program. You may have read an extensive article crediting him with this advance of theater and microphone technique in the September 1931 edition of the Motion Picture Herald.

Last September he decided to take radio more seriously and came down to St. Louis where he joined the staff of KMOX been heard on original programs of his own, in-studio features, and has adapted his original theater title of  “The Singing Organist” in his daily morning programs where he sings an all-request hymn feature called “Morning Reveries.”

When he came here, he and Sunny Joe, the banjoist, formed a team, and by way of contrast, Walter Richards, the Program Production Director, dubbed him Sad Sam. So he is the same person, Sad Sam the accordionist, and Ken Wright the organist. Each program is typically different and indicative of the versatility of his ability and character.

Ken and Sad Sam, since he is the same, is probably the most serious minded person to be so merry that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. His work is his paramount interest and one can practically feel his intent interest in his work when he is near. He has cabinets and more cabinets full of music through which he pours [sic] with all possible application when he is designing a single program for his listeners.

He is six-feet-two with brown hair and violet colored eyes. His features are regular and have the most flashing smile of great conviction. He is devoutly interested in every possible angle of his work and in his friends. One has the feeling that he is a trifle romantic but try as hard as I could, I could not discover what his ideal girl would be.

He has the forehead of a scholar and his eyes are rather quizzically slanted which might be an indication of the part that he is playing when he is Sad Sam. Ken speaks a good brand of French all of which he has mastered by himself and is thoroughly conversant on most of the intellectual subjects that there are.

He is likable and friendly and talented and handsome, in fact he answers the ideal requisite which one would create in one’s mind as his favorite radio entertainer. That he is a favorite is indicated by the several thousand fan letters he has received.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 2/11/33).

He may be strictly for the early birds, but Gary Owens takes his civic responsibilities seriously. On Station WIL from 5:30 to 9 each morning, he wakes up St. Louis. It takes some doing. Gary must first rouse himself, then his wife “Arty” (Arlette), then one-by-one the “cast of thousands” who assist him in his morning shenanigans. Despite the heavy labor, Gary insists he enjoys the routine – “especially around 4 ayem, when I make coffee in my pajamas.” (“Sometimes,” quips Gary, “I wish we had a percolator!”)…But the cast of thousands don’t wake easily. For the most part they’re a rascally bunch, destined to get coal in their stockings come Christmas. Among the leaders are Clinton Feemish, career nepotist; Fenwick Smoot, unlisted; The Marquis de Sade; and an amoeba named Frank. For a fictional break, Gary puts on his horn-rimmed glasses and plays “Uncle Don” reading the funnies. “Suddenly a huge black-lettering balloon comes out of the head of Rex Migraine, M.D.,” narrates the GO-man, “and in big, black letters spells, ‘Sorry, I can’t remove your pancreas for only $25; however I may be able to loosen it a bit’…The nurses in the series,” puns Gary, “are just too cute for wards.”…Back in Plankinton, South Dakota, some 24 years ago, Gary didn’t have such heavy duties. Just born, no matter how hard he cried, he couldn’t wake more than 750 sleepyheads – the entire Plankinton population. On the “GO” ever since, Gary’s been artist, journalist and deejay extraordinary. Gary also has the distinction of being the first American deejay to phone Moscow to ask if they kept a Top Forty list. “It was a Party Line,” Gary surmises. “They told me the U.S.S. R. prefers the classics.”…Because his wife Arty majored in psychology in college, she understands GO and shares all of his “real gone” enthusiasms – like sipping espresso and playing Monopoly. But then it’s time for WIL’s wake-up man to quiet down. By nature he’s not an insomniac, but, before drifting off, Gary likes to think about his great system for rabbit-hunting in St. Louis. “You just wait for the rabbit to come by,” says GO, “and make a noise like a carrot!”

(Originally published in TV/Radio Mirror 1/1959)

Station Policy
In this era of “Modern Radio”…resplendent with frenzied format…rapid-fire rhetoric…ear-splitting shrieks…and programming designed to set your teeth on edge…radio listeners are casting about frantically in this cackling cacophony (where even static can be soothing) for the small…still voice of sanity…programming designed to be listened to…with delight…not delirium.

In light of this need for common-sense listening and enlightened programming…K-SHE has painstakingly planned its listening day for the discriminating listener who expects more from radio than radio has been able to offer…until K-SHE.

Our format is adult programming for adult taste…adult intelligence and adult preference. Programming with a purpose.
K-SHE is the radio station in which people are interested.

Meet the Lady of FM
K-SHE began operations on February 11, at 94.7 Megacycles, serving an area, roughly circular, within fifty miles from Crestwood. Although she is still a very young lady, K-SHE has acquired a reputation with her listeners as a “good music” station, programming over 26 hours of better classical music weekly. This is almost double that of any commercial FM station in the area.

Full Dynamic Range Sound is heard exclusively on K-SHE. This is an electronic system, whereby music is reproduced and transmitted to the listener in exactly the way the artist performed it – the pianissimo passages are heard pianissimo – the fortissimo passages are heard fortissimo. Nothing has been added – nothing taken away. Music is alive – as though the work were being performed in the listener’s home.

Inherent in the FM system is good frequency response and freedom from static, distortion and natural or man-made interference. K-SHE has been painstakingly designed and constructed to take every advantage of these qualities. No effort or engineering talent has been spared to make K-SHE the finest-sounding station in this area. Distortion and compression on K-SHE have been brought to such a low level that they are almost unmeasurable. K-SHE sound is THE finest sound in the area.
Frequency response is flat to a fantastic range, far beyond the requirements of the FCC technical standards. Proof? Ask any listener.

Station image has carefully and rapidly been built into the operation of K-SHE. The call letters are always given with a female voice, with emphasis that K-SHE is the “LADY OF FM” with many moods. She is sophisticated, unpredictable, with the continental touch and ALWAYS INTERESTING.

Success? Many letters received by K-SHE are addressed to “the Sophisticated Lady” – “the Unpredictable Lady” – “the Lady of FM” – etc. Many telephone callers ask to speak to “The Lady.”

Finally, K-SHE is known as “:the station that DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

K-SHE is the area’s only FM station with a balanced program schedule; one that was designed, not an accident. Its programming is patterned after but not copied from successful FM operations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

COMMENTARIES:
“Raconteur” nightly with Bud De Weese.
“Madamoiselle” weekly.
Garden Time weekly.
Cocktail Hour nightly
Over 11 hours of Comment weekly.
FEATURES:
Musical Comedy nightly
Variety and Comedy nightly.
Over 4 hours of Comedy weekly.
Over 4 hours of Broadway Musical Comedy weekly.
NEWS
Chain of Events.
News at the local level with weather every hour at the half hour during the day and between programs at night.
OPERA:
Complete performance each Sunday evening at 9:00 P.M. on “Night at the Opera.”
JAZZ:
Profiles in Jazz – two hours of better Jazz each Sunday at 4:00 P.M.
ROCK AND ROLL:
We’re not sorry – none on K-SHE.
You’ll find a veritable kaleidoscope of worthwhile, better listening on K-SHE, the station that truly DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

1280 Kilocycles – – – 234.2 Meters

KWK which until a month ago carried the call letters KFVE is now in its tenth month of operation in its present home and under its present ownership and management, the station having officially opened bearing the name of the International Life Insurance Company on March 17th, 1927.

It is generally conceded that KWK now ranks as St. Louis’ most progressive station. Its rapid rise to recognition started in April, 1927, when it scooped all other local stations and was first to present a play-by-play account of both the Cardinal and Brown Baseball Games (Ed. note: Some dispute this claim.) This feature won for the station thousands of followers. Through the broadcasting of nationally known orchestras from the Palm Room of the Hotel Chase it developed a large number of listeners who tuned in nightly to enjoy the music of the best orchestras in the St. Louis district.

Through its morning shoppers’ program another large following was developed, as it was the first station to present morning programs which were enjoyed.

In the month of October, the station gained a splendid reputation through its untiring efforts and successful work during the tornado disaster. It was the first station on the air with the news.

The Shut-In-Fund through which the station provides radio sets for the unfortunates who are shut in has been another nice feature that has won public favor and brought joy and happiness to many of the unfortunate in the St. Louis district.

The station’s standing in the community was most conclusively proven when more than twelve thousand listeners cast a vote by letter requesting the Federal Radio Commission to grant the station full time on its wave length while only forty-one voted against full time; and, though it is true full time was not granted by the commission, the station was only asked to give up two hours on Sunday to two other stations, namely WMAY and KFQA.

On December the first the station acquired the Blue Network programs from the National Broadcasting Company, and now broadcasts daily many national features, namely: Roxy and His Gang, Rise and Shine, Stromberg-Carlson Orchestra and Quintettes, The Sixty Continentals, The Torrid Tots, The Armand Company Girls, The Variety Hour, The Mediterranean Dance Band, The Ampico Hour, The Chicago Civic Opera Company’s Balkite Program, The Wrigley Wrigamarole, The Victor Hour, Collier’s Hour, Thomas Cook & Son Travelogue and a program by Montgomery Ward & Co., and the White Rock Mineral Springs Co. which starts next week.

On Sunday in each week, the station has also added the broadcast of a Little Symphony Concert with soloists from 12:00 to 2:00 P. M. followed by the St. Louis Symphony Pop Concerts through the courtesy of the Laclede Gas Light Company from 3:00 to 5:00 P. M.

Many new features and additional programs are being developed  and the most promising future appears to be in store for the station. It is the ambition of the entire staff and all those affiliated with the station that KWK  rank with the best in the west on or before the first birthday of the station which will be March 17th, 1928.

(Originally published in the International Life Broadcaster January 1928).