Radio Articles

 It was just like those stories you hear the old timers tell: He was a 15-year-old kid who was so fascinated with the radio business that he just hung around the radio station until someone decided to hire him. His name – Dick Castanie.

When Dick was 15 in the late 1950s, he started spending all his free time at the KCFM studios in the Boatmen’s Bank Building downtown. The station had no openings for announcers, but Chief Engineer Ed Goodberlet recommended Dick be hired on a part-time basis to do some engineering work like meter reading.

“I got paid $19 a week for about 35 hours,” he says.

The station’s format consisted of instrumental music tapes. The “studio” from which the broadcasts originated was a room at the top of the building next to the elevator shaft, which made it impossible to talk on the radio when the elevator motors started up.

Castanie says that was no problem. Back then the KCFM broadcasts were based on music,  not personality. When listeners heard a voice, it was seldom, if ever, live. The drop-ins were recorded at KCFM’s other building at 532 DeBaliviere – where station owner Harry Eidelman owned and operated a hi-fi shop – and brought downtown to be broadcast. All the music was on huge reels of recording tape which were played on the big machines in that small room at the top of Boatmen’s Bank. Castanie says there was an emergency microphone there to be used should the need arise.

Eidelman had bought the KCFM frequency from KXOK for $1 after KXOK-FM had shut down. In an effort to keep breathing life into KXOK-FM, the station’s owner, the St. Louis Star-Times, had tried something called “transit radio.” The city’s streetcar and bus system had been outfitted with FM receivers tuned to the station’s frequency. But lawsuits shut down transit radio in other cities, and in 1954, Harry Eidelman became the proud owner of the frequency. KMOX gave Eidelman a used Western Electric control board from its old Mart Building studios.

“I remember Harry bought all the radio receivers used in the streetcars,” says Castanie. “We converted them for use in automobiles and sold them over the air for $19.95 apiece.”

A couple years later, Castanie got a chance to jump stations when a friend let him sit in and watch a show. While Dick Kent was on the air on KWK, the 17-year-old Castanie sat in an adjacent room next to the turntable operator behind the glass. These operators were leftovers from the days when radio stations had employed live musicians. Their union, the American Federation of Musicians, negotiated a deal with the station that would allow members to continue employment as “platter spinners.” Castanie was hired at KWK in 1959 as vacation relief for the turntable people, but he had to join the musicians’ union. His dad loaned him the dues, and Dick was soon elevated to a full-time slot. 

“I worked with Buddy Moreno and King Richard, and for a short time with Gil Newsome before he went to KSD. Gene Davis was the program director, and I worked with him when he was the midday announcer in 1961,” says Castanie.

That union situation hit an interesting juncture while he was working at KWK. Radio stations were limiting their playlists, so they dubbed most of their popular songs onto tape cartridges. This meant the turntable operators were no longer playing records, and they weren’t supposed to handle the tapes. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers argued its members should be playing the carts since they were the audio engineers, and the announcers’ union, AFTRA, argued its members should be playing the carts since the little plastic contraptions were part of program content. The entire argument centered on who would push the button to start the tape cartridge.

Castanie has other vivid memories of his work at KWK: “I was there during the ‘treasure hunt’ fiasco, and we had to go to work through the back of the building because the crowd up front was very upset about being scammed.” KWK was later found guilty of hiding the “treasure” in Tower Grove Park the day before it was found by a listener even though clues to its whereabouts had been broadcast for several days. The Federal Communications Commission eventually found the station guilty of conducting a fraudulent contest and revoked KWK’s license to broadcast, shutting down its operation.

When Ed Ceries signed on with a new FM station in St. Louis in 1961, Castanie went to work for him. The station, known as KSHE, featured female announcers playing classical music and was located in the basement of Ceries’ home in Crestwood. Castanie says his work with the new station didn’t last long: “I was let go because they couldn’t afford to pay me.”
Looking back on his experience over the years gives Castanie a different perspective, especially when it comes to the real reason he was hired at his KCFM job. “Years later my uncle, who managed the building, said that Harry [Eidelman] hired me hoping that if he couldn’t pay the rent there my uncle wouldn’t evict him.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/2001).

Neil Norman, announcer at WIL, once laughingly described the announcer’s booth as “the house by the side of the road” because everyone who comes into the station to visit or to perform passes along there.

“Being a friend to man,” as Walt Whitman described the ideal house along the roadside, is a good idealistic theory, but WIL lives up to it. It is known as “The Friendly Station” and the first thing that greets the visitor’s eyes as he leaves the elevator on the top floor is a sign bearing two hands in a comradely handshake and the slogan “WIL, The Friendly Station.”

On my first visit there, I rather thought that the friendliness that I encountered was because of my connection in radio interests but upon weeks of revisiting it, I am realizing that they really live up to the motto. Everyone from L.A. Benson, president of the station and on down to the janitor who is always in evidence is cordial and it is because they are actually glad to see people and take them into their friendly band.

Evidence enough of the pervading spirit of good fellowship is the fact that no one ever seems to want to leave and one can almost find the entire staff around even when they are not working. They like being with each other. They like extending the expressions of friendship to visitors and they don’t like to leave and fear that they will miss something.

I had the occasion the other day to take a total stranger there while I was securing an interview and the reception he received for no reason at all was of epic-making sincerity.

There was Franklyn MacCormack, the program director, who has a ready smile of greeting and a common interest with everyone who comes up there. He immediately establishes some sort of a definite connection  and everyone feels that he has made a friend. While my guest and I were visiting with him, along came six-foot-four-and-a-quarter Billy Lang, who is said to be the tallest announcer in the middle west. He joined the group lending his interest and support to the conversation.

Miss Catherine Snodgrass, who is chief continuity writer and general reception committee stopped by and they all started teasing her while Robert Enoch, leader of the Pirate Club, with his compelling smile and guileless eyes, attempted to take her part. Eddie Wacker with his flaming red hair who was just around joined the general teasing and chatter.

Mr. Benson slipped out of his office with a greeting for everyone and while they paid him the respect due his position, one could feel that he was as much a part of them and their “kidding” as they were themselves. He was in on their secrets and enjoyed the gentle raillery as much as they did.

They treated my guest with such delightful informality that I had all the pleasure of having taken a child to visit his austere maiden aunt and had him behave in a model fashion. The teasing reached its height when Frances Domeimuth, switchboard operator and secretary, handed Franklyn an elaborately wrapped bouquet of flowers from some admirer.

Otto Reinert, director of the studio orchestra, rushed up in his clean white suit with his violin in hand to see what had happened. He joined us rather regretfully for he had been peering in Studio One to try to distract the artist by making faces at him like a bad boy. Even Allister Wylie, pianist, left his dreamy piano musings to come out and talk a minute.

Garnett Marks, newest announcer at the station, sat reading studiously, looking up only occasionally to laugh with the rest of us. Then in strolled several of the five Vaughn Brothers and Les Roberts, soloist. Allen Clarke, who is billed as “The Prince of Songs” rushed out to rehearsal at the Municipal Opera stopping long enough for a handshake and a greeting. C.W. Benson, vise-president, was a friendly but quiet participant in the fun.

We were shown each of the three studios and equipment and went back to the control room where we got the same friendly spirit of interest. We had only stopped for a minute but it was hard to tear ourselves away after an hour’s time for we had gained the feeling that we, too, might miss something.

They accompanied us to the elevator and they had made us know why the station was successful. It couldn’t help but be successful when it is all founded upon such harmony of interest. They work together and love doing it. My guest said as we parted that in all his travels he had never seen such a delightful group of people.

I am an old-timer in my visits there and I know that they are always like that and I agree with my guest. They live up to their motto of: “WIL, The Friendly Station.”

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment, 7/23/1932).

The story of the Girls of the Golden West is one of determination and centered purpose. They wanted to be singers, they wanted to sing over the air and they have succeeded.

Their real names are Dollie and Millie Good. They come from Texas and at heart they are real Texans. Their mother plays the guitar, their father sings and all eight children are musical.

When they were youngsters, they were ushered into the front room after supper and had singing bees all their own. Their oldest sister played the piano, both their father and mother played and they all sang. They had contests to see who could sing the loudest and best, whistling contests and so on and hilarious in their idea of make-believe, they always pretended they were on the stage. They “played like” they were bowing to vast audiences and they acknowledged the applause as graciously as if they were.
While Dollie, the youngest, was still in school she decided that she wanted to play and sing more than anything else. Her mother told her that she would either have to stop school or stop spending so much time in learning to play a guitar. So Dollie, intent on her purpose, stopped school.

She wanted to play a guitar because her mother played one but she wasn’t quite sure just how to go about it. She played a ukulele ever since she was a child. and so she tuned the guitar in just the same way and managed to get music of a sort out of it. Then she started harmonizing with her own music and playing while Millie sang.

When they had learned about two songs together they decided to attempt a radio tryout. They went down to WIL and had an audition on one of the two songs that they knew and they were so well received that they were given a job immediately. They were scared to death for their repertoire was limited and so they started learning some popular songs. The program director there told them to play and sing more “hill billy” songs and they were so new in the game that they didn’t even know what he meant!

After about six weeks, they decided to devote more of their time to learning to sing and concentrated on that. They came down to try out on “Hank” Richards’ County Fair last summer and have been at KMOX since then with the exception of three months they spent at the KER outlet in Milford, Kansas.

Besides being talented, (they both play banjos and violin) they are pretty and friendly and happy in the work that they are doing. Millie has dark brown hair and laughing brown eyes and Dollie is taller, quite slender with broad shoulders and has light brown hair and a smile that would win anyone.

Their childhood ambition of being on stage is gratified in the personal appearances that they make throughout the surrounding cities. They are a part of Wyoming Jack’s rodeo unit that is booked out for personal appearances and they are featured as the only two girls singing yodeling Western songs on the air. Millie harmonizes yodeling which is a unique feat.

When they sing “I Want to Go Back to Texas,” they really mean it for, as they explain with a dreamy look in their eyes, they really love Texas and the West. They can visualize the mountains when they sing about them, they can picture the camp fires and are really inspired when they are singing about that country. It takes real feeling to be able to sing about that territory, they explain, and they have it.

They appear on the Early Morning Farm Folks Hour, the KMOX County Fair as well as on special programs when Wyoming Jack is the announcer of his own Western Rodeo.

They have talent and ambition and a native interest in things, they are determined to succeed further in radio work and in talking to them and realizing what pretty, clever girls they were, I decided that they started out to win, and at the moment that is…success.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/22/1933).

The station, operated by students at Clayton High School, was assigned the 88.1 frequency and signed on May 28, 1968, after several years of planning. It operated with 10 watts of power until the late ’80s, when the F.C.C. forced the school district to divest itself of the frequency unless it could meet minimum requirements for operational hours.

Bruce Barrington, News Editor for KXOK St. Louis, presented what is believed to be the first broadcast of its kind in the United States when he aired a direct report of a spectacular $1,000,000 fire near East St. Louis via mobile radio telephone. Barrington contacted Richard Everett, Star-Times reporter who was on the scene with a radio-telephone-equipped car from the studios and relayed, over the air, Everett’s on-the-spot description of the 300-foot flames visible for miles, the crashing walls of the burning buildings which endangered the large crowd on hand and the great difficulty experienced by firemen because of the low water pressure caused by tremendous amounts of water being poured on adjacent buildings to keep the fire from spreading. The use of the radio-telephone has undoubtedly opened up a new avenue of on-the-scene broadcasts.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Advertising Club Weekly 10/21/1946).

An around-the-clock schedule for KMOX is announced by Merle S. Jones, general manager of the station. Heretofore, KMOX has been on the air from 5:00 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. daily, with 24-hour service on special occasions only.

Under the new schedule, which began October 16, the period from midnight to 5:00 a.m. will feature a variety program to be known as the “Victory Patrol” with Guy Runnion serving as master of ceremonies.

 

The program itself will include news reports during the last five minutes of each hour; occasional interviews; special CBS transcriptions; western and hilly-billy music; dance recordings and martial airs played by well-known bands. Special War Bond promotions will also be included.

With this new schedule, KMOX becomes the first St. Louis station to operate regularly every minute of the day.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Advertising Club Weekly 11/2/1942).