Radio Articles

The life of a staff announcer in local radio in the 1940s was not exactly filled with thrills and excitement. But Ralph Hansen remembers one day, even though it occurred over 60 years ago.

Hansen had grown up in Wisconsin, going to school in West Bend, north of Milwaukee. One day a group of students was taken on a tour of a local radio station and the hook was set for Hansen. Later, as a student at Northwestern University’s downtown Chicago campus, he applied for the job of page at WMAQ, NBC’s huge operation in the Mart Building. As a page, he was able to attend classes run by the network to train future announcers, and when that training was finished, the network helped place the successful students in radio jobs. Ralph Hansen ended up at WALA in Mobile, Alabama.

And he ended up in St. Louis because of a woman. She’d caught his eye in Alabama, but as a student at Stephens College in Central Missouri, she wouldn’t be spending much time in Mobile. Hansen auditioned at KSD in St. Louis for Frank Eschen, the station’s news director, and was given the job of staff announcer. He was 20 years old, and today, he says he has no idea what happened to that girl.

Working at KSD in the late 1930s and early 1940s was a pretty good gig. The station was owned by the Pulitzers, who also owned the Post-Dispatch. The company’s building was on the northeast corner of 12th and Olive, and they’d put a separate entrance on the Olive Street side of the building for the radio station. KSD was a strong union shop, with engineers who belonged to IBEW and announcers who were members of AFRA.

Eschen saw some possibilities in the youngster, but Hansen’s announcing needed some refining, so Eschen would take the young man upstairs into the observation booth overlooking the studios. There Eschen would have Ralph read copy while the news director would critique his work. Hansen soon scored a slot as the regular staff announcer for Russ David’s “Alpen Brau” program. But there were additional duties, and it wasn’t exactly a glamorous job. A schedule would be posted each week outlining the shifts of the announcers, and often, their only duty would be to sit in the studio during network feeds and voice the live station identification at the hour and half-hour.

This was the sort of shift that brought Ralph Hansen to the KSD studios one early December Sunday in 1941. He and the engineer were the only two people there. At 1:00, the NBC “Chicago Round Table” program began, and Hansen left the studio and wandered into the deserted newsroom. He was bored, so he was looking around for something to occupy himself when one of the wire service machines began a loud ringing sound, the signal that something of great importance was being transmitted. Hansen rushed to the machine and tore off the copy. As he read it, he inadvertently blurted out “Oh, my God!” and went running into the control room to tell the engineer he had to break into the NBC feed. Then dashing into the studio, Hansen gave the signal and blurted into the open microphone the news that the Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The engineer rejoined “Chicago Round Table” and Hansen went back into the newsroom to see if any more information had come in. A few minutes later, the flash bulletin containing the same information interrupted the program again, but this time the news came from the network. Here in St. Louis, a 20 year-old staff announcer had scooped the network by several minutes and, in the process, had also beaten all the other local stations in getting the news on the air.

The rest of Hansen’s day was anti-climactic. He finished his shift and went home to his apartment. Soon afterward he would join the armed forces, returning to KSD in 1946 to take up the position of staff announcer again. When the Post-Dispatch went on the air with KSD-TV on February 8, 1947, Hansen made the transition and never returned to radio.

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 3/w2004.)

What set Joy Lepp apart as a teenager was the fact that there was a radio station in the basement of her house.
When she was 16, Joy’s father, Joseph Lepp, realized his lifelong dream by building a commercial station, WCBW-FM, in the basement of his Columbia, Illinois home. This meant Joy and her two brothers experienced a home life unlike those of her peers. For one thing, there seemed to always be music in the background. And there was a constant stream of people coming to work and going down the basement stairs. And, as a sort of added bonus, Joy got to be on the air.
“Everyone in the family voiced commercials,” says Joy, who is now Joy Kocher. “I did a daily spoof of the local weather girls and put on a sexy, disguised voice. All the guys at school wanted to know who our weather girl was.”

Joy wasn’t the only Monroe County teenager involved with WCBW. Steve Schmidt from Sts. Peter & Paul High School in Waterloo had a regular air shift using the air name “Steve Williams.” “My parents had been friends with the Lepps for years. When my dad told me that Joe had applied for the radio station license, I said I’d love to work there. Like any other 17-year-old guy growing up in the Johnny Rabbitt era, I thought being a deejay would be really cool.”

Steve was on the air the first day of operation, February 15, 1964. He was told to play some music and read the news. “Dad had about fifteen record albums to start,” says Joy Kocher. Schmidt says the music consisted mainly of “easy listening” material from artists like Percy Faith and Mantovani. “In the initial years all the deejays decided on which music we would play. I was the closest thing to a program director or music director that WCBW had. I worked the record companies and distributors for new product and ordered the deejay promo copies of albums that we needed,” Schmidt said.

Dorothy Lepp, Joe’s wife, was “the rock who kept things going,” says Joy Kocher. “She loved the excitement and disruption of having WCBW in the house.”

Dorothy did all the office work, even writing commercial copy and occasionally reading news on the air. Joe kept his day job at the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and he also found time to sell ads for the station and sometimes pulled an air shift. “Dad loved radio,” Kocher says. “Grandma said he used to pretend he was working at a radio station when he was little.” The realization of that dream came when he was 52.

WCBW-FM was typical of most small town radio stations in the mid-60s, according to Steve Schmidt. Even though it was on the fringe of the St. Louis market, the station’s programming was aimed at the Monroe County audience. “I hosted the German Music Parade for awhile, and Polka Time was on every day at 5:30. There were also plenty of remote broadcasts from local churches.” Joy and Steve were teamed to host the station’s teen show for about four years. Steve also remembers anchoring a local news show which consisted of reading tidbits out of the Monroe County newspapers. “I think the papers sponsored the show. I was supposed to read the first couple lines of each story and then tell the listeners to buy the papers for more information.”

Joy was one of the staffers who read the obituaries provided by the local funeral homes each day. “It was during the Vietnam War. I had to read the obituary of a friend of mine who was killed in action. It was one of the hardest things I ever did.”

Other announcers in the early days of WCBW-FM included Eric Stiegerman and Tony Mayer, who hosted a German-language program, and regulars Jim Gray, Bill Ray and Dick Ross. As one might expect, the station’s equipment was bare bones in the beginning. “There was no tape cartridge machine for about the first six months on the air,” according to Schmidt. “You either read the commercial live or played it back on the Roberts reel-to-reel machine. (Commercial copy, often hand-written, was kept in a three-ring binder.) We broadcast in monaural sound at 104.9, and the tower was out on Cemetery Hill.” Joy Kocher remembers staffers having to go to Cemetery Hill several times a day to take transmitter readings.

Eventually the station was moved out of the basement and into the Lepp’s garage. Steve Schmidt says the move was made in the early ‘70s and became necessary because the Lepp’s basement, like many others, was susceptible to flooding.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/2003)

When Bettye Robinson started working at WESL July 31, 1972, as a receptionist, she had no way of knowing how many changes she’d see in her 35 year career there.

You may not recognize her name, because most of her work was behind the scenes, although she was called on to work in the control room occasionally when a jock was late for a shift. She readily admits to becoming the mother figure for many of the station’s announcers over the years.

The station had just recently returned to the airwaves when she was hired, having gone dark because of financial problems. WESL signed on July 10 of that year under the ownership of E. St. Louis Broadcasting. The company was overseen by majority owner Dr. Wendell Hansen. “He was a jewel. I loved him,” says Bettye Robinson. “He would come in once a month. We’d have a sales meeting and he’d give us a pep talk. We made a lot of money with him.”

Hansen was a real character, even by radio standards. He had a group of trained birds which he’d occasionally bring to the station, where he would put on a bird show. “He was just good for the station,” Robinson recalls. “I think we made more money under Dr. Hansen than we did under any other owners. He’d worked with radio and with black people before and he knew the kind of music blacks liked. He knew how to deal with people.”

Reverend Robert Wolf, the station manager, had hired Bettye Robinson, a process she recalls fondly. “He was the best manager I had. He taught me so much about radio. There was an article in the paper and he said he was looking for a receptionist. So I came down. He said ‘Are you sure you want to work in radio?’ I told him I’d give it a try. And Reverend Wolf asked if I could type. I told him I could, so he sent me to the E. St. Louis employment office to take a typing test. That was on a Thursday. He called me at home the next day and asked if I wanted to go to work. I asked when I could start and he told me to come in Monday.”

At that point, WESL featured block programming. Don O’Day had an oldies show. Ken Brantley hosted a program of gospel music. Program director Decatur Agnew even asked the station’s receptionist to host a daily five-minute household hints show. Bettye Robinson remembers writing the scripts using a big book full of information. She also took calls from listeners who had specific questions. Her 2:00 p.m. show, Bettye’s Household Tips, ran for about a year.

Everything at the station changed in January, 1984, when Bishop L.E. Willis of Norfolk, Va., bought WESL. The format was switched to gospel and all the announcers quit. Bettye Robinson has been the administrative assistant to Dr. Hansen, and she performed many of the same duties as the station liaison to the bishop.

Ten years later there was another owner, nightclub impresario Robert Riggins. His hope was that he could use the station to promote his club, and for awhile it worked well. Blues musicians appearing at the club would drop by the station, which was a thrill for Bettye Robinson. “With Mr. Riggins I met all the blues people and they’re very nice. Johnny Taylor, Bobby Bland, Bobby Rush. I met so many entertainers I’d heard about.”

But Riggins’ lack of knowledge of the radio business proved to be his downfall. He spent money to add on to the studio building, envisioning an increase in the sales staff. “He was going to hire all these people to come in and turn things around,” says Robinson, but it never happened. “Mr. Riggins never really moved into the new building because he got sick. That was his dream – to move into the new building.”

In the late ‘90s, Bettye Robinson decided to retire to pursue another dream, but those plans took a detour. ““I retired from WESL in 1999 on a Saturday evening. I had a big retirement celebration. Mr. Riggins asked ‘What are we going to do without you? I don’t know radio.’ And Mozella, his wife, said, ‘You can’t leave us.’ So I told them I’d come back and help until they could find someone. I went back the next Monday morning and ended up staying.”

Another ownership change came in November of 2004. Simmons Media bought WESL and later moved out of the E. St. Louis studios, consolidating operations with another radio property in a building on Laclede’s Landing on the Missouri side of the river. The format was also changed, bringing back Bettye Robinson’s thoughts of retirement. WESL, she says, would never be the same. “Home is that little building that sits at 149 S. Eighth Street, and when I think of WESL, that’s what I see in my mind.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 3/2007.)

It was really the ultimate in portable radio, and it came to East St. Louis in January 1927. Instead of the radio receivers being portable, the radio station was.

The East St. Louis Daily Journal carried a front page story on Dec. 26, 1926, heralding the imminent arrival of WHBM, stating, “Radio station WHBM is going to put East St. Louis on the aerial map.” This claim could probably be chalked up to the bandwagon effect. Across the Mississippi River, St. Louis had several stations operating by 1926, but the Illinois side had none. That’s when Charles Carrell came on the scene.

National radio historian Thomas White traced Carrell to Chicago, which was initially the base of his portable broadcast operations. WHBM was licensed to Chicago at first. Another researcher, Donna Halper, found that it was a popular entrepreneurial move in the 1920s to take a radio station “on the road” to communities like East St. Louis. In her words, “They brought radio to towns that otherwise could not have supported a station.”

WHBM was brought to East St. Louis by the city’s chamber of commerce. A group spokesman told the newspaper, “This company [Carrell] offered us the services of their trained staff of technicians and consultants…we were to be the judges of whether or not such a station would be acceptable to us…”

Carrell’s group did everything right. “Tests” were conducted in late December, broadcasting two programs from the Lyric Theater, with Paul Godt playing the Lyric organ “broadcasting sweet melody.” The newspaper accounts in late December had already begun leading the public to believe that the station may put down permanent roots: “The Chamber of Commerce will gather to discuss the practicability of installing the station here for all time.”

The next day’s issue made the official-sounding announcement on its front page: “WHBM…is to be permanent, following decision of the Chamber today.” It would take to the airwaves five days later from studios in the Chamber of Commerce offices. Chamber manager Les Foreman was named “official announcer” for the station.

Following the official inaugural broadcast, which featured a speech by Mayor M.M. Stephens, the station settled into a daily schedule of variety programs. News bulletins were broadcast by the radio editor of the Daily Journal at 5:30 p.m. each day. After initially carrying articles about the various radio programs for a week, the Journal cut back its daily coverage to a Page 2 box listing the day’s shows and times. By Jan. 19, sponsorships of several programs had been sold and were listed in the box.

Major feature articles ran in Sunday editions, extolling the value of the “advertising” the city was receiving via its radio station. Two months into its operation, WHBM received a letter from a listener in Utah, which was no small feat, considering that the station was broadcasting with 100 watts at 1390 Kc.

By March 20, it was all over. Newspaper articles were now more specific on the initial agreement, stating that “…it [the station] was to be installed here and operated on a trial basis, to ascertain whether the city of East St. Louis would respond to a station of its own…it was agreed that the station would operate during an experimental period up to and including March 20th.” The final broadcast in East St. Louis was March 19, 1927. None of the newspaper accounts of the station, save those at the very beginning, mentioned C.L. Carrell.

Researcher Halper learned that Carrell had been a theatrical impresario in Chicago, overseeing several traveling companies. It was, therefore, no coincidence that many of the WHBM broadcasts originated from the Lyric Theater. It was Carrell’s way of getting publicity for his people, which got more people to go to the theater.

By 1928, the Federal Radio Commission outlawed portables under General Order 30.

As a footnote, only one article about WHBM could be found in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and it listed the wrong call letters (WBHM).

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/98.)

When the St. Louis Globe-Democrat finally got on the bandwagon of newspaper ownership of radio stations, it did so in a big way. KWGD-FM was given a state-of-the-art facility of its own at 12th and Cole, down the street from the newspaper offices.

KWGD Studios architect rendering

The building, which now houses Sinclair Broadcasting’s St. Louis operations, cost $1.6 million to build in 1948, and the new station went on the air in December of that year. The newspaper admitted that it spent so much on the building because it also planned to set up a television station there.

The newspaper’s owners had actually applied for the frequency in 1941, but U.S. participation in World War II brought about a freeze on all new broadcast licenses. By the time it signed on December 19, 1948, at 92.9 mHz, KWGD-FM was beamed through its 10 kilowatt transmitter to the area’s nearly 100,000 FM receivers.

The paper touted the possibilities of FM, which was springing to life in the period following the war: “Listeners…will be assured of a new experience in radio enjoyment, free from the annoyance of interference by electric razors or vacuum cleaners, atmospheric static, and competing programs which set up a stream of ‘cross talk’ on standard broadcasting dials.”

Globe-Democrat staff writer Bob Goddard was given the task of writing the full-page introductory piece about the station. He described the building, writing, “The layout and décor are well calculated to put the prospective advertiser in a warm and receptive frame of mind from the moment he steps through the entrance door on Cole Street.”

There were four radio studios on the street level, two of which were nearly 1,400 square feet so they could handle studio audiences of up to 50 people. The studios were described as “floating,” That is, the walls and floors were constructed on “cushioned members, which creates acoustic isolation for the highest fidelity sound reproduction.”

The KWGD-FM newsroom was located just off the lobby, and passers-by were invited to stop and watch through the large exterior plate glass windows as the news staff worked. Although the newspaper dubbed the facility “Radio City,” a portion of the second floor was set aside to house television transmitting equipment and studios.

The fanfare was short-lived, though. FM radio stations in St. Louis, which at that time did little more than simulcast the programs of their co-owned AM counterparts, failed at a rapid rate. In a six month period, KSD-FM, KXLW-FM, WIL-FM, and WEW-FM went dark.

KWGD was acquired in 1949 by Thomas Patrick, Inc., which owned KWK, and KWK-FM began using the facility and transmitting equipment. The station was now located at 98.1 mHz, but in less than a year after the acquisition, the plug was pulled. In April of 1950, KWK-FM became the fifth FM station in six months to fail in St. Louis.

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/98.)

The first radio country club in America is now being developed within the city limits of Kirkwood – on the grounds of the transmitter plant of KWK. When completed early this summer it will have bridle paths, swimming pool, tennis courts, handball courts and even a trapshooting field.

Thomas Patrick Convey, president of Thomas Patrick Incorporated, owners of KWK, conceived the idea of a retreat for staff members last summer. One hot night he and Clarence Cosby, KWK director, were at the transmitter plant, which is located on the Manchester road, near Lindbergh boulevard. It was a moonlit night and Convey was impressed by the scenic value of the site. It was then that he decided to build a sleeping porch addition to the plant where he could spend sultry nights.

The sleeping porch soon became a reality and since then ten rooms have been added. Now it is the summer home of the KWK staff, and landscape architects are at work beautifying the grounds. More than 3,500 shrubs and trees have been planted and when summer comes, it will be a haven for tired continuity writers, announcers, singers and other KWK attaches.

The plant is open to the public and hundreds of visitors pass through it each week. The studios of station KWK are at the Hotel Chase and [are] where the programs originate, but without the transmitter plant KWK would not be able to reach out into the distance with its programs.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/9/32).