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).