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50 YEARS AGO

R

Runrigger

The Valley Breeze/Observer runs a little feature in which they print some short blurbs from the newspaper from 50 years ago. There were a couple of broadcast-related ones this week:

Salty Brine was scheduled to emcee the 13th annual Bridge and Whist at St. Aloysius Home. I noted they identified him as a TV star, but I assume he was at WPRO at the time. Hey, without Facebook, Myspace, & Twitter he had to get out there to interface.

Also, a CONELRAD test, was scheduled to silence every radio and TV station for 30 minutes on April 17 from 11:30 a.m. until noon. CONELRAD, part of the nation's defense warning system, would be the only means of communication to the public in case of a nuclear attack.
 
Then, the tuner was "the radio 'dial.'"

Runrigger said:
CONELRAD, part of the nation's defense warning system, would be the only means of communication to the public in case of a nuclear attack.
Click to expand...

When you see an old [AM-only] radio, you'll see two dots on "the dial."
If it's a big dial, they won't just be dots; you'll see little nuke symbols, at 640 and 1240, frequencies-set-aside.
There are stations there now.
But back when Kruschev was loading missile silos, these frequencies were where-we'd-be-told-to-tune when we heard sirens wail.
 
So everybody went silent for a half hour? Back then it was probably a big thing. Now we have the internet. Also analog TV for emergency messages. Isn't that the reason for the digital transition? Also I think Salty started at WPRO in the 1940s didn't he?
 
back in the 40's and early 50's, WPRO was broadcasting the CBS radio network. Salty in the late 40's, early 50's was a staff announcer, as was jake pacquin. Salty became an air personality when WPRO, dropped CBS and went Top 40 on its own.
 
Channel Sixty Eight, WPRO, The Station That Reaches The Beaches! ... 'bing bong' Time to Turn so You Don't Burn ... No School Fostah Glostah .... Salty, Larry Ice Cold, Jimmy Gray, Joe Thomas, Andy Jackson, Holland Cooke, Vic Armand (sp?), Brother Bill, Bill Taves, Jay Clark and Gary Berkowitz at the old 24 Mason Street dump making magic
 
Re: Then, the tuner was "the radio 'dial.'"

Holland Cooke said:
Runrigger said:
CONELRAD, part of the nation's defense warning system, would be the only means of communication to the public in case of a nuclear attack.
Click to expand...

When you see an old [AM-only] radio, you'll see two dots on "the dial."
If it's a big dial, they won't just be dots; you'll see little nuke symbols, at 640 and 1240, frequencies-set-aside.
There are stations there now.
But back when Kruschev was loading missile silos, these frequencies were where-we'd-be-told-to-tune when we heard sirens wail.
Click to expand...

There were stations on 640 and 1240 back then as well. Not nearly as many on 640 -- it was still a clear channel for KFI, Los Angeles -- but there were daytimers in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Ohio. 1240 was full of stations -- it was a Class IV ("graveyard") channel, just as it is today.

Civil Defense was afraid Russian bombers would use AM stations as navigation beacons to find (and bomb) our cities. (after all, that's one way how our bombers found German cities during WWII)

The idea of Conelrad was to have every station in the country operate on either 640 or 1240, on a staggered pattern. WPRO might operate on 640 for a few minutes, then shut down and hand over the channel to WRKO in Boston, which would run for a few minutes and hand it over to WEZE, and then to WEAN, etc., etc.. All stations would carry the same program, delivered by telephone line from Washington. The idea was to make it impossible for air raiders to know which station they were getting a "fix" on, and impossible to maintain that fix.

I think they gave it up once they realized the Russians knew how to make maps & could find Providence without the help of direction-finding gear.....
 
Those Russkies had the map alrighty...

w9wi said:
Russians knew how to make maps & could find Providence without the help of direction-finding gear...
Click to expand...

Summer of 1976: Tall Ships in Newport...100,000 people a day...WPRO broadcasting live in-the-middle-of-it-all.

We were the first American press to board the-tallest-of-The Tall Ships, from Russia.
It was very spontaneous.
We were in a launch, circling her.
Salty was on the bullhorn, shouting "ELIZABETH TAYLOR!"
They invited us aboard, about a half-dozen of us.

Along the impromptu tour, on the bridge, they opened a broad, shallow drawer.
Nav charts.
They showed us detail of Newport Harbor...printed in Russian.
Back then -- with the Berlin Wall still standing, and The Cold War still on -- it was chilling.

You'll see several shots of this sudden, memorable moment, among a-pile-of-slides-I-shot, which we turned into this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcPxEFeLbeA

HC
www.HollandCooke.com
 
MT1 said:
Channel Sixty Eight, WPRO, The Station That Reaches The Beaches! ... 'bing bong' Time to Turn so You Don't Burn ... No School Fostah Glostah .... Salty, Larry Ice Cold, Jimmy Gray, Joe Thomas, Andy Jackson, Holland Cooke, Vic Armand (sp?), Brother Bill, Bill Taves, Jay Clark and Gary Berkowitz at the old 24 Mason Street dump making magic
Click to expand...

Not the same Jay Clark who was on Hartford radio in the 1990's, I imagine...
 
"Not the same Jay Clark who was on Hartford radio in the 1990's"

Jay was WPRO's PD until 1977, then went to be PD @ WTIC/Hartford, but wasn't on the air in Hartford.
From there he went to WABC, several years later; so he was long-gone from Hartford by the 90s.
 
Re: Oops...

Holland Cooke said:
MT1 said:
Channel Sixty Eight, WPRO
Click to expand...

Don't send THAT house six diaries...
Click to expand...

That was the jingle and positioning at one point, toward 'Pro's peak, when they were co-owned with WPRO TV Channel 12 (Salty was a pioneer in cross platform work with Salty's Shack on TV and his morning show on WPRO - all from 24 Mason Street where the elevator didn't work half the time... way closer to 50 years ago then your tenure.

So don't be pokin' fun there Fetus :)
 
RE "way closer to 50 years ago then your tenure"

"Than" my tenure?
Correct. I was there a mere 35 years ago.

But perhaps you mean "Channel Sixty THREE?"
 
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