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Anyone Remember NBS Communications/Kaleidoscope?

M

Merkin

I spent several years as a volunteer programmer on air at WXPN 88.9 FM. Except for a on the air audition at WAYV, I never was on air for a commercial station. Why, in my 50's, I still have dead air dreams escapes me.

However, I did work at the "do you wanna be on the radio" enterprise known as NBS Communications, assisting paying programmers get on the air, as 15 or 30 minute programs were batched and played overnight as a format called Kaleidoscope on radio stations in places like Pleasantville NJ and McConnelsville PA. I believe, as part of a consent decree in NY, they were not technically a broadcasting school, just a way to pay to be on the radio.

Clients, in stage 1 would get coached in reading PSA's, in stage 2 paid staff would co-pilot your production of a 15 minute music show , and stage 3 allowed you to produce your own 30 minute show in the basement studios at 1510 Chestnut Street in downtown Philly.

Yeah, kind of a scam like song poems, but many of the clients seemed happy enough. They started in NYC, Philly was the second branch, and I know I was recruited to assist in starting up an LA office, which may or may not have actually opened. This was back in the early 1980's.

Strangely, there's NOTHING about this place on the Internet. Literally, except for a weird site that lists pay phone locations, NOTHING! I could see that broadcast professionals wouldn't be proud to list their experience on the resumes, but it's weird that this place seems to have never existed.

One oddity was that though the place was called NBS, the letters didn't appear to stand for anything, just to sound like NBC or CBS....

Anyone else out there remember/worked at/paid to go to NBS? I'd be interested in your recollections, or whatever happened to some of the very <<<ahem>>> unique characters that ran the place.
 
Well, I hate to say it, but I was one of those producing a 30 minute show. Can't recall much about the place specifically. I have a vague recollection that the facilities were kind of bleak at first, but then they moved from one building to some other. My memory is that the second location was kind of nice, pretty much your standard center city mid-rise office building. I recall some of the staff were people that you would hear on Philly FMs doing the traffic for, was it Shadow Traffic back then? I think the 30 minute shows would wind up on WOND on a Sunday night or something like that. I played a lot of Springsteen, Bad Co., Southside Johnny, Crawler, Starz, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Metro, Cafe Jacque, Baby Grand, The Babys, Hall and Oates, Boz Scaggs, April Wine, Charlie, Skynyrd, Blackmore's Rainbow, Harry Chapin and who knows what else. It was a fun way to spend a small piece of a Saturday morning.
 
Great, thanks, I was worrying that maybe it was just an hallucination.

Yeah, I do believe that some of the staff was there in between "real" broadcast jobs, others were various kinds of lovable misfits and sales types. The owner of the operation was a total trip and a half. When I worked there (I seem to recall two separate stints) we had WOND 1400 in Pleasantville, a station in Connellsville PA (I said McConnelsville in my prior post, and there's no AM station presently in Connellsville, maybe it went dark) which I once heard broadcasting Kaleidoscope in the middle of the night driving on the PA turnpike and a third station that may have been closer to Philly, though I don't recall it being WQIQ at the time. They probably were constantly negotiating for cheaper and cheaper blocks of airtime. My tenure was definitely in the mid rise office building, some attempt had been made to make it appear to be a "professional" broadcast facility. When I did production work dubbing the programs onto reels, I recall that was in a glass fishbowl studio visible from the lobby, which usually had an attractive yet official looking receptionist directing the client flow. They didn't pay much, but were pretty flexible around scheduling work hours, and it was pay as you go for the clients, which was probably more honorable than some of the schools that required long term contracts.

But it was kinda sketchy.....
 
I do remember, but I was at the one in NYC. I started going when I was 16 on weekends and when at 17, they offered me a weekend job as an instructor. I still had never been on the air a day in my life at this point but did learn all of the basics. I finally got my first part time radio job at 18 and ironically, hired to run the Kaleidascope programming overnight in Long Branch, NJ. Of all of the people I met while working for NBS, one was straight forward and sat me down and said do this for fun, but get a real job and not in broadcasting. Even though I totally respected his opinion, I stuck with it and worked my way up through the industry at great radio stations and recently landed at 92.5 XTU here in Philly. Thanks for the great memory!
 
It was a decent source of revenue for stations in small markets. At Radio 14 in Pleasantville, NJ, they would air the show from Midnight to six, during hours when they could never sell :60 commercials. I seem to recall Jack Kessler and Kay Wallace saying that it generated between $50,000 - $75,000 per year ! Not bad for AM station with 250 watts of power that would whistle all night long on low power. Do good, be well and happy.
 
I was a 30 minute guy at NBS, I think it stood for Nat'l Broadcast School. The owner's name was "something - Lewis" as I recall. You rarely or never saw him. He had a nice place nearby and had invited me over through the main guy you would see working at the mid-rise on Chestnut (taller skinny guy with glasses and slightly longer dark hair and always in a suit, nice dude but can't remember his name). They wanted to see if I was interested in doing some sophisticated voice personalities, but I declined because I was NOT very sophisticated at the time lol. I used to love going there... take the train into reading terminal in my early 20's on a Saturday, walk around Philly, have a bite to eat somewhere and do my show, then go home. Fond memory worth every penny. My show went out on WTTM and WOND. Only ever heard it once. My intro was "Song for America" by Kansas, I had a prog rock format.
 
NBS Radio

I was a part-time program director there, 1978-79.
A number of prominent local broadcast personalities worked there at the time.
 
i worked at nbs radio in the early 1980s. worked in a boiler room near macys on 32nd street in manhattan. it was a nightmare and i was eventually fired. an awful pederast named
dean was the owner i believe.

we gave presentations to suckers who paid 15 dollars for a chance at being on the radio. total bullshit scam. low point in my oife.
m
 
I was one of the people who paid to do a 30 minute show every week. I was in the program for 5 months. in 1980. I think when I started there, they had some ratty facilities around 16th & Market, I think in the old Fox Theater building. When the building was going to be demolished, they had to move. The new facilities at 15th & Chestnut were much nicer. Dean Lewis was there for my initial sales pitch. I went in fully aware of what this whole thing was, and I figured it would be a good way to learn some radio basics, and to gather some airchecks I could use to land a job. It worked! After 5 months with NBS, I landed my first full time job in the Atlantic City market, at WMID, then WMGM. After working on air in Philly, Seattle, Tampa, and Norfolk, I've spent the last 20 years doing morning drive here in Orlando, so I guess 5 months at NBS worked out for me. However, there was a "scammy" quality to it. There was a woman in my initial presentation who had absolutely no business being within 10 miles of a microphone. Rather than telling her the truth, that this wasn't for her & that she'd probably never be hired by a radio station, they told her that if she stayed with them, they could help her land a radio job! I was floored! If she had been in the program for 10 years, and gave them thousands upon thousands of dollars, she still would not be able to land a job. I gave myself a deadline of 6 months to make something happen, rather than just throw money down a hole for years, as they would have liked for me to do.
 
I was the one who built up all those little mini control rooms that NBS used for training. The equipment was decent (but no Pacific Recorder stuff here folks) and was complete with console, turntables, microphone, and reel-to-reel recorder. Can't remember if there was a cart machine or not. Dean had scored some sort of countertop sections that worked nicely for the setup. Of course he didn't pay me much for the work but it was extra money for me at the time so no complaint.

I met Dean Lewis while I was working at Craig Recording which was in the Benson East in Jenkintown, right next to WIBF studios. Dean had stopped in the station to talk to Doug Henson, the General Manager to see about buying up airtime at bargain prices. Doug turned him down as they already had plenty of other religious and ethnic programing that was much more profitable.

The whole idea seemed a bit crazy to me, people producing a little tape and then driving all the way out into Jersey in the middle of the night just to hear it aired. But Dean was a real likable guy, very gregarious and well meaning. And it really did seem like people were having fun with it. It certainly was profitable for Dean, I remember him having a huge computer printout on greenbar that listed all the program segments that people had paid for that week. He sort of dropped it pridefully from his hands to the desk as he was commenting on it.
 
i was an employee

i worked for nbs for maybe 6 or 7 months in like 1982 until i was fired. it was a crazy organization headed by a stone cold
child lover whose firest name was DEAN. i forget his last name Bad News. Like the organization as a whole.

We would advertise on ny radio. auditions. funny concept. not a school. cant get a job without experience, cant get experience
without a job. host your own show on a real station.

we had cattle calls. Evryone who could read a menu was accepted.

and the five minute shows were stuck together and sent to very small markets in nowhere arkensas. or texas.

Carol something, attractive black lady on nbc local new york was a graduate i was told

our office was accross from macys in nyc. i have many more memories of this time in my life, 35 years ago.
sam cohen
 
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