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Radio News - When There Was Radio News...

I don't remember John Whalen but I remember those teletype machines. In college I did 6AM shifts at WVIA FM with Tom McHugh. We alternated days. My biggest fear was coiming to work and seeing no paper in that machine. Being non technical, for me it was maddening but I learned to do it. I not only had purple fingers, I had purple hands!!!!As far as the bells went, my two biggest were August 8th (32 years to the day today) Nixon's resignation and the day Elvis died. Bill Kelly and I were walking from the TV studio to the Control Room, (the ticker was in the connecting hallway) and the bells were going nuts. He said "Something must be happening" and I took a look. At first, I saw Presley and I thought it was an entertainmenmt feature but those bells kept on ringing. Then I looked again and there was the bulletin. Kelly went to the TV booth to break in during programming and I went to the radio studios to do the same. I still have some of those original bulletins and thought someone on E Bay might want them. No takers! My wife was correct on that one. "Only a news nerd would want them or know what the hell they were!" she correctly proclaimed.
At one point, when WVIA FM did the news, we had a mike near the teletype and you could hear the sounds. But George Graham put a stop to that because it was an extreme use for a good microphone. And with that walkway between FM and TV, once in a while you'd hear a TV engineer go berserk with profanities and..........well you know the rest.
WARM stopped the teletypes when Heller took the news to the top of the hour as far as I know.
As Mary Hopkins sang on Apple in 1968, "Those Were The Days".
Yonkstur
 
Wasn't sure when it stopped, as a listener you tend to block that stuff out. Thanks for the clarification.
Yonkstur
 
As far as the bells went, my two biggest were August 8th (32 years to the day today) Nixon's resignation and the day Elvis died.
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Interestingly enough, I was there and on-the-air(different stations) for both of those events. The Nixon Summer was incredible, I'd say 75% of what moved on AP was Watergate related. It was a non-stop stream of information and an endless list of names, most now long-forgotten.

With Presley, one of our guys walked from the news room and handed me the bulletin. Before he did, he said, "You'll probably never read anything this big on the air again." I'd say he was right. The phones exploded. Elvis was scheduled to play The New York State Fair at Syracuse within a few weeks, and it was amazing to hear from all those who had tickets and were devastated by his death. Oddly, and I just remembered this, we were a CBS station, and CBS never offered a bulletin(also complete with bells) on Presley's death, which today would be a certainty. We had to wait until their next hourly news feed for any network coverage.
 
With Presley, one of our guys walked from the news room and handed me the bulletin. Before he did, he said, "You'll probably never read anything this big on the air again."
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Sounds like the guy needed an education and some perspective, if he thought that's the biggest thing that would ever happen.
 
ThomasCarten said:
With Presley, one of our guys walked from the news room and handed me the bulletin. Before he did, he said, "You'll probably never read anything this big on the air again."
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Sounds like the guy needed an education and some perspective, if he thought that's the biggest thing that would ever happen.
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Uh, no, I don't think so. He's is and was a very bright guy, who has had a huge career in radio. Frankly, being a jock, I never did read anything that big on the air again. If I were a newsie, it'd be open for debate; being a jock, no, that was beyond big.
 
Does anyone remember the CBS "NetAlert" box, which had a little window which flashed a number to alert the jock to up-coming events, such as commercial breaks, news feeds, and bulletins? The higher the number, the more important the coming event. I was on the air when Kennedy was shot. Reading a live spot, when the box started clicking, went to NINE, spun back and went to NINE again.
I thought it meant nuclear war. I had only been on the air on my own for two or three days. The PD had been lounging in the newsroom, and the UPI bell started ringing, like it was stuck. He ripped the paper and stuck it in front of my face-
"Kennedy Shot" I mumbled something to the effect that we will now join CBS News for an important bulletin, and hit the network key. We ran CBS solid, no commercials for three days at least. Incidentally, if you bugged UPI, they would install a re-inker, a bottle of ink with a wick that a more permanent ribbon ran over, and you hardly ever had to change a ribbon again.
 
Incidentally, if you bugged UPI, they would install a re-inker, a bottle of ink with a wick that a more permanent ribbon ran over, and you hardly ever had to change a ribbon again.

Yeah thanks. Even though its about 33 years too late!!!!!
Yonkstur
 
A few questions about the WARM news staff, forgive me if I'm beating a dead horse: Did Lenny Wolosen or Steven Allen Scott ever do news?? Who were some of the other WARM news people in the 60's?? I do remember Terry McNulty and Ron Allen (man those guys had great pipes)...mentioning the teletype sfx sent me back in time...great stuff ;D

longing for the good old days
Warm590
 
warm590 said:
A few questions about the WARM news staff, forgive me if I'm beating a dead horse: Did Lenny Wolosen or Steven Allen Scott ever do news?? Who were some of the other WARM news people in the 60's?? I do remember Terry McNulty and Ron Allen (man those guys had great pipes)...mentioning the teletype sfx sent me back in time...great stuff ;D

longing for the good old days
Warm590
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To the best of my knowledge, Ron never did news. Terry did news, then jocked for years, then went back to news, eventually ending up back jocking again. Steven Allen Scott I only remember as a jock, and barely at that. My guess is that he wasn't at WARM very long. Len Woloson was WARM's All Night Satellite before he became Morning Mayor. Anyone remember Woloson's Marching 'Cordeen(accordian)Band?
 
Ron Allen never did news on a regular basis, scheduled. I think once in the sixties when there was a huge snow storm I heard him do it once because he was the only guy there. But never scheduled. Terry McNulty did news in the 60s and actually broke the news on WARM about Kennedy's assassination. (At least that's the legend). In the 60s, he did a weekend sunday show from 3pm to 7pm (Tommy Woods did 11AM to 3PM before him) and called himself "The Big Fella" to seperate his news and jock persona. In the early 70s he had a show on from 9am to noon and then in the late 70s was moved back to news. I'm not sure when he returned to the jocking but it was either the John Hancock or John David Wells era. Whatever one it was, I know that those guys were extremely generous to him in terms of celebrating him as a WARM mainstay.
Steven Alan Scott was at WARM in the early to mid seventies. Did an afternoon drive shift. I know I was still in high school so it might have been circa 1971 thru '74 (give or take a year).
Woloson was the all nite satelite and according to that WARM documentary, he was prohibited from doing the news at WARM because on the all night show, he'd drop in voices and sound effects to liven it up. Someone taped the news for him on overnights.
Remember the editions, "at 1:30AM, this is the 4th edition of WARM news".
"It's 1:55AM,this is WARM News live at 55 with the 5th edition of W A R M news. ____________ _________________reporting. Yonkstur
 
"The Big Fella" was, for a lot of us jocks across NE PA at the time, what you could call a disc jockey's disc jockey. He pretty much epitomized what many of us thought a radio personality should be. The Big Fella's Pineapple Feature alone was priceless. Weird, very weird, but weird can be good, funny, and extremely entertaining. I would't even attempt to describe The Pineapple Feature, I could never do it justice. When he was doing early mid-day on WARM, he'd open his show with an intstrumental version of "You Alway Hurt The One You Love..." and would sing along for, oh, maybe 2-3 seconds. It never failed to crack me up - it made no apparent sense, it was totally incongruous, and maybe that's what made it so funny.

Terry was clever, entertaining, funny, had a commanding on-air presence, and a knack for seeing the humor in situations that eluded so many of us "up and comers" at the time. IMO, The Big Fella was most assuredly major market material, but my guess is that he had no interest in that at all. Now, does anyone know just how he came up with that Big Fella nickname?

P.S. Very surprised no one has mentioned Scott Arthur with regards to any WARM posts so far.
 
Here I am responding to my own post, but I really need to point out that what I wrote about The Big Fella, Terry McNulty, was written without my knowledge of his death yesterday, Friday.
 
Now, does anyone know just how he came up with that Big Fella nickname?

In the 60s, he did a weekend sunday show from 3pm to 7pm (Tommy Woods did 11AM to 3PM before him) and called himself "The Big Fella" to seperate his news and jock persona.

yonkstur
 
yonkstur said:
Now, does anyone know just how he came up with that Big Fella nickname?

In the 60s, he did a weekend sunday show from 3pm to 7pm (Tommy Woods did 11AM to 3PM before him) and called himself "The Big Fella" to seperate his news and jock persona.

yonkstur
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Thanks, Yonk, but how did he come up it? Why I never asked him is lost on me. For those of us who knew Terry, he was not a big fellow by anyone's definition. At most, he was of average height. He was also at one time one hell of a runner - it was nothing for Terry to run 8-10 miles daily, usually at Lake Scranton. I had recently heard of some health problems, but had no idea of their seriousness. He was only 70, certainly not old by today's standards. We lost a great one.

I hope folks can share memories of Terry, it would be fitting. One that always brought a smile to my face was that every Friday night for years he would take his elderly mother out for pizza and beer! "Loretta" was very fond of Stelmak's on South Main in West Scranton, and Terry would pick her up and off they'd go on Friday nights. Another radio legend, Paul Francis McNamara, was likewise a regular at Stelmak's, I do believe he played the organ there.
 
I think I heard him say in an interview that it was just something that popped into his mind. It came into his head, he said it on the air and it just stuck.
yonkstur
 
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