Bulletin of Special Collections in Mass Media and Culture at the University of Maryland

Spring 2014

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An exhibit documenting the rich history of the University of Maryland’s radio station is on display in Hornbake Library and open through July 2014.

“Saving College Radio: WMUC Past, Present and Future” showcases the student-operated station that has served as a train-ing ground and creative outlet for students since 1948, making it one of the nation’s longest continuously operating college ra-dio stations. As a platform for alternative programming, WMUC remains the only alternative music station in the D.C. metro area.

“Radio stations are hubs of cultural activity and embody local traditions and culture,” says Laura Schnitker, curator of the exhibit and sound archivist at the Uni-versity Libraries. “In addition to being the voice of the campus community, WMUC is important because it provides an alternative to commercial Top 40 or talk radio.”

Offering the student perspective of key historical events and campus happenings, the exhibit draws from more than 1,800 audio recordings as well as reports, admin-

SymposiumFriday, April 1110am-5pm

“Saving College Radio,” a symposium hosted by the University of Maryland Libraries, offers a day of insightful and interactive presentations on the themes of preserving active college radio culture as well as stations’ historical archives.

In conjunction with our current gallery exhibit “Saving College Radio: WMUC Past, Present and Future,” the symposium brings academics, archivists and college radio participants together to highlight the vital contributions of college radio to campus, local and online communities, and to emphasize the value of college radio archival materials in history and scholarship.

Keynote speaker Jennifer Waits, the College Radio and Culture Editor of the blog Radio Survivor, founder and editor of the blog Spinning Indie and longtime college radio DJ, will open the symposium with a presentation on the importance of keeping college radio alive in the United States.

She will be followed by Dr. Kip Lornell and Tori Kerr of George Washington University. Dr. Lornell, Assistant Professor of Musicology, will discuss his current research on WAMU’s bluegrass programming, and Ms. Kerr, the Music Director of campus station WGRW will talk about the station’s role as the voice of GWU.

After lunch, guest speaker Dr. Maureen Loughran, who holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Brown University and current Managing Producer for NPR’s American Routes, will share her experience using college radio archives for her doctoral dissertation on local music culture in Washington, D.C.

She will be followed by Eric Cartier, continued on page 5

istrative files, brochures and photographs. Materials in the WMUC Collection are part of the University Archives and docu-ment cultural, music, sports, and news pro-grams.

Among the highlights of the exhibit are: early 1970s audio recordings of Viet-nam War protests on campus that drew thousands of demonstrators; a station ID, or short on-air promo, that John Lennon recorded for a WMUC deejay at the press conference accompanying the Beatles’ first U.S. concert at the Washington Coliseum; station IDs recorded by other celebrities including Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Phyllis Diller and Frank Zappa, among others; and information about Yesternow, the station’s first ongoing program to both feature and target African Americans and other minority communities.

The exhibit underscores the UMD Li-braries’ efforts to preserve the university’s student radio heritage. Robin Pike, manager of digital conversion and media reformat-ting, leads a team of specialists working to digitize the station’s audio recordings and print materials, important to the university

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An Announcement from the CuratorThe University of Maryland Broadcasting Archives, home of the Library of

American Broadcasting (LAB) and the National Public Broadcasting Archives (NPBA), is now officially known as Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture (SCMMC).

SCMMC has always been about more than over-the-air radio and television. Material on community antenna or “cable” TV, distance learning, closed circuit TV, satellite technology, film and other related topics were present in the LAB when it opened its doors as the Broadcast Pioneers Library in the early 1970’s.

The Archives of The Children’s Television Workshop in NPBA contains hundreds of books and reports on early childhood education. Such resources might not appear to have much to do with traditional television – but they have everything to do with Sesame Street, seen as very non-traditional television when it debuted in 1969.

The inclusion of this kind of material in our holdings, when combined with the genre-spanning nature of the careers of many of our donors and rapid changes in the viewing and creating of media in our “interconnected” age, have led to a decision to formally expand our mission, and to change our name to reflect that broadened focus.

A perfect example of why we made this choice is represented by the popular Emmy-winning series House of Cards. This series, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright (and shot largely in the state of Maryland), cannot be viewed on any TV network or station, cable system or channel. It’s not available by satellite TV either. Netflix, a media streaming service that delivers content over the Internet, produces it. House of Cards has no time slot. It has a release date, when Netflix makes an entire “season” of thirteen episodes available, the better to please its “binge watching” viewers. Netflix content can be watched on web-capable TV’s or through TV’s attached to web-capable devices, like Roku or the new Fire TV from Amazon. It can also be watched on desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and other like devices. It looks like a television show, but its economic model and delivery mode make it very unlike television as we’ve understood it for the last 65 years or so.

If the producers of House of Cards called tomorrow and offered the production records of their show to us, I would accept with alacrity. Though it’s a subscriber-funded series streamed over the Internet, it has definitely made an impact on the broader culture. It’s also undoubtedly “mass media,” as Netflix has over 44 million subscribers and adds more every day. It’s exactly the kind of program scholars will be writing about, in both the near term and the future. I want our collection to be part of that scholarly conversation, and part of other conversations not yet imagined. The changes I’ve outlined will help us accomplish that.

Chuck Howell, CACurator, SCMMC

Last of the ‘Murrow Boys’ Talks to Merrill StudentsNote: Special thanks to Mike Freedman, senior vice president of communications at the University of Maryland University College, who is an old friend of Richard C. Hottelet’s and made the conference call possible. Freedman was also a guest speaker during the Historiography of Broadcasting class.

By Adam KuhnPhilip Merrill College of JournalismClass of 2014

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – On Tuesday, March 25, students enrolled in the Historiography of Broadcasting class had the unique opportunity to participate in a conference call with Richard C. Hottelet, a journalist who had a distinguished career with CBS.

Mr. Hottelet, 96, is the last surviving member of The Murrow Boys, which refers to a group of young reporters who worked with legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

During the 20-minute conference call, Mr. Hottelet told stories from his career that included covering World War II. On one instance, he met Adolf Hitler at an airport. Mr. Hottelet was told of the German chancellor’s intense blue eyes. But to Mr. Hottelet, the eyes were nothing out of the ordinary.

Mr. Hottelet also had the experience of parachuting out of an airplane that was damaged during a battle. Mr. Hottelet escaped with only a black eye, and President Franklin Roosevelt commented on how fortunate the journalist was. On June 6, 1944, Mr. Hottelet reported an eyewitness account of D-Day.

For today’s journalists, Mr. Hottelet stressed that “writing what you know” is important in order to be successful. He also took questions from Merrill College students about breaking into the field and the evolution of presidential press conferences from just a few reporters into a televised production.

It was certainly a phone call that the students will remember.

Reprinted with permission of the Philip Merrill School of Journalism.

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Digital Reformatting Specialist at UMD Libraries, who will discuss the goals and challenges of archiving WMUC’s audio collection. Our final speakers are archival assistants Amanda Knox and Cara Shillenn, who will share some of the more valuable treasures from the WMUC Collection.

The symposium will be followed by a viewing of the WMUC exhibit in the Maryland Room Gallery at Hornbake, and a

reception for the presenters and attendees. We expect the symposium to reach a

broad audience that includes academics who study local culture, past and current participants in college radio, radio enthusiasts and historians and archivists who work with amateur-created, multi-media formats.

The symposium is free and open to the public. Please RSVP at the event website: http://www.lib.umd.edu/wmuc/events.html or by contacting curator Laura Schnitker at lschnitk@umd.edu.

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By Talia Richman (Reprinted from The Diamondback)On his way to cover President John F. Kennedy’s campaign for

re-election, Sid Davis realized he had left his reporter’s notebook at home. During a stop at a San Antonio airport, he purchased a simple red notepad for 15 cents.

It was on those pages that he would scrawl these historic words: “President John F. Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. CST today in Dallas.”

Davis, who was working for Westinghouse Broadcasting Company at the time, shared his memories from Nov. 22, 1963, with a crowd of students and faculty members in Richard Eaton Broadcast Theatre in Knight Hall yesterday. The 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination is Friday.

“There was nothing unusual about going to Dallas,” Davis said. “Secret Service was a little concerned because there had been two incidents where a Democrat was mistreated verbally, but that was the only thing we expected. We never expected anything like what happened.”

Davis remembered seeing the president and first lady exit Air Force One at Love Field. He noticed the couple was holding hands — a rare occasion, he said, as the commander in chief was very private about his marriage.

When he saw what fashion icon Jacqueline Kennedy was wearing that day, Davis asked a female reporter what color her outfit was. He planned on writing that it was pink, but she assured him it was raspberry.

About an hour later, Davis was sitting on the press bus about eight car lengths behind Kennedy’s uncovered Lincoln when he heard three shots fired.

“We saw the car just take off,” Davis said. “We saw the raspberry color of Mrs. Kennedy’s dress just disappear; they were going so fast to get away.”

Davis was one of three reporters and 27 people total on Air Force One when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in later that day. In the iconic black-and-white photo of the ceremony, the left side of Davis’ face and his glasses are visible.

“That was Johnson’s finest hour,” Davis said. “He was calm, reserved; he knew what he had to do. His treatment of Mrs. Kennedy was very compassionate. There was nothing in his heart at that time but to lead the country.”

The hours after the assassination were difficult, Davis said. Between rushing to Parkland Hospital and flying back to Washington, there were moments when he broke down in tears.

“If you stopped to think ‘Oh God, the president is dead,’ you couldn’t get through the day,” Davis said.

He called upon the final stanza from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to explain how he felt.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep,” he recited.

Former Group W and NBC reporter Sid Davis recently spoke on campus, at an event hosted by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and Special Collections in Mass Media and Culture, University Libraries. His presentation on Monday, November 18 followed his coverage of the Kennedy assassination 50 years earlier, as well as an overview of his career.

Reporter who witnessed JFK assassination spoke at journalism college

Davis started his presentation by joking about his most recent experience speaking at a university.

“Last time I did a university speech, it was followed by a letter that said ‘Dear Mr. Davis, if my doctor gave me only one hour to live, I’d like to spend it in one of your lectures. One hour with you is like an eternity,’” he said.

But senior journalism major Samantha Medney disagreed, saying his presentation was fascinating.

“I was really impressed by the way he was able to convey the emotions and feelings of that horrible day. His stories were incredible, and I was so happy I could be there. I would love to go to another lecture like this one,” Medney said. “It really helps give [students] perspective on historical events and gives journalism students an idea of the type of work we might do when we head out into the real world.”

Carm Saimbre, a freshman journalism major, said Davis knew how to tell a story, which kept the lecture enjoyable and enlightening.

“It was awesome to get perspective about JFK’s assassination from a reporter who was actually involved with Kennedy’s inner circle,” Saimbre said.

Diamondback staff writer Talia Richman is a freshman journalism major covering political advocacy and diversity.

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Monitor was a weekend-long radio program on the NBC Radio Network, broadcast from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. Airing live and nationwide, the program offered an eclectic mix of short segments – news, sports, comedy, variety, music, interviews and even old radio stars in new skits. Its length and format were radical departures from the traditional radio programming structure of 15- and 30-minute programs.

“It became the greatest show in network radio history, the forerunner of talk radio and one of the most-copied formats ever… For more than a thousand weekends, Monitor tied the country together electronically and provided news, sports and entertainment for a generation of Americans. It provided the very best programming that American radio had to offer. In the process Monitor became NBC Radio’s biggest success story and kept the radio network alive for two decades.”

– From the Introduction to Monitor: The Last Great Radio Show by Dennis Hart.

Last spring, Dennis Hart donated the research materials for his books Monitor: The Last Great Radio Show (2002) and Monitor: Take 2 (2003). We had the chance to talk with him about his research recently.

Q: Which came first, the web page or the book?

The website came before the book, and it actually triggered my writing. The first incarnation of monitorbeacon.com – now, it’s .net – appeared in October 2001.

It had, I believe, about 20 total minutes of audio available for anyone to listen to (our Internet hosting service only had room for a small amount of content). There were no pictures, and only a few pages.

I figured that, at most, a dozen or so former Monitor listeners a year would find us, and that it would remain a quaint, quiet niche site.

But through the mysterious ways of the Internet, somehow people began finding out about the Monitor Tribute Pages almost immediately. They began writing about their delight that someone, at last, was recognizing the program they’d grown up and older with over those two decades of Monitor’s existence from 1955 to 1975.

They told their friends about the site, and their friends told others. Within a few months, the site had received several thousand visits.

Some of those visitors included former Monitor staff members who suggested that I write a book and offered to put me into contact with others they had worked with.

That began an extensive series of weekend telephone calls with such people as Hugh Downs, Jim Lowe, Tedi Thurman (the legendary “Miss Monitor”), and numerous producers, writers and executives who had worked on Monitor.

And that resulted in the first book.

Q: What made you choose iUniverse? Or was it a choice? Did conventional publishers decline the title?

I researched a variety of publishing options and talked with several local authors who had been both successful and unsuccessful in “traditional” publishing. I remember sending a proposal about the Monitor book best-selling potential. I was nearly ready to drop the project when someone told me about iUniverse, which was an early player in the self-publishing game.

I decided to give it a shot, because, frankly, I had waited years – decades – after Monitor came to an end on NBC Radio for someone – anyone – to write the story of the this incredibly innovative and important program. I felt the program’s history, vitality and impact needed to be documented so that readers could understand just how good American network radio could sound in the age of television.

So the website helped me “get the word out” about Monitor – and the response to the site convinced me that there was still an audience for a book about “the last great radio show.”

The book sold far better than I ever anticipated.

Q: What happened between the first and second editions of the book to make you want to rewrite and revise so quickly after the first book?

I was satisfied with the initial book until I started receiving messages via the website from people who had worked on Monitor but whom I either had been unable to contact for the first book or who were unknown to me.

They had read that first book, and they began telling me stories I’d never heard about Monitor. These were behind-the-scenes stories about, among other things, how the program was produced, about the up-to-now untold foibles (and brilliance) of some hosts, producers and executives – and about quirky, funny or emotional things that happened on the broadcast.

And for the first time, I was put into contact with people who told me what “really” happened behind closed doors in NBC’s executive suites that led to Monitor’s demise. These people named names and told the tale of Monitor’s life and death much better than I had been able to relate just a few months earlier.

They were wonderful stories – storie that more fully portrayed the Monitor experience for listeners – and I decided that a new book was needed.

Q: We’re very glad to have both editions of your book as well as your research materials in our collection. Thanks so much for talking with us. Anything you’d like to add?

As you can tell, I love talking about Monitor. I grew up listening to it and I went into broadcasting because of it.

And when I did my research on it, I came to realize the program’s importance to both NBC Radio – it literally kept the network alive for 20 years – and to the nation. About 30 million people listened to Monitor each weekend in the mid-’60’s.

I was just lucky to be one of them.

Dennis Hart spent three decades in broadcasting. He also taught broadcast journalism at Cal State Fresno and at Iowa State University in Ames.

Author Hart Celebrates NBC’s ‘Monitor’

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because they are unique, at risk and irreplaceable. Quarter-inch, open-reel audiotape, for example, will be preserved according to national standards and practices and ingested to a digital collec-tions repository, ultimately to be made available to researchers.

Preserving the items is especially challenging, she says, be-cause of the rate at which the media degrades.

“We don’t have much time left,” says Pike says. “Most mag-netic audio tape has approximately 15 years left before it degrades beyond a point where the content can be saved.”

One way to restore open-reel tapes so that they can be played and digitized is to bake them in a special oven at 120 degrees for one to two days. The oven, she says, is similar to those used in science labs, with heat lower than that of a toaster oven. “We only get a few chances to play and digitize the tapes after baking them,” Pike says. “This doesn’t preserve the items, but it does temporar-ily help. ”

University-sponsored radio started in the early 20th century, of-ten by engineering departments seeking to provide students with broadcasting experience in the experimental medium. After World War I, about 200 licenses were granted to educational institutions. By 1938, however, fewer than 40 college stations were still on the air due to the rise in commercial networks and the increasing value of airwave space.

WMUC mostly emulated commercial radio until the 1970s, when new FM technology and the freeform movement offered more experimental approaches to broadcasting ushered an era of experimental, free-form radio.

Schnitker, an ethnomusicologist, hosts a Thursday-morning WMUC radio show, Bohemian Challenge. She appreciates first-hand the significance of college radio. “It’s such a valuable cre-ative outlet, not only for those involved in its production but also for the listeners,” she says. It really is a public service.”

Admission to “Saving College Radio: WMUC Past, Present and Future” is free and open to the public during the Maryland Room Gallery’s open hours (Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. – 8pm, Sunday 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.).

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DJ Kirk McEwan, 1991, seen in a photo display of student staff at WMUC through the years.

A display about the station’s struggle to get an FM license. It took five years and two rejections from the FCC before they finally got 88.1 on the FM dial.

On the cover: WMUC track jacket from the 1987 WMUC Alumni Reunion. On loan from Lee Chambers.

The exhibit features a mock studio with a vintage sound-board and a working turntable that visitors can use to listen to a selection of LPs.

On the bulletin board are reproductions of flyers made by students over the last 20 years to advertise their programs, showing the do-it-yourself nature of college radio culture.

The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation presented its 11th Annual Giants of Broadcasting honors at a ceremony and luncheon held Oct. 16 in New York City. LABF honored eleven people for their “excellence in the electronic communications arts.” They were:

Morley Safer, 60 Minutes correspondent and CBS Reporter;

Dick Cavett, talk show host, comedian and writer;

Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy;

David E. Kelley, creator of Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, and Boston Legal;

Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC, creator of Fox and USA Broadcasting, former CEO of Paramount Pictures;

Anne Sweeny, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group;

Jeff Smulyan, founder, CEO and president of Emmis Communications;

Robert L. Johnson, founder and former CEO of BET, founder and chairman of The RLJ Companies;

Richard E. Wiley, FCC former chairman, commissioner and general counsel;

Richard Leibner, founder and president of N.S. Bienstock and talent agent;

Carole Cooper, talent agent. The Library of American Broadcasting

Foundation has been honoring leaders in the broadcasting industry annually since 2003. The current list will bring the total

number of inductees to 170. Our staff member Michael

Henry attended again this year, and displayed several items from the LAB collections, including a four-panel display highlighting the radio program Vox Pop. Joining Michael from the University of Maryland Libraries were Heather Foss, Director of Development and Dan Mack, Director, Collection Management & Special

Collections.LABF is chaired by Virginia Hubbard

Morris, president of Hubbard Radio, based in Minneapolis-St. Paul; the president/CEO is Donald West, broadcast journalist and former assistant to the president of CBS Inc..

The Library of American Broadcasting is a signature collection in the University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections in Mass Media and Culture. The dean of libraries at the University of Maryland is Patricia Steele, and the curator is Chuck Howell.

Our friend and colleague, Cary O’Dell has written a book that asks us to take a closer took at the way women were characterized on 1950s and 1960s television.

“From smart, savvy wives and re-silient mothers (including the much-maligned June Cleaver and Donna Reed) to talented working women (long before the debut of Mary Ty-ler Moore) to crimebusters and even criminals, American women on tele-vision emerge as a diverse, empow-ered, individualistic, and capable lot, highly worthy of emulation and ap-preciation” (from the publishers’ de-scription).

In a review of the book, Commu-nication Booknotes Quarterly com-mented: “O’Dell has clearly done his homework.” And we’re pleased to say he did much of it here.

“June Cleaver Was a Feminist would not be the book it is — cer-tainly no way as inclusive in its scope — without the vast library and collec-tions of the LAB,” Cary told us in an email.

“Access to the Library’s holdings forever impacted the book’s central thesis, and my own understanding of the subject I was studying.”

Cary O’Dell is with the film, video and recorded sound division of the Library of Congress. He has worked as an archivist for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chi-cago and for the LAB. He lives in Culpeper, Virginia.

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Book Notes

NPR — For much of the last year and a half, staff was heavily involved in moving tapes and archival material from NPR’s old building in preparation for their move to new headquarters. More than 27,000 reels of 10.5 inch analog audio tape from NPR’s News and Information division were boxed and transported to Hornbake Library, as well as several filing cabinets and seven pallets of photos, files, books, artifacts, CD’s, DAT’s and promotional items. Large items, including back-lit member station maps from the lobby and the iconic NPR sign from the front of the old building, were delivered by truck before demolition on NPR’s former home began.

Internet Archive Project — as part of UMD Libraries ongoing relationship with The Internet Archive, a number

of Broadcasting-related titles from our holdings have been scanned for inclusion on the site. These include:

Sponsor (8 volumes);Columbia Program Book (11 volumes)Radio Showmanship (8 volumes)Broadcaster’s Victory Council (36 volumes)US Radio (5 volumes)Media History Digital Library —

Related to the above, SCMMC staff met with David Pierce of the Media History Digital Library to discuss our participating in that project — we have contributed our digital scans of the complete run of SPONSER magazine, which are now on the MHDL http://mediahistoryproject.org/

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2013 Giants of Broadcasting

Special Projects & Activities

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• Media historian Christopher H. Sterling, Associate Dean and Emeritus Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, is making an ongoing donation of the media-related titles in his private library, as well as donating his personal papers – to date, more than 1,400 book and journal titles and 75 linear feet of papers have been transferred.

• Washington, DC television producer Bruce Martin made additional donation of rundown sheets and other production elements for a number of programs, including Meet The Press, The Chris Matthews Show, Face The Nation, The McLaughlin Group and It’s Academic, as well as trade magazines and a large number of off-air video tapes.

• Michael Freedman, senior vice president of Communications at University of Maryland University College and former general manager of CBS Radio Network News: books, periodicals, recordings, photographs, and various ephemera documenting the history of CBS.

• Arch Campbell, D.C. area fixture as entertainment reporter and critic for WRC and WJLA TV and cable’s News Channel 8, has donated additional material documenting his long career – including an artist’s rendition of him in clay (right).

• Judy Dawes, Swampscott, MA:

former President of an Arthur Godfrey fan club during her teen years, Dawes donated her large collection of Arthur Godfrey-related material and memorabilia.

• Jerry Berg, President of the Committee to Preserve Radio Verifications (CPRV), Lexington, MA: large addition to CPRV Collection of QSL postcards.

• Dr. Michele Hilmes, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, donated one box of

broadcasting-related titles not in our collection from her personal library.

• Mark Sebastian: Donated the papers of his late mother, Jane Bishir Sebastian. This gift contains many of her writings for radio, theater, and television in both draft and final form, including her scripts for the NBC radio show The Honeymooners, with Eddie Albert and Grace Brandt (1933-36).

• Dr. Donald Godfrey, Arizona State University: 6 linear feet of records pertaining to Dr. Godfrey’s work as a member, director of the Board and President of the Broadcast Education Association, 1972 to the present.

• Dr. Saul Rockman of Rockman et al Research and Evaluation; Dr. Rockman, formerly of Apple Computer’s Education Division and the Agency for Instructional Television, donated hundreds of books, studies, reports and guides relating to instructional television and television for children.

Donations of Note:

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting — We also began work on a large new project on the public broadcasting side of SCMMC’s holdings – we have contributed over 3300 hours of public and educational radio programming on R/R tape for inclusion in The American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

The American Archive is, at once, the very history and future of public media. This comprehensive effort was begun by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the Spring of 2010. It has since been handed off to the Library of Congress and PBS station (and public broadcasting archiving pioneer) WGBH in Boston.

This project represents the next step in the archival and public broadcasting community’s commitment to locate and preserve the vast legacy of radio and

television programming produced by local public media and national producers alike. The American Archive will ultimately provide a system-wide video and audio asset inventory of Public Broadcasting.

The tapes we selected for inclusion include our entire collection of programming from the National Educational Radio Network – a college and university-based NPR predecessor that was phased out upon NPR’s creation.

Additional tapes filling out our allotment came from the DC metro area’s public radio powerhouse, WAMU-FM, and include live bluegrass recordings from the 1960’s and 70’s as well as some early Diane Rehm programs. The tapes will be digitized, and returned along with digital surrogates for our collection.

Library of Congress Collaboration — Another project we are participating in began last summer. Eric Breitung of the

Library of Congress is working to develop a non-invasive methodology for testing magnetic tape for binder hydrolysis (sticky shed syndrome). At present, the only way to know if a tape is compromised is to attempt playback, which is potentially damaging to both tape and equipment. Mr. Breitung is experimenting with real time mass spectrometry as well as microscope-aided visual inspection as alternative means of identifying affected tapes.

UMD College of Information Science — We are assisting Assoc. Professor Kari Kraus from the College of Information Science in her seed grant project to develop a database of Electric Network Frequency signatures for use in forensic research. These unique signals, left on any audio tape recorded using power from one of the three U.S. grids will (hopefully) enable her team of electrical engineers to determine recording dates of unidentified recordings.

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By Ashley S. Behringer

We have lingered in the chambers of the ‘chives By boxed-reels wreathed with tape red and brown Till broadcast voices wake us, and we drown.

One of the main components of Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture is the National Public Broadcasting Archives. Our NPR holdings sometimes feel like a depthless ocean of tapes and papers. Too often we only skim along the surface lest we sink the bottom. We do not fear that we cannot return from the warm and still abyss of this never silent sea but rather than we may not want to return. What if the siren call of Terry Gross lures us to an eternity of listening to Fresh Air and we therein find sweet oblivion? What if some unprocessed papers rankle our spirits and we seek the elusive perfect order forever, forever? (That said, we currently have three NPR finding aids online and have begun work on our most recent pickups. We are industrious divers.)

The admiral of the fleet recently sent this ensign in a bathysphere on a hubristic mission to measure all the drops of water in the NPR ocean. The figures I produced are not comprehensible to mortal minds, the least my own. To make them understandable, I had to convert them into familiar units. Therefore, I will explain the weight, length, and volume of our NPR holdings in easily understandable terms: Edsels, trips to Timbuktu, and Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møllers.

On the ground floor, we have 1,627 boxes of dense packed NPR tapes. We weighed one of these boxes on a scale with a maximum weight of 70 pounds, and it topped it out. So we can safely say each box weighs 70 pounds or more.

1,627 x 70 = 113,890 pounds of dense packed NPR tapes.The curb weight of the lightest Edsel Corsair is 4,300 pounds.113,890 / 4,300 = 26.5 Edsels.

We have about 80,000 total NPR tapes. They are overwhelmingly 10.5” reels. The average length of tape on a 10.5” reel is 3,600 feet.

80,000 x 3,600 = 288,000,000 feet or 54,545.45 miles of tapeThe distance from Washington, D.C. to Timbuktu is 4,645

miles. So if we wanted to make round trips to Mali on our NPR Tape Frequent Flyer Miles, we could go on:

54,545.45 / 9,290 = 5.87 trips to Timbuktu.

So what of the volume of our holdings? The aforementioned reels measure 6,136.25 cubic feet. Our paper holdings of NPR papers are paltry compared to the audio, a mere 1,236 linear feet, almost all of it in boxes which are ten inches high.

1236 x (10/12) = 1,030 cubic feet of NPR papers.In addition, we have 203.5 cubic feet of CDs, 47.64 cubic feet

of VHS and Betas, 39.86 cubic feet of DATs, and 1.25 cubic feet of tee shirts, plus a few smaller components. In total, the volume of our NPR holdings is 7461 cubic feet! (This should be taken as an exact, certain, scientific measurement which is in no way an approximation.)

The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, a large container/cargo ship, holds 18,270 TEU of freight. That’s a Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit. The most common volume for a 20 foot long shipping container is 1,360 cubic feet. Thus Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller carries up to 24,847,200 cubic feet of cargo.

7,461 / 24,847,200 = 0.0003, therefore our NPR holdings take up 0.03% of Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller.

So now you should be able to grasp the size of our NPR holdings!

Ashley is certainly one of the most

hard-working and resourceful staffers

we’ve ever had, first as a student and

then as a contract employee. Here she is at NPR in a flack jacket worn in Iraq

by Guy Roz (I think). — Chuck Howell

Just How Much NPR Stuff Do We Have?

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By Douglas GomeryWhen discussing TV of the 1950’s and

1960’s we usually think of three big names — David Sarnoff of NBC, William Paley of CBS and Leonard Goldenson of ABC. A fourth man needs to be added to that list — agent, then studio boss (Universal) Lew Wasserman, who died in 2004. The networks were still king, but needed a supplier of programs. Through the 1950’s and 1960’s he developed strategies whereby the core of the Hollywood studio system was its TV production.

By October 1957, MCA-TV — according to Television Magazine — ranked behind only CBS and NBC in terms of television power. MCA represented more top TV stars than any other agency. But in addition to actors and actresses, MCA also represented top-flight writers, producers, directors, musicians, and singers, whom MCA agents packaged for TV broadcasts, and later made- for- TV movies. In fact, there was a better than even chance during the late 1950s that any time a viewer in the USA saw a television show, MCA’s Lew Wasserman had had a hand in it.

NBC was MCA’s top client with Wagon Train, This is Your Life, M-Squad, Truth or Consequences, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Restless Gun, Suspicion, and Dragnet. The power of MCA often brought about strange TV programming circumstances. On September 22, 1957 (a Sunday) for example, NBC’s Robert Sarnoff decided to use The Steve Allen Show to display the network’s wares for the new season. It was an impressive lineup — and most of it was provided by MCA. What made Wasserman and company uncomfortable was that Ed Sullivan, who was practically MCA’s favorite son, occupied the CBS time slot opposite Allen. Variety gleefully headlined the predicament, “It’s MCA Versus MCA!”

Advertisers loved MCA programs: Wagon Train (sponsored by National Biscuit, R. J. Reynolds, and Ford), Riverboat (Corn Products), General Electric Theater and Bachelor Father (American Home Products and American Tobacco), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Bristol-Myers), Tales of Wells Fargo (Procter & Gamble and American Tobacco), and Ford Startime. They were glad to work with Wasserman to fashion shows they could then sponsor. Gradually, advertising agencies lost their power as

Wasserman dealt with corporations directly and offered them TV shows with audiences advertisers wanted to reach.

While Paley maintained a degree of independence from Wasserman (although some of his top talent, like Jack Benny, were Wasserman clients), NBC in particular relied upon MCA and Wasserman’s skills. Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, now a programming legend, was long gone when one spring night in 1957 the aforementioned Robert Sarnoff — son of the network’s founder — called a meeting of the network’s programming executives. They were planning the upcoming 1957-1958 TV season.

After they had assembled, the door opened and in walked MCA Vice President David A. (Sonny) Werblin. Wasserman had primed Werblin. Without any preliminaries, Sarnoff said: “Sonny, look at the schedule for next season; here are the empty spots, you fill them.” The rest of the evening the NBC executives meekly watched Werblin rearrange their schedule and insert new MCA shows. When finished, the schedule showed fourteen MCA-produced series in prime time.

As the 1950’s ended MCA’s share of NBC’s weekly prime-time programming was still at eight and a half of the total twenty-four and a half hours. MCA sold two of its new 1959-60 shows — Riverboat and Laramie — to NBC without even making a pilot (a film made to show prospective customers what the series would be like). Robert Sarnoff — with his father’s approval — stated publicly that he dealt so much with MCA because he and his father figured MCA produced the most profitable shows on television.

Wasserman usually managed to get a very sizable share of any TV’s show’s income. The first three years of Wagon Train, starring MCA client Ward Bond, was budgeted at about $100,000 a week, bringing MCA about $17 million. Earnings of this magnitude explain why production was so important to MCA. For the company to gross $17 million in agency commissions it would have to get 10 per cent of $170 million of client salaries. (MCA movie star clients Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable combined probably did not earn that much in commissionable income in their entire lifetimes.) MCA was the only company that was at once a talent agency, a producer, a selling agent, and a lessor of production facilities. This gave MCA a tremendous advantage. It attracted new clients among actors who figured that if they used MCA as their agent they stood a better chance of getting parts in series produced by MCA subsidiary Revue Productions.

One television executive who did not want his name used told Television magazine in the late 1950’s: “It’s on these package deals that MCA is really making the money. Through its subsidiary, Revue Productions, MCA produces the package. On shows destined for network use, after Revue makes the pilot, the network will usually finance the rest of the production, but Revue adds 20 per cent to the total estimated cost for production overhead. But then MCA will get another 10 per cent for selling the package. And later, if it’s syndicated, MCA-TV gets another 10 per cent for distributing it.”

Ed Sullivan stated in 1957: “Here’s an example of how a big agency like MCA can be of tremendous help to you. This summer [1957] I went over to Europe for two weeks. There’s a nightclub in Paris called the Lido; the best shows in Europe play there. There was an act called the Nit-Wits, a musical act from London. They do pantomime; it’s sort of the English equivalent of Spike Jones. I

Broadcasting History

Who was Lew Wasserman?

This caricature of Wasserman exagger-ates the prominence of his trademark oversize glasses, but not by much….

continued on page 10

Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture — formerly (and still infor-mally) known as the “Broadcasting Archives” — is located on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park. Housed in Hornbake Library, the National Public Broadcasting Archives and the Library of American Broadcasting are our signature collections.

wanted to get them over here on the show. The first step was to arrange with the Lido, which holds a year’s contract for them, to let them come over here for a couple of weeks. This I worked out with the Lido through friendships and past favors. Then we had to get an okay from [the musicians union], because technically the Nit-Wits coming here could cost some American musicians some employment. So MCA, with its offices in London, worked out a deal for me with the British musicians union so an equal number of American musicians could appear in Europe. It happens that Spike Jones has nine men, the same number as the Nit-Wits. So MCA booked Spike Jones in Europe while the Nit-Wits are here. They’re going to be on the show here 24 November 1957 and 1 December 1957. An individual agent couldn’t swing a deal like that.”

Wasserman was “unknown” because he rarely gave interviews. An exception came in March 1977 when noted TV journalist Sander Vanocur called and Wasserman agreed to give him 60 minutes. Vanocur was impressed -- titling his short piece: “Is He the Smartest Man in Hollywood?”:

“After an hour with MCA Inc. chairman Lew Wasserman, a reporter has two options,” he wrote. “He can lie down and rest his brain or he can award himself an instantaneous Ph.D. in mass communications. Wasserman is regarded by most people in the entertainment business as the smartest and most powerful man in Hollywood. He sits in his office in Universal City behind an antique desk that is always devoid of paper.” (Note to underline the obvious: the deals and the figures were all in Wasserman’s head).

Vanocur continued: “{M]ost of us spend our lives at desks filled with the night soil of paper — unanswered phone messages, long memoranda that lead to meetings where grown men and women sit around making indecisions, and letters that will never be answered and never should have been sent. Wasserman sits behind his desk making decision and offering his opinions when asked.”

Mr. Vanocur had come to Lew’s paperless office seeking his reaction to the phenomenon of Roots — the unexpected TV hit of January 1977. Vanocur asked him what impact Roots would have on future patterns of television programming. “Well,” he said, “Roots is an extension of what happened a year ago with Rich Man, Poor Man [which was produced by Universal TV]. It was well done and brilliantly programmed. That, combined with a thing called the weather [an exceptionally cold January], developed the largest audience in the history of television.”

How did Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man tap into the American television audience? “Well,” Wasserman said, “both of them became events that were out of the routine television viewing pattern. Television has evolved greatly in the 30 years it’s been around. In the early days, it was almost a carbon copy of radio. Then, as events developed in television...the long form of television, such as 90-minute programs, became much more similar to movies than to radio. Therefore, the event on television is going to parallel or exceed, as Roots has, the event in the movie business, if you can

have a big blockbuster on television akin to The Exorcist or [The] Sting or Jaws or Towering Inferno you are going to have that translated into enormous viewing. Roots certainly fits that category. And without taking anything away from ABC, you had people locked in because of the weather.”

Finally Vanocur asked him if he was against efforts to bust up the domination by NBC, ABC, and CBS. Wasserman ended the short interview by saying: “Yes. I’m too old [then 64] to fly blind. What will they put in their place?” Short sweet and to the point -- then Vanocur was escorted out of the office so Lew could get back to work.

Barry Diller later summed up Wasserman the TV and film mogul. “He could act coldly, harshly, hardly benevolently,” stated Barry Diller, who grew up with Wasserman’s only child, Lynne, in Beverly Hills, Calif. “This is a very honest and honorable man, but a tough, tough guy.”

Douglas Gomery is Resident Scholar at the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland and Professor Emeritus at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park.

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Who Was Wasserman?Continued from page 1

One final note: Shawn VanCour, Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, gave a talk March 6 on “Making Radio: Inventing the Art of Aural Broadcasting, 1920-1930,” tracing the development of early radio production practices and their impact on twentieth century sound culture. This is the first in a planned series of presentations by visiting scholars.