Something that lives rent-free in my brain, as the kids say, is how the late Bill Burns — long-time news anchor on KDKA-TV — pronounced “Boulevard of the Allies.” He used the pre-war pronunciation: “ahh-LIES,” with the emphasis on the second syllable, rather than “AL-eyes.”
(My Webster’s 12th edition, copyright 1960, says “The difference in accent often depends on the position of the word in a sentence; also, the plural form is perhaps more generally accented on the final syllable than the singular is.”)
Burns has been off of TV since 1989 and died in 1997, but whenever I’m on the Boulevard of the Allies, I think of him: “Boulevard of the ahhh-LIES.”
Which then makes me think of how he pronounced the name of former Pittsburgh mayor and Allegheny County commissioner Pete Flaherty, in an exaggerated Irish accent: “fluh-HAIRT-tee,” reportedly much to the mayor’s annoyance.
I found an article from 1975 about an American Federation of Radio & TV Artists roast of Bill Burns in which the emcee, Don Brockett, said “we’re here to honor a guy who works in a city where he cannot pronounce the mayor’s name.”
In the same article, Burns’ co-anchor, Marie Torre, is quoted as saying, “when Archie Bunker came on TV, they called it a new concept in programming. I’ve been working with him for 12 years.”
Bill Burns was a character. Marie Torre and Don Brockett were themselves also Pittsburgh characters of a kind we will probably not see again. I suppose among still-active broadcasters in the city, Sally Wiggin and Larry Richert come closest to having that kind of public impact and name recognition.
But we won’t see another Bill Burns ; when Burns was anchoring the 12 noon and 11 p.m. news, Pittsburgh was the 10th largest media market in the United States, and KDKA Radio was — by itself — the ninth-most-listened-to radio station in the country, and the flagship of Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Broadcasting, the fifth-most influential chain of radio stations in the 1970s.
Now? Pittsburgh is 28th (behind Nashville and Salt Lake City) and in danger of slipping out of the top 30. As Rob Owen pointed out in the Tribune-Review last week, KDKA-TV’s newest reporter was hired directly out of journalism school. One used to require a few years in the sticks before they moved up to Pittsburgh, which was seen as a career destination, not a stop along the way.
In case you’re wondering, I have no point to any of this, except that I drive on the Boulevard of the ahh-LIES several times a week and always think of Bill Burns. Apparently I’m turning into James Lileks, or possibly Larry King. Based on their popularity and longevity, I suppose there are worse people to rip off.
In other business: I notice that Pittsburgh is installing more “traffic calming devices” — aka speed bumps — this time on Hazelwood Avenue. I’m starting to think that Mayor Ed Gainey is in the pocket of the speed-bump lobby.
Coming up tonight, Eyewitness News investigates: Does Big Speed Bump control the mayor’s office? Film at 11.
We’ve been watching old “What’s my LIne” shows from 1955 and hearing John Daly (born in South Africa raised in Boston) say “again” as “ah-gayne” makes one understand the mid-Atlantic accent all over “ah-gayne.”
As you know, I love “What’s My Line?” so much. It’s my background TV when I’m washing dishes or folding laundry. John Daly managed an extremely difficult trick of both being very erudite and well-read, but also being able to relate to everyone who came onto that show, whether they were a movie star or someone who worked in a penny arcade. He genuinely appeared to be interested and concerned for whomever the guests were. What a wonderful broadcaster he was.