Jean Shepherd, who wrote the articles on which “A Christmas Story” was based (and narrated the film), was a well-known amateur radio operator.
According to the website “Flick Lives,” Shep was fascinated by radio at an early age and got his first amateur radio license — W9QWN — when he was approximately 16.
In later years, Shepherd contributed articles to radio magazines such as “73,” appeared and spoke regularly at amateur radio conventions around the United States, and even narrated audio tapes and videos about the radio hobby.
So I thought it was fair to ask, why isn’t “A Christmas Story” about a kid who wants a ham radio for Christmas?
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.
Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates! I hope every radio in your Easter basket was a flavor that you like.
The picture above comes from the very entertaining Radio Shack Catalog Archive website. Contrary to the name, the “Flavoradio” wasn’t flavored and wasn’t even scented. But I wonder how many kids licked them just to see.
I can remember Radio Shack selling those AM-only “Flavoradios” well into the 1980s, when virtually no kids or teenagers wanted an AM radio. At the end, if I remember correctly, they were often given away for free if you clipped a coupon from the Sunday paper.
Speaking of Easter, Alert Listener Captain Jack from Munhall pointed out that although there seem to be 1 million Christmas songs, there are virtually no songs about Easter except for “Easter Parade.” I asked my social media followers to suggest some other Easter songs, and although several made a valiant effort, we mostly came up empty. A goose-egg, if you will.
Trivia Question: Regarding the song “Easter Parade,” as any fule kno, it was written by Irving Berlin. It debuted in a 1933 Broadway musical called “As Thousands Cheer” with Clifton Webb and Marilyn Miller. It became more famous in the 1942 film “Holiday Inn” starring Bing Crosby, then became the basis for the 1948 film “Easter Parade” starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland.
There’s one line in the song that I suspect confuses modern listeners:
And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure
I will award a solid brass figlagee with bronze oak leaf palms to anyone who knows what a “Rotogravure” refers to. #easterparade
As God as my witness, “The New WKRP” was a turkey that wouldn’t fly, but that didn’t stop Burt Reynolds and Jerry Seinfeld from risking cameos
“WKRP” deserved a better send-off than this. Hell, “My Mother The Car” deserved a better send-off than this
As I mentioned, I’ve been sick this week, so in between trying to keep up with my paid job — because capitalism, that’s why — I’ve been mostly looking for low-impact time-wasters. The Internet is great for wasting time.
Occasionally, I’ll just bop over to Internet Archive or YouTube, type in some keywords, and see what I find.
What I found this week had me convinced that I was having a fever-induced hallucination. (Or should it be a “Fever” induced hallucination?)
But it was real. All-too-real. Horribly, horribly real.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of “WKRP in Cincinnati,” the CBS-TV sitcom that aired from 1978 to 1982. In fact, a lot of radio people are. If you know the show at all, it may be from the famous Thanksgiving-themed episode, “Turkeys Away,” which is often cited as one of the best Thanksgiving related episode of any TV show, as well as one of the funniest half-hours of American TV, period.
There are a ton of funny moments in “Turkeys Away” beyond the closing scene, so as God as my witness, the next person who says “I thought turkeys could fly” to me and thinks it’s the height of comedy is going to get pasted in the puss.
“WKRP in Cincinnati” was produced by the same MTM Enterprises quality-TV factory that produced “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Lou Grant,” “Hill Street Blues” and other video classics. It was set at a failing AM radio station (supposedly No. 16 in a 18-station market) in the Ohio city.
Like those other MTM shows, “WKRP in Cincinnati” debuted to almost universal praise from TV critics — and why wouldn’t it? A true ensemble cast filled out most of the roles you would have found at a radio station in the 1970s, including program director Andy Travis (Gary Sandy), traffic (commercial scheduling) director Bailey Quarters (Jan Smithers), morning DJ “Dr. Johnny Fever” (Howard Hesseman), overnight DJ “Venus Flytrap” (Tim Reid), news director Les Nessman (Richard Sanders), and sales manager Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner).
I’d rather play “What’s My Line?” than play the game I’m currently playing, “COVID or Novid?”
I’ve got some kind of a miserable chest cold that keeps coming and going.
It’s not COVID, but it’s been enough to knock me on my butt for several days. I thought I was over it, and it came roaring back with a vengeance.
So I’m pushing fluids, resting, and watching TV — on my computer, that is. Is there a word for watching TV on your computer, besides “streaming”? (I’m doing a lot of streaming, too … because of all of the fluids. Heigh-yo!)
It’s a cliche that for Gen X’ers like myself, when we stayed home sick from school, we watched “The Price is Right.” But lately, when I’m sick, I find myself instead indebted to whomever has uploaded to YouTube virtually every surviving episode of the 1950s and ’60s game show “What’s My Line?”
Most of them appear to have been taken from late-night reruns on what used to be called “Game Show Network,” and is now “GSN.” Contrary to popular belief, I’m not old enough to have seen “What’s My Line?” on TV between 1950 and 1967, and I never watched it on Game Show Network. To be honest, I’m not sure how I discovered it, but it’s become my TV comfort food.
I think these questions were originally intended for the Shell Answer Man, but since he’s busy trying to get Platformate stains out of his lab coat, I’ll have to do.
Mike writes:
Hi Jay,
Long time listener, first time emailer…
Hey, my eight-year-old son and budding radio enthusiast (he wants to have a show on WRCT someday) requested a radio/CD player for Christmas, “So I can listen to WRCT at home.”
The thing is, my car gets great reception of 88.3 but in the house, I have an old receiver with extended antenna that aren’t so great. We live in Brighton Heights.
Any recommendation of a brand that is good for reception? Everyone says Bose but I have no experience with it.
If you liked “Star Trek” and “Battlestar: Galactica,” this is nothing like those. Instead, “Salvage 1” gave ’70s TV viewers Andy Griffith playing Fred Sanford on the Moon
In a scene from the forgotten TV flop “Salvage 1,” Andy Griffith asks Joel Higgins, left, where their careers went wrong, while Trish Stewart tries to remember her agent’s phone number
YouTube is mostly a barf bucket filled with medical misinformation, stunts gone wrong, bad advice and conspiracy theories, but occasionally it still coughs out some good content.
One of the thing that never ceases to amaze me about YouTube is how lost and forgotten old-time TV clips keep showing up on the service. When I was a kid in the pre-DVD and streaming days, if you didn’t see a TV special or a TV show when it aired, it was more or less lost forever.
But thanks to YouTube, a lot of TV history that was presumed lost is suddenly resurfacing. I’ll go looking for something on YouTube — say, “old Pittsburgh newscast” — and lo and behold, someone will have uploaded a 1985 KDKA-TV news broadcast with Bill and Patti Burns, and as soon as the theme music begins, I’m instantly transported back 40 years.
Years ago, I heard that Andy Griffith — beloved folksy comedian and star of “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Matlock” — had once been in a short-lived TV show about a junkyard owner who builds his own rocket and successfully launches it to the moon.
That sounds like a made-up TV show from “30 Rock” or The Onion, right? The show, called “Salvage 1,” aired on ABC television for barely one season (actually, 16 episodes — part of the 1978-79 TV season, and for two weeks during the 1979-80 TV season).
With only 16 episodes produced, it was never put into syndication to be seen in reruns. Apparently, a limited-edition DVD set came out in 2013, but I sure didn’t remember hearing about it.
“A new ABC hit?” Spoiler alert …
In other words, other than some yellowed newspaper clippings and mildewed copies of TV Guide, there was nothing to prove the show actually existed.
The other day, the MeTV channel — which airs the classic 1960s “The Andy Griffith Show” — posted an article about another unsuccessful show in which Andy Griffith starred, called “The Yeagers,” in which Griffith played the patriarch of “a fiercely independent lumber and mining family” who owned a business empire in the Northwest. Sort of a Northwoods take on “Dallas” or “Falcon Crest.”
(No, I never heard of “The Yeagers” either — it was cancelled after two episodes.)
The same article mentioned “Salvage 1,” so I thought I’d see if any footage of that was on YouTube …
This Saturday, it’s three hours of vintage 45s. Plus, a question about our old-time radio theater on Sundays
This Saturday, it’s three hours of the original hits on the original 45s played by the original record players. Tune in and hear the original scratches and dirt, too
I broke a mirror. After the last few years we’ve had, how will I know the difference when the bad luck starts?
That raises a couple of other questions. Does the seven years of bad luck run consecutively with other bad luck, or concurrently? Like, if I walk under a ladder, or spill a salt shaker, or get off on the 13th floor of a building, do each of those things then add more bad luck to the seven years I’ve already received for breaking the mirror, or does it just make the already existing bad luck worse?
Anyway, I blame Steve Allen. I’ve been reading a Steve Allen book and when I was getting ready for work, I bumped the book, it fell onto a mirror that was sitting on the floor, and broke it.
Some might say the mirror shouldn’t have been sitting on the floor. Well, thanks, but that would have been useful advice a couple of hours ago.
Speaking of bad luck: It’s my luck to be out of town two Saturdays in a row, which means I have a pre-recorded show again this week. But it’s a good one.
We’ve had a bunch of records donated to the Tube City Online Radio studio (most of them by me) and I’ve recently been going through them.
So this week’s show is three hours of vintage 45s, mostly from the 1960s, with a handful from the ’50s and ’70s.
The experience that turned me into a radio ne’er-do-well happened when I was about 7 years old. Sony Walkmans were the hottest electronics item anyone could have. For my birthday, my grandparents … didn’t get me one. (A real Walkman wouldn’t have been an appropriate gift for a 7 year old anyway.)
Instead, they got me a tiny AM radio disguised as a Walkman, complete with headphones. My grandmother probably got it from Murphy’s Mart or Woolworth for $10 or $15.
I say it was probably from one of those stores, because if I remember correctly, it didn’t even have a brand-name. If it did, it was something like “Randix” or “Yorx.” (Amazon didn’t invent the practice of making up brand names from random combination of letters.)
The first night I had the radio, I tuned around the dial and to my astonishment, picked up CKLW in Windsor, Ontario. A radio that could tune Canada! From Pittsburgh! Then, I picked up KMOX in St. Louis! Another miracle! And WLS in Chicago!
More than you ever cared to think about late-night TV during the era depicted in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Amazon Prime Video photo by Philippe Antonello
(SPOILER ALERT: Mild spoilers for Season 5 of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”)
On Friday, I wrote about historical anachronisms that bother me in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” including a “mic drop” last season and a Johnny Carson-clone this season called “The Gordon Ford Show.”
An alert reader messaged me on Facebook to say, “‘Mrs. Maisel’ also (used the term) ‘Friend of Dorothy,’ which wasn’t really used until the 1980s, and even if it were used in queer spaces, would (Midge) Maisel know it?”
In fairness, the writers of “Mrs. Maisel” couldn’t have used any of the actual 1960s euphemisms for being gay, because there would have been riots, not Emmy awards.
As a sidenote: I’ve been on a little bit of a kick lately looking up old 1970s episodes of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and the amount of casual homophobia in the monologues is astonishing. Carson frequently used gay and lesbian stereotypes as a punchline, often insinuating that targets of his jokes— including his bandleader “Doc” Severinsen — were gay.
(The Credibility Gap — the comedy troupe led by Richard Beebe, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and the late David L. Lander — did a memorable and scathing parody of “The Tonight Show” called “Where’s Johnny?” that focused on Carson’s frequent use of gay jokes. It’s painful, but funny, and very close to the truth.)
