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Forks in the Road: Chapter 6 NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT Coming back to radio from the Army was not easy. I was discharged fairly late. The Army released twice as many announcers as it had taken in, and the jobs filled up fast. In New York any honorably discharged serviceman was entitled to an automatic audition at all networks, stations and ad agencies. The answer in most every case was the familiar “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Then you sat around waiting for the telephone to ring. There was a phone service called Radio Registry to which you could subscribe. They would take calls when producers wanted to reach you. I came up so empty at Registry that I began calling in messages for myself so the operators there wouldn’t think I was a complete blank!
I was staying at Highland Place again, and the mustering-out money was just about gone. I decided that New York was not going to welcome me with open arms, and I began to send out letters to new radio stations all over the country. The wartime freeze on new stations had ended, and they were springing up everywhere. I offered myself as a Program Director, but would have been willing to take an announcer’s job if necessary. One of my letters elicited a call from a man in Hartford, Connecticut, who had a permit to build a new station in nearby New Britain. I was invited to come for an interview with the owner, head of a Hartford ad agency, Julian Gross. I donned my uniform because it got me half-price on the train. After several minutes, the conversation was pleasant but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. “When do you expect to hire your program director?” I asked. “We’re not hiring a program director. We’re hiring a manager,” he said, “and the manager will hire his program director and the rest of the staff.” “Then there must be some mistake,” I said. “I applied for the job of program director.” He checked his paperwork and agreed that a mistake had been made. I got up to leave. “Wait a minute. Why don’t you apply for manager?” I told him I had never been a manager. Truth is, I had never even thought of becoming a manager. My idea of success was to become the next Bob Hope. “It’s not whether you have done it, but can you do it?.” I took a deep breath. “Yes.” He then made me a proposal. I was to come to work the following Monday for the salary I had requested as Program Director, seventy-five dollars a week. There were plans to be made and preliminary steps to be taken and, with a deadline to commence operation, no time to be lost. I would perform these preparatory functions. If he felt, as a result, that I could manage, then I would become manager for a hundred a week. If not, Gross would see to it that I stayed on as Program Director. I drew another big breath and accepted. I spent the intervening days at the New York Public Library, reading everything it had to offer dealing with radio station management, advertising rates and sales, FCC rules and regulations, all the aspects of broadcasting that I had never encountered in announcing and programming. I spent an entire night working with my good friend Gene Clark. I had met him when working in Kingston, and he was by this time a high-ranking engineer at New York’s WOR. He helped me put together a complete list of all the equipment needed to build the station. When I reported for work Monday morning, I was loaded with information and plunged right into the tasks at hand. After two weeks came payday, and I received a check for two hundred dollars. So I went to see Gross. “There must be some mistake,” I told him. “Why, didn’t we pay you enough?” “No, too much.” “Oh, I forgot to tell you - you’re the manager.” Thus did I make the jump from announce booth to manager’s office. I buried myself in the work of getting WKNB ready for the air. But - wouldn’t you know it? - the phone calls started coming in from New York offering me work. I commuted several times to earn substantial fees performing on commercials for major advertisers. One day I did an audition for an agency for something that was cloaked in secrecy. I had no idea what the job was. Came the phone call, and I was offered a major running part on one of the leading daytime serial programs at a stipend far greater than I had at WKNB, and just for a fifteen minute show a day, five days a week. But I had become so imbued with the challenge of putting a station on the air that, after much serious thought, I turned New York down and took myself off the market at Radio Registry. Fork #10. I had my first experience in hiring as I organized a staff for WKNB. One memorable lesson came when I hired a salesman who impressed me greatly. I instructed him in the rates and other factors, and sent him out on his first call, to see a banker who was one of the minority stockholders in the station. My phone rang, and the banker advised that my salesman had acted in a peculiar manner in making his presentation. It turned out he had a nervous condition that caused his face to twitch when he was under pressure. He had somehow avoided this taking place when he was dealing with me, but he was unable to suppress it when facing a prospective customer. It was my first time to fire anyone, and it was most difficult, since it was not the man’s fault. I had to fire many people in the ensuing years, and I never enjoyed it; but the first one was the toughest. Another salesman hired was Peter Kenney, who was the husband of Gross’ secretary. He caught on quickly and eventually managed the station in radio and TV, then became an NBC vice-president when NBC bought the stations. He crowned his career as NBC’s government relations man in Washington. I put together a competent staff and the station made an impressive debut in the early summer of 1946. At first I thought the sun rose and set on Julian Gross because of the way he had hired me, but he soon revealed another side of himself that became intolerable. He put in a direct phone line from his desk to mine. All he had to do was pick up the phone in Hartford and it rang in my office at WKNB. He was very critical of what I considered necessary expenditures, and of the people I had hired, yet he several times ordered me to hire people that were his relatives or friends. A tremendous amount of friction developed, and shortly after Christmas he decided to let me go and bring in a new manager. I called to his attention a highly complimentary letter he had written to me, confirming the terms of my employment, identifying me as manager, and calling for me to receive a percentage of the profit. I had never been allowed to see a financial statement, but I knew there was profit, and I demanded my due. He denied that I had ever been made manager, and claimed that he owed me nothing. Gross then set up a meeting that evening at the studio. Abraham Ribicoff, who eventually became a United States Senator and a very big man in national politics, had been a city judge in Hartford, and was Gross’ attorney and one of his minority stockholders in WKNB. He was brought in for this meeting. I produced my copy of the letter. Ribicoff read it slowly, then turned to Gross. ”Julian, did you write this?” “Yes.” “Julian, did you sign this?” ”Yes.” “Pay him, Julian.” That ended the dispute and I have admired Abe Ribicoff ever since. He certainly could have taken his client’s side and easily intimidated me into submission. But he did what was right. A good man!
My earlier batch of letters to proposed new station owners produced another lead when I was contacted about putting a new station on the air in Danville, Virginia. I met with Allan Clarke, one of the principals, at National Airport in Washington, D.C. I was subsequently invited to Danville to meet with the Board of Directors, consisting entirely of local Danville businessmen. They chose me for the job I went to work designing the studios, on the second floor of a downtown bank building, hiring staff and doing all the other things I had just done at WKNB. We had a great debut, with a live show from a local auditorium to sign the station on. We were off to a fine start. When the first audience ratings were released, we had overtaken the long-established station in short order. J. D. Pruitt was president of WDVA. He owned and operated a factory that made overalls. I’ll never forget the day he took me on a tour of his factory and offices, pointing out with great pride that the filing cabinets contained not one paper clip. It was necessary to operate economically, he advised me, and one could not do so if one filed away paper clips. He was an odd choice to head the group; one day, when our early sales success was laid out for him, he said he couldn’t understand why all these clients had spent so much money; he did not believe in advertising!
The WDVA staff was a most unusual one, with several really talented and versatile people. To a certain extent, the influence of the KFOX style of operation became part of mine. Dick Campbell had been a singer with the Fred Waring organization. A friend in New York had told me about him; he was down on his luck and badly needed a job. He became one of our announcers, and his singing talent was put to good use on the air as well. To my great surprise, Dick stayed with the station for many years and eventually became its manager. Another announcer with a good singing voice was Walt Baldwin, who later became a very popular disc jockey in Cincinnati. Ross DeRoy was our musical director, an excellent pianist and organist. At WAAT, I had become acquainted with Charlie LoCasto. His job in the New York area was to appear as the radio voice of “Donald Besdine,” who had a gimmick business in seeking out people with lapsed insurance policies. Charlie was eager to leave New York and establish his own identity on the air, so he became our primary newsperson as Charlie Craig, and remained with the station for many years, and in Danville for the rest of his life. Charlie Holmes became a Danville favorite before moving on to NBC’s Monitor program. I had reestablished contact with my half-brother, Howard, who had just graduated from college and came for a visit. When one of the hired announcers backed out just before our air date, Howard took over the slot on the announcing staff and developed very nicely in the job. He adopted his middle name professionally and became Howard Garland on the air. He married his college sweetheart in Studio A, and I was his best man. WDVA was in a rich agricultural area, and we started a daily farm program that did a good job and really caught on. The host for this program was Frank Raymond, who was also our bookkeeper. He became very popular on the air. I had a nice little bachelor apartment within walking distance of the station. Things were going very well indeed in Danville, Virginia.
Preface |
Dedication
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