re: Early Los Angeles Radio and Television History

Interesting cover. Thx for sharing.

The LA/SoCal radio (and by extension, television) market was once filled with interesting and often colorful station owners. Some of whom overshadowed the "personalities" they employed.

There was Earl C. Anthony, another car dealer (who I believe preceded Don Lee).

A singing cowboy who also went on to own a local baseball team. (Gene Autry).

A young singer from Motown who either owned outright or had a sizable stake in a once popular "soul" station. (Stevland Morris).

Along with several owners whose station holdings may have been modest by comparison, but certainly not their personas (or egos).

Corporate-wise, there was a petroleum company, advertising house, soda bottler, real estate magnates, bus company, and even a preacher or two.

Alas, today one's paycheck is issued by a faceless corporation located in far-flung cities such as San Antonio, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, or even New York.

And they say that's progress.

 
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Bobstamp

04 May 2023
05:36:33pm

re: Early Los Angeles Radio and Television History

Radio has played a significant role in my life since I was only three years old, 77 years ago! Maybe I should start a "Radio on Stamps" collection. Maybe I shouldn't! I don't [i]need[/i] another collection! But I see a lot of potential in such a thematic collection. And now, my history with radio:

Ocean Sugar Yesterday

I was three years old when my uncle, Phil Ingraham, returned from three years in the Pacific serving with a group of U.S. Army Air Force men who travelled from island to island repairing radios. At one point, he became an official member of the Royal Australian Air Force so he could work on a project using radio triangulation to locate downed airmen. Phil became involved in wartime radio because he had been a civilian ham radio operator; he was the youngest person ever to become a ham. I remember watching him at his radio; his call sign was Ocean Sugar Yesterday (OSY).

Here are a couple of photos, one of my dad helping Phil to erect a radio antenna, and one of Phil with his radio. I believe that both photos were taken shorty before the Second World War.



MARS

Phil’s ham radio experience led to a significant event in my life. After I was wounded in Vietnam, in March, 1966, I was evacuated to the U.S. via Da Nang, Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, Hawaii, Travis AFB near San Francisco, and then San Diego where I was hospitalized for almost a year. At each stop, I was held overnight in hospital.

At the hospital at Clark AFB, a medic asked if I’d like to talk to my parents. At that time, long before email and “instant” messaging, and even before a submarine cable had reached the Philippines, the U.S. Army had established the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS), a scheme that allowed military radio operators to work with civilian hams to set up telephone calls between servicemen and their families. A radio operator at Clark contacted a ham, who contacted a ham, who contacted Dean Battishill, a ham in my hometown, Silver City, NM. Here's a photo of Dean:



I actually knew Dean — he had often “conversed” with my uncle via ham radio — and he was one of the first people I met after my family moved from New York State to New Mexico in 1949. Dean called my parents (it was early in the morning in New Mexico), and I was with them for the first time in eight months. They didn’t know I’d been wounded; the Navy didn’t inform them of my status until something like another two weeks had passed. It was a phone call like we have today, and had in civilian life then. It was a radio-telephone call, which meant that you had to say “Over” every time you voiced a thought, and the person you were talking to would respond, and end his or her response by saying “Over”.*

A few years ago, on eBay, I found a QSL card sent by Dean Battishill to one of his contacts. (QSL s were postcards sent between ham radio operators to confirm contacts. The more QSL cards you had the better operator you were, I guess.) And here’s a note for audiophiles and radio aficionados: Late in his life, Dean was importing vacuum radio tubes from Russia to sell to hams in the U.S. — apparently transistors weren’t up to the tasks set for them by hams, and Russia was the only country still making the vacuum tubes.)



The Jonestown Massacre and Uncle Phil

In 1978, Phil was contacted by a ham in Jonestown, Guyana who was inquiring about a delayed shipment of needed supplies. The something? Apparently the cyanide used in the murder/suicide all but two of the 918 people who died in the Jonestown Massacre. My uncle, who had simply been trying to help the other ham, contacted someone who contacted someone, and the shipment was apparently completed. He was astonished when he learned about the Jonestown tragedy, and even called the FBI to tell them about his ham-radio contact and protest his innocence.

Phil’s ham radio activities came to a halt when bad language and pornography began insinuating themselves into the ham radio world, and it also began to be challenged by the growing use of computers and cellphones.

A 78-RPM Radio Station

Another of my early contacts with radio happened in New York before our move to New Mexico. My family had a 78 rpm record player which had a small radio transmitter built into it. To listen to a record, you’d tune a radio to the record player! I remember driving around the block with my dad, listening on the car radio to a record on our record player at home! Records I remember being played on that record player: Nature Boy sung by Nat King Cole, and The Warsaw Concerto.

The Ingrahams (and a Hill) on the Radio

For a while in the mid-1950s, when my dad was between jobs as a newspaper editor and entrepreneur, he worked as an announcer at our local radio station, KSIL. He hated that job, mainly because of live radio’s need to watch the clock!

And finally, in high school, the love of my life (then), Mary Hill, and I volunteered to be hosts of an evening music show at KSIL which would supposedly appeal to teenagers We weren’t the hosts they were looking for — both of us much preferred classical music to rock, and our only listeners were probably our parents. But we had fun!

Radio Drama, Radio Comedy

I mourn the loss of commercial radio as it was. I grew up listening to dramas like Gunsmoke, Dragnet, The FBI in Peace and War, and The Whistler, and to comedies like Fibber McGee & Molly, The Jack Benny Show, and Amos & Andy. I even liked The Hour of St. Francis, although I’m not Roman Catholic and never was particularly religious. I was disappointed when KSIL dropped Gunsmoke in favour of The Hit Parade. Has there ever been another voice like William Conrad's?

Radio on Stamps

It's should be both easy and relatively inexpensive to develop a "Radio on Stamps" thematic collection. Many nations have issued radio-related topicals. Some, though, should never have been been given their freedom , like this terrible Canadian stamp! Quick! Kill it before it multiplies!:



Echo I

Here’s an American stamp, picturing the passive communications satellite Echo I. Echo I (and Echo II, launched in 1964) were huge, aluminum-coated mylar balloons designed to bounce radio and TV signals back to earth for long-range communication. They were among the most visible earth satellites that have ever been launched.



I have a personal reason for including this Echo I stamp in my “Stars on Stamps” collection, which includes some space exploration material; my dad closely followed the “Space Race,” and got on NASA’s mailing list so he could keep up to date. He only had a high school education, but he was a science-minded, logical guy, and after Echo was launched, in August, 1960, he built an “Echo Tracker” using a large round mirror to reflect the night sky, strips of electrical tape on the mirror representing points of the compass, an actual compass, and a wind-up clock. Using his tracker, Dad could accurately predict where and when Echo would appear on the horizon and how long it would be visible before re-entering earth’s shadow. My very first published photograph on page one of the Silver City Daily Press edition of September 12, shows the time-exposure streak of Echo in the sky over Silver City, with the steeple of the local Lutheran Church in the foreground:



Bob

* I was used to not being able to telephone my parents. I couldn't talk with them for two years, from mid-1963 through mid-1965, because I was stationed at the Navy hospital in Yokosuka, Japan, and telephone calls were prohibitively expensive. Following combat medical training with the Marines in California, I got a week's leave home, and then sailed with the Marines for Okinawa and then South Vietnam; once again, I had to rely on letters for communication.

 
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