Inside WSKG

WSKG will air President Obama's 100 Days press conference

WSKG Public Broadcasting will air special live coverage of President Obama's primetime news    conference on Wednesday, April 29th. President Obama is expected to address his first 100 days in office, including his administration's handling of the economic crisis, its response to the outbreak of swine flu, and his legislative priorities going forward in his administration.

NPR's Robert Siegel will anchor the coverage on WSKG Public Radio. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will offer a special report on WSKG-TV.

The coverage begins at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29th.

An Inauguration in More Ways Than One

by Bill Jaker

Barack H. Obama’s inauguration makes him the nation’s 44th Chief Executive (actually the 43rd since historians count Grover Cleveland in his two non-consecutive terms as two people).  The ceremony marks the 64th presidential inauguration in American history.  It is also the 23rd presidential inauguration to be broadcast live on the radio.  National Public Radio’s team of reporters and commentators and WSKG are providing complete coverage of the day’s events starting at 10:00 AM and running till 2:00 PM, when NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” on WSQX will bring in public reaction from around the country.  The constitutionally-obligated ceremony is also a really great show.  It’s been called the USA’s only truly national spectacle.

Most Americans were far removed from the events of Inauguration Day until the 4th of March 1925 and the inaugural of President Calvin Coolidge.  Radio was still a squealing infant and networks were not yet formally incorporated concerns, but the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was already feeding programs by wire from its stations WEAF in New York and WCAP in Washington.  The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had also started to distribute live broadcasts from WJZ in New York and WRC, Washington.

In 1924 both companies covered the national political conventions; an orderly Republican gathering in Cleveland proved to be a good technical warm-up for the raucous Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden a few weeks later that stretched to 103 ballots.  At one point a fistfight broke out between delegates on the Garden floor.  WJZ announcer Norman Brokenshire was chastised for describing the melee as if it were a heavyweight championship.

Many stations provided election returns that November, continuing the service begun with the pioneering coverage of the Harding/Cox election on 2 November 1920 by KDKA in Pittsburgh and WWJ, Detroit that is commonly considered the opening day for American radio.  (Actually, election night radio reporting had begun with a broadcast by inventor Lee deForest in November, 1916 from his experimental station in The Bronx).  The Army Signal Corps was so impressed with the possibilities of wireless communication that it offered to broadcast President Harding’s inauguration and proposed building a complete radio station on the Capitol grounds.  When the offer was refused the Signal Corps suggested that the President-elect record his inaugural address, which they would play at the same time it was being delivered.  The Army lost that engagement too.

But four years later radio was ready to rise to the occasion.  Announcer Graham McNamee – best noted as a sportscaster – had gained some political background covering the conventions for the WEAF network.  But “the inauguration proved a meaner job than most,” he later wrote, “as it was so hard to get information.  Washington was full of officials, each apparently knowing all about what was to take place but unwilling to impart much of their knowledge… it was impossible to make our arrangement.”  There was no such thing as a radio news department.  McNamee had some research assistants and was accompanied by a few “gofers”, but when he went to seek one his aides he got lost in the Capitol, and an estimated 25 million listeners were kept waiting.

Meanwhile, Norman Brokenshire was virtually alone on the job.  He envied McNamee’s staff and the glass booth AT&T built for him; all RCA could manage was a seat in the front row and a microphone perched on a railing.  It was also unclear what time the radio stations were to begin their coverage of the noontime ceremonies.  Figuring that whoever started first would draw more listeners, Brokenshire went on the air before 10:00 A.M. and talked for over two hours, snagging interviews with anyone who passed by his seat.

When President Coolidge finally stepped before what Brokenshire described as “an electric cactus plant of six microphones” he could barely be heard speaking the oath of office.  But his inaugural address came through loud and clear on loudspeakers across the Capitol grounds and on 31 radio stations across the country.

Radio’s first Inauguration was a success.  Graham McNamee wrote, “almost every school in the land had a loud-speaker installed in its auditorium or its one little room, in the case of country hamlets.”  The radio industry had arranged for hundreds of school and public listening posts.  Until that time, many people considered radio a technical curiosity that might have a bright future but wasn’t yet an essential part of daily life.  When children came home from school and told their parents about hearing the President of the United States people started to take the sound medium more seriously.

A year later, RCA purchased the AT&T stations as the nucleus of the National Broadcasting Company.  In 1927 Congress passed and President Coolidge signed the Radio Act, clearing away many technical problems and initiating regulation of the broadcasting industry.  By then about a third of American homes were equipped with radios and the medium was developing rapidly into a major source of entertainment, information, education and (to no one’s surprise) political activity.

THE JUDICIAL HUMORIST --or--

"You mustn't tell us what she told you -- it's not evidence"

Judge Roberts on the list.

by Bill Snyder

The Chief Justice, Dylan and the Disappearing Double Negative

Leap Day

by Bill Snyder

A Great Leap Forward

Mardi Gras...

...or Shrove Tuesday, or Fastnacht, or Fasching, or Carnival, or Butter Week, or....

by Bill Snyder

Carnival

Thanks, Elizabeth!

by Bill Snyder

I got a really nice email from a listener and volunteer thanking me for the music I programmed for the anniversary of 9/11.

It may seem odd, but I really look forward to programming that day, because there is so much music that I love that is a little too introspective for my usual mid-day shift.  In fact, I couldn't fit in even a quarter of the music that would have been appropriate.

I'm sure that everyone has his own vivid recollection of where they were and what they were doing on that day.  I mentioned that I was in Baltimore for a Public Radio announcers workshop led by a woman named Marilyn Pittman.   Earlier that year everyone else here went to Boston for the same sort of workshop with her and they came back raving about her.  Kate Cook and I held down the fort while they were in Boston, so it was our turn to go to Baltimore in September of 2001.

Being from the Harrisburg area, I know that route really well so I drove and Kate helped me memorize lines for a play I was doing at Ti-Ahwaga.  We found our hotel near Johns Hopkins, located the community college where WBJC is located, and got dinner near the harbor. 

There was a little restaurant in the hotel so we had breakfast there the next morning.  I didn't want the maid coming in before I got back to get ready for the workshop, so I left the television on. 

Of course you know what I saw on the television when I got back from breakfast.  Kate's room was all the way at the end of the hall, so I ran down there and banged on her door.

BANG! BANG! BANG! "Kate! Turn on the television!" BANG! BANG! BANG! "KATE! A plane flew into the World Trade Center!" BANG! BANG! BANG! "Kate!"

"Yeahyeahyeah.  Okay."

I went back to my room just in time to hear a reporter say, "Is that another plane?"

WBJC is strictly radio and completely classical music, so there was only one miniscule televison in an office.  When we got there some of the 21 people who were taking the workshop were gathered around the door of the office trying to get a look at what was happening.  Many of them were news people and their cell phones started ringing with calls from their stations.  By ten o'clock, when the workshop was supposed to begin, there were only 7 of us left -- and no Marilyn Pittman!

The station was letting everyone without a cell phone call family and their home station.  Kate called her husband, David, and I called my father -- I was planning on stopping by his house near Harrisburg on the way back from Baltimore.  The funny thing is that I don't remember if we called WSKG!

So all of us had gotten in touch with someone -- and still no Marilyn Pittman.

And when she does arrive, she is fit to be tied.  She got in a cab at 8:45 and said "Take me to Baltimore Community College!"  The driver took her to A Baltimore Community College campus, but not the right one.  So they went across town to another campus.  And another.   I don't remember how many campuses she visited on her unintentional tour of Baltimore, but she was clearly unhappy about being in a cab for an hour and a half.

And when she saw only 7 people there for the workshop that was supposed to have 21, she was even less happy.  Then she found out what had happened in the world during that hour and a half.

We started the workshop eventually in a theatre on the campus.  Classes had been cancelled and every hour a campus security person would interrupt us, saying that we had to go home.  And Marilyn would tell them that, no, we were not a class, but were with the radio station.  Finally in the afternoon session they came in to tell us that they were going to lock the theatre and we really had to leave.

All the restaurants were closed except the one at the hotel where Marilyn was staying, so we all decided to meet there to eat.  There was a huge projection television in the restaurant and lots of other televisions too, so all we saw the whole time we were there was the planes flying into the Towers, people jumping out of the Towers,the Towers collapsing, and dust and debris chasing people uptown.

And again.  And again. And again.

By this time Kate was feeling ill.

Driving back north the next day was pretty surreal.  There was little traffic on the highway, even at  York, PA where it's usually pretty dense.  We stopped at my father's house a little north-west of Harrisburg and he gave us each some produce from his garden.  And we stopped to visit my Great-aunt Julia who lived in the next town.  She gave us each dishrags that she had been crocheting. 

The traffic was light on 11 & 15 along the Susquehanna. I really despise the Sunbury-Selinsgrove highway and I was thankful for that.  We seemed to be the only car on I-80 East.  But that changed when we got to 81 North.  I think that all of the traffic that would have gone north on 90 was making a wide berth around the Metropolitan New York area.

It was certainly good to be back here at WSKG.  I had to completely change the music programming that I had done in advance, even though we were not sure when we would actually go back to normal programming.  Kate was out sick for a few days with strep -- so she said; I think that after all that happened, she was looking for an excuse to spend time with her family.  I know that it certainly did me a world of good to stop in to see my father and my Aunt Julia.

I also spent some time the next few days getting in touch with friends in and around New York.

I don't know where I was going with this, and I think the adhesive fumes from the carpeting they are installing in the new WSKG Master Control are making me a little woozy.

I think it's time for lunch!