Monday, April 14, 2008

The news from 1951 Wistful Vista

If you were a broadcasting student at the University of Omaha during the winter of 1951, the future before you seemed limitless.

RADIO WAS STARTING to feel the heat from this upstart called television, but it was still kicking -- with disc-jockey shows, public-affairs programs, comedy, drama, cooking shows and news, news, news. And that was just the local stations.

Nationally, four national radio networks still provided all those same kinds of programs -- and soap operas, too -- to their affiliates from coast to coast. In coming years, NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual would change -- refocusing on news and program syndication -- but they still would remain in need of talented men and women to produce high-quality programming.

Programming like, for example, NBC's Monitor, which would debut in 1955 and provide an all-weekend "kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria" (as NBC President Sylvester "Pat" Weaver coined it) of news, features, interviews, comedy, live remotes and music.

And then there was television.

Back in 1951, local TV stations were signing on in city after city, looking to fill the broadcast day with local shows featuring local talent. And Omaha U. students were itching to get in on the action.

NOW IT'S 57 years later. The University of Omaha long has been the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Local TV shows are few and far between, excepting the "If it bleeds, it leads" newscasts.

Two of the old radio networks still stand, sort of. ABC- and CBS-branded newscasts still air on affiliate stations.

And local radio isn't so local anymore, with studio computers too often playing -- between the same few hundred overresearched tunes -- canned patter from assembly-line disc jockeys behind microphones in far-off places.

That was not the future anyone had in mind in the winter of 1951, when this article ran in Omaha University's alumni publication. The Injun:

FM at OU?

While most of Omaha and vicinity beheld their newborn television industry with passive awe last year, the university was pulling on a pair of seven-league boots, ready to match the lusty infant stride for stride.

One of the boots was a new Speech Department head, 27-year-old Bruce Linton, who spent a year as a radio announcer at WHIZ, (Zanesville, Ohio), then picked up a speech MA at North­western University.

The other half of the long-distance footwear was a $5,000, acoustically treated studio and control room, stocked with the finest professional sound equip­ment — microphones, turn-tables, re­corders, amplifiers.

Thus newly shod, OU took its first step: the addition of three new radio courses, designed to prepare a student for a beginning in radio or TV.

The frenzy of preparation at Omaha U didn't go unnoticed by the local broadcasting industry. The ink was hardly dry on the first draft of plans when WOW-TV invited the rejuvenated Speech Department to produce a 15-minute show twice a month. Omaha area viewers watch the OU production every other Thursday at 5:15 p.m. KMTV has asked for film-produced shows and special studio productions as soon as they can be supplied.

On the AM side, OU's radio talent puts out a weekly on-the-spot interview over KOIL (9:30 Wednesday nights). Called
Let's Hear Them All
, the KOIL program presents interesting visitors to OU and Omaha. (Samples: Mrs. Pahk of Korea, the Ice Follies' lighting director.)

Sandwiched between the regular shows are one-shot productions over other Omaha stations, e.g. the pre-Christmas
A Dickens Christmas
, featuring OU actors and choir over KFAB.

KBON Day will have its fourth an­nual showing on March 7, when OU speech and journalism students will take over Omaha's Mutual outlet for exper­ience in all aspects of radio station operation.

Although the present courses dwell mainly on AM radio technique, Linton is bringing television in gradually ("we have to be careful of over expansion"), with TV lighting problems brought into Speech Department stage productions. Next summer, Linton plans to have a simulated monitor scope installed in the control room. Movies supplied by the Audio-Visual Department will be shown on a ground glass screen to give an­nouncers a chance to practice TV nar­ration.

With all his plans and dreams, OU's Linton is rocky-realistic. "We don't assume that everybody who leaves here with a speech degree is going into 50,-000-watt production," he points out. "There are lots of smaller stations in need of announcers who can spin their own records; in radio, it's best to start out small and work up big."

Even beyond that, the new courses have something for students who have no notion of going into radio work. They can get a better understanding of the radio industry and see how it fits into their own business.

But how about the real stuff? Is Omaha U planning to have a station all its own? Once again, Linton points up the problem of over expansion, but he adds that an OU FM station is "not at all improbable."

In the meantime, OU radio students get pressure experience from the present radio and TV shows, with an occasional fling at covering football and basketball games on the public address system. And as student interest increases, so will the list of radio shows. A forum TV pro­gram and musical AM performances will be regular productions, and there will be special productions for holidays.

OU's radio training has already paid off for one student. Undergrad Ralph Carey is a full time announcer at KOIL. Then why stay in school? "In the radio profession, you never stop learning," he answers. "Anybody in the business can pick up pointers out here."

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