The fifth floor of the Museum housed the scientists’ offices and was also a storehouse of artifacts not on display. Margaret Mead had contributed objects from her work in Bali. While she and I were working out a script for the segment on Manus she pointed at something I had never seen. She called it Read More
When television was young—before the computer, the microchip, and editing cuts lasting less than a wink—CBS News did 136 broadcasts of Adventure, a documentary television series beginning in 1953. It was produced in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History and hosted by Charles Collingwood. Some programs had no commercials. The salesmen called Sunday Read More
I had done a script or two for WHA, the University of Wisconsin’s radio station. Live radio production was exciting. Tape had not been invented, and everything was done to precise time. The programs had to be exactly twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds long. I liked the anxiety, the deadlines, and writing scripts for children. Read More
I was the Chief Musical Producer at WBBM from 1948 – 1950. The musicians union required that WBBM keep forty full-time musicians on staff. Because I could read an abbreviated score, I became a pet of the musical conductor, Caesar Petrillo, brother of James Petrillo, the head of the American Federation of Musicians. Caesar had Read More
1952 was the first year political conventions could be seen from coast to coast. The coaxial cable had crossed the continent and all the viewers in the country could watch the same picture at the same time cable channels were decades away, as was tape recordings. Live was live. I was drafted to assist in Read More
The year I joined WBBM in 1947 was the same year the station bought tape recorders. The earliest machines could be carried from place to place, but they weighed over twenty pounds. It took some time to see that tape was not like vinyl records. Unlike discs, which simply recorded sound, tape could be edited. Read More
I had sent all my awards home, along with some two hundred tapes of shows I had written, coached, or produced. I waited until early evening so I would not meet sentimentality in the corridors or elevators. Three months earlier when I had lost favor, my colleagues fell away, as if I were infectious. Collegiality Read More
From 1948 to 1950, I worked at the Chicago radio affiliate of CBS. I won two Peabody awards. One was on race relations, the other on the sale of narcotics. The latter embarrassed the Chicago Police force. It also embarrassed the owner of the station who made his peace with the force by firing me. Read More