WGBH Journal; Gold Rush

WGBH began in radio. It was just radio for four years before television was added educational radio was the name for it but WGBH so far overcame that formidable image that in its first year it brought a doubling of the FM radio sets sold in the area a measure that impact was in the sales of the Zenith symphony radio that came on the market to provide receivers for the Boston Symphony Concerts that made the first programs of WGBH those first WGBH broadcasts were done in a cubbyhole high up over the back of the stage in Symphony Hall. Just big enough for the announcer and a sound control technician. Each concert was preceded by a radio program that gave the station a special role tomorrow symphony was an audience rehearsal in appreciation of what was to come. Conducted by Jay Wallace Woodworth professor of music at Harvard where he was to carry on this tuning of the Boston ear for 18 years broadcasting music and all the other arts.

WGBH became the born again arrow Boston's historical axiom the Law Institute in 1836 John Lowell had bequeath a legacy of free public lectures to Boston WGBH converted that legacy to modern form through a unique enterprise that joined the cultural institutions of the area and broadcasting that all Institute was well into its second century by the time Armstrong had developed FM radio that more than doubled the number of bands for broadcasting chairman James fly of the Federal Communications Commission was determined to exploit the expansion that FM afforded he had bands 88 to 92 reserved for educational institutions. Fly wrote President Conan to Harvard proposing that the colleges of the area combine for broadcasting flyers proposal was persuasive. But the problem remained for Harvard decide how to align the other colleges sounded bumptious just what some people would expect at Harvard

what was needed was some neutral umbrella to cover them all. David W. Balej then secretary of the Harvard governing boards thought of the Lowell Institute. Times were changing audiences for lectures had shrunk as people could have free entertainment at home by radio and Ralph Lo sole trustee of the Institute was an overseer of Harvard. He was involved also in most other Boston institutions from banking to museums and on to other college boards. They only talk to law and they persuaded Coleman. Between them Bailey and Lowell carried the proposal to eight colleges. Bailey will have recommitted solicited mits Simmons and Radcliffe well took on Tufts and Northeastern where he was trustee and B C and B U Harvard and MIT each put up twelve thousand five hundred dollars. The other six thousand five hundred each and the Lowell Institute matched the total for the first budget of the Lowell Institute cooperative broadcasting Council.

That was nine hundred forty six. The museums of art and science and the symphony would come in later. Mr. Lowell recruited Parker Wheatley who had conducted the Chicago round table weekly broadcasts as a director and for business manager he hired Hartford Gunn just graduated at the Harvard Business School a gun a radio buff in college was to become president of the Public Broadcasting System. At the start they got the commercial radio stations to broadcast their lectures. The stations got credit for this as a public service. But this didn't work too well. Mr. Lowell insisted that the programs be aired between 6 and 9 o'clock. Well we would now call prime time but the stations tended to push them off to less valuable time slots. So after a few seasons the council that is the presidents of the member colleges decided to set up their own station. They got a license for the WGBH educational foundation. The letters stand for great blue hills where Harvard contributor site for

the transmitter and so Saturday October 6 950 wanted it. WGBH broadcast a first regular concert of the Boston Symphony Seventy first season Sunday their father was John Hill good in Hamlet and the Budapest String Quartet. Monday had Carl Sandburg reading his poetry Tuesday writer Brattle Theater performance of Delhi but on Wednesday saw power Biggs at the organ. Thursday had the Taft area players in three one act plays Friday brought the symphony round again. The station's air time shaped to its budget ran from 3:30 to 10:00 p.m. other programs remember that first season. Where the Morris gray poetry series short story readings by Professor Donald borne of the you. Here's a story for you. An early offering a reading aloud that Bill Katniss was later to develop weekly book reviews by P. Albert Duhamel of D.C. a program of art and ballet by badd Hastings Jr. a weekly review of the

political scene by WCB Joyce of DC he insisted on stopping this when we got into television. You can't go before a camera in a Roman collar he told me. A special programme of which plays was a weekly panel America at the crossroads. The Korean War was the crossroads of the time. Packer obtained the distinguished Reith lectures from BBC the station presented a full schedule of university extension courses. John Finley have a classicist on Greek history. See Rolfe on geology mits Charles Kindleberger on foreign affairs. A very special program was Nancy Harper's Children's Hour of stories and games. Wheatley on a shoestring budget trying to do everything himself. This included an evening news program UPI supplied a pony radio while hardly more than headlines. But the WGBH audience was too far sophisticated for that. The news wasn't good

enough. That started my connection with WGBH within a few weeks of its start. David Bailey persuaded me to take on the news temporarily. I was directing the name and fellowship program in journalism at Harvard so a teletype was set up in my office and a squawk box called a remote amplifier was installed. We subscribed to a wire of the AP that says metropolitan newspapers and of the UPI regional while it always surprised me how much of the day's news that mattered was in time for a 6 o'clock broadcast. We turned on the teletype after lunch and by 4 o'clock I turned from I have a job to shape a news program. But I'd started the day reading The New York Times and Boston Globe in bed at seven o'clock and had the monitor in lines so I knew what I was looking for on the news ticker has the Senate confirmed that appointment. What did the UN do with that resolution. Are the returns in from the French elections. Monday was then Decision day in the Supreme Court

as the other stations pay little attention and even The New York Times coverage was not till next morning. My early warning reports were appreciated in the law schools where the time slot was 10 minutes later 15. I had to limit myself to important news. I tried to deal with public affairs in enough depth to show the continuity and meaning of what was going on. The physical problem was to go through the voluminous wire report select what mattered and rewrite it in sentences that could be read. You couldn't read aloud a wire report sentence without coming to a point where you wondered whether there was a head behind you. Another problem was my own pronunciation. Half a lifetime in journalism had taught me to spell but that was all wasted on the foreign place names that might look familiar became crises when with my mouth open. You weren't sure where the accent came. A woman listener used to send me postcards how to pronounce a y a naval

officer sent me from New York to correctly X and a list of Arab names starting with cue that the Middle East war had inflicted on me my wife's name and Secretary as she sorted out the wire copy by topics would underline an accent and a suspicious names so a pattern shaped up at the long table at the Faculty Club I was teased as the poor man Zelma Davis Robert Frost asked what's your sign. I had no slant to begin with. After years of newspaper discipline to objective reporting. But that cliché of journalism produced superficial reporting reporting in more depth then called news analysis was becoming accepted and the blight of McCarthyism soon demanded the full dimensions of the news and what lay behind it. My reports held they were neutral tone until the death of Harold Ross of the New Yorker called for an appreciation of that eccentric inventive editor immediately weekly found words that I include any comment that would add meaning to the news.

So the program became news and comment. The comment arose right out of the news sometimes half a sentence would do a quite different thing from a formal editorial separated from its news incentive. So there was another change. The lectures were felt rather a bore it would liven them to change the form to interviewers. If lines were taken on a 15 minute interview to follow the news I said I would have someone would do the legwork of scheduling the interviews. So I got a call from the station every morning to ask my suggestion. This brought the expertise of our leading scholars to discussion of topics in the news. And we soon expanded to guest beyond our campuses. When a Pulitzer or neighbor prize landed in Cambridge we'd hoped to interview the recipients that evening news and backgrounds the program was now cause for some time the interviews were done right in my office. My wife would phone the station to say Professor fat bank is here ready when she got the signal over the squawk box we talk. Cross the desk. My most frustrating experience was with the

vagaries of our weather. My report from the weather bureau's 5 o'clock forecast might prove 100 percent wrong next morning. So I announced I was going to drop it but this brought such a protest mail that I was asked to reconsider. It seemed absurd that people would want to report in which the reporter had no confidence. But I suppose I had unconsciously included my own observations thereafter I frequently discussed the changing seasons. The succession of garden blooms of the condition of crops or of the words such broadcasts always brought the largest response. That was like years before Crockett's Victory Garden and the last a clue sells flowers. So my amateurism had no competition. My funniest broadcast experience came on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth second. Parker had personally rounded up a trio of scholars each steeped in the law of the British Crown. An English professor Mark Cam who was here on an exchange centered around Claire Arthur Dobbin our

erudite eccentric exuberant Englishman professor of religion and Professor Charles Mcelwain who must have been the most complete Tory at Harvard he looked like Julius Caesar but he was a sweet old man. Parker had considerately supplied mild Scotch highballs to is the scheduled hour. This may help prolong the disputations over the fine points of meaning and history of the Unicorn and the maze and the other ritual symbols. I could almost hear the audience giggles as I tried to move the explications of ceremonial from point to point. Flexibility was an aspect of our early programming. Parker would call upon an exceptional news day to say don't hesitate to run over if you need more time. Our location was also a movable item while engineer William B who was creating a broadcast facility in the old skating rink than MIT contributed as a studio for a time I broadcast in the basement of the bush rise in the museum. Then the Harvard undergraduate station offered a deal. Use our facilities and let us use

your program and I schedule was flexible to get varied from six o'clock to six thirty back to 6:15 and then to 640 far as Parker appeased complaints that the news came just at our dinner hour or just and we had to put the children to bed. Our announcer William Pierce who came on from Emerson College in the second season had to keep track of these variations which he did with aplomb. He had taught English and he brought with him a standard of English usage appropriate to the station. One of our young staffers he coached to use English is now $100000 anchorman in a neighboring station. Floating schedule had to come to rest when WGBH had a television and the newspapers listed our times. I read in the 978 WGBH calendar under the date made two thousand nine hundred fifty five glowing lines read the news for the first time before a television camera. The news program then became a simulcast.

But for a very long time we were careful not to show anything on the TV camera that would leave the radio listener feeling he was missing something. While President Carter is abroad urging an improved world economic order the American economy is suffering no pains of inflation. The president paused in Brazil to say the amount of steel price rise of $10 and a half a ton is excessive and inflationary. There's no U.S. steel price increase coming on top of last month's riot raises their prices by 8 percent in the first quarter a year. This comes in the same week that brings the report of the consumer price rise at an annual rate of eight point four percent.

Beef prices rose 4 percent in February alone. The steel industry blames its price increase on the coal settlement that adds 13 percent a year for three years to coal wages. The head of the Teamsters Union said yesterday he hopes his union can gain as much as the miners. The president said in Brazil he will announce new steps against inflation when he returns next week. Any new steps should be in place of the voluntary price restraints that is wage and price Stabilization Board has been trying to administer. The administration President Carter said has been evolving a complete analysis of what we can do both through administrative action through public statement through working with the business community and through congressional action to control inflation which he said is becoming an increasingly important problem for us. Well inflation has been a nightmare the last three administrations. Each has tried to treat it as a bad dream. But the public statement Mr. Carter mentions as to working

with the business community steel industry members sent in only last week with his council on stabilization. I heard it's aims to cut back inflation but never mention their plans to raise prices. As for congressional action Vice President Mondale in the president's absence said the president will veto all the farm price bill the Senate has passed unless the house cuts it now. But to counter it the president has himself offered cotton and grain farmers $75 an acre to keep up to 40 percent of their crop land unplanted and proposes to increase farm price supports for grain and cotton by only somewhat less incentive the town which is increase the stabilisation Council contradicts the steel company's claim that the coal wage increase requires a 10 and a half dollar a tonne rise in steel. It needs only $4 The council says it reports that the steel rise will increase prices in autos and in most industrial and household equipment. The council is concerned about the effect the

rise in food prices will have on labor unions. The council's been urging restraint in seeking wage increases in new contracts. The president and the council have both said they hope other city of companies would not follow us till one of them has national its president says. We're in full agreement that inflation is the most pressing problem before us. National Steel is primarily a producer of coal rolled steel it supplies the automobile industry so the weak illustrates the cycle of inflation higher food prices incite unions to demand wage increases which push up industry costs for the equipment farmers must buy to produce the food that raises the Consumer Price Index. The riddle of where and how to kind of this has paralyzed government action. Meantime the dollar that's the symbol of our economy declines abroad and I savings diminish month by month. The Japanese put a billion dollars into the market this week a problem. The dollar without visible results. The week's news reinforces the warning of the Joint Economic

Committee of Congress in its economic report only last week. It said it had always opposed wage and price controls and still does. But such controls will be required unless inflation can be checked. A banker says The basic problem is public psychology of ICTs the acceptance of inflation is inevitable. Here a news conference in Brazil the president talked freely about his differences with that military government but mutual interests override these differences he said. He will not challenge Brazil's agreement with Germany for a nuclear reprocessing system nor will he support the move in Congress to cut off American funds for a World Bank project for countries that violate human rights. Today the president had a meeting with two Catholic cardinals at their request on the human rights issue that they oppressed in Brazil. Mr. Carter has weekend visits in Nigeria and Liberia in Brazil if that presence felt it necessary

to deny reports from Israel that his administration is trying to have Israeli's Prime Minister Begin ousted from office completely false the president said the reports emanate from supporters of Mr. beggin who rallied the Knesset to resist what he described as American intervention on that issue he overrode criticism of the positions that caused his differences with President Carter and won a three to one vote of support. But a proposal he sent Sadar for resuming talks was angry rejected by said that who said he had been tricked by a public relations gesture. The cease fire in south Lebanon was punctured by sporadic outburst of firing from Palestinian positions beyond the area that the first UN units were assigned to patrol. But by the weeks and the ceasefire it appeared to be taking taking hold of about as solidly as such an effort would be expected to in its first week. The Carter administration proposed a program this week they've been a

year shaping up aimed at making our cities more livable a long term plan the president called it to restore the vitality of the cities to stem the draining away of the city's economy to the ever expanding suburbs. This by funding revival of city facilities and through tax incentives to bring back business and industry that provide employment and revenues and National Development Bank to provide capital is a central proposal. It adds up to a tilt toward the central city. A new concentration of federal effort to contain and supplement urban resources. The president emphasized also the intent to correct the flaws in former government plans that he said prevent them from working. Every new plan now or have careful review we said to make sure it won't do more harm than good. So you may as well come the new direction. Some skeptics questioned whether the suburban thrust is reversible whether new capital is the city's main problem rather than street crime and municipal corruption and

incompetence by and for coincidence. The proposal of a bank for development came the same day as announcement by the largest Boston bank the first that it's closing out a branch in Codman Square an area that contains most of the problems the administration hopes to help the bank next day agreed to delay the closing amount to give a blank black managed neighborhood bank a chance to try to take it over. House in in Boston is back on the front page today with the trial of the second real estate operator indicted some months ago in Attorney General bloodies roundup of what he called an organized attempt to burn down Suffolk County. A witness yesterday testifying under immunity admitted burning properties for hire in the Fenway Chelsey Dorchester Braintree. He implicated a city building inspector who served time as a lookout. The firebug said those indicted include city and state fire control employees and insurers

involved in the charges to burn down old buildings for their insurance. Barbara Ackerman from American Bridge announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor yesterday opposing Governor Dukakis. She said her problem of public record is recognition in this first statewide candidacy is less because she's a woman. People today think they can trust a woman when they can't trust anyone else she said. She supported a caucus four years ago. I like what he says but I don't like what he does she said it's clear that many people want a new government. The present governor has not cut the cost of government. He has cut essential services. He hasn't attracted new jobs. The key to that is lower taxes and effective government. We have the worst civil service system in the country continuing scandals in government and a reputation as a state that doesn't know how to handle money and hurts us with business her own political positions have been conspicuously on the liberal side. One of the founders of the

citizens for participation in politics the endorsement at its convention April 8. She says it is crucial to her candidacy.