I used to listen to a lot of his adaptations when the National Radio Theatre of Chicago was producing radio plays in the 1980s.

He will be missed.

i’m no electronic genius..far from it; but it seems to me if every tv u tried blew up that the problem is other than old tvs’

Na…my suspicion is the 28″ television died because it was old, and used a lot. (I have mild tinnitus and so need some sound to mask the “noise” - sometimes it’s Old Radio, others it’s television playing all night.) The second, the one from the basement, died I believe because I didn’t properly store it. In retrospect, I should have either had it covered from the time it hit the shelf, or when I brought it up removed the back and used air to remove the dust. I did wipe the outside down when I brought it from the basement, but I suspect there was enough of a “dust blanket” inside to cause some component or another to overheat. (That was the one that smelled like overheating, arcing components. The larger one just kept flipping on-and-off. And the 55″ rear-projector in the living room was never plugged into this outlet…heck, I don’t think it would fit anywhere in the bedroom, not while leaving room for the bed, anyway!)

I thought about the outlet, but 1) the larger television had been plugged in there for years before it pitched a fit, and 2) the laptop computer, monitor, and external amplified speakers are plugged into it now with no ill effects.

I’m thinking this experience was just my usual fortune at work. Thank heavens Newegg is constantly running sales on televisions…already ordered a reasonably-priced Toshiba television. I did screw up and forgot to go through a cash-back website I use - could have gotten a 2% rebate on it had I only remembered…

(Yeah, I’m really that cheap.)

First of all it wasn’t on the 18th March as you show in the blog.

Yep, I clearly confused myself between the threes and eights (380313); I got it right in the copy, but screwed-up in the title and the filename. My assumption is I screwed it up in the filename, and copied the title from there…when I wrote the script, though, I had the research in front of me and got it right in the introduction. Naturally, I never noticed the contradiction…so much for consistency.

(*sigh*) Blame my advancing age. ;) I’ll get things straightened out this evening.

The intention by Murrow and Shirer along with Paul White was to have a news roundup that would begin with Robert Trout - switch to London where Shirer had flown into from Austria the night before. Shirer than introduced Ellen Wilkinson from Parliament. They had intended to also include Edgar Mowrer who was with the Chicago Daily News and in Paris, after Ellen Wilkinson, followed by Pierre Huss in Berlin and Frank Gervasi in Rome. The latter two were INS reporters and getting permission to let them speak took a while since it was a weekend. This would then be followed by Ed Murrow in Vienna. However, Gervasi could not come through live due to transmitter availability lacking, so at the end, they switched back to Shirer in London who read Gervasi’s text. But even that is not heard and though Shirer writes that he read it, we hear Lewis Schwellenbach, U.S. Senator. I wondered whether they dropped the Gervasi text for a U.S. Perspective. Shirer doesn’t mention it not going on the air, but perhaps he never really knew.

The recording you have and as best as I have been able to determine hunting for years now, it is the only one that exists publicly, has Huss, Mowrer, and Murrow all missing except for a short snippet of Murrow. Also Whether Ellen Wilkinson is cut off, or just finished and since she wasn’t part of the team, it immediately rotated over to Mowrer, I don’t know. I have always wondered if Mowrer and Huss were missing due to some rights issues in the past. Why that part was missing also could possibly be to how it was transcribed.

No matter, I have been on the hunt for a complete copy for years since I have collected a lot of news material, much of which is now publicly accessible. Perhaos, CBS Radio Archives has a complete copy, I don’t know.

Great intro announcer. Did she also perform the closing music?

She said, “Thank you!” and no, my daughter Katie (who can be seen elsewhere on the blog performing with Will Huchins) isn’t the musical performer; that’s Jill Sobule, of “I Kissed a Girl” fame (not the Katy Perry song, the better one). She wrote me a theme song with some of the story of my life. I listen to it every morning for motivation. ;)

Great intro announcer. Did she also perform the closing music?

Bob in Lone Oak, TX

Good piece! We’re in total agreement about conventions past and present and the viability of having it evolve or not. Yes, (don’t faint!) I TOTALLY agree with you!

Some of us literally grew up with these conventions. Having attended/supported FOTR ALMOST since the very beginning, and Cincinnati since #1, many lifetime friendships in OTR blossomed when many of us started hanging out together at these events…I’ll never forget hanging out in our rooms until 4:00 AM (when we were younger!) with some of the coolest people in OTR; the trials and tribulations of the hotel, how certain people masterfully had a solution to EVERY little minor crisis & how we always decided we wanted to return the following year by the end of the convention.
Some years, especially more recently, it was tough. But with a little creativity, I found a way to make it.

It was the “stars” of course who gave of their time that we appreciate, but also the people who MANAGED these events **I** salute to whom we owe a debt of gratitute that can never be re-paid. They know who they are, and I hope they realize a major part of the convention success in its heyday (and WHY I KEPT COMING BACK)is because of THEIR dedication. All the woes I hear from dealers who whine they arent covering their expenses are MEANINGLESS (aside from the fact some dealers just lost interest, got too old, or migrated elsewhere.). That would’ve happened anyway. People evolve, even if it was a film convention or something more maintstream.

Meantime, I’ll continue supporting Cincinnati as long as that convention survives. And to everyone on the FOTR Convention committee (of which I was one mostly in the ’80s), a simple but sincere THANK YOU.

As for Newark, let’s do it again… ONE MORE TIME.

-Bob Burnham
-BRC PRODUCTIONS