On The Occasion Of Its Ninetieth Anniversary
April 21, 2015
By Tom Fitzmorris
This was part of a special section published in the New Orleans Item-Tribune on April 19, 1925. At the top are pictures of Clyde R. Randall, announcer and program director, and E. C. Carrington, the chief engineer. Top center photo shows the original antenna atop the Maison Blanche Building. The other photos are of the studios, with the control room at the bottom.
New Orleans’ First Professional Radio Station
Six radio stations were on the air in New Orleans on April 21, 1925. But none of those generated the excitement caused by the new station that signed on that day.
WSMB was a joint venture of the Saenger Theater and the Maison Blanche department store. (Hence the call letters.) And it was a big deal. A full-page advertisement in the Times-Picayune communicated much of the promise: it showed pictures of the studios, the equipment, of the transmitting towers atop the Maison Blanche Building, and of the chief announcer and the chief engineer.
This was a very spiffy facility compared with those of the existing stations. All were home-built rigs, running out of spare rooms of the concerns that owned them. Most of the stations were little more than advertising outlets for the businesses that owned them: electronics shops, mostly. Even WWL (the only one of those six aforementioned early stations that’s still around) was little more than a science project of Loyola University.
WSMB was the first radio station in New Orleans that was planned as a self-supporting broadcast business. Its facilities were the best available at the time. The transmitter was a factory-built RCA unit, at 500 watts by far the most powerful in New Orleans. The station was staffed by professional announcers, dramatists, musicians, and engineers.
The studios were on the top floor of the Maison Blanche Building (now the Ritz-Carlton Hotel), and were so well designed that they served the station for sixty-five years. Few radio stations in America stayed in one place as long as WSMB did.
Radio was to 1920s America what the Internet is to our time. People were obsessed with it. The first commercial radio stations appeared in 1920, and multiplied rapidly for the next two decades.
But when WSMB signed on, what to put on the air was still an open question. A mix of music, drama, and news seemed to be what people wanted to listen to. WSMB was well prepared to offer this. The Saenger, which was still mounting live shows in its various theatres, broadcast many of them direct from its stages, and provided the talent for in-studio productions. They also provided musicians, who performed live from WSMB’s studios every night. Jazz was hot then, and there was plenty of it on WSMB’s air.
The live performances at WSMB were good enough that people frequently crowded the lobby to watch through the large studio window and listen through a loudspeaker as big as a door. Until the station moved out of the Maison Blanche Building in 1990, listeners were welcome to come up, have a seat, and watch the program on the air.
Unfortunately, how to make all this pay for itself was not immediately obvious. The idea of selling commercials had not yet been hatched. The Saenger and Maison Blanche figured that their connections with the station would raise their profiles and promote their services. But beyond that the investment in WSMB was mostly wishful for the future.
Although the returns from WSMB never came close to equaling the expenses of the station in the early years, the enthusiasm of the audience was overwhelming. Listeners clamored for more WSMB. So the original six-day-a-week, four-hour-a-day schedule quickly went to seven days and fourteen hours. Radio addicts from all over the country wrote in with reports of hearing WSMB’s powerful (for that time, anyway) signal. All of it motivated the Saenger and Maison Blanche to keep WSMB going.
But not enough to move the investors to expand their station in any major way. Wasn’t it the best in town already? That notion produced the first in a series of missed opportunities that were to later frustrate the growth of the station. In this event, aggressive action (and very good political connections) on the part of WWL claimed the most valuable broadcasting franchise in town. WWL became a fully commercial station in 1928; shortly thereafter, it boosted its power to 5,000 watts and was installed on a clear channel. That was the sort of service that WSMB could and should have provided. But in letting WWL beat it to the clear channel, WSMB not only allowed its strongest competitor to flower, but saddled itself with a second-class franchise.
The Golden Age Of Radio
None of that had much immediate effect, however. WSMB was still a powerhouse, going up to 5000 watts at about the same time WWL did. And it latched onto a new force in the world of broadcasting: the national networks. WSMB was the first New Orleans network affiliate. It joined with NBC, the first radio network, in 1929.
As network programming grew in appeal, the NBC affiliation made WSMB an essential station for New Orleans listeners. Indeed, radios of the Thirties, which frequently showed radio station call letters on their dials and sometimes even on pushbuttons, always provided a quick access to WSMB.
The Thirties and Forties are thought of as the Golden Age of Radio. (It should be noted, though, that listenership is far higher now than then.) This was the heyday of the great radio dramas (The Shadow, Suspense, Lights Out), the classic comedies (Fibber McGee & Molly, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, The Great Gildersleeve), and the original soap operas (Ma Perkins, Just Plain Bill).
Right in the middle of this magical era came World War II and all the real drama that brought to the news and to everyday life. Throughout the Golden Age WSMB was New Orleans’ leading source of the kind of programs you often see nostalgic references to in cultural histories. It held a position and a degree of success that the network television stations do today.
Live broadcasting remained active among the network shows. WSMB was especially active in the realm of remote broadcasting, and was the first station to report Mardi Gras live from the streets of the city.
By the end of the war, WSMB was very successful, indeed. It embarked upon its first major studio renovation in 1946. Just a few years earlier it developed the transmitter site that it still uses to this day, along what is now Terry Parkway.
The Golden Age of Radio ended when the not-so-golden age of television began. In New Orleans, that was 1948, when WDSU turned Channel Six on. People bought televisions as soon as they could afford them, and turned their backs on the radio shows that had entertained them for the previous two decades. And at a time when the art of the radio drama was at its zenith!
Like most other network radio stations, WSMB wasn’t sure what to do next. So it kept on doing the same thing. That strategy didn’t have a prayer of succeeding, if for no other reason than that the networks were amputating one program after another from their schedules. Only news and (for awhile) variety shows continued to thrive on the networks.
This dilemma was compounded when the ABC network merged with the Paramount Theatre chain—which, by this time, included the Saenger. This made ABC an owner of WSMB, and it switched the station’s affiliation from NBC to its own programming in 1951. This may have been good for ABC but it was terrible for WSMB. ABC was a distant third in audience to NBC and CBS, and offered much less programming. WSMB’s fortunes began to slip precipitously as the 1950s unfurled.
Saved By The Disk Jockey
Fortunately, there was music. As network programming evaporated, the gaps were filled by longer and longer shows of guys playing records. These had always been on the air—listeners liked hearing the big bands and the popular singers that followed them.
Disk jockey shows were cheap and easy to produce. Yet people loved to listen to them. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise how popular they were. A new gang of listeners, mostly on the young side, came up the WSMB elevator to watch their favorite disk jockeys spin tunes and sprinkle banter. The vogue of the time was to never play two records in a row without inserting at least a short routine between them.
The disk jockeys became celebrities—much more so than the staid announcers that preceded them. WSMB promoted itself as The Station of the Five Stars. The five stars were: Roy Roberts, whose show evolved later into WSMB’s all-time greatest act. Marshall Pearce, the station’s program director for almost 30 years. Sid Noel, who later reincarnated himself as Dr. Morgus the Magnificent on Channel Four. Jim Brown, who moved on and dropped out of sight. And Scott Muni, who became a long-running radio personality on rock stations in New York City.
These were the days before rock ‘n’ roll, and teenagers’ listening diets included Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, the Hilltoppers, Kaye Starr, and the rest of the Your Hit Parade ilk. When, in the late Fifties, rock did take over, WSMB chose to stay with the music it was already featuring, and the audience that liked it. WTIX and WNOE played rock ‘n’ roll for the kids of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their big brothers and sisters, and their parents, stuck with WSMB. Those listeners developed a loyalty to the station that almost defied comprehension.
The credit for that loyalty belongs to John Vath. He had an idea he called “people-to-people radio.” In place of the affected style universal among radio announcers, he insisted on a more conversational approach. His announcers were going to be less like performers and more like neighbors.
WSMB’s familiar style and its appeal to the adult audience created one of the greatest success stories in the annals of New Orleans radio. WSMB grabbed the number one ratings position among adult listeners, and held it for over 15 years. In 1965, it became the first New Orleans radio station to bill over a million dollars’ worth of business in a single year. It was many more years before another station pulled off that trick.
New Orleans’s First Talk Radio Station
By the 1960s, most of the Five Stars were gone, replaced by what became a legendary air staff. The signature show of the station was “Nut and Jeff,” WSMB’s morning team from 1961 until 1988. The chemistry between long-time WSMB disk jockey Roy Roberts and newsman Jeff Hug made them major local stars. The minimally-produced show—it was just the two of them shooting the breeze—had absolutely no fear of corn. They eschewed nothing within the bounds of good taste if it would result in a laugh. For four hours every morning, tens of thousands of Orleanians tuned in. Because, among other reasons, here were a couple of guys who were unmistakably local in their outlook and love of good times. Theirs would become the longest-running New Orleans radio show in history, a record it still holds–although The Food Show will surpass Nut and Jeff if it is still on the air in December of this year.
After midnight, another new show grew up. Larry Regan, a disk jockey from the sock-hop era, began talking to his listeners between records and airing the conversations. At first, Larry related what the caller was saying (there being no way of putting the caller’s voice on the air). This ultimately became a program entirely devoted to telephone talk. The callers used handles (“The Outlaw” was the most famous) and frequently held forth at great length on not very much. It was widely listened to and often very amusing.
Another talk show developed in the Sixties in midday. Keith Rush, holding strong conservative opinions on almost everything, pulled strong ratings for twenty years. His show, punctuated by leaves of absence when he ran for various public offices, infuriated more than its share of people. In other words, it was far ahead of its time, and was the kind of talk show that would be right in step today.
WSMB and its diehard listeners had a great love affair for two decades. But nothing like that could last forever. It had a dark side: few new listeners were coming aboard. This could be observed in the ratings in the Eighties, which showed that the WSMB audience was getting older and dying. The station was frustrated in its attempts to fix that, by the very listeners who had made the station so successful. Any change in the perennial programs was greeted with loud disapproval by the long-time audience.
A huge controversy was engendered by the sudden death, in 1978, of “The Sounds of Music”–the name by which all of WSMB’s remaining disk-jockey programs were known. WSMB then became the first all-talk station in New Orleans. But, to read the letters that appeared in the Times-Picayune for months afterwards, you would have thought that the station had espoused devil worship. The move, of course, was perfect for the time, and preserved WSMB’s ratings for a few more years. But the relationship with the audience would never be the same.
There were other clouds on the horizon. FM took over a lion’s share of the radio audience during the 1980s. And the owner of the station—a New York-based oil company—was staking its future on the prospect of obtaining the New Orleans cable television franchise. After it became clear that WSMB Cable was not going to be a reality, the radio station was essentially set adrift. Cash flow had long since been directed away from the station. Its equipment—most of it dating back to 1965—was in such disrepair that the station was frequently out of line with federal requirements.
The deaths in the early Eighties of John Vath and Marshall Pearce left the station rudderless. None of their successors were up to the challenge. One manager actually proposed turning the station into a round-the-clock bingo game and changing the venerable call letters to KENO.
Rebirth, Near-Death, And The Food Show
A chance for rebirth came in 1988, when local outdoor-advertising magnate Marc Winston bought the station. He invested heavily in rebuilding the physical plant, installing the best of everything from the studio to the transmitter. He moved the station out of its original studios in the Maison Blanche Building. This was sad but necessary; after 65 years, the place had become an engineering nightmare.
Winston also made long-overdue programming changes to attract some new listeners. On July 18, 1988, Winston replaced virtually the entire on-air staff, including the venerable but creaky Nut and Jeff team. The new on-air crew was beefed up to a level never before seen at WSMB. There was a full-time news and sports staff, plus round-the-clock live talk show programs. The idea was simple: to steal some of the success of WWL.
One of the new shows was originally thought of as merely a nice midday time-filler. In fact, it was another first for WSMB: America’s only daily call-in talk show hosted by a restaurant critic. That’s my Food Show, of course. It’s the only remaining vestige of the sweeping changes of 1988.
Knowing what a passion New Orleanians have for food, I thought the show would be a success. But neither I nor anyone else could have predicted that “The Food Show” would become the most heavily sponsored most listened-to show on WSMB. It defies the conventional wisdom of running a radio station, which is to draw as large and heterogeneous an audience as possible. Instead, “The Food Show” appeals to a more limited audience, but one enthusiastically interested in the subject.
It was hoped that the other shows would do as well. But neither ratings nor sales ever got off the ground. An abrasive host named Ed Tyll tried to woo a younger audience for WSMB with shock-jock techniques. He accomplished what many in the business thought impossible: he drove off what was left of WSMB’s perennial, hyper-loyal audience.
Shortly thereafter, WSMB came dangerously close to disappearing from the dial. The station began signing off at ten p.m., and remained off the air on Sundays. Your author was the final station manager under Winston; I brought the station back to full-time, but the business remained bleak.
In April 1992, Winston sold the station to WSMB’s powerful rival WWL. The station moved to WWL’s studios, 24-hour programming was restored, and a new slate of network programs was installed. But the most valuable aspect of the station remained: its all-talk format. It introduced Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Bill O’Reilly to local listeners, broadcast live coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, and other unique programs.
Technical Trivia
During most of its history WSMB was an AM-only station at 1350 in the dial. But when it signed on, frequency allocation had not come into being. The station signed on the air at 940 kilocycles, broadcasting from a set of wires suspended between two towers on the roof of the Maison Blanche Building. After a few years, the frequency changed to 1010, and a new transmitter was built on the edge of the swamp on Old Gentilly Road. This proved a terrible site, putting forth an almost uncatchable signal. So a new transmitter site was built at the Algiers Naval Air Station. That lasted until 1939, when it was destroyed by a tornado. A new transmitter site on Behrman Highway near what would later become Oakwood Mall was developed; the station remains there to this day.
In 1932 the FCC divided all broadcast frequencies into clear-channel, regional, and local categories. WSMB was assigned a regional frequency, 1320. It remained there until 1941, when the AM band was expanded and most American stations were moved a few slots up the dial. That’s when WSMB became 1350 AM.
In 1934, WSMB was charged by a station in Akron, Ohio, with interfering with its signal. That’s when WSMB began directional broadcasting at night, nulling its signal to the north after dark. That was no problem back then, when most Orleanians lived nearby. Now, however, with far-flung suburbs, this ancient decision is a curse (one shared by most AM stations, by the way).
WSMB was a pioneer in FM broadcasting—too much so. It signed on the original (and later relocated) FM band in 1947 at 46.3 on the dial. Broadcasting with a power of 240 kilowatts, it still holds the record as the most powerful radio station in the history of New Orleans. But few people had FM receivers. WSMB-FM, despite its superior sound, never had much of an audience, and in 1953 it was terminated, never to return.
WSMB also planned to get into television, and indeed held a construction permit for Channel 13. It decided against the idea, and sold its rights to the channel to the station that became WVUE-TV.
What’s next? Digital AM broadcasting? Maybe. An increase in power to 50,000 watts? Possibly. Who knows?
A Day from the Golden Age of Radio
WSMB’s Program Schedule, February 14, 1945
7:00 a.m. News Roundup Local
7:15 Remember NBC
7:45 War News Local
8:00 Ration Summary Local
8:15 Mirth Madness NBC
8:30 Know The Answer Local
8:45 Daytime Classics NBC
9:00 Air Newspaper Local
9:15 Robert St. John NBC
9:30 Finders Keepers NBC
10:00 Road of Life NBC
10:15 New York Fashion Letter Local
10:30 Scuttlebutt Local
10:45 Health Talk Local
11:00 War News Local
11:15 Words and Music NBC
11:30 U.S. Air Force Band NBC
12:00 noon Melodies Local
12:15 p.m. War News Local
12:30 Echoes from the Pipes NBC
12:45 Morgan Beatty and News NBC
1:00 The Guiding Light NBC
1:15 Today’s Children NBC
1:30 Women in White NBC
1:45 Behind the War News Local
2:00 Women of America NBC
2:15 Ma Perkins NBC
2:30 Pepper Young’s Family NBC
2:45 Right to Happiness NBC
3:00 Mary Noble, Backstage Wife NBC
3:15 Stella Dallas NBC
3:30 Lorenzo Jones NBC
3:45 Widder Brown NBC
4:00 When a Girl Marries NBC
4:15 Portia Faces Life NBC
4:30 War News Local
4:45 Aloha Land Local
5:00 Lone Ranger NBC
5:30 Jill Jackson Local
5:45 Walter Williams NBC
6:00 Supper Club NBC
6:15 News Roundup NBC
6:30 Cheerful Earful Local
6:45 H.V. Kaltenborn and the News NBC
7:00 Mr. & Mrs. North NBC
7:30 Carton of Cheer NBC
8:00 Eddie Cantor NBC
8:30 Mr. District Attorney NBC
9:00 Kay Kyser’s Kollege NBC
10:00 World At Large Local
10:15 Richard Harkness and News NBC
10:30 Music for Tonight NBC
11:00 War News Local
11:15 Dan Ryan Serenade Local
11:30 Design for Dancing Local
12:00 midnight Sign Off