NBC Announcer Ben Grauer On Fast News Relays During World War II

06/02/21 • 1 min

For Westinghouse's 50th Anniversary in 1970, longtime NBC radio announcer Ben Grauer spoke about being on his toes with news relays during World War II. Born in New York in 1908, he was a child actor who became an NBC staff announcer in 1930. Grauer covered olympic games, announced for Walter Winchell’s Jergen’s Journal, and was hand selected by Arturo Tuscani to support NBC’s Symphony Orchestra. By World War II he was a senior commentator and reporter.

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Pat Weaver On Why Monitor—Thoughts On Radio Losing Money

On Friday April 1st, 1955, NBC's President Sylvester "Pat" Weaver held a closed circuit press conference for NBC affiliates to announce a new weekend programming format which would be called Monitor. Monitor would completely take over NBC's weekend schedule from 8AM Saturday morning until the end of Sunday night. In this clip, Weaver explains why he feels Monitor can work, and why radio's national network revenue had gotten into trouble. For more on the launch of Monitor, tune into Breaking Walls Episode 116: https://soundcloud.com/thewallbreakers/bw-ep116-the-launch-of-nbcs-monitor-1955?in=thewallbreakers/sets/breaking-walls-the-wall

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Jim Jordan On Fibber McGee's Hall Closet

In 1971 Jim Jordan, better known as Fibber McGee, sat down with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC's the Golden Age of Radio to talk about his career (full interview here - https://www.goldenage-wtic.org/log.html). In this clip Jim talks about the origins of Fibber's hall closet and the famous gag. By 1955, Fibber McGee and Molly was running on NBC as a Sunday—Thursday serial. They were one of the few shows to remain on NBC's Sunday schedule after the network debuted Monitor on June 12th. For more information on this era of Fibber McGee and Molly, tune into Breaking Walls Episode 103: A Weekend at the Malt Shop with Fibber McGee and Molly (1955). For more information on the launch of Monitor, tune into Breaking Walls Episode 116: The Launch of NBC’s Monitor (1955).