The Remembered Yearn
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THE REMEMBERED YEARN GOLDEN "ERSARY A,)- C BROADCASTING J M Morris tYite e/ineinleted Netta A PERSONAL VIEW OF THE 50 YEARS OF BROADCASTING - RADIO AND ETV - THAT WE CALL KOAC, CORVALLIS. SERVICE TO PEOPLE OF OREGON FROM 1922 THROUGH 1972 WITH PROGRAM PHILOSOPHIES, HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF FACILITIES - AND THE PEOPLE WHO KEPT IT ALL HAPPENING DISCLAIMER - This is my view of The Remembered Years! No one else is responsible. If you object to my view of history you are invited under the rules of the F.C.C. to take equal tie! A CONTINUING EDUCATION BOOK CORVALLIS, OREGON Copyright © 1972 James M. Morris Corvallis, Oregon 97330 Continuing Education Publications Waldo 100, Corvallis, Oregon 97331 Printed by Oregon State University Department of Printing it Dedicated to all the people, named and unnamed in these pages, with whom we had the pleasure of working down thru the KOAC Remembered Years! You've been loyal and devoted to the 1922 dream of educational broadcasting. iii Photo by Rebecca Morris Fendrick iv occupant / An Open letter: Bob Hinz is responsible! I've wanted to do this story for a long time. In the mid-sixties during the few years while Luke Lamb was in Oregon...and shortly after I had left the station to head DCE's Information Services..Dr. Lamb in his role as director of educational media would say, "Jimmie, when are you going to write the history of KOAC?" But I kept remembering more than twenty years before when I was asked to help another editor on a shorter historical piece about KOAC. The result was deadly dull. Somehow the facts covering the early span of years didn't run together in an interesting script. Now what would happen when another twenty years were added? So this writing...this dream was delayed...! Then the questioning memo came from Bob. It said, "Dear Jimmie — KOAC will be observing its 50th birthday on December 7, 1972. It would be great to celebrate on that occasion with the book of KOAC history we've always wanted you to write." Fifty years of KOAC history — of educational broadcasting! Robert Louis Stevenson observed that art is the knowledge of what to leave out. Our memories, which leave out so much, are artists of this school. The incomplete survives; the part outlives the whole. And we all know the agony of listening to the man who has total recall. Indeed, if a bore could stop short of making his recital complete, he would cease being a bore.* There was my "out" — and a wonderful one! You, the reader of The Remembered Years escape the boredom and the agony of total recall by the author. And should you be a former member of the staff or a devoted listener, you enrich this story with your own additions to the history. Add the names of favorite staff and talent, your own favorite broadcasts, the *Alan Gregg For Future Doctors. Readers Digest, November 1971. strange and humorous incidents from your own memory. All of these will enrich your reading of my remembered years. And I hope, you won't say, "We11...damn Jimmie, he left out the most important part!" As I moved from the staff in 1963 Oregon Educational Broadcasting included all four stations (KOAC-Radio and KOAC-TV in Corvallis and KOAP-TV and KOAP-FM in Portland) and the radio and television networks each reached some 75% of the people of Oregon. If you and I were content to look at my remembered years from 1922 to 1963, the half century we celebrate would be incomplete. For this reason I have added a final chapter or two in which we have gathered together the news in the press, conversations with present staff, changing times in Oregon and national and world events which have brought changes to KOAC since 1963. It's been great to have been associated with this pioneer among the nation's educational stations and now to be able to tell you about The Remembered Years! J.M. Morris KOAC staff of 1932 (1 to r, front to back) Anthony Euwer, Wallace Kadderly, Zelta Rodenwold, Byron Arnold, Dix Perkins, James Morris, Luke Roberts, Grant Feikert, Don Kneass, Cy Briggs. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication An Open Letter Some Early Memories 1 The Kadderly Years 3 Administration Legislative Direction 17 Chancellors, Presidents and Deans 25 Station Management 31 Marginal Notes Commercial Side 35 National Organization 39 Pressures of Time 42 Live vs Recording 43 Unorganized Podge 50 Remembering The Farm Hour 55 61 Women — Especially 67 News, War, Special Events Oregon School of the Air 77 U of On The Air 86 0 90 Dateline Statehouse From Pops to Classic 94 The Sports Page 101 Video View 107 113 Televised Junior College Project Who Listens? Why? Where? 118 127 KOAC — Since 1963 The Future — Campaign for Excellence 130 Kilocycles, Kilowatts, Decibels 138 The Hall of Fame 143 And Especially Secretaries 149 vii KOAC's first transmitter (then known as KFDJ) with Professor Jordan holding the microphone. Students from his radio class look on and assist with its operation. The first KFDJ staff (1 to r) Webley Edwards, announcer, Wallace Kadderly, director, Jacob Jordan, engineer, Grant Feikert, operator. yin SOME JEMORIES I was a high school boy in Eugene, Oregon, at the time. On my way home from carrying a paper route for the Eugene Guard a friend, Milt Koupal, invited me up to his room to hear his new "wireless." It was the end of World War I and the fellows were back from France where they had used this great new discovery to communicate between trenches. Many of them had learned the code and were talking back and forth sending messages over this grand new device. Milt stuck a pair of "cans" on my ears. All I heard was the hum from the power line right outside his window — but that was enough to get me interested. In the next few minutes he told me all about galena crystals for detectors, tuners made of coils of wire on Quaker Oats boxes, and things he called condensers made of strips of tinfoil and waxed paper rolled up together. In a few days I had duplicated Milt's receiver with his tuning coil, the chunk of galena, some of the mechanical parts from my erector set, and a single telephone earpiece. When the wire that was supposed to go outside to an aerial was touched to a pair of metal bedsprings standing against the wall in my room I heard code signals loud and clear! That receiver had tuned in a sending set operating from the physics laboratory on the University of Oregon campus just a few blocks away. 7YB was the station's call and it was being used to try and bring in news for the student daily "The Emerald." By January, 1922, the Eugene Radio Club listed 18 licensed amateurs as members. 7JU (me) was one of them, and I'd had that license for nearly two years. During this same time, students returning from World War I were enrolling under the original G.I. Bill in engineering and physics at O.A.C. 40 miles away in Corvallis. Some of these fellows were in the lab of Professor Jacob Jordan. Capitalizing on their knowledge and with his own 1 experimental skills (Jordan had been studying radio with Dr. W. Weniger, head of the department, and himself a student in the first radio class held in the United States) Jacob Jordan was busy building one of the new wireless sets that could talk instead of merely sending out dots and dashes. And KOAC was being born! The next few years were hectic ones for me. Developing an intense interest in amateur radio, attending Eugene High School, and keeping up on the beginnings of the broadcast industry. I was building some of those early broadcast receivers for myself and for others in Eugene. Out of this grew a small business with the big name of "Eugene Radio Laboratories." The stock included radio parts for people interested in building their own receivers and complete sets which we were assembling in the shop. KFDJ (later to become KOAC) on the OA.C. campus in Corvallis became one of the stations which we used to test the sets being built. Then there were Portland stations including KGW, those owned by Hallock and Watson, and Meier and Frank. In the evenings we heard California stations, too ...KGO, KPO, KNX. Powell Crosley was marketing a line of radio parts and like so many others he used broadcasting from his own station (WLW, Cincinnati) to promote interest and sales in this new entertainment medium. We listened to WLW nights, way out here in Oregon. All these thoughts seem necessary to emphasize the fact that The Remembered Years stretch back to the very beginnings of KOAC. Not on the campus until the fall of 1924, and then associated with KOAC only as a student at O.A.C. for four years, there are still personal memories of those beginning years: of hearing Professor A.G.B. Bouquet on Wallace Kadderly's farm programs; of women's programs with Miss Claribel Nye and her extension staff; music by the Petris; student variety programs with Webley Edwards and Mel Allen, of announcer Art Kirkham, and of Captain Harry L. Beard and the Cadet Band. Can't you just imagine the sound of a college brass band playing in a plastered room that was the physics lab in Apperson Hall? 2 THE KADDERLY YEARS ...