@Bcast_Md

Special Collections in Media & Culture

5 notes

Radio Ads — ephemeral

“When advertisers first started getting into radio, some of them were concerned that it was too ephemeral — that the words that came over the radio set would come and go so quickly that the audience wouldn’t catch it. But proponents would argue that that ephemerality wasn’t a problem because radio used the voice, and the voice was a much more effective vehicle for the advertising message than that dry, impersonal, voiceless print on the page.”

– Cynthia B. Meyers, author of A Word From Our Sponsor: Admen Advertising and the Golden Age of Radio

111 notes

Howard K. Smith (1914-2002) was a broadcast journalist and commentator, first for the Columbia Broadcasting System (1940-1961) and, later, the American Broadcasting Company (1962-1979). One of the preeminent names in broadcast news, his numerous...

Howard K. Smith (1914-2002) was a broadcast journalist and commentator, first for the Columbia Broadcasting System (1940-1961) and, later, the American Broadcasting Company (1962-1979). One of the preeminent names in broadcast news, his numerous awards included the Peabody and an Emmy. Smith was also the author of several books, including Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War (1942) and an autobiography, Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter (1996).

The papers of Howard K. Smith in the University of Maryland Special Collections span from 1936 to 2001 and include professional and personal correspondence, press clippings, publicity materials, transcripts, manuscripts, citations, and photographs. In addition, Smith kept the thousands of letters he received from listeners and viewers throughout his career in response to his programs and commentaries, responding as often as he could.

P.S.  On the shelves behind him is Google, circa 1960. Scattered across his desk is the equivalent of email during the same period, produced by the teletype machine over his shoulder.

Filed under UMDSpecialConnections broadcastjournalism radio television 20thcentury

25 notes

The Beautiful World of Zoom, the Short-Lived PBS Show That Once Had More Viewers Than Sesame Street

ZOOM, a half-hour PBS show for 7-to-12-year-olds, was ’70s kids’ culture in a nutshell: brightly colored, optimistic, utopian, short-lived. The show was part of the educational TV boom of that decade, which was kickstarted by the establishment and funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS in the late sixties and early seventies. The most famous show of that kind is, of course, Sesame Street, for younger kids, but there was also Electric Company, for elementary schoolers, and a scattering of regionally-produced shows: Hodgepodge Lodge from Maryland, Vegetable Soup from New York…

Filed under kids tv