Radio history — Mixed media in 1955
Here’s a fun story about media convergence in the Adirondacks as the Golden Age of radio was giving way to television dominance — as reported in the newspaper.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise columnist Eddie Vogt wrote on Sept. 12, 1955 about gathering with some friends in Saranac Lake on a Saturday afternoon to watch the Yankees-White Sox baseball game on the Burlington television station.
For some reason, the scheduled game was not on, so they tuned in to WNBZ radio in Saranac Lake to listen to the broadcast.
After a bit their host announced that he found the game on the Watertown television station, but the sound reception was poor.
So they watched the game on television with the sound turned down and continued listening to the radio broadcast.
“It hadn’t gone very far when someone discovered that the two didn’t synchronize,” Vogt wrote.
It turned out that the fans were listening to the Yankees-White Sox game on the radio and watching the Red Sox-Indians game on television.
In his Feb. 18, 1955 column, Vogt thanked WNBZ announcer Tommy Wertenbaker for playing the song “Three Little Fishes” that Vogt had requested.
“Incidentally,” Vogt wrote, “an interesting sidelight on this year’s WNBZ radiothon, Tommy tells me, is the numbers most often requested have been ‘Mr. Sandman’ and ‘Let Me Go, Lover.’”
Click here to read my most recent previous radio history post.
