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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY OLd-time radio was done live I like to write about old-time radio because it was fun to listen to back in the '30s, and fewer and fewer are now alive who can still remember broadcasts of that era. The radio networks were founded in the 1920s, and by the late '30s, their programs often were masterpieces of the art of using only voices and sound effects to tell stories. The networks also served as platforms for some of the most inventive comedians ever to grace the airwaves. In those years, all network shows were live. The only record of an early radio show was a recording made on a 16-inch metal disc coated with some sort of wax. The result had lots of pops and noises, particularly if the record was played several times. In the early days, each network show was performed twice, once for the Eastern and Central time zones, and once three hours later for the Mountain and Pacific zones. This sometimes led to the two versions of a show being a bit different. One show I remember reading about was one which featured a real bald eagle perched on the gloved hand of his trainer. Why they would have a real eagle there when all they could do was describe him escapes me. The broadcast for the Eastern half of the country went well, but the same could not be said for the West Coast feed. On that show, the eagle got away from his trainer and went flying around the studio, leaving deposits behind him. The radio columns in newspapers the next few days were all devoted to the eagle's escapades. I have no idea how the cast was able to get through the rest of the program. As I said, most of network radio was highly structured. Every comic or dramatic program was given a dress rehearsal before a live audience a day or two before the actual show. People living in Hollywood in those days liked to attend the dress rehearsals, as they were usually funnier than the real broadcast. By the 1930s, stations in the larger cities were affiliated with CBS or NBC, and there were some regional networks that did well, such as the Texas State Network or the Don Lee Network here on the West Coast. In 1942, I worked for a few months at a station in west Texas that had to supply its own programming because there was not a large enough audience to attract a network affiliation. The music on the station was supplied by leased "electrical transcriptions," large records which supplied stations with hundreds of songs for less money than if they had bought their records on the open market. The engineer at the station was George Dodson. He had been with the company from its founding in 1935, and he used to regale me with stories about the first few years of the station's operation. For example, the station did not have a "peak limiter" during its first few years of broadcasting. This device automatically dampens an unexpected loud noise during a broadcast. If the sound was not limited, an extra-loud sound could actually throw the transmitter off the air. Dodson told me that the station broadcast the Sunday morning services of a local church then. He tried to convince the preacher that he had to stay in one place and preach directly into the mike, but the parson loved to pace about the platform. There was no engineer at the broadcast. The man on duty at the station had the chore of controlling the volume, which would have been easy if he had been at the church. But when the preacher walked away from the mike, the studio operator would turn up the volume, and invariably the preacher would stroll back to the pulpit and virtually shout his next words into the microphone. And the station would be "blown off the air." The studio man would get the transmitter back on the air, only to lose it again when the preacher passed by the mike. Technically, life was primitive in those days. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA