You're on the Air |
Common terms and phrases
announcer artists asked ball baseball Beau Brummel BILL NOLAN broadcasting Bryan called CLICQUOT CLUB ESKIMOS concert control panel control room convention course crowd Danny Deever EMILIO DE GOGORZA entertainment ERNEST HARE everything eyes face famous feet fight Graham McNamee gram Greb hall hand head phones hear heard HEYWOOD BROUN hour hundred lady later letters lights listening look loud-speaker ment micro microphone mike minutes monitor's booth mother never night once orchestra Phillips Carlin piano play POLO GROUNDS pretty radio audience reception room right fielder ring roar seemed shot sing singer someone sort speaking speech staff stand Stanford White station stood Street studio talk tell thing Thornton thought thousand thrill tions tone voice watch WEAF Winnie Woolworth Building World Series York
Popular passages
Page vii - A machine amounts to nothing much unless a man can ride. Graham McNamee has been able to take a new medium of expression and through it transmit himself — to give out vividly a sense of movement and of feeling. Of such is the kingdom of art.
Page 117 - That is, a ray of light from this star takes twenty-one years to reach the earth, traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second.
Page 52 - You must make each of your listeners, though miles away from the spot, feel that he or she, too, is there with you in that press stand, watching the pop bottles thrown in the air; Gloria Swanson arriving in her new ermine coat; McGraw in his dugout, apparently motionless, but giving signals all the time.
Page 4 - I know you are sitting in little farmhouses or in city apartments with head phones over your ears, standing by loud-speakers in the city streets, or massed in great concert halls, all listening to what we say in quiet syllables, just as if we were talking to our wives. Yet we never see that vast audience, your massed ranked faces, and you never see ours. We are voices out of the night, almost out of the unknown.
Page 181 - Well, Judge, there it is. Now these letters came in on all sorts and hues of paper, even on birch bark. They contained prose, poetry, and vers libre, and were done in script, pen, plain pencil, blue pencil, type; and not a few were printed by hand with marginal decorations. But the one, after all, that I value most, is quite simple in character. It is from a iiospital and significant enough of the pleasure radio gives so many afflicted millions to print in full: "Mr.
Page 105 - ... pacing up and down once more, while all the time the perspiration ran off his face in streams. Bori, on the other hand, was still, and apparently composed, but ice-cold. I knew it, for recognizing this strange symptom, too, she asked me to touch her arms. "Just feel them," she said, "they're like ice —it's almost as if I were going to die.
Page xvi - It seems perhaps much longer ago than that, now that so many millions are accustomed to tuning in each night; but, if you think back, you will remember that it was only in 1922 that you got your first radio set, something you put together yourself, if you were handy, or purchased somewhere under a manufacturer's label that is now forgotten. Not long after that the first radio ANNOUNCER'S CONTROL Box AT WEAF es I magazine came out.
Page 32 - I was cold from the frosty weather—and all this time the "mike" was on. Many letters came in from fans amused over the accident, and a still greater number after another mishap in a World Series game when the rain suddenly came down and spoiled my new suit. Just to entertain people I jokingly mentioned this fact, never dreaming what would be the result—not only a host of sympathetic letters but many offers from clothing houses and individuals for new suits.
Page 35 - Hello, Mary, out in Flatbush!" Of course, arrangements had been previously made with "Mother" or "Mary" to tune in at that hour. Usually they were disappointed, or else half the message got over with disastrous results; the first syllable of the "Hello...
Page 34 - In those early days, we had considerable trouble through thoughtless conversation from visitors who were occasionally allowed in the studios while we were "on the air," also with people who tried to sneak over messages. A broadcasting station such as ours, which is primarily designed for entertainment, is not allowed to send out personal communications...