[GreenKeys] Teletype sounds in newscasts

[Richard Knoppow]

   WRKO was formerly WNAC. At one time owned by the Shepard 
department stores, one of the partners in the Mutual Broadcasting 
System. It was bought by RKO General a division of General Tire 
and Rubber Co. General Tire bought the RKO theaters division when 
RKO Radio was broken up by the Paramount consent decree. The 
legal agreement limited a single owner to being in any two but 
all three parts of the motion picture industry: production, 
distribution and exhibition. Most of the five major companies 
sold off their theater divisions. RKO was one of the largest. 
General Tire owned something called RKO Teleradio division which 
owned radio stations. Teleradio also took on the RKO theater 
division. The production end of RKO was bought by Howard Hughes 
who proceeded to mismanage it to death. The RKO physical plant 
was sold to Desilu. There is still a stub of the RKO distribution 
arm in existence. They are the proprietors of the RKO trademark 
and hold some of the library but not all of it. The whole 
business history of RKO is very complex. It began as a merger of 
several silent picture companies and theater companies organized 
by Joseph Kennedy. He had no sense of the motion picture 
industry. When sound arrived it was extraordinarily expensive but 
necessary to survival. Kennedy arranged to sell his company 
(called Film Booking Offices) to RCA. RCA at the time held 
patents in had inhereted from its parent General Elecric for a 
method of recording sound on motion picture film but had 
difficulty finding clients due to Western Electric having gotten 
there first. They acquired FBO and associated companies, to 
create a market for their Photophone recording system. The 
company was called Radio-Keith-Orpheum, the latter names from two 
of the major theater chains owned by Kennedy (also Pantages but 
that didn't get into the name). This was 1929, smack dab at the 
beginning of the depression. RKO never did well and went bankrupt 
about at the time General Electric sold out its interests in RCA. 
I am getting away from the story. In any case General Tire 
acquired the radio and TV stations which had formerly been 
associated with Mutual except for WOR in New York and WGN in 
Chicago (Chicago Tribune). Mutual never developed a TV network. I 
must now say that I can't remember an important date. General 
Tire ran into problems with the United States government for 
running a scam in its international dealings. On top of this the 
Boston station was discovered to have claimed to run 
advertisements it did not run but charged for. They were warned 
but did it again. The FCC decided that between this and the bad 
history of General Tire business ethics they were unqualified to 
hold any broadcast licenses and were forced to divest themselves 
of all broadcast holdings. They had stations in Boston, Los 
Angeles, San Francisco, elsewere and had to sell all of them and 
agree never to engage in the broadcasting business again.
     I should probably proof read this but is all so OT that I 
think I will quit. All this history is on the web with a little 
searching. In its early days WNAC was a well respected station 
and Shepard also operated the Yankee Network (mostly NBC) and the 
Colonial Network. An early practitioner of FM radio.

On 3/24/2020 3:26 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2020, Bill Horne wrote:
>
>> In 1976, I was a newly-hired engineer at WRKO in Boston. On my 
>> first day, during break, I wandered down to the (abandoned) TV 
>> studio and wen to inspect the Teletype machine that they 
>> showed in the background of the opening to their news program.
>
> [...]
>
> Jut curious, was WRKO any relation to RKO Radio Pictures?  I 
> loved seeing those old B&W films on TV (hey, all B&W films are 
> good!), and especially the "RKO Radio Pictures V V V" being 
> transmitted in CW :-)
>
> -- Dave VK2KFU
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-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL