History on the Air

Thanks largely to radio, no public figure had ever seemed quite so close to so many citizens as Franklin Roosevelt. Reporting the death of the President who made his own radio history, radio, too, made history of a sort. For four days it was not itself, and for one full minute it was silent.

Most people had come to know Franklin Roosevelt's voice like an intimate's. Radio probably had more attentive listeners on the day of his death than it ever had before. Most of the nation first heard the news over the air.

Faced with one of the most delicate and responsible jobs of its career, radio came through with credit. Technically, the performance was notable; in terms of taste and imagination, passable.

All in all, radio's professionals came off better than the host of minor notables who were rushed to the microphones. Most painful to the ordinary listener was the cumulative effect of the politicos who cannot speak without orating and of well-meaning citizens who aired sincere and hollow banalities. By contrast, radio's shirt-sleevers distinguished themselves.

The news was announced at the White House at 5:48 p.m. Two networks had it on the air one minute later. Thus in many thousands of U.S. homes the first to hear the news were the children. The flash broke into the regular time for juvenile adventure-stories. That was the end of most commercial radio for four days.

"Nobody Believed It." Two minutes after its first flash, NBC had pink, excitable H. V. Kaltenborn commenting. CBS put a second newscaster on the air four minutes after its first flash; nine minutes later Major George Fielding Eliot was on.

The Blue followed its flash with five minutes of detail. Mutual had a commentator on the air in the first quarter-hour. It was about time for the regular overseas news casts. Within slightly more than two hours, overseas correspondents of NBC, CBS and Blue had been broadcasting the first local reactions -- from Paris, Rome, London, Luxembourg. Before the night was over, the reports were coming in from Germany, Guam, Okinawa.

From Admiral Turner's flagship off Okinawa, CBS's Don Pryor reported that at first, among the crew, "nobody believed it." He heard a sailor remark shortly, "It's like somebody dying in your own family." Reported Douglas Edwards from London: "Everyone here wandered if there couldn't be some mistake." Reported the Blue's Clete Roberts from Rome: "I met an American soldier. He came up to me and said: 'The President is dead. I feel so funny. I've got to talk to somebody.' That was how I learned. . . ." Tchaikovsky & Prayers. As poignant as any broadcast comment was a quiet, all-but-casual account by CBS's John Daly, for four years the net's Presidential announcer, who simply described, a few of the President's personal characteristics as he had known them. NBC's longtime Presidential announcer Carleton D. Smith reminisced the next day. From the railroad station at Warm Springs came difficult, well-handled reports by the Blue's John Barlett, CBS's Frank Gaither. They saw the departure of the President's body. "We notice Mrs. Roosevelt has just been helped from her car," said Gaither, ". . . behind Mrs. Roosevelt and Mr. Early is Fala being led on a leash. . . ."

Through the first night the radio air was choked with the words of prominent men & women all over the U.S. In whole-souled American fashion, the broadcasters plunged in all the way.

Next day, and the next, and the day after, U.S. radio wore an unaccustomed air. It almost admitted to a guilt complex about its own normal commercialism.

Out went the commercials, the comedy shows, the soap operas, the blood- &-bluster dramas, the gay music; radio listeners heard little besides reminiscences and tributes to their late President, newscasts, comment, prayers, and the sort of music (Gounod's Ave Maria; Tchaikovsky; Home on the Range) that radiomen variously considered suitable to the na tion's mourning mood. An NBC program from Hollywood offered the music of a 63 -piece orchestra, on a special broadcast involving 20-odd top-ranking movie and radio stars.

For one minute, at 4 p.m. on Saturday, the U.S. radio was silent. To many, this was the most memorable moment in radio's strange four days. Many stations broadcast old records of Roosevelt speeches, and listeners heard with a kind of shock the long familiar voice of the outstanding radio personality of his time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.