MARLIN’S GOOD-TIME PICTURE BOOK! – Part 1

This is how I look today, now in my 84^th year of residency on earth! The giant poster, though, is from 2005 when XM Radio threw me a 70^th birthday party. Organized by my wife Alicia and Vice-President of Human Resources, Anne Kontner, the entire company was invited to take part and, as you see, dozens signed this poster, which features my official XM Radio portrait photo.

Moving on … it’s now nearly a year since my memoir, RADIO … My Love, My Passion, made its debut. In it, I very clearly state that one could see larger color versions — where available — of the pictures which are found in the book here on my website. A fair number have been included in various articles that have appeared on this page … yet there are several that, so far, have not.

Let me begin to correct that now by displaying a few . . . 

First, as seen on Page 72, from 1966 … here’s that wonderful WDVR “Top Dog” billboard — proclaiming that the station was the most-listened-to FM station in the market — which Philadelphians saw as they drove north on the Roosevelt Boulevard/U. S. Route One after crossing the Schuylkill River:

Next, here’s a WRFM ad which was placed in an end space in every car of the New York City subway system in September of 1970. It was designed to continue building awareness of the WRFM call letters and as a reinforcement of the “Begin To Like Radio Again” theme that had been our key promotional phrase throughout 1970. While the ad appears exactly as it was posted — all black letters on a white background, this visual is from a follow-up we did in the next month’s issue of the Advertising News of New York, presenting the station’s facts for the advertising timebuyers to seriously consider:

Staying with WRFM, as described on Page 127 of my memoir, I was walking through Bloomingdale’s store in the City one evening and spotted this pedestal cup decorated with Grecian figurines. Crazy thought: “What if those figurines could be replaced with WRFM’s FM Dial Card artwork? All kinds of businesses are beginning to give out ceramic mugs with their names and logos emblazoned on them … it’s a concept I love, but we’re a class operation, so we’ve got to go a step above in appearance!”  Here’s the result:

Some 15 years prior to the above, possessing two of these RCA Model 74 ribbon-velocity type microphones — as discussed on Page 17 — enabled me to secure my paying job in radio, engineering a Saturday afternoon two-man DJ remote from a car dealership. I was hired because I could provide these “modern” mikes and some related components, including a public address system, none of which WTNJ in Trenton, New Jersey had at the time… its facilities consisted of no more usable equipment than needed for daily broadcasting. This type of microphone was introduced by RCA in the mid-1930’s, and was a giant step ahead of what Western Electric and anyone else offered at the time.

Finally, let me turn the clock way back and show you something from the early days of radio broadcasting … a Western Electric Model 600A double-button carbon microphone, dating to the 1920’s. This is exactly how it looked when I found it, complete on its spring mountings and stand, buried under rubble in a junk closet in the small transmitter building of WTNJ, which was located just off of U. S. Route One in Fallsington, Pennsylvania … only a few hundred feet from the car dealership where we did the remote broadcasts using the microphone shown above. It has now been in my possession for more than 60 years!

There’s a few more to share, but we’ll save them for another Musings.

Meanwhile, thank you for continuing to sign up to receive notification when we post a new Marlin’s Musings. I’ll do my best to keep the subject matter interesting as the weeks pass. The only question … what will be on my mind next time? And, I’d love to have your comments — positive, negative or an embellishment to the story — and look forward to reading!

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