It would be negligent not to acknowledge how and by whom WJML came into existence. Prior to 1965 there were few FM radio stations. It was a new technology that hadn't yet gotten support from the consumer side of electronics. Home FM receivers weren't widespread because there weren't many FM radio stations. FM radio in cars was unheard of. It was a classic chicken or egg debacle. In Northern Michigan it was even more of a challenge to develop a successful FM radio operation dependent on advertising revenue. It took someone with swagger. A bigger than life personality that could convince a group of investors that FM was the future and to back a project that was so big that it dwarfed the coverage area of every AM station in the Upper and Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
FM at the time was programmed with jazz or classical music. Program hosts or commercials were few. Aside from FCC requirements for news and public affairs programs the stations were mostly place holders for the day some kind of audience would develop and they were generally ignored by management. But John Harrington was not of that mind set. He believed that his station would be programmed just like an AM station.
But before we continue we need to pause and look at the broadcast veteran behind such a bold project.
There are many pioneers of radio that have passed through history with little acknowledgement. They were true giants as broadcasting started. They built the 50,000 watt super stations that covered the country, entertaining and informing a brand new consumer audience and it was in this new entertainment medium that John Harrington found a career that spanned over 4 decades.
It was a difficult to track down a true time line but there was a 1932 Radio and Entertainment article that gives us somewhat of a glimpse of who Johnny Harrington was:
By Yanner Alexander
If John Harrington has an ambition tucked away in his upper left hand desk drawer, it's to be a big time sports announcer, always providing St. Louis is the home base.
Not a spectator sportsman. Looks like a football player and was. Played guard at University of Arkansas. A three-letter man at Kirkwood H.S. Basketball, football and baseball ranked in that order of his affections.
Baseball worked its way up with him. An outfielder in his senior year at high without playing at all. Now when he broadcasts Cardinal games, he yells so enthusiastically that Thomas Patrick Convey wants him to pipe down a little.
And it's not a pose. Talking two to three hours from Sportsman's Park is a grind, and he prefers to take his baseball on off afternoons without benefit of remote control. Believes nearly every St. Louisan is well educated in the fine points of the game, citing the diminishing number of technical queries received by him and other members of the KWK staff - most of them accounted for by the annual crop of small boys. Never misses a local football game and wishes he could announce them over the air.
Born in New York some 23 years ago, Chicago, then St. Louis became his home. Likes his "Saturday night town" better than any other. His program, if any, includes marrying, a pleasant home in the country, two good automobiles, a salary of around $500 a month, just enough work and plenty of time for play. Doesn't think he's bright or ambitious, but isn't so bashful you'd notice it.
Started this interview by spiking the report that he's engaged to a beautiful blonde. Dates more than one girl answering that description, anyhow. Also, likes them rather small and dark.
However, he's letting all kinds of engagements slide until fall when he returns from hermiting it out on the river. Let the mountain come-. He's living out at Drake with Sterling Harkins, whose wife and baby have gone to Mobile, Ala., for the season, and several other congenials. It's a forty minute drive to the studios.
Working on an alternating schedule, he's able to get in lots of swimming, his favorite sport as a participant. Was a life guard at Osage Country Club three summers, the hardest job he ever had.
Oh yes, in case you don't already know and can't wait for television, he has curly brown hair, nice blue eyes, turned up nose and the beginning of a swell tan. And he likes spinach.
(Originally published in Radio & Entertainment 5/29/1932)
If there was a sport being played John Harrington covered it, talked about it and often was there at the microphone giving the play-by-play coverage with his own style that kept the listening audience glued to their radio, cheering or booing, caught-up in the infectious booming delivery of the man who loved sports just as much as his radio audience.
Historical material curtesy of
Brothers Les and Ralph Atlass were amateur radio experimenters in the early 1900's. It was from those experiments WBBM came into existence. John recalls his introduction to Les and the beginning of a 25 year association with the marvelous WBBM whose call letters at one time stood for "We Broadcast Better Music".
"I well remember the day he hired me in St. Louis. He had come down on one of the first American Airlines scheduled flights into St. Louis, and the airplane heat had gone out and it was about minus 20 degrees up where they were flying. Then, to make matters worse, after arriving at the St. Louis airport, he immediately got into a taxicab with no heat. So by the time he got to the Mart Building where Mr. Jack VanVolkenburg, who was one of his proteges, and I were waiting, he was so frozen stiff, that he came running into the office and jumped up onto the radiator. While he was standing on the radiator, Mr. VanVolkenburg said to me, `John, I would like you to meet the Boss. Here he stands.' I had to reach up and shake hands with him. He looked at me and he said, `Hmmm, you're a sportscaster, huh?' `Well', I said, `I'm trying to be one.' He said, `Well, report in Chicago on Monday morning.' I asked what time and he said, `Anytime before noon.' That's the way I was hired, by a man standing on a radiator in the office of Mr. Van Volkenburg, who at that time was general manager of KMOX which was part of Mr. Atlass' Central Division of the Columbia Broadcasting System." Harrington recalled how it seemed that everyone "the Boss" took an interest in went on to bigger and better things. He said that Gene Autry owes much of his success to Atlass. "Mr. A. once told me that the way he got to know Gene Autry was when Will Rogers made a stop here in Chicago and was talking to him about a cowboy he had heard out west. Rogers said, 'I heard a telegrapher out there, who was in a small railroad station, who thought he could sing. I think he has some possibilities and I think you ought to write him a letter and ask him to come in and sing.' Mr. Atlass did write to him and from that came the famous Gene Autry. "Of course," said Harrington, "there was another story too, about the Boss. When he found out that Gene Autry was taking music lessons, he said, `You'll have to quit that or be fired, because you're going to spoil it, if you try to take singing lessons and learn to be a singer.' I think Gene stopped taking singing lessons right then and there."
The story of WBBM founder Les Atlass who was playing with transmitters at the age of 17 in 1911 is a wonderful history of radio pioneers, and well worth exploring.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Station-Albums/WBBM-Yesterday-Today.pdf
On the next installment I'll have more reflections on the WJML story.
WGN Gets Johnny Harrington, KWK's Ace Sports Announcer
John Harrington, popular KWK announcer and sports commentator who grew up with radio in St. Louis, has left the Mound City to go with station WGN, Chicago.
Harrington's move to Chicago was like his sports broadcasts, swift and unexpected. The former announcer entered radio in September of 1929. At that time he didn't have the slightest desire to enter the game but visited the KWK studios with a hankering to see the transmitter. They wouldn't let Harrington in unless he had some business with the studio so John promptly asked for a job - more to see the station than anything else. He was given an audition and hired, and has been with radio station KWK since then until last Thursday night.
Though Harrington entered radio through an accident more than anything else, his early training suited him for an announcer's spot in front of the "mike." He had exercises in voice culture and oratory at the Kirkwood High School and the University of Arkansas down Fayetteville way.
Some of the assignments that stand out in Harrington's memory are helping in the broadcast of the last two World's Series in St. Louis.
He has interviewed such notables as Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, the most eccentric of all modern ball players, Sammy West, the leading hitter in the American League, and other notables in the sport world. He introduced Floyd Gibbons to St. Louis radio audiences on his two visits here and is christened by some the "Gibbons" of the Central States on account of his rapid fire reviews.
(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment, 6/3/1933)