Word: godfreys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...soon moved from the radio bush league of Baltimore to an NBC staff announcer's job in Washington. One morning, speeding along Riggs Road to the Congressional Airport for practice at flying a glider, Godfrey had a head-on collision with a truck. He lay in a strait-jacket of bandages and casts for five months. For two years he could not bend his knees. He still walks with a slight limp...
During his long hospitalization, Godfrey spent hours listening to the radio. "Those days we were all talking to the 'ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience.' I decided there wasn't any such audience. There was just one guy or one girl off somewhere listening by themselves. Hell, if they were together, they'd have something better to do than listen to the radio...
Valuable Lesson. It was a revolutionary discovery. Back at NBC he put his new theories to the test on a dawn-till-breakfast show that soon built up a fanatic following among Washington's thousands of live-alone Government girls. Encouraged, Godfrey began applying the same personal approach to his commercials ("Whew!" he would say after reading some copywriter's purple prose advertising lace undies). Everybody was outraged but his listeners, and when the listeners hurried to buy, sponsors and radiomen quickly calmed down. Godfrey had learned a lesson he has never forgotten: "They don't care...
...growing informality on the air was soon matched by excessive informality off it. Most announcers in the early days were temperamental; some were habitually late to work, and others had trouble with wine and women. Godfrey scored high in all departments. Despite his growing popularity with the listeners, he was finally fired...
Harry Butcher, then manager of the rival CBS station WJSV, was quick to grab him. In the deal, WJSV (now WTOP) got most of Godfrey's morning audience and 80% of his former sponsors. NBC retaliated by bringing down a New York announcer named Don Douglas to buck Arthur. Unreasonably terrified by the threat of big-city competition, Godfrey convinced Butcher that he should stay on the air all night to kill Douglas' first broadcast. Since WJSV closed down at midnight, Godfrey had to broadcast from the transmitter in a swamp near Alexandria, Va., with no other props...