FUN – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  We had a bit of fun here yesterday.

I asked readers if they could identify the two personalities chosen by civil-defense officials in the 1950s to keep Americans informed in case of a nuclear attack, in part because their voices were so familiar.  We got far more responses than I'd expected, but no one got both names right.  A small number got one right, or the other, but not both.   Answers ran from Ronald Reagan (incorrect) to Arthur Godfrey (correct).  Most respondents said they were just speculating.

The correct answers are Arthur Godfrey and Edward R. Murrow. 

Godfrey, known as "the old redhead," was the most successful broadcaster of the time, logging more hours per week, both radio and TV, than anyone else – a morning show five days a week, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on Monday nights, and Arthur Godfrey and His Friends for an hour each Wednesday night.  His network was CBS, known in those days as the Columbia Broadcasting System.  Americans knew his voice, and his ukulele playing.   Godfrey's star started to fade when he fired an enormously popular singer, Julius LaRosa, on the air, and he was revealed in articles, not as folksy Arthur, but as a cold, jealous, and arbitrary boss.  He died in near-obscurity in 1983.

Edward R. Murrow was often called the father of broadcast news.  His reports from England during the blitz of 1940, starting with the words, "This is London," showed what the medium of radio could do in bringing events directly to the audience.  On television his "See it Now" series, on CBS, became famous for Murrow's devastating portrait of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, for whom "McCarthyism" is named.  Murrow was instrumental in the series of events that brought McCarthy down.  He, and his associate, Fred Friendly, were among the originators of the TV documentary.  Murrow also hosted "Person to Person," which took TV viewers into the homes of the famous, something unique in television.  Among his guests were John and Jackie Kennedy.  Murrow went on to head the United States Information Agency during the Kennedy Administration.  A three-pack-a-day smoker, he died in 1965 of lung cancer.

We'll do another "question to readers" pretty soon.  It was fun.

July 16, 2014