NBC Memories 1942 - 1964
by Bill Roddy

Chapter Six of Twelve

Fast Forward to 1946

I continued as a junior announcer at KPO during the rest of 1942 and early 1943. As I mentioned earlier my shift was always the midnight to six in the morning. At 20 years of age I did not have the experience or the voice. If it had not been for the war NBC would not have hired me. 

When I was a boy I used to spend a lot of time on the waterfront watching ships going out the Golden Gate. I wanted to go to sea. In early 1943, I joined the United States Maritime Service to become a merchant seaman.
I left NBC for the first time and was sent to Catalina Island off the Southern California coast for basic training. NBC was required to give me my old job back at the end of the war.

I'll skip 1943, 1944, 1945 and my years as a shipboard radio operator in the Pacific and go to 1946 and my return to NBC. (Maybe I'll tell you about the war years sometime.)
During the intervening years, the union, AFRA, American Federation of Radio Artists, had abolished the classification of Junior Announcer, which meant NBC had to rehire me as a Senior Announcer.

And they weren't happy about that at all. I was barely qualified to be a Junior Announcer and was certainly out of my league as a 24 year old Senior and besides NBC had to pay me more. Under the law they couldn't fire me, but they could transfer me to another station.  The manager called me in one day and said they had found an NBC affiliate in Montana willing to take me on where I could gain some experience.

I didn't want to go to Montana and told my mother what had happened. 
She was an actress in San Francisco after 1906 and knew I lacked the capabilities. But she had an idea. 
One of her friends in the Thespian Club was Chief Caupolican, a wonderful singer of the old school. he used to appear in Indian headdress in his act in the theatre.*

She hired the chief to give me vocal lessons, and once a week he would come to our basement flat on Fillmore Street and give me vocal lessons. I would sing scales and tongue twisting phrases. He told me I had to project my voice. The chief saved my job and NBC gave me another chance. I never went to Montana.

But I still made mistakes that a more experienced announcer would not have. One time Madame Chiang Kai-Shek came to San Francisco and went on NBC's coast to coast network to appeal for aid for China. She broadcast from her hotel room and it was my job to introduce her from the studio. Everything went fine until I got to her name. The script read, "Now here is Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek." 

I panicked, what the hell was "Mme?" I blurted out, "Now here is Mademoiselle Chiang Kai-Shek.
Fortunately, Mme did not hear me or I would have been off to Montana for sure.

Chapter Seven: The Big Bands

Bill Roddy