Radio Broadcast - 1925, February - 113 Pages ... - VacuumTubeEra

THE CONTROL ROOM AT STATION WJAX, WHERE SOME OF THE RADIO DRAMA OCCURRED
When Two Political Conventions Were Going on at the Same
Time Some Interesting Sidelights on the Life of a Broadcasting
Station Engineer What Goes on Before the Curtain is Raised
BY DON S. KNOWLTON
Manager, station WJAX, Cleveland, Ohio
4, 1924, was the busiest day we ever
had at station WJAX.
The excitement really started several
JULY
days before, when we hooked in on the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company
wire tie-up and began broadcasting the
National Democratic Convention from Madison
Square Garden in New York. After that
had been going day and night for a week the
boys in the station began to get slightly weary
and every time the words "twenty-four for
Underwood" came through, the gang set up a
cheer you could hear from one end of the
twenty story Union Trust Building to the
other.
To top that, along came the Filipino Orchestra
from the S.S. Leviathan on a 'radio broadcasting
tour. They were due to broadcast
over our station on the evening of July 3rd.
We had the machinery all set up so that this
Leviathan orchestra could do their act down in
the lobby of the Hotel Cleveland and we had
our remote control panel and our line installed
to do the broadcasting from that location in
the evening.
And then the Democrats kept right on gumming
things up. Of course, we had expected
that the Democrats would get through nominating
and go home by that time, but they
didn't. They kept right on going during the
day hours of July 3rd and started in on a
long evening session. Would the Democrats
get through in time for us to broadcast
the Leviathan orchestra, or wouldn't they
The Leviathan crowd had to make a train at
twelve o'clock that night.
While we were stewing about that, in came
the word that we were to broadcast the La