Lewis William Selmeier
Notes, page 1
Crosley Radio
Crosley Radio was in Cincinnati. If he were going to sell radios, Powel Crosley knew that people had to have something to listen to. He created WLW – ‘The Nation’s Station.’ It had 500,000 watts, ten times what any station is allowed to have today, and broadcast from coast to coast
(further actually) from a single antennae in Cincinnati. It
even was picked up in Australia sometimes. It was said that in the vicinity of the antennae it was so strong that some barbed wire fences and even the fillings in the teeth of a few people emanated a facsimile of what was being broadcast. When I was a child, when we traveled, when people asked me where I was from, when I said "Cincinnati"
they repeated back to me the call sign and a slogan from WLW that ended in
"Cincinnati" no matter where in the country we went.
This was the station that carried Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats and stars like Rosemary Clooney, Red Skelton, and Jack Benny. It was headquartered in Cincinnati where it had such prominence that even the train station had been built to replicate the silhouette of a Crosely Radio, the first inexpensive, mass
market, electronic media receiver.
So when my father tried to get work writing for radio in
Cincinnati, he was trying to start at the top.
Frannie Block
In with his things was the announcement of her marriage in Florida to
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