Dick Bertel

In April 1948, shortly before graduating from high school, Bertel requested a tour of WNLK, a new daytime-only radio station being built in neighboring Norwalk, Conn., and was offered an unpaid position. Initially writing and announcing news from his school, within a few months he was hosting The Hi Teen Show, a weekly Saturday morning program featuring local amateur singers, a band, and sketches performed by teenagers.

To accommodate his work at WGCH (described below), in 1949 WNLK moved his shift to Sunday. When the station was granted a full-time license in the summer of that year, he was placed on the WNLK payroll.

Bertel also performed with and announced for the Community Radio Workshop, a group of local hobbyist actors who produced a program on WNLK called The Mystery Theater of the Air and who also appeared in community stage productions.[3] In 1950, WNLK broadcast a supernatural drama called "The House of Retribution" which Bertel wrote for the show.[4]

He remained at WNLK until 1951 when he accepted a Sunday shift at WNAB in Bridgeport (described below).

From September 1948 to June 1952 he concurrently commuted from Darien to Manhattan on the New Haven Railroad to earn a degree in broadcasting from New York University (NYU). One of his instructors there was Brad Phillips who had just started what would become a forty-four year career as a news anchor on WINS Radio in New York. (On Election Night in 1948 Phillips would stay on the air for twenty-three straight hours covering the surprising results of the presidential race between President Harry S. Truman and Governor Thomas E. Dewey.)[5]

In the Fall of 1948, testing began on a new New York television station, WOR-TV (WWOR today). While attempting to tune in a test pattern, Bertel instead found an unrelated audio broadcast. It was a test of an experimental FM station in Greenwich, Conn., WGCH (WFOX today), which due to a harmonic could be heard on the audio carrier of channel 9. Bertel responded to an announcer's invitation to listeners to call the station to report reception. Within a couple of weeks he decided to use that telephone conversation as a reason to visit the station and introduce himself. During that visit, he offered to volunteer as an announcer.

By January 1949, he was hosting The Teen Turntable on WGCH on Saturday afternoons, working for free to gain experience just as he was presently doing at WNLK. After hosting The Hi Teen Show on WNLK in the morning, he would take a bus to Greenwich carrying a case of his personal collection of 78 RPM records for use on his WGCH show. Within weeks, WGCH offered him an announcing shift on Thursday and Friday afternoons and all day Saturday as well as $18 per week, making this his first paid position.[6] On Saturday nights he hosted a listener call-in show called Request Party and co-hosted Jazz Cavalcade with a local record collector, Bill Gray. On Sundays he hosted a music show called Rhythm and Song.

In the Summer of 1949, Bertel was made the acting program director at WGCH, covering for program director Jack Hines during his hospitalization for pneumonia and the recovery that followed.

In 1950, Bertel hosted a Christmas broadcast featuring music conducted by Erich Kunzel, then a student at Greenwich High School, who would become known as the "Prince of Pops" during an illustrious career leading the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra.[7]

Bertel continued to work at WGCH until he graduated from NYU in 1952. By that time, however, struggling to find an audience and advertisers on the FM band, WGCH was only broadcasting for 3 1/2 hours per day.[8] At the end of that year, it ceased operations altogether.

While continuing his work at WGCH, in 1951 Bertel left WNLK to begin working Sundays at WNAB (WCUM today), the ABC affiliate in Bridgeport, Conn., where a friend he had made at WNLK, Bill Edwardsen, was now the chief announcer.[9] (Edwardsen would become a fixture in the Albany - Schenectady - Troy, N.Y. market, primarily on WGY Radio and WRGB Television.[10])

When he graduated from NYU in 1952, he was hired for the daily night shift, his first full-time position. Although he would continue to host The Saturday Night Dance Party, soon he was moved to the midday shift and was appointed to be the continuity director, writing all of the commercial copy for the station. He left WNAB in 1954 to work for WSTC (described below).

On Sunday nights, WNAB broadcast live performances of big bands appearing at the Ritz Ballroom in Bridgeport.[11] Bertel participated as an announcer, receiving his first professional experience working with celebrities. In this capacity, he interviewed famous musicians including Billy May, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Spivak, Lou Monte, Don Cornell, Ralph Flanagan, and Steve Lawrence.[12]

When Bertel and his family first moved to Darien in 1944, he began listening to WSRR in Stamford, an affiliate of NBC's Blue Network [which would become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1945]. Intrigued that this radio station was broadcasting within a few miles of his new home, Bertel and one of his Hollow Tree Ridge Junior High School classmates visited the station and asked for a tour. The announcer on duty graciously showed them the operation and allowed them to stand silently in the studio while he conducted a record show. Bertel resolved then that he would one day come to work for that station which would change its call letters to WSTC in 1946.

In 1954, WSTC hired him for the night shift, delivering the eleven o'clock newscast and conducting station breaks around network shows such as The Lone Ranger. Other members of the staff included Scott Vincent (who would become a staff announcer for ABC), Jerry Damon (who would become a staff announcer for NBC), and Dee Caruso (who would become a TV writer and producer for Get Smart, The Monkees, and The Smothers Brothers Show).

Up until now, he had been using his name "Dick Bertelmann" on WNLK, WGCH, and WNAB. Other announcers at WSTC used stage names so he decided it was time to coin one for himself. At WSTC he started calling himself "Dick Richards."

One night in September 1954, one of Bertel's colleagues conceived a plan for them to meet women working as nurses in residence at Stamford Hospital. He would call a dormitory on the hospital's campus under the pretense of being a producer seeking requests for records to be played on The Dick Richards Show, then ask the nurse on the phone if she and her friends would like to meet Dick Richards and his coworkers at a pizzeria. That led to Bertel's courtship with Jean Thies, a native of Dunkirk / Fredonia, N.Y., and their marriage in November 1955.[13]

Engaged to be married and contemplating how to best position his career to support a family, Bertel decided in 1955 that he needed to move to a new, larger market. In 1955, the Bridgeport - Stamford - Norwalk market ranked 31st in the U.S. Although not small, it was over-shadowed by nearby New York, the largest market in the country, and the powerhouse stations that operated there. Looking seventy-five miles away to Connecticut's capital city, Bertel resolved that he would find a new job in the Hartford - New Britain market, then ranked 27th nationally.[14]

Situated nearly equidistant between New York and the Boston, Mass. - Manchester, N.H. market (then ranked 6th in the U.S.) and yet completely independent of both, Hartford offered the opportunity to build a reputation that could easily be transferred to a major market at a later time. A highly affluent and particularly well-educated area, it was also an important test market for advertisers and therefore a richly profitable location for broadcasters. Plus it was the home of WTIC Radio, one of the most prestigious broadcast operations in the country.

In July 1955, Bertel visited most of the major radio stations in Hartford including WTIC. In the early autumn, he accepted a job at WGTH Radio (WPOP today).

His first assignments included weekend work. On Saturdays he hosted a live children's talent show from the Brown Thomson department store in Hartford. On Sundays when the station would carry local foreign language programming, he would run the equipment for those amateur hosts.

In December he played the master of ceremonies for The Christmas Carol Sing, an event organized by The Hartford Times newspaper, and announced the program on WGTH. A tradition for many years, more than ten thousand people would gather outside the Hartford Times Building to join a choir singing Christmas carols and other holiday songs.[15]

Turnover was rampant at WGTH. As a result, within weeks Bertel, who was still using the "Dick Richards" air-name that he had created for himself at WSTC in Stamford, had become the senior announcer. As such, he hosted The Uprising, the daily morning show. At midday he co-hosted Luncheon with Dottie and Dick with the station's women's director, Dottie Coleman, who usually referred to him as "Richard" on the program.[16]

Besides the regional Yankee Network, WGTH was both an ABC and a Mutual affiliate. When the Mutual network comedy team Bob and Ray broadcast their show nationally from the Hartford State Armory, Bertel performed as their announcer. Similarly when the Mutual news commentator Cedric Foster (the former manager of WTHT, a predecessor to WGTH) broadcast his network show from WGTH, Bertel read his intro and several public service announcements.[17]

Besides Ross Miller, Floyd Richards, and Fred Wade, Bertel joined an announcing staff that included Ed Anderson, Bob Arel, Frank Atwood, Jean Colbert, Bruce Kern, Paul Lucas, Bob Steele, and Bob Tyrol.[21] Over Bertel's twenty-one year tenure other staff announcers would include Bill Clede, Bill Corsair, Brad Davis, Arnold Dean, George Ehrlich, John Elliott, Bob Ellsworth, Joe Girand, Bill Hanson, Bill Hennessey, Bill Henry, Art Johnson, Lani Jurev, George Malcolm-Smith, Bob Nelson, Mike Ogden, Lou Palmer, Norm Peters, Ray Rice, Robert E. Smith, John Stevens, Al Terzi, Jim Thompson, Doug Webster, Dana Whalen, and Jerry Williams.[22]

Staff announcers read commercials, issued station breaks, and delivered newscasts. The staff announcers would read newscasts prepared by the newsroom, often fifteen minutes in length with no breaks, not even for actualities or commercials.

Regarded as one of WTIC's most versatile announcers and best interviewers, Bertel hosted many programs during his tenure at WTIC.

Conversation Piece

From 1956 to 1969, Bertel hosted Conversation Piece, a half-hour program he conceived and produced that was broadcast each weekday at 7:00 p.m. It was built mainly on intriguing stories provided weekly by the script service A.P.S. Inc. Examples are how President Abraham Lincoln considered the number 13 to be his lucky number, a theory that Napoleon Bonaparte may have been murdered, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's report to the nation on the Space Race. The theme song was "No Strings Attached" performed by Richard Hayman and his Orchestra, over which Bertel read this introduction: "And a very pleasant good evening to you, this is Dick Bertel welcoming you to Conversation Piece, featuring facts and figures about the world we live in, a touch of music on records, plus strange and unusual stories of actual happenings."

Americana

In 1962, Bertel assumed hosting duties of Americana, a ninety-minute interview program with a patriotic tilt that aired daily at 2:00 p.m. Guests would discuss historical subjects, current events, and cultural traditions from around the nation although stories with connections to Connecticut and its neighbors were most prominent. Typically, these discussions were prerecorded in one session and segmented so that they could be stripped across the entire week. Occasionally, they would be recorded on-location such as the cab of a steam locomotive on the Valley Railroad in Essex, Conn., a riverboat on the Connecticut River with a live jazz band, and Thanksgiving on the grounds of Old Sturbridge Village.

Christmas Eve Shows

A tradition from 1962 to 1976, Bertel hosted an hour-long program of holiday music at 8:00 p.m. each Christmas Eve. Beginning in 1964, he included his children Darcy (born 1959), Jim (b. 1961), Susan (b. 1967), and Doug (b. 1971) in the dialogue. Many times the shows incorporated guests such as illustrator and painter Norman Rockwell, Sleigh Ride and Christmas Festival composer Leroy Anderson; Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas, the inspiration for Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus; opera star and civil rights icon Marian Anderson; and Johnny Marks, the composer of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Saturday Showcase

From 1967 to 1969, Bertel hosted Saturday Showcase which was modeled after the Sunday Showcase program that Arnold Dean had anchored since starting at WTIC in 1965. It was a music program that usually spotlighted the catalogue of a particular performer or group. It included features provided by Jean Colbert, the director of women’s programs, and Bill Clede, the outdoors editor.

‘TIC Afternoon Edition

In 1968, Bertel was directed to take over the ‘TIC Afternoon Edition from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. which, after a long period of being the dominant afternoon show in the market, had plummeted in popularity. For the first time, he introduced current rock music (that complemented the station’s usual middle-of-the-road selections) into the playlist. The show returned to number one within the first ratings period.

WTIC Anniversary Shows

Every year Bertel would anchor a retrospective program to mark the anniversary of WTIC’s first broadcast on February 10, 1925. The title was usually styled like “The Broadcaster at Forty” as it was in 1965 for example.

The Golden Age of Radio

The Broadcaster anniversary shows attracted the interest of a particular listener, Ed Corcoran, a computer programmer who had compiled a massive collection of early network radio shows that he had recorded himself off the air. After Corcoran introduced himself to Bertel, he frequently appeared as a guest on one of Bertel's various programs to share his collection.

In 1970, together they created and hosted The Golden Age of Radio, a monthly program featuring interviews with radio actors, writers, musicians, producers, and engineers primarily from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s who would comment on clips culled from Corcoran’s collection. It continued until Bertel left the station in 1977 and yielded one of the most extensive oral histories of that singular era in American media and entertainment.[23] Vincent Price, Don Ameche, Rudy Vallée, Mason Adams, Ruby Keeler, and Joan Fontaine are just a few examples of the notable people who appeared on this show.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, The Golden Age of Radio interviews were regularly incorporated into The Big Broadcast, a weekly compilation of recordings from radio's golden age on WAMU in Washington, D.C., the public radio station owned and operated by American University, which was then hosted by Ed Walker.[24] The SiriusXM Radio Classics channel will still occasionally play excerpts from these interviews.

Special Programs

Bertel was frequently assigned to host specials that WTIC Radio would produce, particularly its coverage of the Space Race. In one particularly memorable broadcast, he led a program from the Springfield (Mass.) Science Museum to report on the spacecraft Mariner 4 transmitting pictures of the surface of Mars. The program made broadcast history because the studio-to-transmitter link was partially conducted on a laser beam engineered by the PerkinElmer corporation.

WTIC-FM

During the period that Bertel worked at WTIC, WTIC-FM simulcast WTIC (AM) much of the time, but would break away for its own classical music programs. Like many of the other staff announcers, Bertel worked shifts on WTIC-FM as a classical music host.

As a member of the Special Events team, Bertel would anchor, report on, and otherwise contribute to breaking news coverage of crippling weather events, power blackouts, and other emergencies such as the deadly 1961 Hartford Hospital fire.[25] These events included two of the three major assassinations of American public figures during the 1960s.

The Assassination of President Kennedy

The news that President John F. Kennedy had been wounded by an assassin broke into the final minutes of Mikeline on WTIC Radio which was being hosted on Friday, November 22, 1963 by Floyd Richards and Bob Ellsworth. After the standard NBC five minute newscast at 2:00 p.m. EST ended, Bertel assumed anchoring duties at the direction of producer Bill Marks. Bertel interrupted music selections with news updates from the wire services until NBC finally began providing its radio affiliates with continuous coverage at 2:11 p.m.

Throughout the weekend that followed, Bertel anchored the major newscasts on Channel 3, the only local content Channel 3 broadcast until the day following the president's funeral.

The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King

Just as he was concluding his Conversation Piece program on WTIC Radio at 7:30 p.m. EST on April 4, 1968, Bertel was handed a bulletin, which he read while transitioning to a newscast, announcing that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King had been shot in Memphis, Tenn. Later that evening, he anchored the 11 o'clock newscast on Channel 3 which was dominated by assassination-related demonstrations in Hartford's North End neighborhood.