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NBC Commentaries |
Sometime in or around 1974 Shep did a
series of short commentaries for NBC Radio. 4 of those have shown up, but
little about them is known.
If you remember
them and can provide additional information as to how many he did, dates,
times, etc. please
email me.
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Abject Failure
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Science Fills The Gap
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Slob Art
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Removing the Label
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| Joseph P. Jaslow writes:
In reference to NBC commentaries, here is everything I know (which isn't much):
The three on your
website were recorded off the air by me in the summer of 1974. They were
part of a short series of what I called "two minute shows" that Shep
taped for the NBC radio network in NYC in 74, which were then broadcast
across the country on many of NBC's FM affiliates. I believe they were
only played on FM (I could be wrong, but that's where I got mine from).
I remember hearing 5 or 6 of them at the time, but
because of NBC's scheduling it was difficult to tell exactly when
one might be played so I just let a reel of tape run on different days and
was lucky enough to capture these three.
But the question remains: How many of these did Shep
make for NBC? Probably not more than a dozen or so in my humble opinion,
since they seemed to vanish from the airwaves as quickly as they came.It
seems as if no other copies exist, but I doubt that. You just know that
somewhere out there in the darkness, some ex-NBC engineer has a complete
set of these on tape, probably hidden away in a basement. That's where
mine were, anyway. Excelsior
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Marc Spector (Associate Producer for Shep at WOR from 1974 to
1974) writes:I just read your commentary on the NBC Shows. A
couple of comments. First: they did run in 74-75. They were
recorded over on the 5th floor of 30 Rock at the NBC Radio Network
facilities. Jean's producer was a man named Joe Coggins who was an
established News producer and also produced some of the network's
strip shows. The show was broadcast to all NBC affiliates. In NYC,
WNBC would not have taken it because it was a music station.
However, it was NOT limited to FM stations at all. I do know a
couple of the engineers who recorded it--one of them was Bill
Chambers who was the engineer on Dimension-X and was credited
on-air, if you are familiar with the show. Bill became the dept.
head of NBC Radio Recording which was the group in charge of
pre-recorded shows and sat next to the ROD desk which was in charge
of live operations at the network. In 1975, NBC started a very
expensive and doomed project called 'NIS' or News and Information
Service. It was a 24/7 news and features network. Unbelievable in
1975. Anyway, when they did so, they had to redesign all of
the on-air and recording studios (and the studios where Monitor came
from) in order to support this monolith. I believe this is when
Jean stopped doing the strip show, although I am not 100% sure of
this. NIS went on the air in May, 1975. I was there--interesting
stuff.
If so, I can tell you that there were definitely more than a dozen
of them done. How many more, I couldn't tell you. But, listen to
how far ahead of the times they were. Keep in mind that the other
strip shows at the time were: Dr. Joyce Brothers; Joe Garagiola;
David Brinkley and others who were as straight and mainstream as an
arrow. And, then there was Jean. Also: you can hear that the NBC
shows are more scripted than his WOR show. That's because they were
more scripted. Not fully so--but NBC needed to 'bless' content
ahead of time as you can imagine and Jean needed to present content
for general approval. Also: this was a 2-minute (EXACTLY)
broadcast. It was good exposure for Jean--but, I still cannot
figure out the match between NBC Radio Network and Jean. The shows
are not my favorite of his work.
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