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NBC
Commentaries on the NBC Radio Network

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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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

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.