Just about every line of human endeavor has a hall of fame these days, but radio broadcasting has remained an orphan of obscurity. Blame its big-footed offspring, television, which has hogged the scene, strutting about with awards and galas and headlines for almost half a century.
Radio finally came into its own Tuesday, courtesy of Emerson Radio Corp., the product of which, in the glory days of the medium, was almost as familiar a presence in the American living room as ”Fireside Chats” with FDR and
”Fibber McGee and Molly.”
For the first Radio Hall of Fame, the selection panel went all the way back to Guglielmo Marconi, father of the wireless, for inductees. Marconi won the nod in founding-year awards for technology.
Other honorees: Edward R. Murrow; Benny Goodman; Martin Block of the old
”Make-Believe Ballroom”; disc jockey ”Cousin Brucie” Morrow;
sportscasters Bill Stern and Don Dunphy; rock `n` roll radio pioneer Alan Freed; Groucho Marx for ”You Bet Your Life”; Fred Allen, Arthur Godfrey, Orson Welles for ”Mercury Theatre on the Air”; Virginia Payne, who starred in the seminal soap opera ”Ma Perkins”; Fran Striker for creating ”The Lone Ranger”; Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden of ”Amos `n` Andy”; and Himan Brown, producer of ”Inner Sanctum Mystery.”
The selection panel, which included Dick Clark, Walter Mondale, Howard Cosell, MTV founder Robert Pittman and Casey Kasem, creator of ”The American Top 40,” among others, also voted a lifetime achievement award to CBS founder William S. Paley.
Ceremonies, attended by a handful of inductees still living and by the sons, daughters and grandchildren of the rest, were held in the Empire State Building, with a black-tie reception on the 86th-floor observation deck. Even artist Peter Max got into the act. He presented the new ”Hall of Fame” with his modernist interpretation of an old Emerson radio.
Memorabilia-photos, audio tapes, films, letters and antique radios and microphones-will be housed at Emerson headquarters in North Bergen, N.J., but a spokesman for the event said a permanent housing for the collection is being sought.
Five to 14 inductees will be chosen annually, and next year a Hal Jackson Pathfinder Award for minority broadcasters will be added as a Hall of Fame category. Jackson, the first black deejay and the first black radio station owner in America, still is in the business, broadcasting out of New York.
