Mike Biel
His Story
Here's a photo of Mike Biel and his future wife, Sheila. The picture dates from 1967.
This is an e-mail from Mike Biel to Gerry Wilkinson for posting on this site.
IS THERE LIFE AFTER WRTI? It all began at a little 790 watt radio station. . . . Following graduation in June 1968 I worked for a second Summer at Floyd L. Peterson, Inc. in New York City. We were a studio that did all the advertising for MGM, United Artists, and Avco-Embassy. Floyd had decided to branch out into making movies himself, and that summer they shot "Parachutes to Paradise" starring Roger Davis, written and directed by Alan Gittler. The film was never released (as far as I know) and bankrupted the company just after I left. I left to A) get married to Sheila Kaplan, and B) go to graduate school at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. I got my M.A. in 1970 and continued on for my Ph.D. Sheila worked at Evanston Hospital as a nurse, and I was a teaching assistant. I taught the radio labs for the first year and was manager of WNUR my second year, 1969-70. The station was very similar to WRTI and I instituted many ideas from WRTI to During my last two years there I was archivist of the Northwestern Univ. Radio Archive Project, and cataloged the collection of 15,000 discs from NBC, Chicago. Half of that collection was stolen several years after I left (I have on videotape a speech I attended where a noted old-time-radio businessman proudly discussed his role in the disappearance of the discs, and 5,500 of the discs were later donated to the Library of Congress for a HUGE tax write-off by another allegedly notorious nationally known old-time-radio businessman.) In 1972, while still working on my dissertation, we moved to Columbia, Missouri where I got a job teaching at the University of Missouri-Columbia. We returned to Teaneck, New Jersey in 1974 and I continued to work on my dissertation and teach at Fairleigh Dickineon University and at Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. The latter job became a victim of the New York City financial crisis in 1976 (remember "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD"?) After seven years of research and writing I was finally able to complete my Ph.D. dissertation "The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting Before 1936" 1,183 pages, (available from University Microfilms and from Nauck's Vintage Records, http://www.78prm.com) I arrived in Chicago on the afternoon of August 12, 1977 to prepare to defend my dissertation two days later. So, I received my Doctorate two days after the death of Elvis. Armed with those three magic letters after my name, Ph.D., I was able to become an Assistant Professor of Radio-TV at Morehead State University, Morehead, Kentucky. Now a full Professor, I will receive my 20 year pin in January 1998. Sheila and I live with our 13 year old daughter, Leah, in Owingsville, Kentucky, where Sheila is the nurse at Bath County High School, and Leah is in the 8th grade. The other two members of our
by Michael Biel, Ph.D.
Northwestern. One of my first students was Flawn Williams, who is now Technical Director of NPR's All Things Considered. Two other of my students were Harry Castlemen and Wally Podroznik, later authors of several Beatles discographies and an outstanding TV history book, "Watching TV." And believe it or not, the equipment at Northwestern was far worse than anything you could imagine at Temple. I longed for the luxury of Thomas Hall!
family are Gomez Addams Biel, a Shetland Sheepdog; and Charlie (Chuck) Dietz Biel, a white cat.
Also part of our "family" are over 60,000 records and tapes, and perhaps 30,000 books which reside in several locations in the area. Much to Sheila's horror, Leah has shown interest in these other family members, and already has a nice collection of several hundred CDs and LPs, and several hundred more books. I have been a member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) since 1971 and the International Association of Sound Archives (IASA) since 1974. I have made numerous presentations at the conferences of these organizations, and have held many offices of ARSC including President from 1986 to 1988. This has put me on a first name basis with the curators of most of the important sound and broadcast archives in the U.S. and around the world. Most recently I gave a presentation about the original discs of the 1937 Hindenburg Disaster broadcast at the convention of the Friends of Old Time Radio in Newark, N.J., Oct. 1997. This May I will be doing a presentation at ARSC in Syracuse, N.Y. on the history of the instantaneous lacquer recording disc (usually incorrectly called "acetates.") In 1983 I taught a class in broadcasting in London, England for the Cooperative Center for Study in Britain (CCSB) and in 1989 taught a course in internationl broadcasting in Bregenz, Austria for the Kentucky Institute for International Study (KIIS). I am planning another course in Austria this Summer on international broadcasting and on video production, so if you have or know of any college students who might be interested in spending the Summer in Europe studying broadcasting and shooting video, have them contact me. There also is a web site: http://www.kiis.org. We will be living in Bregenz for five weeks, but will also be travelling to visit broadcasters in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovak Republic, and Austria. Well, I guess those are the highlights. And I suppose that, yes, there is life after WRTI, but those four years at WRTI helped make a lot of this possible. Hey--if any of you happen to be travelling around our area, Owingsville is at exit 121 of I-64 to the East of Lexington, Kentucky. Give us a holler and come on by to visit! We're exactly a mile from the interchange. Michael & Sheila Biel Dr. Michael Biel Dr. Michael Biel
P.O. Box 1017
Owingsville, Kentucky 40360
(606) 674-2132 home (often busy due to internet)
Morehead State University
UPO 893
Morehead, Kentucky 40351
(606) 783-2794 office (this one has voice mail)
(606) 783-2457 fax
P.O. Box 822
Morehead, Kentucky 40351
(606) 784-8404 archive
In Biel's Basement...
located, no doubt next to the Record Shelf.
The following is a condensed version of two e-mails from Mike Biel to Gerry Wilkinson....I dug deep into the files, and even deeper into the farthest corners of the basement and have come up with oodles of goodies. I have a program guide from Feb-May 1959 which is the Alumni Issue and includes a picture of the full first staff from 1948-49 and a caption that identifies each of them and where they were at the time of the guide. I have the tape of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy's appearance on the Temple campus 11/1/60, the hour long wrap-up of the assassination reporting on 11/22/63, programs I did two years after and Sandy Skalka did three years after, the concerts we broadcast live of Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Ramsey Lewis Trio/Joe & Eddie; the teach-in with Alan Ginsburg from upstairs in Thomas Hall, a skit from Feb 1964 "The Adventures of Larry Blenheim (which came to me from Bill Stock after he graduated), and loads of other things. Included in the paperwork are some minutes from staff meetings, the sign out sheets for tapes and carts from 1965, audition scripts, scripts for christmas party skits, staff handbooks, exec staff lists, banquet booklets, etc. I found this undated dittoed sheet which probably came from either a banquet or christmas party.
HEY! Look us over! Don't make a face, d.j.'s, Right on the airwaves, I do not know who wrote this, but it was with some yellow legal pad sheets with six song lyrics in MY handwriting each dedicated to a separate exec: SB (name removed at the request of SB), Gary Metz, Bob Cirillo, Mike Bove, and Rich Russakoff. Actually, I think they're pretty good but the people they're about are not here yet to defend themselves................ This evening as I listened to Phil Sabateli doing a devistating funny imitation of Mr. Blenheim (this was his pre-doctorate days, after all) I realized that I have absolutely no tape of the real Blenheim. He was no longer doing Monitor on WRCV and he had the philosophy of not giving us announcing examples because he did not want us trying to sound like him. I NEVER HEARD HIM EVER ANNOUNCE. I believe that he did narrate an instructional videotape around 1966 but I never heard it and don't know of any possibility of any copies. You need to try to see if there is any way to find his family and see if any recordings of him exist. And along those lines, does anyone have any recordings of Dusenbury? And although Roberts is already up on Klein's audio page, does WFIL have any of his TV newscasts? And have you gotten in touch with him? He might have some things. I spent some time with him and Gordon Gray at the NAB/BEA convention about 3 years ago. By the way, I have staff lists galore. Not only exec staff lists, but some full staff lists. And program schedules for almost every semester.
HEY! LOOK US OVER
FM execs!
Groaning and groaning --
Our transmitter --what a wreck!
Don't raise a fuss,
But, whenever we think we're up and on --
The transmitter is always off!
90.1 on the dial,
Interviewing and talking,
Music with a smile --
But, whenever we think we're up and on --
The transmitter is always off!
Soooooo-----------------
Look out, ITA, here we come!
Read Biel's Article about Radio Transcriptions
Read Biel's Article about The Hindenburg Disaster (scroll to middle)
Read Biel's Article about The Pallophotophone (scroll to bottom)
Read Biel's Article about Time Shifting by the Networks
Here's an e-mail from Mike Biel received in September of 1998....While I got you all here, let me take this opportunity to tell you what has happened last week. I had my car catch fire and completely burn. Leah and I were able to get out of the car just fine, although it was still moving slowly as we exited. We were returning from a parade she had marched in, and Sheila was already in Morehead trying to figure where we were. For the next day I was afraid that I had lost some reels of WRTI tape that I had found in the basement only a few days earlier--but when I went to the Morehead house the day after, they were safely there. I had not been able to be absolutely sure that I had left them there and not put them in the car. Luckily I was in too much of a rush that day and left them in the house. They include the famous H S and R opening!!!!! And the B.S. Pulley promo recording session. I can still picture Bob Donze doubling over in pained laughter. Also, there are two of the "newscasts" I did the night that the teletype machine typed all Fs. One was "The World Yesterday." There also is another reel of carts and promos. I think I am getting closer--that final Thomas Hall broadcast HAS to be there somewhere. But there are still a couple of shelves I can't get to.
This is the WRTI Old Gang Web Site