Tom Read and WHO News
During the late 1950s and early 1960s
By George F. Davison, Jr. and Tom ReadPAGE 4 Television newscasts on WHO-TV were at 8:25 A.M., Noon, 6:05 P.M. and 10:00 P.M.
At WHO in the 1950s and 1960s, radio news was the focus. Jack Shelley was News Bureau Manager, a position he assumed when H.R. Gross left WHO in 1940 to seek the Republican nomination for Governor. By 1963, radio newscasts were on the following schedule:
5:30 A.M.
7:00 A.M.
7:30 A.M.
9:05 A.M.
10:05 A.M.
11:05 A.M.
12:30 P.M.
2:05 P.M.
3:05 P.M.
4:05 P.M.
5:05 P.M.
6:15 P.M.
10:00 P.M.
Brief newscasts were presented on the hour between Midnight and 5:00 A.M. These were wire service hourly summaries read by the announcer on duty.The 12:30 News with Jack Shelly on WHO Radio was one of the most listened to broadcasts in the state of Iowa.
Jack Shelly, pounding it out on a "mill" (slang for typewriter)Tom Read is in the background with Shelly in the foreground, preparing one of the 12:30 newscasts. Read writes of that time, "Shelley was a stickler for good copy. He often would hand back a story and say, 'let's try to tell that story a little better.' Shelley's newscasts were entirely new copy with all wire stories and correspondent's reports rewritten." There were two sponsors for the 12:30 News: Standard Oil Company on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed sponsored the newscast on Tuesday and Thursday.
Another long-time sponsor of WHO news programs was the Iowa Retail Hardware Association. IRHA was one of Jack Shelley's first sponsors. This was in the mid to late-1930s when Shelley was doing morning newscasts, and then, writing for H.R. Gross, who handled the afternoon and evening news assignments. The Hardware News was one of the station's sales success stories.Click to view full Hardware News ad with Jack
(fairly long download on dial-up)
A veteran of the WHO News Department, Len Howe, had left WHO to become the public relations representative for the Iowa Retail Hardware Association. Howe was the IHRA spokesman, and Read delivered the Hardware News on WHO in the early 1960s.
Read and Vern Modeland were on duty the Saturday morning in May 1961 when B.J. Palmer died:
TOM:
WHO Manager "Woody" Woods appeared in the newsroom, and since it was Saturday, I knew something must be up. He handed me about a 50-page biography of B. J., advised me he had died in Sarasota, Florida. He gave me the early arrangements. I had about an hour and a half until the 12:30 news to get the copy in shape. The pressure was not so much on handling the item but how much of a newscast to devote to the station's founder while still delivering a balanced newscast for the listeners who were not connected with him. Vern got busy on the phone, and we got "beepers" (Telephone reports at that time were known as "beepers" because of the beep or tone that had to be included to indicate that the call was being recorded.) from Florida, as well as reaction from folks in Davenport. I don't remember how long it ran, but I guess at least half of that newscast was devoted to Palmer's death.Tom Read left WHO Radio and Television in 1965 and joined the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald and KDTH in Dubuque. From there, he had a short tenure as News Director at KWWL-TV, Waterloo, before joining Time Life Broadcasting in Indianapolis at WFBM-TV where he remained for 29 years.
Tom Read today (2003)Back to Beginning
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