This date in radio & television

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Bob GibsonMarch 24th: As Jackie Gleason would say, a little traveling music!!!  We offer it for radio, vaudeville, Broadway and film performer Belle Baker who became the first person to host a radio broadcast from a moving train, on this day in 1932.  That variety program was heard on New York’s WABC. Eddie Cantor paid this lady quite the compliment at one time in saying Belle Baker is, “Dinah Shore, Patti Page, Peggy Lee and Judy Garland all rolled into one.”


Suddenly, Major Bowes’ “Original Amateur Hour” had a much larger listening audience on this night in 1935. That’s when the broadcast, which had been heard only in New York City, debuted on NBC Radio. In 1948, after Bowes’ death, Ted Mack succeeded him in the TV version.  This was a program that covered all the bases, in running more than 20 years on Dumont, ABC, NBC and CBS. 

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