But there are times when management spying and oversight was taken to levels not imagined by the general public.
Take this blurb from a monthly publication:
“H. Leslie Atlaas is head man of WBBM and the Chicago office of Columbia [CBS Radio]. His home is equipped with special lines so he can hear what his station and the network are broadcasting by simply dialing a special telephone gadget. Also, the same system permits him to listen in on the monitor wire and hear what the engineers in the control rooms are saying to each other. Guests recently evinced surprise at the latter. They hadn’t known that the operators [engineers] are connected together by special telephones. To demonstrate, Les tuned in the monitor system. A program had just ended. The guests were horrified, Mrs. Atlaas mortified and Les amused at what they heard ‘That was a lousy &*%$ show’ ‘Yeah, that &*%$ never did know how to produce a real show, the &*%$.’”
That was published in Radio Mirror in February of 1936.
Management, it seems, has always looked for ways to keep track of what was really happening at the station.
It was often said that Robert Hyland of KMOX listened to the radio every minute of every day. Working there, it seemed that way. The hotline would flash within seconds of a goof.
How could a man, even Robert Hyland, hear everything? Well, now we know that he didn’t, but he still knew what was going on.
It seems he had a few folks on the payroll to help him.
Hyland employed blind people to listen and to call his private number any time they heard something he should know about. He would then be on the hotline immediately.
This may sound like overkill, but it wasn’t. It’s what helped to make KMOX a station with an AQH of 20 (and a morning drive share of 32).
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