He Was One of the Best

By Frank Absher

The business of radio has never really been lucrative for a majority of its employees. So why did people choose to work there instead of somewhere else?

Some time back I had the pleasure of interviewing an ex-radio employee whose answer to that question comes as no surprise to many veterans of the business.

Kensinger Jones, who is now known as “Ken,” was an employee of radio in the 1940s. He was a writer. Back in those days almost every word you heard through the radio speakers had been written by someone other than the announcer, and ad libbing was hardly, if ever, allowed. He wrote a lot of different things for radio, but mainly, it was his job to research and write a weekly half-hour program of re-creations of local history.

Much of his work, he told me, was making sure the sponsor was happy. This meant being ready to change scripts at the last minute if that’s what the sponsor wanted.

When he was hired, Jones was in his 20s, and his job was to present a completed script to the sponsor every week, 52 weeks a year. From Saturday until Wednesday, Ken and his young wife Alice would visit libraries to do their research, often seeking info for several different shows at once.

Then, in his words “I’d write frantically on Wednesday and deliver the script to the station, where it had to be duplicated. One copy was used for casting; a second for music scoring; and a third went to the sponsor. Then there would be a quick rewrite and a full rehearsal. Then the show was timed and recorded on 16-inch electronic transcriptions, which were delivered to the sponsor Thursday morning.”

Their suggestions were cranked into a final script on Friday, or maybe as late as Saturday. Sunday at 2:45, everyone was assembled in the studio for a final rehearsal. A final timed run-through ran that day at 4:00, then the live broadcast took place at 5:30 that day. By then, Ken and Alice were back at home working on the next week’s show.

This wasn’t something the two of them could make up. The sponsor insisted on historic accuracy, with the shows “imagining the dialogue that had taken place many – sometimes hundreds of – years earlier.”
He said there really wasn’t a problem coming up with subjects. The large audience constantly came up with suggestions, often supplying details as well.

Imagine this kind of grind: seven days a week, working as a team, to turn out scripts that kept the sponsor happy and that moved the audience so much that they got involved with choosing the subjects. An advertising account executive described the situation in a book. Bea Adams wrote in “Let’s Not Mince Any Bones,”: “In an office only big enough for a small desk, typewriter, chair and raft of reference books, Kensinger Jones wrote ‘The Land We Live In.’ He wrote it, lived it, researched it, personally watched over it and shaped it into one of the finest radio shows ever to come out of St. Louis.”

Here was a young couple working in radio during the final days of its so-called “Golden Age.” Talking to him now, you can tell he loved it and truly had a passion for it, which is what radio was all about in those days. And it wasn’t simply a case of churning things out in assembly line fashion. The writing could move people, and those people weren’t limited to the listeners.

One of Ken Jones’ fondest memories was of the program that featured acclaimed actress Maureen O’Hara. Miss O’Hara took the narrator’s character. As the live presentation was wrapping up, Miss O’Hara began to sob and left the stage. The show’s director immediately cued the orchestra and Jones was summoned to go onstage and finish the wrap-up speech. Later, Maureen O’Hara told those assembled that the script evoked such vivid memories of her own childhood in Ireland that she was emotionally overwhelmed.

Alice Jones, even though she wasn’t paid for her work, really enjoyed the ride, telling me, “It was an exciting time in my life. Young, married, no kids, no car, and all these wonderful stories.”

When the show reached the end of its run, the couple moved to Chicago where Ken took a job writing for television with the Leo Burnett agency. Ken loved his time in radio, which may explain why he was so successful.

In retirement, their writing has continued, with a couple self-published books, including one of original poetry. In them, their love and mutual respect, as well as their love for life, is evident.

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