A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.
• Position: Book review

A VOICE IN THE BOX My Life in Radio

BY BOB EDWARDS

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

2011, 201 PAGES, $21.95

Voices coming from the family's 1939 Zenith radio fascinated the very young Bob Edwards; he "longed for [his] voice to join them." He practiced reading a newspaper in front of a mirror to see if he could sound like men on radio and look and sound like those on television.

In high school, he visited radio stations in and around Louisville, Ky. After high school, he "camped out" at station WHEL, "watching, listening, and asking questions--learning but not earning." As a student at the University of Louisville, he continued to "hang out" at WHEL and, when the WHEL program director was arrested, Edwards took over the job as disc jockey until the director returned and put Edwards on the payroll at $75 a week. WHEL had a frequency of 1570 and only 1,000 watts, but it was radio and Edwards was part of it.

In August 1969, Edwards graduated from the University of Louisville with a BA in commerce. Drafted in November, he was deployed to South Korea to join the American Forces Korea Network, where he did the news--and produced and anchored "Newscope" and "Newsbeat Korea" Discharged in August 1971, Edwards pursued an advanced degree in broadcast journalism at American University, where he studied with Ed Bliss, who, in 25 years with CBS News, had written and edited for Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Not only a wonderful mentor, Bliss became Edwards' lifelong friend.

After receiving his MA in communication in August 1972, Edwards first worked as a freelancer for WTOP, an all-news radio station for which he did his first live interviews. On Oct. 1, 1972, Edwards took a job doing two nightly newscasts for Mutual News, a network with more than 600 stations; in this position, he achieved his goal of having a national network audience by the age of 25.

The American Federation of TV and Radio Artists represented the news staff at Mutual under a union contract negotiated in 1973. When Mutual's president, C. Edward Little, who "hated unions," learned of Edwards' union membership, he released the newscaster at the close of 1973.

On Feb. 15, 1974, Edwards applied for a job with National Public Radio and, after auditioning with a newscast, NPR hired him.

Established in 1970 by public radio stations, NPR served as a production house for national programming and as a nationwide distribution system. NPR's first broadcast was in April 1971.

On May 3, 1971...