Brian Belanger - The Murrow Boys – News Broadcasting During WWII. Radio news prior to WWII had not been featured prominently. Few newscasts were offered and the ones heard tended to be leisurely commentary on current events rather than “hard” news. That changed dramatically during the War. CBS hired Edward R. Murrow to arrange broadcasts from Europe. He hired young journalists such as Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, and Larry LeSueur. The CBS evening news roundup would take listeners via shortwave radio from city to city to hear the latest developments. (“And, now we take you to London.”) This brought the war viscerally right into American living rooms. Listening to Ed Murrow’s live report standing on the roof of a building in London as bombs are falling around him is difficult to forget, likewise, his description of going along on a British Lancaster bomber on a night bombing run on Berlin. Murrow and three other journalists went with the planes that night and two of them did not return. This talk will describe Murrow and his colleagues and the way they reported the news. Audio clips such as the examples above will be played. An electrical engineer, with a bachelor’s degree from Caltech and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, Brian’s first job out of grad school in 1968 was as a research engineer at the General Electric Research and Development Center, in a group concerned with applications of cryogenics and superconductivity to electric power technology. His next career move was to the Atomic Energy Commission where he served as branch chief for advanced underground power transmission, as well as project officer for cooperative research with the Soviet Union under the Nixon-Brezhnev US-USSR Energy Agreement. Brian came to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1977, and served in several management positions during his career there, including Chief of the Office of Measurement Services, Associate Director for Program Development of the Center for Electronics and Electrical Engineering, NBS Liaison to the Department of Defense, and Deputy Director of the Advanced Technology Program. He received Bronze and Silver Medals from the Commerce Department, and was a Commerce Science and Technology Fellow (1983-84). Since his retirement in 2000, Brian has been an active volunteer at the National Capital Radio & Television Museum. One of the museum’s founders, he served as its director for about a decade, and is currently the museum’s curator, a regular docent, and a co-editor of the Museum’s journal Dials and Channels. Brian received the 2001 Houck Award of the Antique Wireless Association for his dozens of articles about radio/TV history, and served as that organization’s vice president as well as editor of its peer-reviewed journal, The AWA Review. He is an extra class amateur radio operator, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club, and is a co-editor of their monthly journal, Radio Age.

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