Remembering the BU Scholars

In our youth, nothing seemed insurmountable. We approached every challenge with the old Mickey Rooney “Let’s put on a show!” enthusiasm.

Read More

Memorial Service for Bud Collins

Our family wants you to attend, so please mark your calendars and make your reservations to arrive by boat, train, car, airplane, or barefoot to celebrate Bud’s magical life with us.

Read More

The foundations of WGBH: 84 Mass. Ave.

From Don Hallock: Many extraordinarily-gifted figures and luminaries of the day — in the arts, science, politics and education — found their ways into the halls and studios of the original WGBH-TV/FM studios at 84 Massachusetts Avenue.

Read More

A stranger in a strange land

From Fred Barzyk: Bill insisted I try to get into the scholarship program. You studied for your graduate degree at Boston University and worked three days a week at the Educational Television station. Free tuition and you got $600 to live a year in Boston!

Read More

Jean Shepherd tells his first WGBH story

From Fred Barzyk: I first heard Jean on the radio in Boston. It was 1961. I was babysitting my young son and, while idly scanning radio stations, I heard this person, this intense personal voice, talking to me.

Read More

Remembering the original WGBH

From Art Singer: Fifty one years ago this past September, on several late afternoons a week, I would take the twenty minute walk from BU across the Charles to the station’s studios on the MIT campus for a night’s work.

Read More

Building a Network: EEN (1961-64)

This entry is part 6 of 12 in the series The Michael Ambrosino Collection

WGBH: The Early Years Skating Around the Rink (1956-60) Building a Network: EEN (1961-64) Going Public (1964-70) From Michael Ambrosino Ed: This is the second of three excerpts from Michael Ambrosino’s autobiography. In the first part, Skating Around the Rink, he described the early years at WGBH, an era of live and live-on-tape TV productions…

Read More

Ricardo Comacho, 49, Editor for Destinos and La Plaza

From Raquel Ortiz — 3/19/2007 I am sorry to have to share this very sad news … but it seems that last week was a particularly sad one for the WGBH family. Ricardo Camacho passed away on Saturday March 10, 2007 at dawn with his brother by his side. The private funeral for his immediate…

Read More

In a World All Its Own (1955)

From John Nadeau — 3/2007 When we did simulcasts on radio and TV, my station break announcement sounded like this: “This is the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council…WGBH-FM at 89.7 megacycles and WGBH-TV, channel 2, in Boston.” I joined the staff of WGBH-FM-TV in 1955. The two stations identified themselves as “noncommercial and educational” because…

Read More

A Hot Time in the Old Town (1961)

From Dan Beach – Studio 8H Website Design Eighty-four Massachusetts Avenue on the fateful morning of October 14, 1961 when "it all changed." Studio A. Ed Salners and Dan Beach — performing maintenance on camera 2? Early that day, most of us were deputized to paw through the acrid wreckage in search of anything valuable.…

Read More

Discovery (1955-56)

Photos from John “Rocky” Coe — March 2002 Don Hallock: Thanks to “Rocky” Coe’s persistence in weeding through his collections of old slides, here are some of the best images we have from the first year or two in studio A at 84 Massachusetts Avenue. We believe they’re from Discovery‘s 1955-56 season, and seem to…

Read More

Rat Alley Reminiscence (1959)

From Paul Noble Now, here’s a really choice photo, from Brooks Leffler. It’s the entrance to Fred Barzyk’s and Tom McGrath’s dreadful little hovel in "Rat Alley," 1959. It was literally in a back alley which ran from Massachusetts Avenue out behind the Zebra Lounge. The hundreds of resident rats were the size of house…

Read More