Frank Lane, 74, Cameraman and Studio Engineer

My dear father, known as Frank to his ‘GBH family, passed away over the weekend. I always loved hearing his work stories (Zoom, the news, the Pops on the Esplanade, the BSO, The French Chef with Julia Child, This Old House, The Victory Garden…the list goes on).

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Bill Cosel: What goes around…

Bill Cosel

From Bill Cosel What goes around, goes around, goes around / Comes all the way back around? 50 years ago, August 1962: As a BU Scholar newbie at WGBH, my first production experience was camera at Tanglewood when Charles Munch gave his farewell concert as Music Director of the BSO, performing Beethoven’s Ninth. Nervous and thrilled, …

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Steve Izzi, 63, sound engineer

Steve displayed a fine ability to transform live orchestral and all ensemble sound via microphone equalization and reverberation techniques that produced and created a truly transparent sound.

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Recollections of a WGBH-FM Volunteer (1951-52)

From Russ Butler A small announcement in The Boston Globe caught my attention. It was 1951, and I was a 17-year old junior in a Boston high school and fascinated with radio broadcasting. The one column-inch notice read that a new FM radio station would begin broadcasting from studios in Symphony Hall. Next day, I…

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A tribute to Dave Davis

From Don Hallock As I remember, a 30 year old Dave Davis came to us at WGBH-TV from the University of North Carolina campus TV in 1957. That was the same year I, at 19, began in the scene shop as assistant to Peter Prodan. Dave was a musician and veteran television Producer-Director. He succeeded…

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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…

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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…

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The BU Scholars program (1957-58)

From Vic Washkevich From on high The Boston Symphony Orchestra was one of the highlights of WGBH programming back in 1957–58. Hey, anything was better than Words, the one-camera show on which I earned my credit as a director. If you recall, symphony rehearsal performances were open to the public. We shot that show with…

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The Lowell Council Ditty (1949)

From Larry Creshkoff [This is] a song from the past. It’s sung to the tune of "There is nothing like a dame" (from South Pacific) and was performed for the first (and only) time at the Christmas party of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council staff in the library of the building at 28 Newbury…

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An Era Comes to a Close With Bill Cosel Conducting His Own Swan Song

Story by Chas Norton and Bill Francis; photos by Chas Norton Chas Norton: Bill Cosel announced his retirement from exec producer of POPS; last night was our last taping and he was asked to conduct the Stars and Stripes Forever by Keith Lockhart. We kept tape rolling and Billy Francis cut it. Bill abruptly found…

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Quo vadis WGBH (1946-2000)

From Don Hallock: It may surprise you to know how many places the station has called home. WGBH’s origins were in a converted skating rink on the second floor of 84 Mass. Ave. and the office spaces on the third, were the first home of WGBH from 1955 to 1961.

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Footprints in your heart

From Rocky Coe – 1999 To Larry Creshkoff on the occasion of his seventy fifth birthday I remember a very exciting evening in a funky old building on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge when I switched on the lights in the little glassed-in room we then called studio B and you cued the cameras and the…

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