By: Peter Bright 

During a recent business trip to the Queen City, a meeting ended early and I found myself downtown, finished for the day and it was noon. Being on Seventh Street, I knew I was but a two minute drive from Crosley Square, or at least what had been Crosley Square. I drove over to Ninth and Elm, found a parking space; nickel’d the meter and stood looking at her.

Crosley Square had seen better days. Her name still etched in granite over the entrance way. The same stone steps worn no more, no less than they had been when I worked there right out of High School the summer of 1966, before I started college at UC. The old gal still vibrated then. There was life, energy; one could sense the heartbeat at her core. Paul Dixon, Bob Braun, Ruth Lyons were charging forth every week egged on by the attending audiences who came by the hundreds every day to see them, after safe guarding their show tickets for several years.

These shows, with their casts of singers and house bands were television continuations to the WLW radio programs of the thirties and forties. There were whole staffs just to deal with all the mail that came in twice a day, every day. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of viewer mail per delivery. If one of the shows was running a mail in contest, you could triple the daily mail. During the months of Ruth Lyons Christmas Fund extra people were hired along with Fund volunteers.

Down the hall from the mail rooms, (yes there were rooms), was the Music Library. Every radio station has a Music Library which contains catalogued records, CD's and the like. WLW had two. One had recorded music; the other was a library of all the sheet music, original scores and full blown arrangements for the various house bands and ensembles that would perform on the shows. Since the thirties, WLW entertainment shows always had live music as part of the make up of their broadcasts. You would have had to go to New York, or LA to find such a library in a radio-television entity in 1966. Not too many doors down the hall from the library were rehearsal studios used every day.

WLWT and WLW Radio parted ways some years ago. Radio took off to Mt. Adams and now takes up several rooms down corridors from former competitive, local call letters. WLWT vacated Crosley Square a few years back to wanted and needed, more state-of-the-art facilities for this new century.

New Art? I don't know. I always want the latest audio-video gadget no less than anyone else. But I’m talking art. The business of local, original television is all news, weather and sports now. That's fine, we need that, but all that locally created music, production and entertainment is an art lost forever.

I know Regis. I’ve known him for years. I like him both on air and off. His show has some of the feel Dixon, Lyons and Braun had. But he's far away. There's no active rapport, other than an hour five times a week. We could reach out and touch Paul, Ruth and Bob. They knew many of us and could relate to our lives. There was a connection. That's what we don't have much of these days. I think that's too bad.

My nineteen year old starry-eyed self loved running up those stone steps every day under the words, Crosley Square, through the lobby, down the halls to the elevators and up to the studios on three and five. Beginning at 7AM, we'd set up Dixon, do the show at 9, tear it down, put up the Fifty-Fifty Club, air it at Noon, tear it down, set for TV-5 Color News at 6, tear it down and set for the Hoyt-Dixon Sports show, Your Zoo, or Bob Braun's Bandstand for evening tapings. It was all in a day's work, unless there was a Reds game at Crosley Field, (WLWT televised those too). All day Saturday we would build the set for, and rehearse, Mid-Western Hayride, which would be taped that night in front of a live audience. Sunday we recorded Mr. Hop. There was never a dull moment.

All this, and more, was what made Crosley Square vibrate and hum. There she stands in front of me, very still. Her name remains over the entrance, but she's on life support now. Standing quietly at Ninth and Elm, I could almost hear Peter Grant announcing..."WLW, Cincinnati, The Nation's Station, its nine o'clock", followed by the tones of the NBC Radio Monitor Beacon leading into NBC Radio News on-the-hour.

God Bless you, Crosley Square. You’ve been a grand old gal. Thank you for housing decades of Cincinnati history, culture and broadcasting. Thank you for all the “Evenings at Crosley Square”. 

©2008 Peter Bright Productions   All Rights Reserved.