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May 30, 2008

Valley radio engineer entering Indiana Broadcast Hall of Fame

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — The sound of a future career for Jerry D. Arnold began with a tube radio in his bedroom in Glendale, Calif.

“My parents were married in 1938, and as a wedding gift they had gotten an RCA console radio. It was in my bedroom and I thought it was neat that I could turn on a box of tubes and hear halfway across the country. I thought, boy, is that cool. That started my interest in radio,” Arnold said.

His first radio job, at age 16, was in 1967 at KIEV 870 AM, a 500-watt station in Glendale.

“A friend of mine, his dad worked at that radio station. He got me an interview with the general manager, who said I could start part-time, sweeping floors or other stuff, but not be on the air. I thought that was fine. Back then, you started at the bottom and worked your way up,” he said.

He also worked at a radio station while in college at the University of California. He graduated in 1973. He later became involved in ham radio. His call sign is K9AF.

It became the start of a 41-year broadcasting career spanning play-by-play and news broadcasting to radio engineering. These accomplishments will land the 57-year-old Terre Haute resident in the Richard M. Fairbanks Indiana Broadcast Pioneer Hall of Fame.

Arnold is one of eight people to be inducted in an Oct. 2 ceremony at The Fountains Banquet and Conference Center in Carmel. Video/picture/audio presentations for each of the inductees will be added to a permanent display housed at the Indiana State Museum.

“It is very unusual to have an engineer” selected, said Dave Smith, a member of the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame Committee. Smith said nominations are sent annually to all radio and TV stations in the state, as well as to universities and colleges.

The committee can keep nominations for up to five years, as well as review new nominations, he said.

Sue Staton, co-chairwoman of the selection Hall of Fame Committee, speculated that Arnold is the first engineer inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.

Arnold’s legal first name is Jeffrey, but his brother called him Jerry, a name he still uses. Arnold is director of engineering for Midwest Communications Inc., overseeing 100.7 Mix FM; WWSY 95.9 FM (Seelyville); WINH 98.5 FM (broadcast in Paris, Ill., with the control room in Terre Haute); and WPRS 1440 AM (broadcast in Paris, Ill., with the control room to be moved to Terre Haute).

He began his career in Indiana in 1978 in Frankfort at WILO AM/FM doing news and sports. In 1979, he moved to Terre Haute to work as news director at WAAC, a radio station formerly owned by the George A. Foulkes family. Foulkes is a member of the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.

“They used to say ‘We’re At America’s Crossroads,’ which the WAAC allegedly stood for,” he said. “We did some Indiana State University baseball. I did play by play, which I love to do. There is just something about the immediacy of live radio play by play.”

Arnold began to move toward radio engineering after a change in a Federal Communications Commission rule in which many radio stations dropped news departments. His first task in Terre Haute came when WAAC’s engineer Joe Kelley died in a plane crash. “We had a situation where we went off the air and I got it back on the air,” he said.

He later worked at WPRS and WACF in Paris, Ill.; WTHI AM-FM from 1984 to 1987 and WBAK-TV from 1988 to 1991. He joined Midwest Communications (formerly BrightTower Communications) in 1992.

While at WTHI, the station used satellite-delivered radio programs. A lease expired on a tower used for a satellite dish, forcing the station to move the dish to a tower in Farmersburg.

“Whoever is the disc jockey sitting thousands of miles away, when it comes time to go to a break, pushes a button and gives you a relay closure in the receiver,” Arnold said.

That allows a station to go to a commercial or identify its station, he said. “That is cool if you have that next to you, but the relay closures were in Farmersburg and we were downtown. I thought there has to be a way around that. I didn’t invent anything new, I just reapplied it differently. I made it to where we could take those closures and turn it into an audio signal.

“Then send the audio [downtown] and have an audio decoder decode the difference in audio and that turned back into relay closures, which went into our automation and did that, so it worked real well,” he said.

His idea caught on to other stations. The satellite-delivered programer asked him to build five of the devices at a time, which he did in his garage. He built about 30 of the devices initially.

“As fate would have it, that satellite music headquarters was in Dallas and in the same building was another satellite-delivered radio called Cadena, which was Spanish broadcasting coast to coast. Their engineers said they have the same problem and was told they need to talk to this guy in Terre Haute, Indiana. They contacted me and at that time, they had 116 affiliates and I build one for every one of their affiliates,” Arnold said.

Arnold said he designed the device with sockets and it only required a screwdriver for easy service repair.

Danny Wayne, a radio disc jockey at The Valley 95.9, nominated Arnold for the Hall of fame. Wayne first worked with Arnold at the former WWSY 95.9, when it was owned by BrightTower Communications. Wayne said he knew of Arnold before that, when Wayne worked at the former WWZQ-FM. “That’s back when I had hair,” Wayne joked.

“There are names on the radio, Danny Wayne and Steve Hall, and those kind of folks, but there are people behind us. Jerry Arnold was one those folks. He is not the guy who turns the microphone on, he’s the guy who makes sure the mic works before I turn it on,” Wayne said.

“I have watched Jerry over the years change from vinyl to CD [compact disc] to PC [personal computer] and he adapted to make all of that work under one umbrella now,” Wayne said.

Wayne said Arnold also is working to keep an interest in former radio programs.

Arnold is heading the “Crosley Radio Players” and performs old radio shows. One such show is 6:30 p.m. June 24 at Westminster Village, 1120 E. Davis Drive, when radio shows of the “Fabulous Fifties” will be presented.

“It is a one-hour show. We have an episode of Dragnet and an episode of the Bickersons, which starred Don Ameche and Francis Langford,” Arnold said. “We also have live singers.”

Arnold said the original scripts to the former radio shows were done before shows became copyrighted, allowing him to recreate a nearly original radio broadcast.

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

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