WOR's Early Bird

Millions begin the day by tuning in on John Gambling '51, radio's celebrated one-man show, "Rambling with Gambling"

As John A. Gambling '51 went through four years at Dartmouth his experiences were shared by several hundred thousand people in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. This was not unusual. Many of the same people had followed John from his birth, February 5, 1930, through his high school years at Horace Mann. Five years before John was born, his father, John B. Gambling, began a morning radio show on WOR in New York. The Gambling saga has continued ever since.

In March 1965, the 40th anniversary of "Rambling with Gambling" was celebrated by father, son, celebrities, and citizens of the metropolitan area. In January 1965 Pulse ratings showed the Gambling program had a 25 per cent share of the audience. More than one million radios were tuned to WOR every weekday morning. The Gambling rating was nearly twice the combined ratings of the second and third rock 'n roll stations, WABC and WMCA.

John A. Gambling took over his father's show in 1959. Since then the ratings have steadily risen. "Rambling with Gambling" was expanded and is now broadcast seven days a week for a total of 25 hours and 45 minutes. On weekdays John A. Gambling is on the air from 5:30 to 9 a.m. The weekend hours are slightly longer.

After John was graduated from Dartmouth, he substituted for his dad during vacations. He was an announcer on several Mutual Radio Network shows and spent four years as the nighttime host of WOR's "Music from Studio X." A year before John replaced his dad the two worked as a team on the morning show.

At 8 one morning in Studio Two on the 24th floor of 1440 Broadway, near Times Square, Gambling was finishing a mug of pea soup. "It's strictly a one-man operation. You rise or fall by your own actions or words," he said. Gambling's rise has contributed to WOR's current number one Pulse rating.

John Gambling's pleasant "good morning" is unencumbered by raucous music, corny jokes or prolonged yawns that are the usual shibboleths of morning radio shows.

He is different, perhaps because he appreciates how people feel when they get up in the morning. He has to get up at 3:30 a.m. in order to leave his Plandome, Long Island, home by 4:30. "I'm a slow starter. I don't eat breakfast, except for coffee and juice," he said. "I'm reasonably awake when I go on the air at 5:30. Nobody else is, but I have a feeling everybody expects me to be."

"The music we play is undefinable," Gambling said. "It's mostly what I like - show tunes, older songs. It has to be a recognizable arrangement of a generally recognizable tune. Familiarity is the key. Our audience is primarily adult and that eliminates the Beatles." The average age of Gambling's listeners is his own age of 35. Yet in lanuary, according to Pulse, some 46,500 teenagers - more than double any previous month - preferred "Rambling with Gambling" to the New Sound of WABC or the Good Guys of WMCA.

Traffic reports from "Flying Fred" Feldman in Helicopter 710 and "banter-time" with Peter Roberts, who reports the news on the half-hour, may account for younger listeners. Both men have been added to the program since John A. took over.

News, weather, time checks, and public service announcements are interspersed with an average of forty commercials during the three and a half hours each weekday morning. Just before the 8 o'clock news, Gambling regularly plays a march. He usually reads a brief amusing item from the Associated Press wire and a listener's letter. The show is lean, well-paced. Gambling's voice is pleasant and cheerful.

"The program is unobtrusive," he said. "We provide the information people want. Is the Long Island Expressway traffic snarled? Should you take an umbrella to work? Have we declared war on anybody? Who won last night's ball game?"

During the winter WOR is the official "school closing" station for 1583 schools registered on IBM cards. John B. Gambling began a school closing service in 1927. Now, codes and identification challenges are used to prevent student pranksters from closing their schools. Despite the precautions, at least one parochial school was erroneously closed by a Gambling announcement. A student who had obtained the code impersonated a nun.

A single announcement on "Rambling with Gambling" is extraordinarily effective. Recently, in April, St. Vincent's Hospital asked Gambling to announce that Type A-1 blood was urgently needed for five cases of open heart surgery. Minutes after Gambling's announcement, St. Vincent's called back to ask that the message not be repeated. It was already impossible to handle all the volunteers who were responding.

Gambling conveys information, plays music, and reads commercials. This leaves him little air time for entertainment. "I don't feel constricted," he said. "This is a business, basically."

"I don't consider myself a big showbiz personality. I'm just not built that way. I'm in the service business," said Gambling. "Basically, I consider myself a salesman."

His arms folded, he leaned forward at his L-shaped walnut desk. His head darted and bobbed as he glanced at the commercial copy on the other side of the microphone. His fingers unfolded as he enumerated a sponsor's phone numbers in New Jersey and Nassau County.

"I ad-lib most of the live commercials. It's much easier. I have a fact sheet. I'm reading ahead of what I'm saying. I'm making up my own sentences," he said. "By reading them myself, I think I can do a better selling job. It's more personal."

A personal, spontaneous quality permeates the entire program. "Most of what you say isn't conscious. You fall into a pattern, into a style. If you hit something that gets a response you stay with it, and if you don't get a response, you drop it," Gambling said. "The bit about Peter Roberts' beard. I just pulled that out of a hat; but by God, people picked it up. It was just a funny thought."

His secretary, Evelyn Volpe, who has been with the Gamblings, father and son, for 12 years, said that John tries to answer all letters. "When listeners ask if it's really true that Peter Roberts has a beard, John answers them evasively," she said. The volume of mail, 500-1000 letters a week, forced Gambling to hire another secretary, Dee Travers, two years ago. The two work in Gambling's Manhasset office to which he returns usually before noon each day. "The nicest comments I get are from people who say they feel they know me and my family," said Gambling.

"Rambling with Gambling" has always enjoyed a close relationship with its audience. On John B. Gambling's 30th anniversary, listeners filled Madison Square Garden at 6 a.m. for the celebration. This year's 40th anniversary was around the piano in Studio Two.

One morning the guests included Ford Frick, Arthur Godfrey, H. V. Kaltenborn, Andre Kostelanetz, Sam Levenson, and Richard Rodgers. John B. Gambling flew up from Florida where he spends his winters in retirement. In the summers he and his wife have a home on eastern Long Island.

With all the Gamblings present, the big question was whether John A.'s son, John R., 15, a student at The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa., would follow in his father's and grandfather's path. John A.'s daughters, Ann ("Missy"), 12, and Sarie, 5, were also in the studio. It is Missy who plays the piano on the air at Christmas as Young John once did on his father's show. The family gathering in the studio, now a Christmas tradition, began in 1934 when John A. recited " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Despite his early exposure to radio, John A. intended to be a pre-med student when he went to Dartmouth in 1947. A few biology courses convinced him that his future was in radio. As a freshman he heeled for WDBS and worked his way up to program director in his junior year and station manager in his senior year. He switched his major to English drama.

In the summer after his junior year John worked for the Granite State network at WKBR in Manchester and at WTSV in Claremont. When WTSL in Hanover was opened in the fall of 1950, Gambling became the station's first morning disc jockey. He was on the air from 6 to 9 a.m. Then he dashed back to campus for classes. He returned to the station in the afternoon to write copy - he was the only copywriter WTSL had - and then home to his wife and child.

In March 1949 John had married Sally Loppacker of Glen Ridge, N. J., whom he had met during high school. John R. was born in April of John's junior year.

Because John was station manager of WDBS and an employe of WTSL, relations between the two organizations started out in a cooperative spirit. "WTSL was a Mutual affiliate and they'd feed us news. We'd let them broadcast interviews and discussion programs that we produced," Gambling said. "WDBS was on the air 18 hours a day during my senior year; we had about 100 people working for us."

"There's no better experience than college radio, because you get to do everything from editing tape to learning engineering procedures," Gambling said. He recalled announcing a hockey game in 28-below weather. But his most vivid memory is of a live weekly half-hour dramatic show that he produced on Thursday nights during his sophomore year. The radio scripts were from a collection he had discovered in Baker Library. Many were by Arch Obeler, the writer of "Inner Sanctum."

"My only stage appearance in four years at Dartmouth was in 'The Middle World,' the first full-length play that Frank Gilroy '50 had produced. I was the stage manager and I had a walk-on. I was supposed to pick up a cigarette butt which some bastard stapled to the stage on the second night," Gambling said. "I'll probably best be remembered as someone who appeared in a Frank Gilroy play."

Gambling's friendship with Gilroy, who was editor of The Dartmouth in John's senior year, meant cooperation between the two campus media. They had generally regarded each other as rivals.

Today, Gambling is like the editor of a weekly newspaper who finds time instead of space to announce the events of the various community organizations. His announcements have aided people as far away as Guam and Bali. In metropolitan New York he has created an atmospheric neighborhood.

Gambling's record of service extends into his private life. He is a director of the Hempstead Bank on Long Island. He is a member of the board of directors of the Health and Welfare Council of Nassau County, of the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County, and of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation.

Though committed to public service, Gambling shies away from controversy. "One of the secrets of the show's longevity and its success is that if it's controversial, we don't taik about it. I think people find they get plenty of controversy in the course of their day. I'm not a crusader professionally, and I guess I'm not a crusader privately, either," he said.

"Our objective is to (a) inform and (b) entertain," Gambling said. "We're like somebody's funny Uncle Charlie. If he says something he thinks is funny and you don't agree, well, he's such a nice guy anyway and you don't mind."

On and off the air Gambling is efficient, often hurried, like a football quarter-back calling his plays. At 9 a.m. he signed off, saying, "Have a Good Day and Keep Smiling." Quickly, he disposed of his work at the station. Mario, his engineer, said, "Goodbye." Gambling replied, "Have a Good Day." Mario beamed. Gambling snapped his briefcase shut. It was a spring day. The half-hour drive home to Manhasset and his 37-foot yacht would be against the traffic.

John A. Gambling '51 with his father John B. Gambling, who inaugurated the popu-lar, early-morning show forty years ago and then turned it over to his son in 1959.

Gambling (r), former Station Manager of WDCR, with his friend Frank Gilroy '5O,once Editor of The Dartmouth and now author of the current Broadway hit, "TheSubject Was Roses." Gambling had a walk-on part in Gilroy's first full-length play,written while he was at Dartmouth, and was the innocent victim of a stage prank.

Gambling, partial to melodic music, selects some records in Studio 2 of WOR.