E_Hoot_Owls

Charles F. Berg Photograph Cellulose negative b&w 4x5 inches

The Oregonian had earlier constructed an iconic

building on the corner of Sixth and Alder Streets,

the first steel-frame building wests of the

Mississippi, which featured a huge clock tower.

KGW's transmission equipment was located at the

top of the clock tower along with the station's

primitive "studio." At that time a radio transmitter

required two towers with the transmission wire(s)

stretched between them. One such tower was

located on the clock tower roof and the other on

the Northwestern Bank Building, a full block away, with the transmission

wires stretched between them high above Alder Street.

While the program’s style evolved over time, the

Hoot Owls always used a somewhat formal

program structure arising from the program’s

founding concept as a club. The program opened

with a roll call of Hoot Owl officers followed by a

“business meeting” during which typical “club

business” was transacted including reading of

correspondence, answering questions,

acknowledging gifts and consideration of

membership applications. The Hoot Owls’ “rites”

at each meeting included singing of the official

Hoot Owl song played with Owlorgan (a

circus calliope) accompaniment by Bishop

Sumner (shown at the Owlorgan) and the

riding of the group’s imaginary mascot, a

goat named Sweet William, by

newly-initiated members. Sunset Magazine,

which dubbed the Hoot Owls the “Laughter

Lodge of the Air,” described the Owlorgan as

“a music-making contraption that makes a racket like nothing ever heard

on land or sea.” Following these rites, the program

unfolded with both semi-scripted and

extemporaneous patter from members of the

Degree Team.

Charles F. Berg (pictured left) presided over the

gathering as Grand Screech. Club “officers” were

known collectively as the Degree Team and each

held a humorous title. Some of the initial Degree

Team members were Episcopal Bishop of Oregon, Walter F. Sumner, as

Grand Sermon. Life insurance agent Frank J. Sardam as Grand Scream,

announcer Dick Haller as Holder of the Grand Goat, pianist Alex Riley as

Grand Skipano, Guarantee Trust Company salesman Jim Albert as Grand

Shout, power company executive Bill Strandborg as Grand Talon ill

Hoffman as Grand Silence.

There are no recordings of the be the Hoot Owls program which was

broadcast before the technology existed to record live radio programs.

The program might best be described as what NBC-TV’s Saturday Night

would have sounded like if it had been done on the radio -sixty years

before NBC conceived of the television program. The program also had a

slight Marx Brothers (who were Owls and occasionally appeared on the

program) quality although one listener described the Hoot Owls as “funny,

more cerebral than slap-the-knee funny. Sunset Magazine described the

show as making “no attempt to uplift or elevate the brows of the

audience; there is not even stereotyped

announcing. It is a period of frivolity and

fun, a radio ‘get together’ of which the

fan feels he is a part” [emphasis in

original].

Stylized as a mythical lodge, the

program featured poetry, skits, music and spontaneous tomfoolery all in

the guise of a meeting of the Order – a “secret society of the air.”

Listeners submitted membership applications and those who were

accepted were inducted in a formal on-air ceremony. The Hoot Owls’

distinctive owl logo was originally created by Oregonian cartoonist C. L.

Smith and lucky inductees received highly-prized membership cards

featuring that symbol. Smith’s role as Hoot Owls’ cartoonist was later

assumed by another Oregonian cartoonist and future member of the

Degree Team, “Tige” Reynolds. Successful membership applications

supposedly required demonstration of some type of significant talent or

accomplishment – but the term was generously interpreted.