Moon River

This series is delightful. So relaxing and poetic, it helps me drift off to sleep so peacefully.

I was on the WLW radio and Television announcing staff for many years. For the last dozen years that it was on the air, I frequently read the poems on "Moon River," which aired seven nights a week. If I may, I would like to offer a slight correction to your website, regarding the signature poem which we used each evening.

It's fun once in awhile to recall those particular days of radio. We really enjoyed producing programs, never realizing how much it might change. So often today they open the phone lines and the listeners become the air product - a lot cheaper that way.

By the time I came along, Moon River no longer had any commercials - just the music, vocals and poetry. When the program ended on February 24, 1968, they were going to discard the poems, so I took them home. About thirty years later, some of us WLW alumni - organist, vocalists and I - went to Cincinnati's Emery Theatre, where the former Albee Theatre organ was housed, and did some 90 Moon River half hour programs. They then aired on WMKV (FM), a Cincinnati station designed for older listeners. Those old poems came in handy!

Meanwhile, during my 30 years at Crosley Square (1952-1982), in speaking with older engineers who "were there" when Moon River began, I never heard that an announcer yawned on the air. As to the Moon River organ - there was more than one over the years. The large organ in Studio A, most often associated with the program, went to the now long-closed Shady Noo k Restaurant near Milville in southwestern Ohio. I'm not sure of its present whereabouts. The famed WLW 500,000-watt transmitter still stands in the station's transmitter building in Mason, Ohio, but several missing key parts prevent it from being operable. I saw it again on a recent visit.

Makes it easy to drift off to sleep.

I really love Moon River. Kind of mesmerizing and peacefull.