The Doctor Will Hear You Now

July 1976 – KYAC had an early morning segment called “Doctor’s House Call.” The KYAC feature aired at 6:30 am.
May 1976 – Lowell Thomas, said to have the longest-running radio program, discontinued his evening newscasts after a run of 46 years. Thomas was 84. He began his first broadcast 51 years earlier on KDKA Pittsburgh. He started with the CBS network in 1930. After two years, he switched to the NBC Radio network but returned to CBS in 1947. He hosted the first-ever television news broadcast in 1939 and the first regularly scheduled television news broadcast (even though it was just a camera simulcast of his radio broadcast) beginning on February 21, 1940 over local station W2XBS (now WNBC) New York. In the summer of 1940, Thomas anchored the first live telecast of a political convention, the 1940 Republican National Convention which was fed from Philadelphia to W2XBS and on to W2XB. Reportedly, Thomas wasn’t even in Philadelphia, instead anchoring the broadcast from a New York studio and merely identifying speakers who addressed the convention. His signature sign-on was “Good evening, everybody” and his sign-off “So long, until tomorrow.”
The final broadcast was not heard in Seattle. KIRO had dumped the CBS radio network, and KIXI, now the Seattle affiliate, had scrapped the Lowell Thomas show two weeks prior to the final broadcast.

Lowell Thomas – Final broadcast – May 1976

Victor Stredicke

Former radio columnist for the Seattle Times (1964-1989).
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