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.