Roy Ortega reports on his blog today that Jack Rye , one of El Paso’s pioneering broadcasters, died over the weekend.
Here is an article about Jack Rye from January 4, 1953.
Jack (I Wanna Be A Friend of Yours) Rye, left
a promising position with a transportation company at the age of 19 to
enter the field of radio. Rye, who has been appointed production
supervisor for KTSM-TV, recalls he was in the money – as he puts it –
when he suddenly realized radio was his long lost ambition.
That was during the early dark days of World War II, when the radio was constantly flashing news of our war efforts against the Japanese in the Pacific. Little did he know that soon he would be broadcasting that news himself over the air.
His first contact with a microphone was when he went to work as an announcer for Radio station KAVE in Carlsbad, N.M., in January of 1942. Here, for the first time he found himself reading 5 –10 -15-minute news broadcasts – something that had always fascinated him. Five months later we find Rye amidst an “all-women” announcing staff at KTSM – something which he found very interesting too, because of the male announcers’ shortage at that time.
This “harem-like” situation, Rye sadly recalls, didn’t last very long. Within a few months following his introduction to KTSM, Rye had followed the foot-steps of other KTSM announcers and joined Uncle Sam’s armed forces and assigned to do publicity and public relations for the United states army recruiting service. Before being shipped overseas, Rye participated in the Army Hour broadcast by NBC from Ft. Bliss on the occasion of the last public appearance of the Horse Cavalry.
Rye did not lose his radio contact while in the service. Instead he gained vast knowledge of the radio business when he joined the American Forces Network overseas as an announcer. Later he became chief announcer and traffic manager for the entire network in London whose duties was to channel radio programs to fighting men in the front lines. During that period, Rye worked on the Allied Expeditionary Forces Services of the British Broadcasting Co. at Broadcasting House in London. When the AFN headquarters moved to Frankfurt, he was transferred to Berlin as program director of the AFN station there. During all of his Army radio service, Rye came in contact with some of the nation’s outstanding radio announcers such as Dick Dudley, Robert Warren, Wayne Howell and Ed King, all top NBC announcers and many other radio producers and writers who had answered the call to the service.
MARRIED HERE
When hostilities ended in Europe, Rye returned to El Paso and married pretty Miss Ann Ares in August of 1947, and resumed his duties with KTSM except for short periods of absence when he went to Ft. Worth for his first TV job with WBAP and later to Salt Lake City where he worked with station KUTA.
Among the most popular disc jockeys in El Paso, Rye is well known for his “Rye’s Record Room” broadcast of popular music.
As production supervisor of KTSM-TV, Rye will act as coordinator to see that all the many facets of a TV program are combined to make a smooth finished product.
A program can consist of contributions from the continuity department, art department, photographic department, announcer, engineering and other material.
“My function,” Rye said, “is to see that all this material is combined in the right place at the right time.”
“I’m proud of the confidence KTSM has shown in me as production supervisor. We plan to furnish the people of El Paso with the same high quilaty program material and production on KTSM-TV as they have come to expect from KTSM radio,” Rye said.
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