Oral History Project Collin Smith

Oral History Interview with
Collin Smith

Born in Utah, grew up in Cedar City and Beaver herding sheep; Served in World War 2; Served mission for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Canada; Headed construction company Western Waterproofing for 28 years in Denver, Colorado where he now currently resides.

Notice: This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Communications 301 Media History class at Brigham Young University. A draft of this transcript was given to the interviewee for editing, however no information from the interview was removed.


Oral History Interview with
Collin Smith

Denver, Colorado
November 3rd, 2005
Cardon Smith

Cardon: Today I want to ask you some questions about the role of media in your life growing up and want to learn more about your first-hand experiences.

Collin: Ok great. I’ll see what I can do.

Cardon: Tell me about your experiences with radio as a kid.

Collin: There were a lot of action shows that we would just sit and listen to as a family.

Cardon: Was your primary source of getting news from the newspapers or the radio?

Collin: The radio probably. Our parents read newspapers a lot more, but we mostly
listened to the radio for news.

Cardon: Was radio programming mostly news or entertainment?

Collin: I remember mostly entertainment. But do you know, when we would go to the movies, at the beginning of the movie they would always show what they call the “news reel” and we would get a lot of our news there, even though it was a week late. We would find out what was going on in the Pacific and what not. It was before the main feature, and they showed about fifteen minutes of world news. That’s how we kept track of what was going on in World War 2. “Movie Tone News” . We would also sit and listen to the radio. I remember my dad sitting on the couch in the corner of the room, the same spot every night same time, turning on the radio, and we’d listen to all the programs and then listen to the news. There were shows like Amos and Andy, Mystery Theartre, The Lone Ranger, Burns and Allen, there was all kinds of entertainment on that radio. We would just sit there and listen and laugh at their jokes, it was just great entertainment. On Pearl Harbor day there is a picture of a family all huddled around an old radio as they listen to president Roosevelt as he announced the United States had been bombed, and you know, that’s exactly how it was at our house. Of course I don’t remember much about the newspaper, growing up in Beaver. I remember more radio. We did get the Salt Lake Tribune. But I think I read the “funny’s” (laughs).

Cardon: What was the town like that you grew up in?

Collin: Do you remember seeing Andy Griffith, Mayberry?

Cardon: Yea

Collin: That was Beaver (laughs)

Cardon: So the Salt Lake Tribune made it all the way down to Beaver?

Collin: Yea they delivered it all over the state. There was a local paper as well, “The Beaver Press”, it came out once a week. We also got the Deseret News.

Cardon: Was there a time you remember getting a radio, or was it something that was always there?

Collin: It was always there.

Cardon: Can you tell me a little more about the programming? Was it every night? Once a week?

Collin: Every night just before the news there was a musical program, Margaret Whiting, and Jack Smith came on for fifteen minutes before the news, and we would listen to them sing, and then we would listen to the news. Most of the shows were once a week, except for Amos and Andy, I think that was every night. That was a favorite of my dad’s. They were a couple of white guys pretending to be black. Instead of the sit-com’s like you have on TV, they would have them on the radio.

Cardon: Were there programs that you would listen to by yourselves, or was it more of a family event?

Collin: It was a family thing.

Cardon: So you wouldn’t ordinarily go up and listen to programs by yourself?

Collin: Yea we just had one radio. It wasn’t like today where you have a radio in your room. I didn’t get that till I got a clock radio, and that was when I was in high school.

Cardon: With the radio, could you turn it on at anytime during the day and find something you would listen too, or was it more of a scheduled event that you would turn it on for only certain programs?

Collin: Well there was always programming on. I remember having it on all the time. During the day it’s just like now on TV there were soap operas. That’s where the name comes from, they had these programs during the day and they were sponsored by soap companies! Sponsored by “Oxidol” soap. A lot of people if they were home during the day they would listen to those. It was a half hour program, and they would listen to those sometimes all day long. There was a program on Saturday mornings called “Lets Pretend” it was a very popular fairy-tale type show.

Cardon: Ok well lets move on from radio to TV. When is your earliest memory of seeing television in your house, or out in public for the first time?

Collin: Well the deal was, down in southern Utah where we were, there was no way to get television down there. They didn’t have those big microwave stations. But they started to bring them down further in Utah, and in about…1956 or 57 they had one of these transmitter stations in Beaver. And out on that hill where I lived, (Cedar City) that hill was high enough, that if you got on the top of that hill and had a TV, you could pick up that transmitter signal they had in Beaver. And so Gene Fulmer a boxer there from Utah, a member of the Church, fought for the championship, and a man took a generator and put it in the back of his truck, and took it up on that hill. A whole crowd of men and boys came up on that hill and stood around and watched that fight. Now that was the first time I saw TV, and I was back from my mission by then. It’s hard to explain the impact that television had…my goodness that was a wonderful thing. You know it was all black and white? I didn’t see a color TV until I was at the University of Utah, and was a freshman. They brought in a color TV, and it was a box. That thing must have been 4 feet high, maybe five, and about three feet back, and the screen was 10 inches square. 10 inches. And they had color television. It was amazing.

Cardon: What exactly was the impact on society and how did that change things.

Collin: Growing up in Beaver we were pretty isolated, and it was a big deal when you got to go to Salt Lake. I didn’t even go on an airplane until when I was 35 years old. And then with television you got to see what was going on all over the world, and back east you know. It made the world so much smaller.

Cardon: Did television affect radio at all?

Collin: Oh yea. It got to where you just listen to radio in your car. It turned to recorded music pretty much. We had a station in Cedar, and that’s all they played was records.

Cardon: Anything else about television you remember?

Collin: This is kind of funny. I remember when they started to get word that there was going to be color television, there were some people that said “that will never fly”. I remember my mom saying “Why would anyone want to have a color TV?” But you could buy,… now I’m going to try and explain this I don’t know if I can. But you could buy a sheet of cellophane, and the top third of the cellophane was blue, and the bottom third was green, and you put that on your television screen, so that the black and white program, if there was a sky it would look blue, if there was grass it would look green. (laughs) My mother said “that’s no good, their faces are blue and their pants are green!” I remember, this is so funny, we were so excited about color TV, down there in Beaver, that we watched a Catholic mass! You know, we had never seen anything like that before. And the Miss America contest oh my. (laughs). It was wonderful to see New York City, and just see everything that was so far out of our realm.

Cardon: Do you remember watching any of the Murrow shows?

Collin: Oh yea, always. It was very good coverage. He was just one of the family. And an excellent reporter.

Cardon: Do you remember watching his show “See it Now”?

Collin: Yea I remember hearing about that. He was big. I’ll tell you someone else who was really big was guy named Art Linkletter. He was really a fun guy. A fun program to listen to. He made it to television from radio. He did it successfully. A lot of them did not make the switch over very well. Have you ever heard of a man named Arthur Godfrey?

Cardon: No I haven’t.

Collin: Arthur Godfrey also had a program that was comparable to the Today Show. Every single morning, and I don’t care where you went, the radio would be turned on, I mean in the grocery store, the service stations, everywhere you went people were listening. It came on at about 7 o’clock. He had the most popular singers in the country come on and they would sing. He was just a delight to listen to. He went on for years and years and years. He was one of the ones that switched over to television successfully also. Jack Benny also. When we were kids listening to Jack Benny on the radio we never would miss that. That was just great and you’d talk to your friends about the jokes that he told. Then he switched over to TV and that was good. Gracie Allen and George Burns, Bob Hope, they all switched over. So a lot of the programs like this Art Linkletter they would you know go on for twenty years. Like Gunsmoke. Oh boy, I’ll tell you we never missed Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. But the guy that played Matt Dillan on the radio was not the same one that played him on television. There is a big difference here. Some people sounded good and did great in radio… but they were so ugly that when they tried to switch over to television they were real duds! They couldn’t make it because the sound was fine, but they looked horrible! You know they use to have wrestling on TV, I guess they still do, but my dad as fake as that wrestling was, he couldn’t seem to see the difference but he would shake and get so excited over it! I wanted to just tell him it was fake and stupid but I guess every one has their own taste.

Cardon: Well thank you Collin I appreciate your time and your stories, they are great.. This has been an outstanding interview, thank you very much.