Christmas Carol sounded great

[Concerning our 2007 re-broadcast of the 1967 WMUB student production of A Christmas Carol, available as a podcast. Rick Ludwin, now Vice-President of Late Night Programming for NBC, was a member of the student cast]:

A Christmas Carol sounded great tonight, including the "behind-the-scenes" introductory piece. It was fun to hear it all put together. Thanks very much for all John Hingsbergen’s work on this and for allowing it to happen. We appreciate it. I've already received very positive emails from several of those involved in the original show who listened live online. I hope you also hear some comments from listeners.

--Rick Ludwin, Burbank, California

Spirit of getting the best on the air

[Concerning our 2007 re-broadcast of the 1967 WMUB student production of A Christmas Carol, available as a podcast]:

While I did not participate in the production of this program, it was a great thrill to hear the voices of my classmates doing this classic story. I also enjoyed hearing the comments of Tom Collins (no relation) and Rick Ludwin in the interview segment beforehand. Tom’s story about using the pegboard hooks to simulate Marley’s chains was a small but telling example of the spirit of getting the best programs on the air with very little resources that marked a group of Miami students I was proud to be associated with.

--Chris Collins, School of Communication, University of Akron

Ingenuity yielded terrific results

[Concerning our 2007 re-broadcast of the 1967 WMUB student production of A Christmas Carol, available as a podcast. Bill Utter is a former General Manager of WMUB]:

[John Hingsbergen’s] introduction with Tom Collins, the original producer-director, and cast member Rick Ludwin was very interesting indeed. [He] did a fine job drawing out the details from those decades ago.

Tom’s explanation of how he created a sound of chains going up stairs with peg-board hooks played off speed was typical of the creative work done in those days. The equipment was primitive when judged today, but ingenuity yielded some terrific results. It is amazing to think that this echo of 1967 can be heard today anywhere in the world!

One listener here in Oxford told me yesterday that she listened to it while driving. She was delighted to think that this could be played from so long ago. She enjoyed it and made a point to seek me out over at the Rec. Center to tell me. I guess it was sort of a “driveway moment” for her.

--Bill Utter, Oxford

Voices have special magic

[Concerning our 2007 re-broadcast of the 1967 WMUB student production of A Christmas Carol, available as a podcast. Ray Smith edited the audio which we used for the broadcast]:

Curious, that even after hearing A Christmas Carol in the process of digitizing and posting it on our own web site here in California, I still had a thrill from hearing it on line from Oxford. And a major part of that thrill was derived from the fact that the signal was also being channeled to a powerful radio transmitter.

I know, the Internet is the most efficient communication machine ever devised, but it has the defects of its virtues: like our L.E.D Christmas lights, it is clean, quiet, and cold. Hearing voices from the ether has a special magic for me, undiminished from that day when I first connected headphones to a crystal radio. Naturally, hearing one's own voice coming out of a tunnel to the past is doubly fascinating. It's proof that yes, we were really there, and yes, we really did that.

Thanks to you for airing this piece. Actors come and go, but Dickens' plea for compassion over self-interest remains on target to this day. It was one more instance of WMUB being relevant to its listeners.

--Ray Smith, Ojai, California