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"The World's Greatest Radio Station"
News Staff > Art Browne
I'm a lucky son of gun.
Reflective comments by Art Browne, now into the 7th decade of his life.
I express that because during my turn at the wheel of professional development I had the grand fortune to rub shoulders with icons of communication in my life and to most importantly fulfill employment dreams and the first was to me forever more WNEW Radio - 11:30AM, the Queen of independent radio in America with a western reach as far as Chicago, a southern reach as far as Atlanta and an eastern and northern reach that brought our clear channel signal into Canada and across the Atlantic to England and the Scandinavian nations. What a daily thrill it was for me to arrive at 565 Fifth Avenue and to work with and learn from some the best news people I would ever encounter and to be all along the way associated with the legendary figure of New York radio, William B. Williams, who was a mentor to me starting when I was just a kid in high school.
I grew up in New Jersey with WNEW Radio. These were the years of WWII and WNEW was part of my family from morning to night and it was in that time that I decided I wanted to be in broadcasting. Little did I ever dream that the day would come when I would indeed be in broadcasting and that I'd become a member of the WNEW family. That time and experience, those memories, are priceless to me. 1961-63.
Browne began his career in New Jersey radio and then moved on to the New York Journal American before transitioning to WNEW.
I think almost every good news person has some print experience in his career file, says Browne.
When I moved on career wise, WNEW Radio remained a part of me professionally and personally in my home life. There was never any other radio station that we were tuned into to and my children gratefully grew up to the personalities and the music of America as I call it and of course WNEW. I learned so much, so sharply from the people I associated with in that glorified newsroom, that splendid time of my life.
As an example, Ike Pappas later of CBS TV was a friend through the years, Pappas who was the individual that Jack Ruby shoved aside to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Pappas who was a mainstay of CBS TV news coverage in DC for decades. Ike was a colleague of mine and just then another guy on that superb WNEW team that delivered 7/24 to the listeners, the best in Radio news coverage and the greatest music of America with a few very rich radio personalities thrown in for good measure. What a great place and what great people.
Throughout my career in New York City, WNEW was always traveling with me, the personalities and the music and through so many of them but particularly Willie B., I had the great fortune to establish ties with entertainers who were pronounced in our lives then and still flourish today, often in our memories.
Browne was lured to ABC Radio Network in 1964 and during his time at ABC covered the civil rights movements in the south that extended to Mississippi and is known to the American public through the motion picture, Mississippi Burning, and witnessed the barbershop episode portrayed in that film.
Browne moved on in the ABC system to Channel-7 in New York that became during his time the #1 rated station in New York City. Browne wrote and produced several award winning and nominated documentaries and then created an award winning investigative unit that would be lauded by the Southern District of New York's Attorney General's Office.
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Browne then became the first sports director of Channel 7's Eyewitness News operation with a staff of Howard Cosell, Jim Bouton, Frank Gifford and Rick Barry. These were salad days working with people of that class and style. The walls were rubberized to deflect their egos, reflects Browne.
During this time frame West Point called upon Browne to come back home as the Voice of Army Football on Mutual Radio and the Army Black & Gold Network. It was in 1971 in this capacity that Browne, while still working at Channel-7 in New York, created the broadcast role of a sideline reporter bringing into the voice of Army Football All American Bobby Anderson to fulfill that role. Browne's friend and later superior, Roone Arledge, took note and told Browne in 1972 that he would create that coverage element in the ABC TV Football coverage package in 1973 and indeed he did using Jim Lampley and Don Tollefson. It is now a common element of coverage at all sporting events, the sideline reporter.
Eventually Browne moved onto ABC TV Network and became national editor for network TV news coverage encompassing all of the Western Hemisphere on a daily breaking news response idiom with a staff of 300+ people and during this stint, ABC TV News became #1 in the national ratings. Colleague and WNEW alumnus of a different era, Mike Stein, senior writer for ABC World News Tonight, has expressed that Browne was the best national editor ABC TV News ever had and at the time other networks tried to lure Browne away from ABC.
As the years moved on, Browne had a brief fling as a news director at WTNH in New Haven and worked again for ABC in Chicago where he developed a friendship with Katharine Hepburn as both were living at the Whitehall Hotel.
Later Browne worked as a managing editor at the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, WDVM where his leadership resulted in several Emmy winning news reports and series and then as vice-president of an independent TV news agency in DC, Newslink, Inc. During this time frame, Browne collaborated with others to write, produce and direct a nationally syndicated radio version of The Make Believe Ballroom, in tribute to his mentor, William B. Williams that utilized the hosting talents of music and vocal entertainers identified with the Great American songbook, bridging all the figures of that era starting with Frank Sinatra and his colleagues to song writer Sammy Cahn and Artie Shaw and so many others.
Browne moved on to a Vice-Presidency for Viznews, a division of NBC at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at the tail end of his broadcasting/news career was senior editor for CNN in New York.
By the turn of the century, Browne was president of the Thomas Alva Edison Museum in Edison, New Jersey, the birthplace of recorded sound and where the light bulb and electricity was founded. During this period Browne organized, scripted and produced the annual Middlesex County, NJ Stars and Stripes Forever Concert in the wake of 9/11 that featured the West Point Glee Club and the Garden State Symphonic Band, one of the few Sousa type bands still in existence.
After a winning slugfest with cancer, Browne these days, weekly works as a media consultant for the Cancer Treatments Centers of America that has a facility in northeast Philadelphia.
Lucky…you bet…now I'm fulfilling my life at a life saving facility…one that saved my life and does too for hundreds of others all the time. Who could ask for anything more?
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