Jim Ramsburg

Jim Ramsburg, author of "Network Radio Ratings - 1932-1953", is a member of the Minnesota Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Hall in 2006 after a 50 year career that began in Twin Cities radio and concluded with the ownership of a successful Minneapolis-based radio and television advertising agency.

(See the Hall of Fame section at www.museumofbroadcasting.org)

Jim's love affair with Network Radio began during World War II when he was the only child and "latch key kid" of a widowed working mother in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale.. "Radio was my constant companion," he says, "I knew the schedules of every Twin City station. There were only eight of them in those days."

What really intrigued the boy were the deep-voiced announcers who introduced the programs and read their commercials. "I began to parrot their styles and got pretty good at it," he says. Those "home schooled" lessons came in handy in later life.

Jim began writing in high school as editor of the student newspaper and reporting prep sports for the North Hennepin (County) Post. Entering the University of Minnesota School of Journalism he covered sports for the Minnesota Daily. It was also at the Daily where he met his future wife, Patty.

During this period he discovered the college's student-run radio station, WMMR.

Jim started working at the station as a sportscaster and disc jockey. He became its manager two years later and his career course was set - it was going to be broadcasting as an air personality and program director.

After working during summer vacations from school at small rural stations he worked his way up to the overnight shift at WLOL in Minneapolis in 1956, the same year that Top 40 innovator Todd Storz had purchased a dormant 50,000 watt Twin City station,WDGY which had suddenly become the market's most popular station.

"I got a call in the middle of the night from WDGY's manager inviting me to join his staff, " Jim recalls. "He said they'd teach me something - and sure enough, they taught me how to count to 40 backwards."

More importantly he learned the importance of ratings in the broadcast industry and how success or failure hinged on the periodic audience surveys. "It was an odd situation," he says, "Suddenly I found myself competing against the same people and stations that I had idolized just a few years earlier.

"Nevertheless, I never lost my respect for them or what Network Radio had meant to me when I was growing up."

After a 20 year radio career that took them from coast to coast, Jim and Patty returned to the Twin Cities and established Ramsburg Media Services, which served the radio and television needs of large retailers and co-op groups.

They retired to Estero, Florida in 1998. Shortly afterwards Jim discovered the supposedly "lost" ratings books from Network Radio's "Golden Age" in the NBC and Nielsen archives housed at the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

Two years of transcribing and averaging the thousands of program ratings followed which presented complete and accurate picture of Network Radio during its peak years.

"It's like I was given the box scores, " Jim says. "My job was to determine the nightly, monthly and annual winners and losers, then rank them accordingly. In doing so I turned up hundreds of stories about the competition that had never been reported outside the industry.

"And because reporting competition within the framework of entertainment is what sports writing is all about , that's how I treated those stories - informally, with headings liberally sprinkled with puns and alliteration.

"It was fun to write and I hope that readers interested in "old time radio" will have fun reading it while learning things about that fascinating period in broadcasting history."

Jim is currently at work on his second book profiling the Top 100 programs and personalities of Network Radio's "Golden Age" plus the films and television programs associated with them.

His additional essays can be found at www.jimramsburg.com