Phoenix — What to do — What to See in the Sun

Visitors is the departure of church buildings from the traditional. Here there seems to have been on the part of many church architects an effort to throw off the shackles of the formulae of centuries and to incorporate in their designs feelings of reverence, adoration, inspiration, and exaltation through lines suggested by the desert and mountains and cacti of this land. Most people agree these extremely modern Phoenix churches are true works of art and that they are highly appropriate as places of wor-ship in this beautiful desert land.

Recreation-wise Phoenix is as elaborately endowed as in other respects. Golf can be enjoyed at any one of six or more (depending on how far you want to travel) excellent courses in the immediate vicinity of Phoenix, and it's golfing weather almost every day of the year. The Annual Phoenix Open is one of the highlights of the winter golf circuit, attracting the country's finest professionals and amateurs. Similarly tennis is a year around sport that can be played on courts at most country clubs, many resorts, all city parks, and not a few private residences.

Swimming is-surprising as it may seem in this desert country-one of the most popular and ubiquitous of sports. An amazing number of private homes have their own pools. Of course, every country club has one, as have most city parks. A resort in Phoenix just doesn't qualify as a resort without a pool, and a motor hotel that hasn't a beautifully lighted and decorated pool is regarded as a mere tourist court.

Square dancing is perennially popular in Phoenix,

Phoenix-those busy Air Waves

If you've just moved to Phoenix or are planning to move, and if you have some money and can't think of a way to invest it, why don't you open up a new radio or television station? Everybody else is doing it or so it must seem to some of the be-dazzled old-timers in the industry. "Until 1940," said one of them, with an audible sigh, "we had only two radio stations in Phoenix. Then all heck broke loose.

He didn't really say "heck," of course, and you can understand why he didn't when you scan the list of stations presently operating in and about Phoenix: Television KOOL, KPHO, KTVK, KVAR.

Radio (AM) KHEP, KIFN, KONI, KOOL, ΚΟΥ, KPHO, KPOK, KRIZ, KRUX, KTAR, KTYL. (KIFN is almost exclusively Spanish.) Radio (FM) KELE, KTYL-FM.

That comes out at four TV and 13 radio stations, which is considerably more than par for the course. Detroit, for instance, has only four TV stations. Tulsa has two. And Oklahoma City has no more than seven radio stations.

Why so many around Phoenix? Nobody knows, except that the answer must be related in some way to people - the quantities that already have moved to Phoenix and the quantities more than can be expected. In other words, if the town isn't yet big enough to support all those stations, everybody anticipates that it soon will be.

The city's pioneers of electronics communication were KTAR and KOY, both licensed in 1922. KTAR (then KFAD) was the 36th station licensed in the U. S. The two of them had things all their own way until 1940 when KPHO set up shop. And then, after that, the floodgates were down.

As befitted pioneer broadcasters in a pioneer state, Phoenix' early-day broadcasters blazed some unique trails. KTAR took its microphones down into a copper mine and up in a dirigible. KOY interviewed four governors, all at one table but each sitting in a chair inside his own state (that was in the Four Corners country, of course). And KTAR launched the Grand Canyon Easter broadcasts 21 years ago, fed them into NBC and has kept them going right up to the present time.

TV, too, has had its pioneers in Phoenix. KPHO, for example, was one of the first to telecast a show under water. It was in a swimming pool at a downtown hotel, and a watertight case had to be made for the camera, and the cameraman had to operate it with a periscope. (Presumably that was before snorkels, or else the budget didn't allow for them.) Along with such feats as these, the Phoenix broadcasting industry also has produced some distinguished personalities. John McGreevy was one of them. He was a writer for KTAR, and now he's living in North Hollywood and is the author of many network TV dramatic shows.

And then there was the case of the young fellow who wrote continuity for KOU He was attending Arizona State College at Tempe and holding down the radio job part-time. Pretty soon he worked up a songs-and-patter act with a Mesa boy named Wendell Noble. They were on the air three mornings a week for five minutes, sponsored by a local drug store. But when the station manager went to the druggist and asked him to pay each of the boys 50 cents extra per broadcast, he shook his head. Said he didn't think they were worth it.

Well, Wendell Noble is now in Hollywood and doing very well in radio and TV.

The other fellow? His name was Steve Allen.