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NBC’s “Radio Ear”…The First IFB or Ear Prompter

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

NBC’s “Radio Ear”…The First IFB or Ear Prompter

To help radio crews and floor reporters cover the 1944 political conventions (both held in Chicago), NBC came up with the “radio ear”…a one way voice link from control.

The television people in Studio 3H saw this and thought it would be a good way to make floor directors a bit more flexible since they would no longer have to use a cabled headset. They tried it for a while and then it just kind of petered out for some reason. It would take over 20 years for IFBs to return to the air with television’s coverage of the US space missions.

Below are three versions of the receiver, two headset models with aerials and one as an ear bud with battery packs. The photos were taken in NBC Studio 3H. The lady is a young Cloris Leachman and the bathing suit photo is to demonstrate how hidable the unit it.



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3 responses to “NBC’s “Radio Ear”…The First IFB or Ear Prompter”

  1. Steven Otero

    Does anyone know who the Lady on the left is ?

  2. Steven Otero

    The Second Man on the right is Jarrett Hathaway who invented the Radio Ear .

  3. Don Cox

    I was told at CBS in Chicago that IFB meant “interrupted fold-back”, that is, the program feed to the talent could be interupted to give instructions from directors or others. It was built into all CBS audio consoles of the era.

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