Joe Earley, a Broadcast Pioneer

Joe Earley in 2000

Joe Earley has been in broadcasting for over a half century. For Philadelphians, Joe is probably best known for his portrayal of Mr. Rivets on "Let Scott Do It," which aired from 9 am to 10 am, Monday thru Friday on WPTZ (now KYW-TV), Channel 3 in Philadelphia in the 1950's.

However, Earley did many other things including working with Ernie Kovacs here in Philadelphia (at WPTZ) and the legendary Gene London (at WCAU-TV).

On Wednesday, December 27, 2000, we recorded two programs in our webcast series, Pioneers in Broadcasting, the first with Shelly Gross and later that same day, the second with Joe Earley.

While the webcast was planned to be 15 to 30 minutes long, Joe was so interesting that we kept the camera rolling and it ran just over 41 minutes in length.

Watch Joe Earley on December 27th
(It may take awhile to buffer. That is normal)

This webcast was originally recorded and uploaded as video. However, because of bandwidth limitations, we were forced for several years to offer this interview, only as audio. However, we did save the video files and now, we can again offer this "Pioneers in Broadcasting" webcast as video because of our increased Internet bandwidth service. We hope that sometime in the future to use new technology obtained since the recording of this interview to improve the video by re-encoding the files. However, until that day arrives, here's the video as originally offered in 2000.

After we finished taping the show, host Ed Sciaky and producer Gerry Wilkinson sat in Joe's den and informally continued the conversation. With Joe's kind permission, we have elected to use part of that conversation here.

Joe talks about Bob Bradley & Buckskin Billy
Rex Trailer
Gary Geers
Harold Pannepacker
TV Cook Florence Hanford
The Flying Sorcerer
Stan Lee Broza
Lee Dexter, Pete Boyle & Ernie Kovacs
Ernie Kovacs & cooking
Ernie Kovacs & 3 To Get Ready
Ernie Kovacs & Edie Adams
Joe's Wife, Kathy had her own TV show on Channel 3
WPTZ Announcer Earle Gill. He did booth announcing and the sign off news.
Andy McKay (Ernie Kovac's Assistant)
Newsman Roy Neal
Joe talks about quality in the industry
Joe discusses The Playhouse in the Park

The e-mail address of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia is pioneers@broadcastpioneers.com