Early Women in Broadcasting

Meserand's first on-air job was as a station's "Musical Clock Girl," who popped up every hour on the hour to give the time of day. In 1949, she began producing for WOR-TV. In 1951 Meserand produced the acclaimed wilderness series "Wildlife, Unlimited".

While Edythe Meserand did spend a good deal of time on the air, it was in her role as an executive that she proved to be a true innovator in the broadcasting world: Meserand is acknowledged to be the first person, male or female, to found an actual radio newsroom. She also produced what is considered the first true radio documentary.

After leaving WOR in 1956, Meserand went on to found her own advertising agency, and run her own tree farm in Albany, New York.

Meserand was the first president of American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT). This organization was founded in response to a decision on the part of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to dissolve its "women's division." Fearful that the overall concerns of women within the industry would not be given a voice, some female members of NAB decided to found their own organization. Since its inception, AWRT has served as an advocate for women within the broadcasting field, while also providing its members with job information services and professional development programs. Today, AWRT is considered the preeminent organization for women in the fields of radio and television. They have over 2,000 members and are headquartered in McLean, Virginia. In 1987, American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) would name its most prestigious award after her. The "Edythe J. Meserand Distinguished Broadcaster Award" is given out annually by the organization.

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Inga Rundvold was born in Norway in 1920, and raised in the Washington DC area. She began modeling while working full time as a secretary and  would often go and pose on her lunch hour. Rundvold  held a modeling contract with the Conover Agency in New York City, one of the largest modeling agencies in the world at the time. In 1942, she was chosen as one of three "girls" to be photographed for "Life" magazine wearing the first, official uniforms of the Women's Army Corps (WAC). This image would also be sent out to newspapers and be reprinted coast to coast. Even well into her small-screen career, Rundvold spent a lot of her time in front of the still camera.

Beginning in 1945, Rundvold authored a daily beauty and fashion column for the "Washington Times-Herald" newspaper, called "Beauty Forever." Every day for five years she was photographed for the column wearing a different hat. Her head-gear choices ran the gamut from bonnets to pillboxes, from tams to skull caps, from those with feathers to those with veils. The Library of American Broadcasting houses hundreds of these headdress images.

Rundvold was largely recognized as the First Lady of Washington, DC television. She was one of the first demonstrators of color broadcasting in 1950, at several special presentations made to the Federal Communications Commission. Ruhnvold joined WRC-TV in 1950. During her 17 years with the station, she would act, create, produce, write, research, promote and host a variety of programs. Her telecasts were a mix of fashion and beauty tips combined with cooking segments, exercise segments, and decorating and marriage advice as well as one-on-one interviews with celebrities and experts in various fields. Her focus ultimately evolved and came to address more weighty issues. Over the years Rundvold interviewed such show biz personalities as Bob Hope, Carol Channing, Danny Kaye, Milton Berle and such political figures as the Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

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Mona Kent was a prolific American writer for radio and television as well as the author of a novel and other works. Beginning her professional writing career in Denver in the 1930s, she reportedly wrote radio soap operas.

After moving to Chicago, Kent created her most famous and long-lasting work, the radio soap "Portia Faces Life." Mona Kent wrote every episode. The show aired daily over the NBC radio network in 15-minute installments. It told the ongoing story of Portia Blake, a young, female attorney whose husband had died before the series began leaving our heroine to raise their son, Dickie, all alone. Kent told "Time" magazine in September of 1949, "Every soap-opera heroine…is, by definition, a much stronger person than her husband or any man in her orbit.”

When "Portia Faces Life" went off the airwaves in 1953, it left the radio audience with one of the greatest cliffhangers of all time: Portia had just been convicted of a murder she hadn't committed and was about to be taken off to jail. The program aired for 13 years, from 1940 to 1953. The Library of American Broadcasting holds over 1,000 scripts that exist in the Mona Kent collection.

With the advent of television, Ms. Kent turned her writing skills to that medium, penning episodes of the early sci-fi series "Captain Video and His Video Rangers." She also continued to write for various soap operas. In 1950, Mona Kent was tapped by author Max Wylie to write about daytime dramas for his book "Radio and Television Writing." Mona Kent's chapter, titled "Perpetual Emotion," outlines the mechanics, meaning, and (in her words) the "main ingredients" for a successful soap.

During her life, Ms. Kent also found time to write numerous short stories, radio and TV scripts, adaptations, and articles as well as write and publish a novel titled "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall". A pulp fiction-y paperback, "Mirror" told the story of Dell Thornton, the writer of "syrupy soap operas for radio" who "destroyed everything she loved."

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