Small Fry Club
| Big Brother Bob Emery | |
|---|---|
Emery at WGI in 1924
|
|
| Born |
Clair Robert Emory August 12, 1897 Abington, Massachusetts |
| Died | July 18, 1982 (aged 84) Newton, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Broadcaster |
| Known for | Small Fry Club |
| Small Fry Club | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Movies for Small Fry |
| Genre | Children's |
| Presented by | Bob Emery |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 4 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | DuMont |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | March 11, 1947 – June 15, 1951 |
Clair Robert "Bob" Emery (1897–1982), known professionally as Big Brother Bob Emery, was a radio and television pioneer and children's show host. He is best known for his pioneer late-1940s network television show, Small Fry Club, and for his long career as a local broadcaster in Boston before and after that.
Emery was born on August 12, 1897 in Abington, Massachusetts. His father James was a farmer, and he was sent to the Farm and Trade School on Thompson's Island, from which he graduated in 1912. He then attended North Abington High School, but did not graduate.
In early 1924, Emery started at radio station WGI in Medford Hillside, Massachusetts, which had been one of the first American radio stations to broadcast regular programming (in 1919, under the callsign 1XE). Emery was a singer and announcer (identifying himself on the air by his initials "CRE", a holdover from ham radio common in early commercial radio) there, then began doing a children's show. In 1924, nearly every radio station had a man or woman who told bed-time stories to the kids, and Boston radio had several. Bob Emery would become the best known, going on to a career in both radio and TV that lasted from the early 1920s till he retired in the late 1960s. When Emery first put the show on the air, it was known as the "Big Brother Club" (this was long before the 1949 publication of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which lent a sinister cast to the term "Big Brother"; the meaning then was just an affectionate older mentor).
WGI was undergoing financial difficulties (it folded in 1925), so in late September 1924 Emery moved to a new Boston station, WEEI, owned by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company. He did his show there from late September 1924 until the early 1930s.
in the early 1930s, Emery took a radio job in New York City, first working for NBC and then working at several local stations in New York.
He then hosted Small Fry Club (also known as Movies for Small Fry), one of the earliest TV series made for children, on the DuMont Television Network. Emery continued to use "Big Brother Bob Emery" as his stage name in the show.
Small Fry Club aired from March 11, 1947 to June 15, 1951. It originally aired weekly, but soon expanded to five days a week, airing Monday through Friday at 7pm ET. According to television historians Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, the show was possibly the first television series to air five days per week.
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