In the mid-70’s, Ketchum in Pittsburgh seemed a fairly magical place for a young copywriter to be. They were all pre-recorded at the radio station, KDKA, which was across Gateway Center from the ad agency, Ketchum MacLeod & Grove. Of course, there was nothing “live” about them. They were called “live reads” meant to sound as though this idea of thirst and Iron City beer had just popped into Bob Prince’s head and he decided to share this with his listeners. Then the script would segue into the delicious, refreshing, clean, crisp, thirst-quenching taste of an ice-cold Iron City Beer. The first thirty seconds or so was a conjuring up of some baseball-related action that reminded listeners what it was like to work up a thirst. It meant writing at least fifteen :60-second scripts a week. As the low man on the totem pole, the job of writing these scripts was assigned to me. To fill all that airtime, they needed about 150 different scripts. Or about 648 commercial airings a season. The brewery sponsored three innings every game, about 4 commercials a game, 162 games a year. I was a young copywriter recently arrived from Philadelphia. In 1974, one of the main sponsors of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ radio broadcasts was the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, makers of Iron City Beer. Actually, there were over a hundred more. Then, almost imperceptibly, he glanced at the stopwatch on the table in front of him, concluded that there was not enough copy to fill the sixty seconds, and began to ad lib, “… that’s right fans, a really clean, crisp taste …”There would be no second takes he had ten more scripts to read. “Iron City Beer has that clean, crisp taste …” he intoned. He had my radio script in one hand, a Pall Mall in the other and the stopwatch on the table in front of him.
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