The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 225

space via Skylab or the confessions of a 7-year-old cat burglar in Miami. The next he may play tapes of several campaign victory speeches to demonstrate how similar they all sound regardless of candidate locale. Even covering straight stories, he sometimes feels compelled to add a twist. Often, it's in the form of a For instance, shortly after House Speaker Carl Albert turned down Spiro Agnew's request for a House investigation into charges against him, Charles Osgood commented: "You accuse me of doing notliing It's not true, as a matter of fact I am far, far beyond doing nothing I am boldly refusing to It is a few minutes after 7 o'clock and the first newscast of the day is over for Charles Osgood. He has a little over an hour left to put together "Xewsbreak." The program runs six minutes, including two one-minute commercials, and is fed out at 8.30 A.M.

to CBS affiliates around the nation. CBS million people listen to "Xewsbreak" every day. Charles Osgood thinks the figure is low. He guesses at least twice that. Xo matter, though.

The immediate problem facing him is to get something for an audience, regardless of its size, to listen to. CBS television has just finished an interview with the chief couase for the independent truckers and some-on? suggests a follow-up. Charles Osgood hedges. He's heard the guy. "He talks like a lawyer," he says, "and no one but another lawyer can understand him." He shrugs.

"Oh, what the hell," he says finally, "let's try him." It is a phone interview and it goes as expected dully. Charles Osgood hangs up and grimaces. "That was awful," he tells Dale Minor, his producer. Minor nods and smiles an I-told-you-so smile. He's been pushing for something on the Patty Hearst kidnaping.

"I've got some real good tapes eyewitness stuff," he says. Charles Osgood glances at his watch. "I sure hope so," he says, "because we've only got a half-hour left." Life hasn't always been quite so harried for 41-year-old Charles Osgood Wocd 3d (his full name). In fact, as a boy growing up in Baltimore, it was downright calm. Things began to change when the family left Baltimore and moved to Philadelphia during Charles Osgood's first year in high school.

He struggled through schools in Philadelphia and Englewood, X.J., and in 1954 graduated from Fordham University. The next eight years were spent in Washington five with radio station WGMS Good Music and three with the U.S. Army band as band announcer. In 1958, shortly after getting out of the Army, he became program director at WGMS and a year later was made general manager of the station, owned by RKO General. "We made money and I was the fair-haired boy," lie says.

"In those days I never dreamed I could write, I never felt I could sell myself as a talent. As an announcer, whenever I gave the news, I simply ripped off the wire machine and read it. I thought my strengths were in production and management." So did RKO General. The company promoted him to general manager of the Continued on Page 7 hev decided to lead with Fred Charles Osgood, who spent part of his boyhood in Baltimore, is the man behind "Newsbreak" a six-minute CBS radio network program heard six days a week. Graham in Washington, follow with Winston Burdette in Rome, cut to Michael O'Sullivan in Beirut and then wing it the rest of the way with bits and pieces about truck strikes in the United States, coal strikes in Great Britain and gasoline shortages practically everywhere.

Gharles Osgood scanned the list of stories and shrugged philosophically. It was obvious there was not going to be enough time to say anything about parking tickets in Reno, jurk mail in Chicago or the price of gold in Dubuque. That approach to news-the headline approach-used to bother Gharles Osgood. Not to the point of throwing up his hands and stalking off his job at GBS, but enough to make him stop and wonder sometimes if there wasn't more to than simply skimming wire-service stories. It wasn't just a matter of professional pride.

It was a whole new way he had of looking at things. While his colleagues were busy assembling verbal front pages, Charles Osgood was looking for items newspapers are likely to bury. Happily, for the past couple of years, he's been able to indulge himself. In ietveen daily newscasts at 7 A.M. and 1 1 A.M., lie does "Xewsbreak," a CBS radio network program that focuses on whatever happens to catch Charles Osgood's fancy.

One day it might be a telephone interview with the teen-age girl who suggested sending spiders into Millions Know What Catches Charles Osgood's Fancy By FREDERIC KELLY.