OUR RESPECTS to John William Guider,

To return to previous page
use your browser BACK button

What are good broadcasters made of? Varying parts of will, energy and persuasion-that’s what John William (Duke) Guider is made of. And Mr. Guider is a good broadcaster who’s been involved in the electronics industry since 1922. At various times during his career, he’s been a salesman of radio receivers, an electronics supply officer in the Navy, and a lawyer who’s argued broadcasting cases before the U. S. Supreme Court. Currently he’s president and general manager of WMTW-FM-TV Poland Spring, Me., and president of Mt. Washington TV Inc., parent company of the stations.

WMTW-TV, a full-time ABC primary affiliate, is an unusual station. Its transmitter is situated on top of New Hampshire’s 6,280-foot Mt. Washington, the highest mountain peak in New England. The station serves 36 counties in a four-state area-Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the northeast corner of New York-that encompasses 1.5 million people.

When Mr. Guider started the station almost seven years ago, he quickly discovered that, unlike most other broadcast outlets, WMTW-TV did not have a specific market with which it could identify. He attacked this and other problems with a determination and ability characteristic of him.

New Market • “We made a new market in an area where no other single media can reach a great population,” he recalls.

Mr. Guider learned the habits, the personalities, the likes and dislikes of his previously unclassified audience.

Less than 25% of the station’s viewers reside in cities and they are an early supper, early-to-bed audience, Mr. Guider made the most of this knowledge. He programmed strong feature films from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with the result that WMTW-TV now enjoys, according to Mr. Guider, a 44.9% share of the audience during that period.

Feature film is the station’s most successful commodity. WMTW-TV now has a library that includes 3,362 feature films under contract, including 568 that are post-48’s.

But feature films are not Mr. Guider’s only source of pride. He’s particularly proud of WMTW-TV’s new 50-foot-high, Fiberglas, radome-enclosed, traveling-wave antenna, which was first put into service about Nov. 1 of last year, and has operated without interruption since. Putting up the new antenna was a necessity, but it wasn’t easy. The top of Mt. Washington gets an average of 100 days a year of hurricane-force winds and they bring snow and ice. Enclosed in a Fiberglas cylinder, the new antenna is impervious to the weather. Mr. Guider says it transmits a stronger signal throughout the WMTW service area and “fills in hollows” that never before could receive the station.

John Guider (everyone calls him Duke, a nickname he got as a result of mistaken identity when he was at the U.S. Naval Academy) never thought he’d spend a good part of his career winning shares of audiences and helping to build antennas.

“In my case,” he says without a trace of regret, “it’s always been a case of electronics overtaking me rather than I pursuing it.”

He was born March 10, 1900, in Syracuse, N. Y. Mr. Guider lived and went to school there until he was 17. After finishing high school, he entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., graduating with a Navy commission in 1922.

It was at this point that the electronics industry first embraced Mr. Guider, an embrace he’s never since successfully eluded. A fellow ensign aboard ship asked WMTW-TV’s future president if he would like to work for RCA. Electronics being in its toddling state, the idea seemed a novel one to Mr. Guider and in November 1922 be joined RCA as a sales engineer.

Sold Radios • “What I really did was sell radio receivers in Washington, D. C. to people who couldn’t get any stations.”

During this period he went to Georgetown U. Law School in the evenings, graduating with a law degree in 1926. He subsequently joined the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, Washington, D.C., remaining there until he was called back to the Navy 16 years later.

As a lawyer, Mr. Guider handled many radio and tv cases, some before the U. S. Supreme Court, but he was not departmentalized in broadcasting. He also served as a lawyer in criminal and civil cases.

Mr. Guider served with the Navy all during the war, from 1942 to 1946. He entered as a lieutenant commander and when discharged was a captain and also was the Navy’s senior electronics supply officer. “I spent most of my time getting things built and channeled to the fighting Navy,” Mr. Guider says.

After the war, Mr. Guider opened a law practice in New Hampshire. Again the call of broadcasting was loud and alluring. In 1948 he bought WMOU Berlin, N.H., a 250-w station, and three years later he added 1-kw WJWG Conway, N. H. (now WBNC) to his budding chain.

He subsequently sold both stations in 1957, but not before he, together with a group of associates, formed Mt. Washington Tv Inc. in 1953. The explicit purpose of the organization was to put an “area” tv station on top of Mt. Washington, and WMTW-TV, which began operations on Aug. 31, 1954, was the result.

Mr. Guider married Dorothy Hogan, a native of Washington, D. C., and a daughter of Frank Hogan, former president of the American Bar Assn., Oct. 20, 1923. They have three children, two sons and a daughter, and nine grandchildren, all under 7 years of age.

Mr. Guider is greatly involved in civic and charitable matters and, also is particularly interested in furthering educational tv. He’s a member of the bars of New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia and has been admitted to practice before the U. S. Supreme Court. For 11 years, until recently, he was treasurer and director of the American Bar Assn. Endowment, and he’s one of 600 Fellows of the American Bar Foundation.

Mr. Guider enjoys swimming and reading, but his real hobby, he says, is “to take kids and help point their feet in the right direction” (the average age of his station staff is 29 years and 4 months).

One of the highlights of his life was his appointment by the U. S. government as defense counsel for Japan’s wartime premier, Hideki Tojo, at his post-war trial.