David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway (July 13, 1913 – July 21, 1982) was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing and relaxing style belied a battle with depression. Garroway has been honored for his contributions to radio and television with a star for each on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well as the St. Louis Walk of Fame, the city where he spent part of his teenage years and early adulthood.

Born in Schenectady, New York, Garroway was 14 and had moved with his family 13 times before settling in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended University City High School and Washington University in St. Louis, from which he earned a degree in abnormal psychology. Before going into broadcasting, Garroway worked as a Harvard University lab assistant, as a book salesman, and as a piston ring salesman. After not being able to successfully sell either, Garroway decided to try his hand in radio.

Garroway began his broadcasting career modestly. Starting at NBC as an page in 1938, he graduated 23rd in a class of 24 from NBC's school for announcers. Following graduation, he landed a job at Pittsburgh radio station KDKA in 1939. As a station reporter, he went about the region filing reports from a hot-air balloon, a U.S. Navy submarine in the Ohio River, and from deep inside a coal mine. His early reporting efforts earned Garroway a reputation for finding a good story, even if it took him to unusual places. The "Roving Announcer", as he was known, worked his way up to become the station's special events director, while still attending to his on-air work. After two years with KDKA, Garroway left for Chicago.

Barbara Jill Walters (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television news magazine (20/20), former co-anchor of the ABC World News, and current contributor to ABC News.

Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's news magazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News, and continuing as a contributor to the network news division and its flagship program, ABC World News.

In 1996, Walters was ranked #34 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

Walters was born in 1929 in Boston, the daughter of Dena (née Seletsky) and Louis "Lou" Walters (born Louis Warmwater). Her parents were both Jewish and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe. Walters' paternal grandfather, Abraham Isaac, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name first to Warmwater and later to Abraham Walters (the original family surname was Waremwasser). Walters' father was born there c. 1894, and moved to the United States with his family in 1900. In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also worked as a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943). He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally disabled and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. She has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson, born to a different mother.^{[citation needed]}

Bob Ray is an independent American filmmaker based out of Austin, Texas.

In 1994 Ray founded the production company CrashCam Films. CrashCam Films' first productions were narrative Super 8 mm films and music videos. Bob Ray's in-camera-edited Super 8 short “Sweet Sweetroll’s BaadAsssss Spin” found its way onto indie producer John Pierson’s show Split/Screen on the Independent Film Channel and Bravo (television network).

Ray made his feature film debut with the rock ‘n’ roll stoner cult film Rock Opera. Ray wrote and directed Rock Opera with very limited resources. The film has accumulated several rave reviews and a 2003 High Times Magazine nomination for a Stony Film Award.

Ray has produced and directed several music videos, including a video for the Grammy nominated song “Fried Chicken and Coffee” by Nashville Pussy, and videos for songs by The Riverboat Gamblers, U.S.S. Friendship, Dambaby (featuring Sam McCandless of Cold), The Phantom Creeps and more.

Continuing his close affiliation with the music community, Ray has worked with The Polyphonic Spree, The Black Eyed Peas, Eels, Jerry Cantrell, Blur, Supergrass, The Rapture, Junior Brown, Jurassic Five, Puffy, Modest Mouse, Pete Yorn, Clinic, Starsailor, Don Walser, The Shins, Ozo Matli, Stephen Malkmus, Hank Williams III, X-Ecutioners, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and many others.

Fred Allen (born John Florence Sullivan, May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956) was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.

His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning (in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) wrote that Allen was radio's most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master ad libber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles), while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk (who began his career writing for Allen).

Leo "Zeke" Manners (October 10, 1911 - October 14, 2000) was an American country musician.

Manners was born in San Francisco but raised in Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School and learned to play fiddle, banjo, and piano. He played in a traveling revue for a time before joining several Western swing groups. In the 1930s he came to lead a group called The Beverly Hillbillies, who were a popular radio attraction long before the TV show of the same name became a hit. Manners's show, featuring himself on accordion and organ, mixed comedy with Western Swing and was broadcast on Los Angeles's KMPC as well as in New York City.

He covered Mr. Ghost Goes to Town which was written in 1936 by Will Hudson, Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish. The Five Jones Boys also performed the song.

The ensemble played for several years together before breaking up, after which Manners put together the group Zeke & the City Fellers. This band played on New York radio and did a tour of Europe shortly before the outbreak of World War II. In the 1940s he hosted his own One Man Variety Show, a comedy/musical routine, and in the 1950s he hosted music programs on Los Angeles's KFWB and New York's WINS.