History of Radio

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History of Radio: How the Radio Changed My Life

The radio was my connection to a whole new world that wasn’t apparent in my home, in my town or in my school.

The radio was my connection to a whole new world that wasn’t apparent in my home, in my town or in my school.

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History of Radio: Listener-Sponsored Creativity and Chaos

Pacifica’s record of provoking local and federal authorities is something the’re likely proud of.

FB In New York, the folks who walked into WBAI’s studio included the likes of Bob Dylan and Ravi Shankar. The beat poets, Alan Ginsburg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were on the air at KPFA and in Los Angeles, the Fireside Theater, a comic quartet whose work could be described as psychedelic mixed audio, got their start at KPFK.

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History of Radio: The Enemies of Good Radio

Radio has been a victim of big data long before anyone used that term.

The airways have been controlled by government and corporate owners by monopolizing bandwidth and squeezing the small players and independents to the margins of the dial. But the internet wipes away that limitation and also strips away the limitations of geography and signal strength. 

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History of Radio: Video Didn’t Kill the Radio Star After All

How radio reinvented itself and built new audiences.

So did video kill the radio star? Definitely not. It changed radio, it changed who listened to radio and it changed the programming. But you can make the case that it made radio better.

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History of Radio: More Big Voices

DJs who pioneered rock ‘n’ roll, freeform and microbroadcasting.

Alan Freed, Bob Fass, Rosko and Mbanna Kantako ,  � �j.)�

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History of Radio: Big Voices

A play-by-play man, a demagogue and a foreign correspondent

Graham McNamee, Father Coughlin and Edward R. Murrow

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Throughout its history, American radio reflected the racial attitudes of the society within which it operated.

During the first two decades of its history, radio exhibited a racism that was expressed in the demeaning characters of radio comedies like Amos ‘n’ Andy and Beulah and in the fact that blacks were shutout of jobs in radio. But radio has also historically been a leader in bringing black music and culture to a larger audience and making it part of American culture.

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[radiohistory]

History of Radio: Hucksters, Pitchmen and Sponsors

In the 20’s the idea of broadcasting ads was considered offensive if not downright unethical.

The early years of radio were chaotic with hundreds of stations all presenting local programming based on local talent. Talent might not be the right word for some of the hucksters who worked their way onto the airwaves. ���

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History of Radio: Communities of Listeners

Radio connected people with similar minded folks all around the country.

No amount of corporate ownership and consolidation, government regulation and enforcement, has stopped the offbeat and off-center from finding a voice on radio.

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[radiohistory]

History of Radio: Tuesday, April 28, 1942

Anxious for news from the war fronts, Americans turn to their radios.

The first commercial television broadcasts began in 1941 but TV did not initially catch on and few families owned television sets during the war years. So on the night of Tuesday, April 28, 1942, American families instead turned on their radios.

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[radiohistory]

History of Radio: Thursday, Sept. 29, 1932

Rin Tin Tin, the Mills Brothers and Amos ‘n’ Andy

On the night of Thursday, Sept. 29, 1932, a typical American family may have been worried about finding work, keeping their home and maybe just finding the money to put food on the table. Radio though was free, and here’s what they might have heard that night.

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History of Radio: Music, Sports, News and More Music

When FDR made his 1941 ‘Day of Infamy” speech, 79% of American homes listened on radio.

It was nearly 100 years ago that an engineer named Dr. Frank Conrad decided to stick a mike a front of his phonograph and send the signal out over the radio transmitter he had built in his garage. Conrad’s Saturday night broadcasts not only gave rise to the first commercial radio station in the U.S. (KDKA Pittsburgh) but the Westinghouse employee was setting the tone for what would be the predominate type of programming over the airwaves for decades, music.

[radiohistory]

History of Radio: We All Sat Around the Wireless

America’s first mass medium

For a little more than two decades, from the late 1920’s to mid-century, listening to radio was the prime time pastime for a pretty large percentage of American homes. It may not have been the first widely used home entertainment device, that was the phonograph, but it was surely America’s first mass medium.

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