TV on The Radio, Part Two

It was many moons ago that I posted on the obscure topic of FM radio stations operating on the TV band. But it was an AM station that first broadcast a visual image.

It was August 13th in the year 1928. 1010 WRNY-AM in Coytesville NJ becomes the commercial licensed radio station to transmit a television image. It was a 1.5 square inch image of Mrs. John Geloso enlarged by a magnifying glass to about three inches so it could be viewed by 500 persons at Philosophy Hall at NYU.

At the time technological limitations forced WRNY broadcast the sight and sound alternately rather than simultaneously. Viewers would first see an image and then a few seconds later they would hear the voice. The performances took place for 5 minutes every hour and were designed to lure the radio audience into buying "televisor" sets from the Pilot Electric Co. The Pilot Electric Co. was owned by Mr. John Geloso, his wife's image was the first picture seen over radio. Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Co presented daily 5 minute programs including cooking lessons, physical fitness instruction, concerts and calendars of events.

By 1929 sold WRNY for $100,000 to the Aviation Radio Station Inc., a company associated with the Curtiss Aircraft Corp. they used it to promote aviation (duh) and interestingly enough Emelia Earhart delivered a few on air speeches from their studios. The depression cut the legs out from under them and to continue they began a dayshare operation with WHN. The original WRNY was shut down when changed when Aviation Radio Station sold it to WHN-AM who scuttled it to end their day/share agreement in 1934.The WRNY calls now reside on 1350 in Rome NY on a sport talker. Charles Francis Jenkins was the first American to demonstrate television technology. His first successful transmission was 19 May 1922. The first public demonstration was on October 3rd in 1922 using the Naval station NOF in Washington, D.C. but, let me remind you These were still pictures not moving pictures, a cousin to what we think of as "television."

Other early test TV stations include 3XN Whippany NJ, W2XBS New York NY, W9XAA Chicago IL, W3XK Washington DC, W2XBU Beacon NY, W2XBV New York NY, W2XBW Bound Brook NJ, W2XAV East Pittsburgh PA, W4XA White Haven TN, W6XC Los Angeles CA and others Of course some of these test stations later became commercially licensed W9XAA became WCFL and one of those became WGN-AM I think.

Mad Daddy on WJW

Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers was in fact the DJ that took the place of Alan Freed's time slot when he left WJW in Cleveland for WINS and the big time in New York. The San Francisco–born Myers gained his first broadcasting experience in psychological warfare for the Army during the Korean War.

Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers was overshadowed by big names such as Alan Freed and Dick Biondi and unfortunately has been overlooked by most rock and roll history. He was one of the strangest DJs in the north-east during his time at WHKK-AM, WJW-AM and WHK-AM in cities like Akron Cleveland and Detroit in the mid 1950s. He had a frenetic, rapid-fire patter delivered usually in rhyme. He is the man who coined the 1960s phrases still used today such as "wavy gravy" "mellow jello". His playlist was an eclectic mixture of rock and roll and R&B numbers featuring such oddities as "The Greasy Chicken" "Ghost Satellite" ...and he even wrote his own rhyming advertisements. http://www.recordsbymail.com/madDaddy.php

In January 1958, Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers joined the station from WHK-AM 640 in Akron, his program was heard nightly from 8 p.m. to midnight. He left briefly for WJW-AM, lasting less than a year before he split for a gig at WHK-AM. At the time, WHK was establishing itself as the Top 40 powerhouse in Cleveland. Here's where you get a hint at how nutty the guy was. WJW-AM enforced a 90-day non-compete clause, (as is so damn common now) and "Mad Daddy" could not be heard on WHK until August 10. To get a little attention during the downtime, Maddaddy did a bit of a publicity stunt. He parachuting from a Piper Cub 2200 feet over Lake Erie, and composed a poem on his way down.

After he was fished out of the water he handed out copies of the 45 record "Zorro" to hundreds of fans who greeted him on shore. At the "peak of his popularity at WHK-AM he hosted record hops and live after-midnight shows dressed in Dracula costume. In the summer of 1959 he moved to WHK's sister station in New York, WNEW-AM 1130 AM, where "Mad Daddy" was not well received. So in New York he had to be Pete Myers and ditch the Dracula routine. He did not like the gig. That went on for three grueling years, until 1963, when he moved to WINS-AM and resumed the "Mad Daddy Show." This show was syndicated to other stations until WINS-AM flipped format to all-news in 1965. (FYI: still all news today) Mad Daddy hung his head and dragged his feet all the way back to WNEW-AM. Again, he became Pete Meyers, at least while on air. This went on for three more year, when on November 4, 1968, when he killed himself with a shotgun shortly after he had been let go at WNEW. Dead dog records carries a disc of some airchecks here.

Although Mad Daddy left us for the on-air studio in rock and roll heaven almost 40 years ago, his spirit lives on in Cleveland. On weekdays at 4 pm, listeners tuning in to 830 WKTX-AM, can hear the son of Mad Daddy, Waxin' Mad Daddy Jackson doing a show in Mad Daddy's character, playing the music from Mada daddy's peak era: early rock, R&B and "Wavy Gravy" hot rod, monster, novelty and instrumental songs.

A History of Vinyl

It was the year 1950 that improvements in the manufacture of Polyvinyl Chloride (also called PVC or vinyl finally spelled the death of Shellac records. Here.

Vinyl was initially discovered by was discovered by French physicist Henri Victor Regnault, and it's first practical production process designed by Fritz Klatte (pictured) in 1912. He discovered that the reaction between acetylene and acetic acid could be catalyzed to produced vinyl chloride. This predated it's use in media by such a long period of time that his patent expired in 1925. One year later it was rediscovered by Waldo Semon, who recognized its potential and patented it for the second time. His employers at B.F Goodrich used it for insulation, raincoats, shower curtains and gaskets. More here.

After it's benefits were demonstrated, (durability, flexibility and longevity) it was adopted as the new material for record production. On June 26th 1948 in New York CBS called a press conference to announce the introduction of the LP or long player. 12 inches wide, turning at 33 1/3 and using the innovation of vinyl had resulted in a record that could hold up to 30 minutes of music per side! It was called "microgroove" technology.

RCA retaliated by bringing their own vinyl medium to the market, a 7-inch 45 rpm micro-groove vinyl single and compatible turn table.

By 1954 45 rpm singles were out on vinyl making available a higher fidelity single and then about 8 years later RCA debuted the stereo LP, an innovation that would have been impossible on shellac.

Lac beetles and your record player

Lac is a substance that is secreted by the insect "Coccus lacca" or "Laccifer lacca" often referred to as the lac beetle. It belongs to the family of mealy bugs called “Coccoidea”. For the record it is not actually a beetle its a butterfly larvae. This substance is collected by hand from a variety of trees that play host to the insect. The main lac host trees are Palas, Ber and Kusum. On an average three hundred thousand insects produce one kilogram of lac resin.
The bags of sticklac are heated over an open fire. As the lac melts, the bags of lac are squeezed with a tourniquet producing enough pressure to force the melted lac to the outside surface of the bag. Much of the lac is processed into thin sheets which are crushed into brittle flakes for preservation and storage. Here is a mp3 blog focusing on shellac 78s. And an eBook for kids.

The raw Lac called "Sticklac" is harvested from tree trunks and branches. The lac is then cleaned and processed into a variety of different forms including industrial shellac, food grade shellac (Ex. jelly beans) and even that stinky goo we use to finish old furniture. Yes, Shellac is non-toxic and is approved for use in food by the FDA. More here. and Here.

It was Edison that first used Shellac to make his recording cylinders, it was an innovation that followed had wax cylinders. Record gooves cut into shellac survived playback much better than wax as you might imagine. But this has been a decade of rapid media change...

During WWI, demand was high among the homesick troops for music from America. As a result special 12 and 16 inch radio transcription records playing at 33 1/3 were shipped to special army DJs and POWs in order to boost morale. They contained both important troop information and top hits of the day, often recorded free of charge by big artists such as Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters. These were called "V-discs." The "V" stands for Victory.

Shellac is brittle and V-discs often arrived cracked or broken, and as Japan invaded Asia the source of shellac, the Lac beetle of South Asia, became scarce. Shellac discs also had undesirable technical shortfalls: the playing time discs was limited to 10 minutes per side. With shellac there was a groove density limitation of about 80 per inch, more than that risked the groove walls collapsing. And making discs larger than 16 inches to increase playtime was just unfeasible. A new medium was needed! Enter a Polyvinyl Chloride also called PVC or more commonly... vinyl. (more on that tomorrow...)

Why are you reading this?

Note to any reader in sales or manufacturing: The #1 web browser search that brings a netizen to my humble blog is [solar + powered +radio ]

WCMQ & WDAE Vs. Cuba!

Just a few weeks ago I read that 620 WDAE-AM in Tampa was tearing down their old tower in Tampa Bay. ...and when I say "bay" I really mean bay. WDAE broadcasts from two big Blaw-Knox towers that straddled the Gandy causeway between Tampa and St. Petersburg. It had great line-of sight but all that salt water left the current owners with no choice but to take 'em down.

620 used to be known as WSUN and was (as the marker states) the first radio station in Florida. It's history is very colorful as I am about to get into. the new towers will be shorter but will also run at a higher power. That’s to make up for the shorter and therefore less efficient towers. But in reality, regardless of their license, WDAE will continue using twice as much power, under a long-running STA to mitigate interference from Cuba! A little info here.

They like WCMQ Miami had a little problem with Cuba. Cuba was blasting radio signals at Florida. And of course the US military was blasting VOA at them on AM and shortwave. I don't know who upped the ante but the end result was that we have several station on the same frequency for signal cancellation purposes. As Cubans left Cuba escaping Castro's Socialist revolution certain Miami stations became havens for Cuban expatriates. WCMQ then became a vocal anti-Castro media outlets. Their call sign mimics Havana's own CMQ outlet, providing lots of nostalgic Spanish oldies for ex-Cubans now resettled in the area.

1210 WCMQ used to be audible all the way to D.C. under certain night time conditions. So, if you can receive it in Washington D.C., people across the gulf in Cuba also should also be able to hear it. The distance to D.C. is slightly greater but also is across land. AM signals travel much further across water. Would Cuba try to jam reception? Of course they would!

For most of its history, 1220 WCMQ was a music station with no political programming at all. It began as a daytimer in about 1968 and didn't switch to a talk format until after SBS purchased them. (WCMQ moved to 1210 in 1984) It was not until SBS brought in a strong political commentator and newsman that the station became an Anti-Castro outlet)

This tendency lasts thru to this very day. In 1996 Cuba was decimated by a hurricane. Many charitable group mounted humane relief efforts. WCMQ told their listeners to withhold donations, because they would only help Castro's government. They stated that Castro's government would steal any donations that were meant for the people of Cuba. at the time this put them somewhat at odds with WQBA who was taking the opposite stance. Even this day WCMQ radio host Caridad Roque and Ninoska Perez speak frequently about politics relating to Cuba. Check it out here.

The Radio Hijacked!

Generally I avoid news. News is not arcane or trivial. You can decide later that it was trivial but at the time it was... news. but this was a little out of the ordinary.

WBAB and WBLI are both owned by Cox. The assumption here is that this was deliberate, and targeted vindictively at Cox Radio.

First the physics. Radio studios are rarely adjacent to their transmitter towers. It certains can bhappen, but usually not. There are several ways to take your studio audio and send it to the tower. One of these is a microwave relay. It's like a point to point wireless connection. a transmitter sends a signal via mircowave, usually above 50 Ghz and it is received at that "transmitter shack" which then converts the signal for broadcast.

It was just last week, on May 17 durring the morning show at WBAB was running as usual. then suddenly somone punched in with a stronger microwave signal and hijacked the 102.3 signal. While the transmitter may have been acquired legally, the punch in was certaiy illegal. Thsi "pirate" the played a racist country song called "Nigger Hating Me" that advocated the killing of black people. The show's hosts, John Parise and Roger Luce, along with the station's technicians, were unable to block the pirate transmission at the time. The same thing happened at WBLI two weeks earlier. http://wbab.com/morningshow/

WBAB has responded by offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the hijacker. They have also wisely asked the FCC to investigate. Their PD Johyn Olsen said: "This was not a child's prank. This was a federal offense... Clearly someone has a bone to pick with WBAB." In Newsday John Olsen their GM freely admitted the technical weakness that all of these staitons had in this regard "You have to be technologically pretty proficient in order to know how to do it... The equipment is probably readily available and if you know how to put the equipment together, then it's something that's possible." Essentially the pirate got close to the tranmission tower and fired up with enough juice to overpower the WBAB relay. The STL frequencies are of public record, but the technical know how is more rare.

Interestingly enough it was only a coupel weeks ago that WBAB faced criticism for airing a fake commercial for "Wetback Streakhouse" that offended the Latino community. It was run as a part of The Roger and JP Show. So the possibility remains that this is a prank on the part of the staiton. Article Here

But still, these events are rare. Only one comes to mind right now, and it was way back in 1987. It was WTTW-TV. Durring the 90 second "inturruption" the pirate wore a Max Headroom mask to hide his identity, and made a fool of himself. The FCC believed that the pirate had overpowered a microwave feed into the array atop the Sears Tower.

All Gypsy Music all day!

There is not a lot of gypsy music on the radio in the U.S. A couple shows here and there. I'll get to that in a minute. But there is one ALL-GYPSY MUSIC radio station in the world. February 4th 2001 Hungary's first independent gypsy radio station, called 88.8 Radio C, began broadcasting. For the record Gypsy is not the nicest word for that ethnicity, in more polite circles they are called "Roma people" I have no idea why.

Radio C hoped to reach the large but socially isolated gypsy population and bring about it's "emancipation". Based in the capital Budapest, they hope to reach the 100,000-strong gypsy community in and the metro. As only the 12th radio station in Budapest it goes without saying that they have a shot at taking in other non-gypsy listeners.

They began months ahead of the launch by inviting members of the gypsy community to visit its studio and bring along their own music to set up the radio's own music archive. On the topic of gypsy music read this article on it's preservation, and download some MP3s free here, and here.
Anyway The success of Radio C has spurred gypsy activists like Olah Vince to try to establish Gypsy radio in other cities like Novi Sad in Serbia. Read about them here.

The Elusive John Stone

Stone is yet another obscure but important man in early radio engineering. He made many contributions to the fields of telephony and radio telegraphy while working at the original Ma'Bell. Originally trained as a physicist, he found employment as a telephone engineer after graduation from Johns Hopkins University. Like many others of that time the arena of wireless was the next obvious step. More here.

He holds several critical patents, (120 in all) one relatively simple one in 1902 for a system of loosely coupled, tuned circuits for radio transmission and reception. Quite critically it was established by the U.S. Supreme court that his held priority over Marconi's similar system. This prevented millions of dollars of royalty money inside US corporations and away from WWI fascist Italy. Politically motivated? ...perhaps.

Stone's arrangement featured a four circuit wireless telegraph apparatus very similar to Marconi's. Marconi,had acquired a patent in the UK (#7777) but had not yet acquired one in America opening the political window on this possibility. More here.

Though the patent was was one after his death, Stone would have definitely approved. he was a member of the American Defense Society; a decidedly pro-war, pro-military intervention group. They advocated war on Germany, the expulsion of American socialists, war on the Bolsheviks and was even pretty critical of the President Wilson. This quiet genius was kind of a political extremist behind closed doors. He was the author both pro-war propaganda and more relevantly several important technical papers, including "The Practical Aspects of the Propagation of High Frequency Waves Along Wires," for which he was awarded the Franklin Institute Edward Longstreth Medal in 1913. Stone's methods had revolutionized spark telegraphy and he was one of the lucky ones that received credit in his own lifetime.

He also is a possible contender for first radio broadcaster. John Stone claimed that, using a a modified arc-lamp generator, he transmitted speech by electro-magnetic waves as early as 1900. Quite impressive if it was true.

...and though he does not hold the patent on it, in 1912 Stone assisted De Forest in the final development of his Audion tube. the single device that made speech over radio even remotely practical. Three years later he wrote one of his better circulated papers, a treatise on Nikola Tesla's priority in radio.

The Transcription Disc

It looks like a record, but it's not exactly a record. It spins at 33 &1/3 rpm like a record but it's about 16" in diameter, that's 4 inches wider than your record crates, but could only hold about 15 minutes of audio per side. But the upside was the audio quality was better than a 78.

It was the year 1929. The great depression changed everything. Leisure items became luxury goods. Thomas Edison's cylinders and discs ceased production entirely. Conglomerates bought up smaller failing independents. Mass production made possible the reduced price of LPs of all kinds. And for radio stations the ability to replay programs was a huge cost-saver.

In 1929 RCA/Victor began making discs from "Vitrolac" (the precursor to vinyl.) It was picked up as a professional medium for radio transcription discs and the Library of Congress also used Vitrolac for talking books for the blind.

Two years later they took that magic material and introduced a type of long-playing record that allowed long form radio programs to fit on a manageable number of discs. These records held between double and triple the amount of music as a standard 78rpm disc. RCA's long-playing format apparently did not catch on. Introducing it in the middle of the Depression cannot have helped.

Prior to the vitrolac disc, the primary purpose of the aluminum disc was for advertiser program reviews. The aluminum discs were only good for a couple plays. Previous to this there were only aluminum transcription discs. These could only be played with a bamboo needle and in fact would be destroyed by a traditional steel needle. In Instead of aluminum discs, the RCA system used recording blanks made of a plastic material, either solid or bonded to a cardboard core. RCA issued blanks with pre-cut grooves which guided the tone arm along the surface of the disc. It was big improvement over the groove-less aluminum blanks.

By 1931 RCA was trying to market these discs to consumers but the idea was a bust. Consumers didn't like the 33 & 1/3 playing speed. But as a commercial product it stuck. The professional transcription disc the standard transcription disc for radio station recording until magnetic tape gained dominance around 1948.

Transcription discs probably peaked 942-1946 when AFRN (Armed Forces Radio Network) was created to distribute programs to soldiers overseas. By January 1946, 1030 vinylite 16-inch transcription discs of 8240 popular and classical songs had been produced as part of the Basic Music Library for the AFRN.

In the middle of this, the head of the American Federation of Musicians, James C. Petrillo, banned the use of transcriptions, insisting that all radio shows be performed live. This begat a musicians' strike that dragged all the way into 1945! ...But that's another story...

What is a listener?

If you're a radio insider, you are certainly familiar with Arbitron. They measure the listenership of thousands of American radio stations. If you buy ads, sell ads or own a radio station you almost certainly already use their data services. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a listener as someone who gives his or her attention to a sound, or makes an effort tohear something... but that's not enough for your advertisers...

I recently uncovered a fine peice of radio arcana regarding thsi more statistical side of radio. In order to estimate the number of listeners a radio staiton has in any given period of time, one must define "listener." Is that one song long? or the average legnth of one ad, about 30 seconds? Nope, actually the threshhold is currently set to five minutes.

The criteria for inclusion as a "listener" is five continuous minutes in one quarter-hour, per week recorded in an Arbitron diary. That sure isn't much usage, I will admit. Fortunatly for radio stations and their advertisers Arb diaries indicate a lot more individual radio usage than this bare minimum. But does PPM? that I do not know.

Their distant, but only real competitor Bridge ratings takes a harsh view on this "Bridge Ratings has no confidence in average-quarter-hour measurement nor its cousin time-spent-listening. The convoluted calculation required to generate such numbers raises the margin of error for such estimates beyond reliability. At Bridge Ratings more confident estimates rest with CUME and FAVORITENESS. Favoriteness simply seeks listenering behavior related to the station audiences listen to most often. Years of studies tell us that a listener devotes between 66 and 80 percent of their weekly listening to their favorite station. This statistic represents loyalty and when combined with cume reflects a station's ability to convert its cume to favoritness. " Favoriteness? Is that like Truthiness? http://www.bridgeratings.com/

Basically they avoid the traditional ratings schema entirely. they generate useful but unrelated quantizations of a stations listener dominance in a market. RAJAR in the UK has an interesting article on this as well: http://www.rajar.co.uk/documents/admap-paulkennedy.pdf

The Paraffin Recording...

There was audio recording Before vinyl, even before. We've gotten used to plastic as a recording medium. It's in the cassette tape backing, their shells, reel-to-reel spools, the PVC plastic 12-inches of the 1970s... Vinyl before that... and shellac 78's and cylinders before that. I have written about early recording media before, I'll try not to repeat myself here.

Early experimental media included wood, thin metallic tape, graphite, and some slightly more ridiculous things. The first was actually paraffin coated paper. He made only one reference to it in his US [No. 200,521] patent: "The material employed for this purpose may be soft paper saturated or coated with paraffin or similar material, with a sheet of metal foil on the surface thereof to receive the impression from the indenting point." For the record paraffin is also used in making wax paper, for sealing cheese, as a solid propellant, as a moisturizer etc.

In 1877 Thomas Edison patented a simple machine that could crudely record and replay sound. The recording was made with a device similar to what we use today: a stylus attached to a diaphragm. but the recording media was a strip of paraffin wax coated paper. That strip of paper was slid under the stylus while Edison shouted into the speaker. it's vibrations left an indentation in the paper. As the paper was pulled back under the stylus his voice could be heard faintly.

But as a recording medium it was terrible. At room temperature it gets brittle cant be carved without chipping. In his British patent [No. 1,644] he actually spelled out the paraffin problem: "The indentation can now be made in the foil, and the paraffin or similar material, and the indenting point, does not become clogged with the paraffin in consequence of the intervening foil." So why did he use it? Probably because had some on hand already. Pure paraffin is an effective electrical insulator, with a resistance of 1017 ohms per meter. This is really only second to plastic. In that era paraffin was used to coat electrical wires as insulation; something that was needed constantly in the Edison workshop. It was later that Edison decided that while a poor recording media, paraffin was good for wrapping candies and foods. He went on to invent wax paper.

from history.sandiego.edu

Within a year the prototype became a true phonograph. It's new recording media was a cylinder covered with tin foil. It was rotated by a hand cranked screw. Edison did not bother to patent the paraffin-coated paper. No one thought to patent it until 2004! It's #6833025 if it interests you.

Paraffin was discovered by Baron Dr. Karl Ludwig von Freiherr Reichenbach in 1830. He was known in his day as a chemist, metallurgist and philosopher. He also discovered kerosene and the antiseptic phenol. He was also big on crystals which is why the larger body of his work is ignored. He first rendered it from wood tar. In that era it was not yet discovered that it would be distilled from petroleum. Reichenbach performed a series of tests on the new substance and found it was generally inert. On account that nature he gave the material its name from the Latin parum, too little, and finitas, affinity).

Paraffin was later obtained in 1830 by the distillation of bituminous schist, and in 1835 from coal-tar; but the inert product was largely regarded as a curiosity. An efficient system for distilling paraffin from bituminous coals was patented in 1850 by Dr James Young. In this era it's primary use was as paraffin oil, for lamps. No one then had any inkling it would later carry the imprint of sound.

Muchas Gracias to all

It has been one year since I began this blog. I had some doubts early on whether or not I would have enough to write about. That worked itself out. A get a couple thousand hits a week now, which is both surprising and gratifying. Thank you all for reading, and your ideas for further posting. Without older, wiser radio men willing to share their wealth of radio arcana, I would have quit many months ago.

A short thanks list in no particular order:

Scott Fybush
Rob Bertrand
Scott Tilde
Barry Mishkind
Andrea Lawendel
Gary Guthrie
Scott at KCNT
Harry at KWHR
the Old Akronite at Ohio Media watch

...and many others throughout the years.

The RKO Radio Picture

The peak RKO radio station lineup consisted of WOR-AM in New York, KHJ-AM in Los Angeles, KFRC-AM in San Francisco, WHBQ-AM in Memphis, CKLW-AM in Windsor Canada, and the Yankee Network and its flagships WNAC-AM in Boston... (The Canadian government later tightened rules on foreign ownership of radio and television stations, forcing RKO to sell its CKLW-AM to a Canadian-based company in 1970.)

A radio picture? Radio doesn't have pictures, that's the point of radio...
RKO was formed in 1928 as a massive merging of four parties:

1. Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain
2. Film Booking Office of America (FBO) studio
3. American Pathé film studios
4. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Photophone division.

The prominence of the word "radio" in the corporate name reflected RCA's 66% holding. It is claimed that the broadcasting-tower logo of the production arm, "Radio Pictures," was suggested by David Sarnoff himself, but the reference is arcane and unproven.

In 1933 the U.S. Justice Department forced a re-org of RCA, requiring that RCA sell off a portion of it's RKO holdings. This change shifted power to investor Floyd Odlum and the Rockefeller brothers. In 1932 during the height of the great depression it went into debt. A corporate re-organization in 1936 made for a leaner more profitable company.

ten years later Howard Hughes gained control by buying 25% of the outstanding stock. Within weeks of taking control, he dismissed 66% of the staff and as a result production was shut down for six months! Hughs spent the time investigating possibly communists in the filing cabinets and under the carpets. As a reward, In the fifties Hughes got whacked with an anti-trust lawsuit and had to sell off RKO theaters.

With the loss of his theater division, Hughs focused on TWA and his aviation division. It was the Korean war after all. Hughes found the steady stream of lawsuits from RKO's small shareholders pesky. So since he was the worlds richest man, and a nutjob, he bought them all out in 1954. it cost $24 million. then, seemingly on impulse six months later he resold RKO to General Tire for $25 million. We all know what happened to him after that....

General Tire restored RKO's links to broadcasting. They already owned the Yankee network and in 1951 bought General Teleradio. But licensing problems with WNAK and KHJ hampered growth for the next 20 years! 1965-1987. Tt began with a simple license renewal. Fidelity Television claimed RKO General forced it's vendors purchase advertising time on RKO stations. Then the dirt came out from under the carpet: General Tire had bribed foreign officials, they had misappropriated foreign corporate funds, they bribed elected officials, RKO misled advertisers about its ratings, engaged in fraudulent billing, lied to the FCC about a destroyed audit reports and filed false financial statements etc. The FCC considered this gross misconduct. In 1980 the FCC stripped RKO of the two licenses.

In 1987, judge Kuhlmann found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee and recommended that the FCC strip RKO of its licenses. Kuhlmann based his ruling on numerous instances of dishonesty by RKO. RKO sold off it's remaining licenses shortly thereafter. Remember back when large corporations used to get punished by the government? Because the governments job was to serve it's citizens? Today I am reminded regularly by headlines that those days are long gone.

The WOS Prison band!

A man known as Harry Snodgrass was once the most popular radio personality in the entire United States. You have probably never heard of him. His show was not at a radio station in New York City or Los Angeles. 630 WOS-AM operated out of the Missouri Capitol State House. Mr. Snodgrass and his band were prisoners at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, MO.
In the early days of radio, back when primitive receivers required headphones and few stations were available Harry was a star. but after every show Harry and the members of the band went back to their rooms at the Missouri State Penitentiary, about six blocks east of the Capitol. More here.
Harry was put on the path to stardom after he botched a holdup in Saint Louis and was sentenced to three years at the Missouri State Pen. When Snodgrass told prison officials he played piano, they assigned him to the prison band. The band was really more of a moderately large orchestra with twenty-eight convicted felons as it's members. They had been convicted of crimes including embezzlement, burglary and even murder.

licensed to the Missouri State Marketing Bureau. Every Monday night, guards would escort the members of the band from stir to WOS studio located beneath the dome of the Missouri State Capitol. WOS claimed an audience in all forty-eight states and as far afield as Hawaii, Alaska, Cuba, Mexico and Newfoundland. The show was incredibly popular. Listeners wrote letters begging for the release of it's players.

Missouri net lists this catalog as follows:

• Brunswick 2850 Three O'Clock in the Morning / The Moonlight, A Waltz With You
• Brunswick 2852 Dusting the Keys/Blue Evening Blue
• Brunswick 3137 Canadian Capers/ The World is Waiting for the Sunrise
• Brunswick 3138 Land of My Sunset Dreams /Prisoner's Song
• Brunswick 3238 Mighty Lak' A Rose/Melody of Love.
• Brunswick 3239 Maple Leaf Rag / Along Miami Shore

Snodgrass broadcast for the last time on WOS on January 14th, 1925. Over one thousand people came to watch his final performance that day. Standing before the microphone, Snodgrass thanked prison officials for making his stay comfortable and the folks in radio land for making it profitable. He promised them he'd go straight and even give up drinking. More Here.


He was rumored to have gone into vaudeville upon his release but that isn't confirmed. He also he does appear to have recorded later in his career. He may have later broadcast on WHAJ in Bluefield, WV. Links to MP3 audio are on the Missouri Net site here

Migrant workers turn DJ

In Immokalee, Florida about 25 miles outside of Ft. Meyers is Radio Conciencia 107.9 WCIW-LP. It's a small local station with a strong religious streak and at that point is pretty normal. But WCIW is entirely run by a group that migrant workers and migrant worker advocates. Those advocates are collectively known as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. They've been a lot more vocal lately with the presidential pressure to spontaneously add 11 million new American citizens.
The station informs listening migrant workers (illegal and otherwise) of their rights and airs news of their Mexican, Haitian, Guatemalan or Caribbean homeland. It even delivers mundane messages — someone needs to reach a relative, for instance — to workers, most of whom don't have phones. To my understanding this service is illegal... but commonplace in remote areas such as Alaska. More here.

It is the 5th radio station built bu the Prometheus Radio Project based in Philadelphia. They have a page about the raising.

The radio station already succeeded as a media tool of the CIW in applying pressure to Taco Bell. Just last year the fast food Mexican restaurant chain agreed to meet the Immokalee workers’ demands. This included a direct pay increase to the workers that more than doubles their current wages.

Radio Rags

Radio has comfortably settled into a secondary role to television since the battle ended in the 1960s. Radio won it's first battle with print media in the 1930s, and print persists today. So let that be a lesson, losing dominance does not mean the end of an industry. Today we are served information and entertainment via an absolute glut of media sources: webcasts, podcasts, streaming video, DVDs, CDs, HD radio, satellite radio, ipods and a general over-supply of media sources. For the consumer thsi is great. All platforms pander to us continually trying to win customers. You can download songs for 99 cents (or often for free) Cable TV is cheap when bundled with DSL, and/or phone, and netflix gives you unlimited DVD rentals by mail for like ten bucks...

In the face of this it can be difficult to remember how big radio was in its golden era. Media has a great propensity for self-interest. newspapers write about radio, radio talks about TV, TV talks up a news article... and its always been this way.
At it's peak radio was huge. There were dozens of magazines devoted to radio. Not trade magazines like R&R... many of these were consumer-oriented magazines.

Radio Star, What's on the air, Radio Magazine, Radio News, Radio Broadcast, QST, Radio Call book, Radio Amateur, Tower Radio, Radio Engineering, Radio, Wireless Age, Radio Home, Radio Review, Radio Craft, Radio times, Electric Radio, New Jersey radio, Radio Guide, Radio Index, "Popular Electronics" was also very popular, while it wasnt' exclusively radio related, it covered a lot of radio. Great article here; http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2004/05/07/1/
As media obsesses on other media now we have a glut of magazines focused on computer technology including Wired, PC magazine and many others. History repeats itself. Some more covers are archived here: http://www.hvra.org/magcover.htm

Northernmost radio

I have told you the easternmost, and the southern most. It was inevitable I would get to the Northernmost: KBRW

The winner is 91.9/680 KBRW in Barrow Alaska. This distant outpost began broadcasting on December 22, 1974. For an radius of over 150 miles KBRW is the only radio station, that makes them the only radio service for every community in an area of about 88,000 square miles! Most of that is tundra but whatever. The nearest full service FM station is 88.1 KCDS a 90 watt community station over 200 miles away in Deadhorse, AK. "Remote" is an understatement. See pic here.

It was started with a $180,000 grant from the State of Alaska. About two years later KBRW began broadcasting with 1,000 watts of power and a small army of community volunteers. in 1988 they added a set of 5 translators to improve coverage in out-lying villages.

Barrow, Alaska is the United States' northermost town, situated 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a mere 1200 miles south of the North Pole. The Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean surrounds Barrow to the west, north, and east. To the south,permafrost stretches 200 miles, all the way to the Brooks Mountain Range. The municipality of Barrow was named after polar expedition sponsor Sir John Barrow in 1826. Previously it was known as Utkikvik, which translated from inuit to "place where the snowy owl flies." More here.

If it interests you, the northermost radio station in the contiguous 48 states is a tad harder to discern. The lands along 49 degrees latitude are largely unpopulated, much of it is national forests. But in a few small towns there are local radio stations.

Prarie Public Radio KPPR has the northermost FM transmitter for its 91.9 FM K220FF repeater in Crosby, North Dakota. The northernmost full service FM is 101.9 KBTO in Bottineau, North Dakota.

Traveling Today

I am on the road through the weekend.
Will return to posting Monday.

Help Barry Mishkind, the Eclectic Engineer

Barry is a radio geek, perhaps king of the radio geeks. He maintains the amazingly informative oldradio.com among other things.

The mission of his site is to collect and preserve historical and current information, graphics, printed materials, and whatever else can be accumulated to help radio enthusiasts, researchers, and students find information on the background and history of the industry.

Over the past seven years, he's been involved in a project to develop historical data on the pioneer radio stations in the US. A great deal of information has been gathered from the 1982 FCC microfiches and other sources, but a lot of history remains out there to be uncovered and preserved. While it is fairly easy to find some information about KDKA or KQW, for example, there are many stations for which those interested have few, or no, sources available.

Ultimately, he intends to produce a reference book that will be of value to those wanting to know about the stations and people that pioneered the industry. The plan is to trace as many stations as possible from their inception to today, including those which went dark over the years. Additionally, I want to develop a "resource index" that will direct historians, researchers, and students seeking further information to the locations around the country where different archives are maintained.

It is a bold goal, but one I admire deeply.

What he needs primarily is help in locating further material and the people who can fill in the holes in the history of the broadcast industry. The idea is to find out the interesting stories about why stations were built, why some of the early pioneers got into the radio business, as well as what caused some to give up on radio and others to continue through the years.

If you know something that you think barry might want to know, please get in touch.
http://www.broadcast.net/~barry/

The Way Radio was meant to be

WMKV 89.3 Reading, Ohio is situated just North of the Cincinnati border. At a mere 410 watts and a HAAT of 72 meters their contour is small and strongly effected by topography. It would not be a station of note except that They are the first FM educational public radio station in America to be licensed to a retirement community.

WMKV operates from the campus of Maple Knoll Village, one of the nation's top-rated retirement communities. Their program focuses on big band music and talk programs focused on retirees and older adults. their studio boasts a 12,000 song library focused largely on pre-1940s material. They even have their own 15-piece WMKV band. Their staff includes a number of "retired" DJs including Bill Myers from local AM powerhouse WLW-AM
They went on air in 1995, and began winning national and international awards for programming shortly thereafter. As recently as 2004 they were profiled in a front-page Los Angeles Times piece. They were also written up in RW online recently.

Interestingly enough about two-thirds of their listeners are online. In a situation where a radio station covers a small area it's impressive enough that they have about 30,000 listeners. It's even more impressive that they double that over on webcast. It's a lesson that can be taught to those small and often over looked college stations, that proper focus, and organization can do amazing things for any radio station, anywhere. http://www.wmkvfm.org/

The Fairness Doctrine and WGCB

I got some terse feedback from "Frank" on Part 5 of my Networks series last week. He doesn't like the fairness doctrine. To be honest, neither do I. But it's not a topic I've covered in any detail before so let's go there. It came from radioland and is fair game. I hope he responds in greater detail.
Frank Charges that the Dems manipulated the Fairness Doctrine to limit the flow of politically conservative views in the media. He is absolutely correct, they did. For example: In 1964 a a Red Lion radio station, 1440 WGCB-AM was challenged in a Fairness Doctrine complaint. It is said that the suit was secretly financed by the DNC. That part is iffy. But it was an absolutely pivotal ruling in future applications of the doctrine.
In a nutshell what happened was that on November 27, 1964, WGCB-AM carried a 15-minute broadcast by the Rev. Billy James Hargis (below) as part of the very conservative "Christian Crusade" series. A book titled "Goldwater-Extremist on the Right" was discussed. Hargis, said some harsh things about the author Mr. Cook, even going as far as to accuse him of being a communist. When Cook heard of the broadcast he concluded that he had been personally attacked and demanded free reply time, which the station refused. The FCC took issue with that. The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution permitted the FCC to order Red Lion to give free air time to liberals who disagreed with its conservative broadcast content. The Court ruled, in other words, that the federal government could dictate the content of a station’s broadcasting. But had the whole suit been about Cook or defamation of character, Cook could have just sued, and probably would have won. Finer details here,

In all fairness to the Dems, WGCB is at the absolute right-most extreme of the politically motivated christian movement. WGCB-TV airs some "out-there" stuff and gets some real heat from the Anti-defamation Committee for their programming. Some of what they called "free-speech" then would be "hate-speech" now. Things like Holocaust denial, antisemitism, sexism and racism just don't fly in America anymore.

Frank is also correct that the Dems have recently attempted to reintroduce this law. It's now called "H.R. 3302, the Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005" It was introduced by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). Source here. But it's not just Dems who have an interest in this law!
The Fairness doctrine was introduced in 1949 and it's stated purpose was two-fold:

1. It affirmatively requires that each broadcast licensee carry some coverage of controversial issues of public importance. This ensures that every broadcaster meets its duty to inform the electorate on public issues.
2. It requires reasonable balance in the coverage of these issues in a station's overall programming.

So why would this favor the Democrats? Only because they had a liberal Supreme court at the time. By the late 1980s When the gavel had swung the other way a new bill to place the Fairness Doctrine back into federal law passed the House by 3 to 1, and the Senate by nearly 2 to 1, but it was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Among those voting for the bill were Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). REPUBLICANS! Today with a divided, but right-leaning Supreme Court you see yet a new approach to the media control.

The Bush white house was caught bribing/paying radio hosts and newspaper columnists to promote their policies. Then we found out about Jeff Gannon, the Whitehouse press plant. @ years ago Bush signed an executive order to keep the political writing of authors from "hostile nations" out of our bookstores. Foreign authors now need to pass through an approval process at the Federal Office of Foreign Assets Control. Yeah, seriously. The efforts of both parties to control and limit the flow of information to the public are unconscionable. If I wrote Part 5 in 1996 instead of 2006 it would be just as apt. This is not a simple battle over bad legislation, these are all attempts by political groups to control what information you ingest in an effort to control what you think.