college courses by radio

Only recently have college course taken over the internet gained any level of legitimacy. When I was very young I clearly recall people earning degrees by mail. The quality of these diplomas is debatable of course, but it's the application of media that interests us here aye?

There was also a time when college courses were taught by radio. One of the first was the station AMRAD in Boston,MA. But it was WGI that was the very first radio station to offer college courses by radio. In the year 1922, they began a series of twice weekly lectures by Tufts University faculty.

In the 1930s Oglethorpe University fostered many innovations among which was the "University of the Air" experiment, which broadcast college courses by radio in the 1930s. It was not the first, since WGI beat them to it, but it was a notable experiment, which lasted about five years, broadcasting college credit courses on the air waves. At the very least it gained widespread attention to their campus radio station, 1400 WJTL-AM. 

Incidentally it's named after benefactor John Thomas Lupton. Sadly only a few years later in 1935, WJTL was purchased by a private organization and moved to downtown Atlanta. The call letters were changed to WATL-AM and eventually WCOH-AM. To quote William Bianchi:

"From roughly 1929 through 1945, two network SOAs flourished: NBC's Music Appreciation Hour (MAH) and CBS’s American School of the Air (ASA). At their peak, they reached a combined weekly audience of approximately two million students, about 7% of the nation’s K-12 school children."

 

Today there do not appear to be any active college courses by radio in the US. But in Australia the RADIO AUSTRALIA has a lifelong learning program that carries college courses by radio. 

[I notice in s related licensing fandango, 2nd adjacent 1420 WATB-AM is moving to 1430... is the relatively under-powered 1400 stick moving back to Atlanta?] 

**Apparently not. WATB ultimately remained on 1420 and in Decatur.  But it did change calls to WWSZ-AM in 2018. WATB had been issued a construction permit from the FCC to change its operating frequency to 1430 kHz and increase its daytime power to 50,000 watts and nighttime power to 174 watts directional. But this change was dependent on WGFS-AM  in Covington, GA moving from first adjacent 1430 kHz to 1220 kHz. They did not. But they did change calls in 2019 to WYKG.