Wisconsin College of the Air

Madison radio station WHA had already been on the air for about ten years when an experiment arose to see if radio could be used in education. In 1930, WHA tried teaching music and current events to grades 6 through 8 in rural schools in Dane County. The ten-week music program was taught by Professor Edgar B. "Pop" Gordon, who had been offering a music appreciation program on WHA as early as 1922. I uploaded a high res scan to the Internet Archive [LINK].

970 WHA-AM was founded as 9XM in 1922 by Earle M. Terry and operated by the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin. It is unfortunate but worth noting that Mr. Terry's widow discarded his research notes and personal papers after his death. It is due to that decision that there are certain gaps in the early record for WHA. But due to the research of Randall Davidson there is at least one great print source to reference on 9XM, his 2007 book 9XM Talking. 

I have written about Radio Courses before. [LINK] Some were generally educational, with the aspirational verve you find in early broadcasting. But there were a few that were real-deal college courses produced by real deal colleges and universities.  But even in that group, Wisconsin College of the Air was special. It was one of the most civic-minded efforts to build an educational tool out of broadcasting. This particular document below is from 1951.

The Jose Fritz Library

The Wisconsin School of the Air debuted the week of October 5, 1931, on WHA. It grew from that one station into a state-wide network. It continued to expand for decades. Even this 1951 pamphlet lists eight stations and two more "future" stations which I've identified tentatively as WHHI and WHSA. The 1952 Wisconsin Blue Book [SOURCE] appears to confirm confirm my assessment. Their respective 1952 sign on dates fit well with the geography of the map and the time of publication. The Wisconsin Public radio network today includes 31 stations and 8 translators. [SOURCE]  In other words this public radio network has quadrupled in size over the last 70+ years. Below is a list of the stations on that graphic for readability:

CALLS	FREQ	CITY	Year
WHA-AM	970	Madison	X
WHA	88.7	Madison	X
WHAD	90.7	Delafield	X
WLBL-AM	930	Wausau	X
WHKW	89.3	Chilton	X
WHRM	91.9	Wausau	X
WHWC	88.3	Menomonie	X
WHLA	90.3	La Crosse	X
*WHSA	89.9	Brule	1952
*WHHI	91.3	Highland	1952

Very few of these 1952 stations have changed call signs. WHA-FM in Madison is now WERN, but is still owned by the University of Wisconsin and airs classical music 24/7. WHKW in Chilton is now WPNE, it only changed calls in 1973 when WHKW moved its stick to the WPNE-TV transmitter site in Green Bay. 

The Wisconsin Blue book goes on to confirm that the radio network broadcast 16 hours a day from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM.  But it further lists two stations transferred to the State Radio Council: 930 WLBL Auburndale which was founded in 1922 as WPAH which is in the area of Steven's Point. It operated then as a 5,000 watt daytimer. 

Programs each weekday were designed for use in school classrooms around the state. It was thought the programs would be of particular value to the rural one-room schools in the state, numbering over 6,500 at the time. [SOURCE] The College of the Air taught courses on music, art, literature, nature, health and safety and according to Davidson, boasted 70,000 students by 1938. Some schools would actually move a radio into the classroom like your teacher might have borrowed a projector or TV from the AV room. These were not "failed experiments" as some critics have written. However, it is generally true that educational radio courses declined in popularity in the 1950s. 

I'll reference the Davidson book one more time. He wrote about some of the most popular programs on Wisconsin College of the Air, including Journey In Musicland hosted by Edgar Gordon, Let’s Draw, Afield with Ranger Mac, and Rhythm, Games with Mrs. Fannie Steve, Aline Hazard's home maker program and many more.