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.

AMRAD: the only station in Boston

The Boston newspapers wrote very little about radio until 1922. So much of the history of AMRAD and 1XE, relies on oral histories and letters of former staff. In as much please under stand that at least some of their official history is fish-tale. Behind it all is Harold J. Power, a life-time radio geek. He ran an amateur station out of his home at the age of 10 all driven by an obsession with the work of Marconi.

The American Radio and Research Corporation, or AMRAD, was founded in 1915 Harold J. Power. AMRAD was the epicenter of radio innovation in both broadcast and manufacture in Boston prior to 1922. Harold was a Tufts alumnus and negotiated with the University to get some land to use for their radio experiments. It was there ton the Tufts campus they built a 300+ foot tall tower and founded 1XE. Their call letters were later changed to WGI and on the manufacturing side AMRAD also manufactured parts for both domestic and military radio. More here.

What mystifies me is that WBZ is generally thought of as the first Boston radio station, one that followed immediately after KDKA. Westinghouse owned both KDKA and WBZ and I guess they had the publicity budget. WBZ began operating in Springfield in September of 1921 and didn't officially do any broadcasting from Boston till late February of 1924. That makes them not the first, or at least not the first in Boston.

In 1917, AMRAD received a license for station 1XE, and experimental broadcasts began on a fairly regular basis that same year. That beats WBZ by 7 years. Granted these were not always radio programs. Some broadcasts were more code practice, but 1XE was on air almost daily.

AMRAD kept running partially through funding from the receivers they made for the military. This continued in 1918, when all amateur stations were shut down by the government. It was this core business that kept the staff together until 1918 when they were allowed to go back on air. 1XE's volunteer staff came back to the microphone. Local radio fans, Tufts students,
musicians and theater, even political figures saw the benefit of being on the new station.

In early February of 1922, 1XE officially became WGI. Although at times it was confused with the bigger and more powerful station WGY in Schenectady, the station kept the WGI call letters but emphasized their AMRAD connection wherever possible. But financial problems mounted in late 1923 and the station was off the air due to equipment failure many times. Staff began to leave for other newer more powerful local stations.

In February of 1925, WGI changed its call letters to WARC and began to day-share with religious station (calls unknown?) April of 1925, with no announcement, WARC simply vanished, there was no announcement and they did not notify the commerce department. Tufts took their building back. The weak WGI transmitter was taken apart and sold. And wherever it's parts were used reception was terrible. Its poor manufacture curse stations such as WBET and they too went bankrupt.

Today the WARC calls reside in Meadville, PA on the Allegheny College station these days but the WGI calls remain extinct.