It's harder to do pretty much everything underwater. I read once that the first under water photograph was taken in 1899 by pioneer Louis Marie Auguste Boutan. It seems very early but light passes through water more easily than people or electronics. But that obstacle didn't dissuade WMOP, they liked a challenge.
In 1956 radio station 900 WMOP-AM set up a studio underwater, 15 feet below the surface of Florida's Silver Springs and broadcast for 13 hours and 15 minutes. The tiny studio was only 8 x 8 feet and contained two microphones, a record player, and a telephone line. According to the coverage the hardest part of the process was getting the equipment
into the studio without damaging it. Each item had to be plastic bagged separately to get moved.
On Thursday August 30th, 1956 somehow Station Manager Jim Kirk, and Program Manager E. Vernon Arnette shimmed into the tank at 6:00 AM and stayed in there until sign off at 7:15 PM. Other members of the staff did their specialty programs from inside the tank including: News Director Ed Sherer, Program Director Gene Turner, and country DJ Nervous Ned Needham. Station owner Ben Letson wisely stayed outside the tank.
You might know the DJ name Nervous Ned Needham. He was one of the prescient DJs who in 1955 foresaw the future career of Elvis Presley. He's quoted in multiple books on the King. Needham was with WMOP for 4 years and went to Nashville to DJ at WENO for 3 months and missed home. He came back to WHYS in Ocala in January of 1958. He told Cashbox that he missed the weekend midget auto racing and the Florida sunshine. The 1959 radio yearbook notes that they had 7½ hours of "negro" programming at that time.I do suspect Needham was connected to that nascent rock n' roll programming.
900 WMOP-AM was based on Ocala, FL; founded in 1953 operating at 1,000 watts. The owner was A.B. (Ben) Letson and it was located at 311 Robertson Bldg in Ocala, FL. The building no longer stands but it was at the intersection of Main Street and Silver Springs Boulevard. Main street no longer exists under that name, I think it became 301.
Back in 1953, the only other local station at the time was WTMC on 1290. The engineer at the time was Lloyd H. Lutz. It's worth noting that Vernon Arnette later was owned WTMC from 1974 through 1980. That station retired the WTMC call letters in 1999 and became WCFI, but ultimately signed off in 2004. Similarly Station Manager Jim Kirk, aka "Country Jim" owned WMOP from 1953 till 1993 and WFUZ for a bit. He had previously been an announcer at WCNH-AM in Quincy, FL. Jim was Mayor of Ocala for three terms in the 1960s and 1970s. News Director Ed Sherer, was also an announcer on WTMC but he was more of a newspaper man. In 1965 he moved to Ohio to become a staff writer at the Star Banner.
As stunts go broadcasting underwater was wildly successful. Nobody drowned and they got a lot of press. WMOP advertised the stunt in advance in the August issue of Billboard. And when nobody drowned, the stunt was reported by Telephony magazine, Broadcast, Florida Newspaper News, SESAC magazine, Life magazine, and Radio Electronics among others. It got them more press than their mobile broadcasting studio, though there seem to be a lot of postcards of it.
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