The Golden Age of Bike Radio

There have been hundreds of thousands of different makes and models of transistor radios.  Every once in a while I find one unique enough to write about. I recently discovered the Concept 2000 Bike Radio which has an interesting form factor. In researching it I found there was a very specific era when Bike Radios were notably popular, relatively speaking. This is different from motorcycle radios which date back much earlier, to at least 1915. To define terms I'm looking only at radios which can be installed on a bicycle, and are marketed primarily at a children demographic. I did not expect at the start of this that I'd find the inventor of the bike radio or that it even had one... but it did. But let's start with that first bike radio that started me on this quest:

Concept 2000 made an odd selection of radios, from high quality table radios to plastic children's novelties. They had multiple Mickey Mose, Big Bird and Cookie Monster radios. This one lands somewhere in the middle, having some novelty in the category but it's size distinctly also made it functional. You can see how it works immediately. The two flanges slot into the back of the radio, and clamp tight on the handle pars. the compass-like dial is a simple enough AM radio. The radio inside the box looks exactly like the picture on the outside. I've seen the circuit, it's nothing to write home about. Inside is a simple and very short ferrite rod antenna.  It takes a 9 volt battery and it works.

Apparently this was not their only foray into bike radios. In the early 1970s they came out with an  AM/CB radio which clamped to the handle bars but was a bit bigger, with a contoured shape. It looks very 1980s, like something you'd attach to a plastic kids seat at Burger King (below). Notice that foot tall flexible coil antenna? I'm sure no kid ever hit the handlebars and took that whip antenna right in the eyeball. 

More complex devices were also available beyond that CB/radio. Siemens had one in the sixties. Westinghouse made at least one Bike radio-headlight which was advertised in 1968 through 1970. A later version re-appeared in 1989 Boys life. The one picture I found has an amber strobe amber light on top of the device. Fanon, a name I know as a maker of cheap walkie talkies, was selling their own Bike Radio in 1978 called the "Spokesman" which also incorporated a CB. It had a completely different form factor and would have looked more at home on a desk than a bike. It may have been repurposed from some other design.

I found an issue of Boys life from august 1971 which had yet two more Bike radio products: an Archer Bike radio of a completely different design, available from Radioshack. But also a whole feature on a bike radio bracket by Glen Wagner which merely clamps your standard pocket transistor radio to the handlebars. The Archer model continued to appear sporadically through June of 1972. A second maker of the bracket "Buddy Bike Radio" was for sale in the classifieds for $5.99 and included a 6-transistor radio from Gentile Sound Enterprises. Their address was PO Box 147, Fairport NY 14450. It's a Rochester suburb; the company advertised it only in 1972.

As you would imagine, Radioshack had their own Bike Radio by December of 1974, SKU 12-193. It was simply called the "AM Bike Radio".  It looks highly derivative of the Archer model with a more contoured chassis. Kmart had one that was almost identical. Arvin sold a model in 1971 which also looked identical and was sold through at least 1984.

In the mail order scam world J.S.C.A. was selling a combination radio/horn/light combo from 1965 through 1972.  Olympic Sales club was still selling a no-name Bike radio in 1989. As horrible as those were, the Discover American Sales Club had a combo Bike Radio, Siren Megaphone which obviously no parent would think was a good idea. You might notice these later bike radios have some safety features. These were listed as fire resistant, and water proof, and had lights built in. This was probably an acknowledgement that they were actually marketing to the parents. 

Most of these ads are from the late 1960s and early 1970s. That's your golden era of the bike radio. The latest models I've found were in the 1990s. In 1992, a green no-name GPX AM/FM radio still being sold by the Olympia Sales Club in Boys life. Nintendo also notably made a "sport" AM/FM  bike radio with a built-in clock and light in 1998. It came in a few colors. You can still pick those up on eBay for about $25. Purportedly Hasbro made a pink Barbie Bike radio as late as 2002.

You can still buy a "bike radio" today but it's more of a Bluetooth speaker than a radio. But JBL still makes one that clamps to the handlebars; a descendant of the originals marketed more at motorcycles and with the modern soft rubbery exterior that breaks down so quickly.

The earliest references to bike radios are from Popular Electronics which advertised "How to Build a Bike Radio" as early as 1954. This was advertised in Radio & Television News, Popular Mechanics, and Flying Magazines but I've never found that article nor the kit. The image below is from 1956 and I had thought that was it.  But World Radio History has a scan of the October 1954 issue with the original Bike Radio instructions referred to in all those advertisements. [SOURCE]  That's pictured at the top of the page. That's the first ever issue of Popular Electronics by the way.

That How-to article was authored by Louis E. Garner Jr., a prolific writer, editor, and frequent contributor to Popular Electronics for over 25 years. Before Popular Electronics Lou wrote articles for Electronics Illustrated as early as 1961. He also wrote for the National Parks Service, Popular Science, Radio and Television News all the way back to 1950. [SOURCE] He also wrote texts for Coyne Electrical School, Tab Books, and the infamous Gernsback Library. It's also interesting to note that he also wrote prose, contributing to Quanta, the Washington Science Fiction Association zine starting in 1949. (Note: There have been at least 3 different publications by the name Quanta) [SOURCE] So there you have it, Lou Garner, engineer, writer, PhD, and unassuming resident of Silver Springs MD, the granddaddy of them all.

Radio Lollipop

In the UK there is a is a charitable organization providing care,  comfort entertainment for children in hospitals. It organizes "Volunteer Playmakers" to spend time with children in wards or in special play areas, taking its name from the radio stations it runs in hospitals playing children's programming. Yes radio stations. While their marketing dweebs focus on the one-on-one interactions, we geeks are interested in the whole radio thing. To that end they have three different services they provide

1. Radio Lollipop Full service: an in-hospital radio station plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play
2. Radio Lollipop Lite: a limited broadcast capability plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play
3. Radio Lollipop Local: A satellite broadcast service, plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play

Radio Lollipop was founded in 1978 at Queen Mary's Children's Hospital located in in Surrey, UK. The small hospital housed some 460 children. The station made its first broadcast on 5 May 1979, when the very first Radio Lollipop went on-air.

If you were curious, there is no similar domestic service in the United States. The closest service we have is Companion Radio, a service for Convalescent Hospitals and Retirement Homes in New York and New Jersey. More here. It's a totally worthy service, but it targets the elderly, not children. Radio Lollipop has opened two stations in the US: Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, FL and Texas Children's Hospital, Houston TX.

By comparison they have ten affiliates in the UK, eleven in Australia, and 6 more in New Zealand. According to Lollipop central (I made that phrase up) "...each Radio Lollipop station has its own team of Volunteers who run the radio station, involve children in play activities and use the sounds of radio to stimulate the children´s imaginations."

Radio Disney is Done

No one was surprised on August 15th when Disney announced they were dumping 24 of their 25 radio stations. The only one they held back was 1110 KDIS-AM in Los Angeles. It sounds like a lot but actually some of them have been silent for more than a year. In 2010 the mouse took 6 stations silent at once with a set of STA filings. Those were for KMUS-AM, KALY-AM, WCOG-AM, WRJR-AM, WHKT-AM, and WMNE-AM. (The only one it didn't sell was WRJR which it only operated under an LMA.) So when they say they're selling.. they mean it. More here.

The reason was that only 18%  of their listeners access Radio Disney via terrestrial radio. The other 82% of their listeners listen via web streaming apps. More than four fifths of their listeners abstain from the radio dial. Ouch.  KDIS-AM will serve as the home studio of all online Radio Disney programming. The rest become chaff. All local positions will revert to national positions, 184 people will be laid off.In other words.. it's over.

What's worth mentioning now is that this isn't the first time they've tried to reboot the struggling chain. I cannot remember a time when one of the outlets appeared in an Arbitron ratings book. The network originally affiliates with stations of all sizes in all markets in an apparent effort to make their programming as ubiquitous as Starbucks. But back in 2010 they dove for the corner and retreated from the minors. [SOURCE] They backpedaled into the top 25 markets only and tried to hold the fort. the problem was that they were operating the last music formatted network on AM radio. The reason then is the same reason now.. music sounds terrible on AM radio. Their young demographic was just more willing to more to a web platform.

but perhaps the most important thing to remember about Radio Disney is that it's still quite young. The network was launched on November 18th, 1996 on the 68th anniversary of the debut of Steamboat Willie.That was less than 20 years ago. With a self-styled target demographic of ages 0 - 16 years they barely cleared two generations of listeners. In 2006 Billboard officially called the network a "Power player."  At it's peak they had 50 affiliates and a Sirius XM channel ostensibly reaching over 90% of the country. Now they're gone.