The Last of the Broadcasting Schools

There actually is big money in radio, just generally not in being a DJ. I've written several posts about radio schools over the years and it occurred to me that there were still a scant few left operating who deserved a bit of credit. Below is a list of every broadcasting school still operating in America that I am aware of.

Broadcasting school may be an old idea, maybe even one that has really passed by but there are still a few educational institutions living the dream. This list excludes known scams and also universities that offer broadcasting or radio courses within a department or as a focus within their curriculum. But I do include ham schools because they are so few. This list should not be taken an an endorsement, tacit or otherwise of any of these schools individually, or of broadcasting schools as a whole. My personal recommendation is to go to a college or university with it's own radio station, get your feet wet, and go suffer through some grueling internships.

Academy of Radio & Television Broadcasting - www.abradio.com

Alpha Pacific Institute - www.alphapacificinstitute.com

American Broadcasting School - www.radioschool.com

Atlanta Broadcasting Institute - www.radiotvschool.com

Broadcast Center of St. Louis - www.broadcastcenterinfo.com

Broadcasting Institute of Maryland - www.bim.org

Broadcasters Mentoring Group - www.broadcastingschool.com

Carolina School of Broadcasting -  www.csbradiotv.edu

Centro Radio & TV Center - www.centrotvandradio.com

Columbia School of Broadcasting - www.csbdream2destiny.com

Connecticut School of Broadcasting - www.gocsb.com

Eastern Connecticut Radio Academy -  www.beonairtoday.com

Gordon West radio School (ham)-  www.gordonwestradioschool.com

Ham Radio School .com - www.hamradioschool.com

International College of Broadcasting - www.icbcollege.com/

Radio Connection - www.radioconnection.com

Radio 1 Broadcast School - www.radio1school.com

Specs Howard School of Media Arts - www.specshoward.edu

Howard W. Sams

SAMS Publishing was founded in 1946 by Howard W. Sams. In the beginning they mostly published radio schematics and repair manuals.Today they do a lot of self-teach software and computer books. A of chang lot happened in between then and now. Ironically, founder Sams was not a radio man, not even an engineer.

He was born in 1897. He studied law but I find no record of him earning a degree or what institution he attended. He went into sales, and worked at Goodyear, General Battery and PR Mallory. More here.  At Mallory he handled sales literature and got involved with the technical instructions. At Mallory he developed the"Radio Service Encyclopedia" and the "MYE Technical Journal."their success got him promoted bu tit also gave him the idea he could strike out on his own. In 1946 he founded Howard W. Sams & Company Inc.  His first idea was his Photofact folder series which used large clear images of the devices and big fold-out schematics to explain maintenance. they were well-formatted and wasy to use. It was very popular and became an industry standard. More here.

There are two versions of how his publishing company and  ITT became entangled. The school claims on their website that in 1966 The ITT Technical Institute was bought by Sams. The school had been founded in 1935 as the Acme School of Die Design. Basically that Sams bought an existing school. Other books record that Sams opened Sams Technical Institute in Indianapolis in 1963, then Sams sold out to the  New York-based ITT Corp, which included  ITT Technical Institute. I find this second version more plausible. But the first version isn't impossible. the Culver Citizen Newspaper records that profits were up 37% in 1961 at Sams. It was a healthy business.

For what it's worth the Sams site says it was acquired by ITT in 1967. Then in 1985,  ITT sold its publishing division to Macmillan. In 1987, Macmillan was acquired by Robert Maxwell who split Sam's into three divisions, transferring the computer book division into what later became Macmillan Computer Publishing. Maxwell was a British media magnate who later was found to be stealing from hsi company's pensions to fund his luxury yacht lifestyle. He liquidated everything else, finally selling the Sams name in 1990 to two former Sams' executives, Richard Hauser and Damon Davis who used some venture capital money. In 1995 Davis and Hauser sold it all to Bell Atlantic.Bell Atlantic held onto it for 5 years then sold the entire Howard W. Sams Company to a California dot com, eCatalogs. Damon Davis swooped in and bought just Photofacts from eCatalogs, he was later forced to sell it to AGS Capital (more VC weasels) under an unscrupulous non-compete clause.  Howard W. Sams died in 1974, before ITT sold off his publishing company.

Gallups Island Radio

Gallops Island, also known as Gallups Island, is an island in Boston Harbor that sits about six miles from shore, between Georges Island and Long Island.  It's about 23 acres in size. It's closed to visitors at the moment due to asbestos remediation still in progress. The island is named after Mr. John Gallop, a resident and sea faring man. The island has been home to a quarantine station, a military camp and during World War II it was occupied by a radio school. More here.

The radio school housed about 325 people. Strangely it operated side by side with a school for bakers and cooks which housed another 150 people. At least the snacks were probably good. The school was a U.S. Maritime Radio School, and it opened in 1940. Commander Sherman W. Reed headed the school from 1942 forward. In that era it was standard to have three radio operators aboard every merchant ship so that rotating shifts could keep the wireless manned 24 hours a day. From 1940 forward the school graduated up to 30 students every 20 - 32  weeks. One source claims that they graduated 2,830 students, the Gallups Island Radio station put the real number at about 5,000. You can see an image of the 1945 graduating class here.

In  1946 the school was closed and the buildings were dismantled. Whatever the long term plan was for the property it was cut short. In 1949 a  stranded fisherman started a signal fire to aid rescue his fire spread through the grass a wharf and several other buildings. The island became a park officially in 1975. The structures, whatever they were all long gone except for the concrete pilings from Radio School Mess Hall and the foundations of other structures.The definitive book on this is We Came From All Over, We Went Everywhere published by the Gallups Island Radio Association in 1997.

The Sprayberry Academy of Radio

If you mail it in now, today, get ready for your place in Radio Television! Not really, but inexplicably there still are radio schools in America.The Sprayberry Academy of Radio was a correspondence school from the height of the golden era. It existed for about 15 years operating from at least half a dozen different locations then vanished overnight. The first address I've found was from 1943: 610-K University Place NW, Washington (9) D.C. That first booklet he's selling is called "HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN RADIO."

In 1944 Frank L. Sprayberry began appearing in ads in magazines like Radio Craft, Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Science, Radio Electronics, Radio News, and others. The ads were often full page, with color. The mailing address for the Sprayberry Academy of Radio in these early ads was always in Pueblo Colorado but it did change a bit. Somtimes it was Room 5568, Room 2055, or Room 1088, one time it's listed as dept 55-L but always in the Sprayberry Building or just "1118 Sprayberry Building." I suspect the varied room numbers are bogus and only meant to identify specific advertisements as generating the business revenue. The ads began mentioning television as early as 1948. But the Pueblo location always lacks a street address. I've had no luck locating the mysterious Sprayberry Building. I believe that it was actually a PO Box. The earliest ad I found was in 1944 and it lists the address as Box 500RF. More here.

But early on they also used an address in Chicago: 20 N. Wacker Drive Chicago. That is the address of a 45-story skyscraper known as the Civic Opera Building built in 1929. Many of the lesson books from the school bear this address. Around 1956 they began using a different Chicago address: Dept 10-J, 111 N. Canal Street, Chicago 6 Ill. The block is now mixed use with both condos, offices and retailers sharing space.  In 1957, just a year later there's a new address again: 1512 Jarvis Avenue, Chicago 26, Ill. that lot now belongs to a Public Storage company. More here.

In 1958 the ads got smaller but were still going with the Jarvis Avenue address. But the real change was in management. The company president abruptly changed from Frank L. Sprayberry to Mason R. Warner. Warner was the owner of the Mason Warner Company, located at 221 N. LaSalle St.in Chicago. It was an advertising company. You dont have to think too hard on how he might have gotten involved with Sprayberry. Prior to that Sprayberry had appeared as a floating head sporting the new title "Educational Director," but there was no mention of Mr. Warner. It's hard to date when the change  occurred. Sprayberry Academy appearances in advertisements and catalogs cease before 1960. It is in that year I find a short death notice in an issue of radio Electronics. They dedicated one whole sentence to a man who'd been buying full page ads for over a decade. "Frank Sprayberry, founder of the Sprayberry Academy of Radio & TV and widely known in the electronic industry, died at his home in Delray Fla."

Bob Jones College (of radio)

At first I assumed that The above Bob Jones Collegehad nothing to do with the Bob Jones Christian College in Greenville, South Carolina. I was wrong. Their campus has moved twice, muddying the waters so to speak. Bob Jones College was founded in 1927 by evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. near Panama City, FL. The school relocated to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933 where it remained until their move to their present 205 acre compound in 1947.The ad above dates to end of their tenure in Tennessee.

Jones founded the college in the wake of the Scopes money trial, terrified that secular thinking might break out.  So he founded the school in St. Andrews Bay, FL with a charter from a circuit court in Panama City. His first class had only 88 students. The purpose of this school was to get back to bible-basics... in other words it was anti-science and specifically anti-evolution. they were also thoroughly racist openly supporting the KKK, they still banned interracial dating on campus until 2000. Unsurprisingly the modern (yet oxymoronic) Bob Jones College science department still supports young-earth creationism... but back in the 1940s they cherry-picked enough real science to believe that radio waves were real. At least real enough to hand out diplomas. They offered graduate and undergraduate courses in technique, script writing, program building and more.

The school barely survived the great depression and was on the verge of bankruptcy when it moved to Tennessee. But Jones had already been broadcasting since the early 1920s. There are documented appearances in Pittsburgh, PA as early as 1925 on KQV-AM. In 1927 he began a radio ministry that consisted of two programs, a daily and weekly which he did personally until 1962. The show was purported to be heard coast to coast but I can't find a list of affiliates. I do know that it originated at a Chattanooga station, WDOD-AM.

In 1944, Jones became a founder of National Religious Broadcasters. After World War II, the GI Bill was introduced, which led the student body of the college to nearly double, hence the impetus to relocate again.But the move to Greenville also allowed space for a university radio station. WMUU-AM signed on with 1,000 watts at 1260 Khz on September 15, 1949. They added an FM station 94.5 WMUU-FM in 1960. The station airs easy listening today and it possibly one of the blandest stations in the nation. The university continues to be a strange crank even among religious institutions, they recently made the news for expelling a student for watching the TV show Glee. More here.

Coyne Electrical and Radio School

The origin of the name Coyne lays with the brothers Coyne about 113 years ago. In 1899, the Coyne Electrical School of Boston started franchising. The first branch of its technical school was to be in Chicago. Other branches were later established in St. Louis and New York.  Needless to say, Coyne College has had many incarnations.  Just a few years ago it was called the Coyne American Institute. The 1908 Patterson's American Education directory just called it "Coyne's School." It was established in 1899, and in the 1920s and 1930s was the kind of correspondence school that advertised in magazines like Popular Science, Electronics World and various pulp periodicals. They still exist today, based in Chicago, Illinois with two campuses. In the 1960s they had moved up to advertising in Billboard. More here.

It began as the Coyne Electrical School of Chicago and opened in January o 1899. There is little public information on those early years but presumably they were hawking early radio knowledge, drafting and automotive skills. In 1915 they were "Coyne national Trade schools."  In 1921 they were still billing themselves as "Coyne Trade and Engineering Schools." They started advertising radio classes in 1922. It's president starting that year and through at least 1955, was B.W. Cooke. He lists himself as a "manager" in a 1915 advertisement. Interestingly in 1926 through 1948 their ads sometimes list H.C. Lewis as the president of their radio division. Both of them put their disembodied floating heads on Coyne advertisements with various titles.

B.W. Cooke was also the publisher of Automotive News in the 1930s. He was the director of the Chicago Motor Training Corporation in 1925. Coincidentally both of those were located in Chicago. An L.L. Cooke ran an electrical school with a similar M.O. just a few blocks away. I cant' prove it, but I suspect a family connection.

In April of 1925, H.C. Lewis purchased 1200 WTAY-AM from Oakleaves broadcasting. The station ran at a puny 15 watts.  It's original calls were WJOC-AM but had to change them to avoid confusion with WJAZ-AM. It had only signed on in October of 1923.  The call sign was changed about a year later to WGES-AM and increased it's power to 500 watts. Their own literature claims that it was a full time station but in fact it was a share-time with WMBB-AM. The station caused enough interference in downtown Chicago that besides losing money, it also obstructed the reception of many other stations. Lewis tried to sell it, then practically gave the station to Joseph Gunyon in 1929. Lewis was later wrote "I see absolutely no value in a school operating a radio station..."  For more on that read Educations Own Stations by S.E. Frost. Their radio program continued even without the radio station. In 1960s, the Coyne Electrical School merged with the American Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Capitol Radio Engineering Institute

I've written about a few other radio schools in the past. I think this one is unique in that it still exists. But they no longer focus on broadcasting. Actually they don't teach broadcasting at all. Wisely they've abandoned that part of the curriculum.  Their current course catalog sports one communications course: Twenty-first Century Mass Media" that seems to include some nominal radio content. The next closest class is on wireless devices. Inexplicably, The 2005 Princeton Review Complete Book of Colleges lists them as having a radio station. If they do it's a part 15 station. I have never seen a record of their existence. Regardless, it appears that they like the rest of the nation, have moved on. (if you can confirm or deny the existence of the station please comment)

The Capitol Radio Engineering Institute, changed its name to the Capitol Institute of Technology in 1964, and in 1987 to Capitol College They began as a correspondence school like many others advertising in the back of Popular Mechanics. Unlike the others, in 1932 they opened a residence hall and hands-on classes. By 1966 they were offering genuine bachelors degrees. In 1969 they moved to Kensington, Maryland then in 1980 moved to their current residence in Laurel, Maryland on a property that used to be the Beltsville Speedway.  [you can hear a WPGC-AM ad for it here] In 1990 they began offering a Masters program.

It was founded originally in 1927 by Eugene H. Rietzke, a Navy radio operator and his wife Lillie Lou Rietzke. Eugene was born in 1897 and he served in WWI eventually becoming Chief Instructor at the Bellevue Naval Radio Material School. For His educational courses he wrote text books.  He was awarded the Marconi Memorial Gold Medal by the Veteran Wireless Operators Association in 1955 and won the DeForest Audion Gold Medal Award  in 1977. He even was awarded the James H. McGraw award in 1962.  On a related note, McGraw Hill publishing acquired a 20% ownership share of the Capitol Radio Engineering Inst. in 1967. In 1960 CREI began awarding the Rietzke Award for the Airman showing the most promise.(I don't think they use it anymore)  He died in 1983, the school lives on.

Get into Radio!

Today at 4000 South Figueroa, Los Angeles, CA is a Chevron gas station. National Tech School was once at this location. Navy Campus management Information System (NCMIS) used it for tech training which was covered under the Coast Guard Tuition Assistance program.

How long the school existed is unclear. The advertisement is from yet another Western Pulp magazine printed in 1948. As I expected they also advertised in Popular Mechanics. The Popular Mechanics ad also listed two branches. One branch in Canada at 811 West Hastings Street vancouver B.C. and another
at 323 West Polk Street in Chicago. A 1949 Railroad magazine listed on Ebay had a similar advertisement. But that one has the important motto "Technical trade training since 1905."

The Journal of Engineering Education still listed the school in 1965. In 1966 the IEEE Membership directory also listed it, still at that address. Sometime in the intervening 40 years it closed or moved and the building was razed.

The American Student Loan Services Directory lists the school as having withdrawn from the Guaranteed Student Loan Program (GSLP) on March 22nd 1977. If that and the 1905 dates are right, the school operated for almost 72 years. But they also list the school as "National Tech School Home Study Division." The ads home training angle suggests this is that same school. If any readers attended this school a little more info would be useful.