Radio Broadcasting in 1920s Beginning Onslaught

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[Music]
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i'm uh Steve Kushman For those of you who don't know me those of you who do know me how's everybody doing i'm glad
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you all came here uh to appreciate another one of our
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speaker events in our reborn building And uh it's really uh a pleasure to have
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events here and it's a pleasure to have people come and hear great speakers like John Schneider real briefly I first
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heard about John years and years ago about 2006 maybe it was when uh David
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Jackson formed the Bay Area Radio Museum online where we had the goods he had the
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clips and um his Bay Area radio uh
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museum online was based on a thesis that John Schneider did when he was at San
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Francisco State university So and John has just been uh he is the man to go to
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for anything historically radio And I'll let you him tell you about that stuff
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But thanks for coming And I'm going to give you over to our executive director
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Rachel Lee who has these kind words
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I'm taller than he is
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Uh welcome to the California Historical Radio Society I am Rachel Lee I'm the executive director And I just wanted to
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encourage everyone to go to our website to find out our events We've got a speaker event every month July is our
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signature event Radio Day by the Bay and that's going to be July 19th We've got the Barhof induction coming up
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Additionally if you go to bayerradio.org or uh we are currently having the Don
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Sherwood Awards uh voting that's going on and that's sort of like a listeners
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choice award for Bay Area broadcasters So check all those things out If you
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haven't toured the building do that Um come see us on Wednesdays and Saturdays
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Sign up to be a member donate volunteer I think I hit it all So
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without further ado John Schneider [Applause]
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I can't believe this This is a bigger draw than Terry McGovern
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drew but he got a bigger paycheck than I ever did So so uh um I'm happy to be here I've
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been a CHRS member and hanger on for decades even though I haven't lived in
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the Bay Area since uh the mid70s Um I uh as um Steve mentioned when I was
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in college I got interested in radio history specifically San Francisco radio
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history and wrote a thesis and have just continued amplifying on that subject for
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uh um the rest of my life I guess So um I' I've picked up a few little parcels
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of information along the way and and a whole lot of photographs and am also a radio collector and ham operator So uh
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um I'm I'm one of you folks I guess So today I'm going to talk about
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um radio broadcasting's first decade Um every I think you've had lots of
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presentations about radio as a communications uh medium uh about KPH and uh the
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maritime group I'm here to talk about broadcasting and the amazing decade when
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radio went from a uh uh simply an experimental device to a giant uh media
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industry So uh um first thing to talk about is to
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recognize who were the re the uh the pioneers the real people who invented
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the concept of broadcasting because uh initially it radio was pointtooint
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communication and people saw the fact that other people could listen in as a
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disadvantage and a few visionaries realized that in fact that could
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a great advantage of the ability to transmit from one person to many people
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So these are some of uh broadcasting's pioneers those visionaries who uh who
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did see the possibilities for broadcasting Um Reginald Fessendon uh
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going back to 1902 and through 1906 developed an
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alternator a technology that would generate a continuous wave in a time
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when only spark transmitters were being used and that allowed the possibility of
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transmitting the human voice Um the story is that um he broadcast uh music
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played the violin on Christmas Eve through his transmitter and it was heard by ships of sea ships at sea all over
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the Atlantic That was from Brandt Rock Massachusetts where he had his
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experimental station in 1906 Of course uh uh some people think
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KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first radio station broadcasting station We all know better Uh it was Doc Herald who operated
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the college uh the Herald College of Wireless in San Jose and he started broadcasting on a weekly basis in
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1912 and did so until 1917 when uh the
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government required all radio transmitting and receiving installations
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to be shut down and disassembled um during the course of World War I So
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uh except for the fact that he was off the air during World War I he was broadcasting from 1912 and and right up
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until today as the station continues as KCBS in San Francisco we all know that
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story very well Uh but there were others Uh Lee Deforest opened his station 2XG
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in uh Hybridge New York in 1916 and he was doing regular broadcasting in New
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York just like Charles Herald was uh here on the west coast He broadcast uh
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uh live music Um um Von Dele uh uh sang live on his radio
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station Um he broadcast phongraph music and election returns um for the
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presidential election in 1916 Unfortunately uh he shut the station he announced that
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uh uh Taft had lost the election and he shut the transmitter down and went to bed
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But he was also off the air from 1917 to 1919
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uh because of the world war shutdown After that um when he tried to go back on the air um the New York radio
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inspector would not allow him to do so So he took his transmitter and moved it to the California theater in San
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Francisco in started broadcasting here in May of 1920 And what he would do he
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had a microphone down on the stage and would broadcast live concerts of the
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theater orchestra every afternoon on uh longwave frequencies and he did over a
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thousand broadcasts over the course of two years Um that uh in 1921 he turned that
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station over to his uh DeForest radio equipment distributor Atlantic Pacific
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Radio Supplies and it became KZY the Rock Ridge station It broadcast with the
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same equipment from Rockidge in uh Oakland Berkeley until it was shut down
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at the end of 1922 but that's that's a uh a very important
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early broadcast station that not many people talk about Um over in the uh in the northeast
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uh Amrad uh radio manufacturer had its station uh 1xe um operating from Tus
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University and it began regular broadcasts in October of 1919 The call sign was changed to WGI in
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1921 and it operated until it ran out of money and closed down in 1925
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in Seattle Uh Vincent Craft began regular broadcasts with uh his
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experimental license station 7XC Um he broadcast from the garage of
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his house and would have uh live as well as recorded music Um it was he was doing
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it on amateur radio frequencies but it was a a broadcast operation clearly In
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1922 it was rellicensed as KJR uh which is uh still on the air today
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And Vincent Craft was also the person who uh was the original builder and founder of KYA here in San
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Francisco Other other early broadcasters um the US government operated WWV before
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it was uh a time and frequency station they would uh uh go on and broadcast
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both uh uh information in news bulletins and also some entertainment Um 8XB in
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Cincinnati in February of 1920 was doing uh regular broadcasts and promoting them
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to the public Um Western Electric in March of 1920 had a radio station on Long Island which was
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2XB and that was uh primarily a technology uh testing facility but they
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did broadcast um uh entertainment programs to the public In Los Angeles
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6XD which later became KOG started in Apr April of 1920
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uh 6 UV in San Francisco Um the radio telephone shop was on the air in April
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of 1920 You notice all of these are before KDKA 6 ADZ in Los Angeles became KNX It
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started broadcasting in September of 1920 And of course KNX is still on the
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air today in uh Detroit The Detroit News opened
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radio station 8K in August uh of that year It had an amateur call sign but it
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was broadcasting daily with uh full entertainment and news program six days
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a week And they did broadcast election returns both in August and for the uh uh
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for the November 19202 uh 1920 presidential election the same night
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that KDKA was broadcasting theirs That call sign changed to WWJ in 1922 and
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they of course are still on the air today In uh Pittsburgh uh Dr Frank Conrad was
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doing broadcasts of weekly photograph records from his home uh in his garage
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in Pittsburgh as early as 1919 Um he was uh an employee of Westinghouse
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um and was uh doing experimental transmitter development and um on on the
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side out of his home people would hear his programs and so he started playing
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uh phonograph records on a regular basis um his boss Harry Davis
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uh got wind of this and said you know we should have a radio station and it would help promote the sale of our uh
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Westinghouse radio receivers And so uh um KDKA began broadcasting in Pittsburgh
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in with the uh uh election returns in November of 1920
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And that is the date that is generally marked as uh the day that um amateur
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experimental radio broadcasting started to become
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commercialized Uh after KDKA's success Westinghouse opened three more stations
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the following year They were WBZ in Springfield Massachusetts WJZ in New York in Newark
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New Jersey and KYW in Chicago And the uh the interesting thing
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is that the first broadcasting license the license given to a radio station
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specifically for the purpose of broadcasting was given to WBZ in 1921 So
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if we were going to say on the basis of licensing what was the first radio broadcasting station it would be
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WBZ Another interesting station u uh one of radio's pioneers was Major Andrew
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White He assembled a special event station in Hoboken New Jersey WJY and
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the purpose was to broadcast the Dempsey Carpenter fight on in 1921 The station
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was on the air for exactly one day was assembled Uh they broadcast the fight Uh
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Major White was in the uh was in the ring and was passing the uh blowby-blow
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information to the station over the telephone where a a uh the technician in
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the station would hear it on the telephone and repeat it into the microphone And what they did because there were so few radio listeners
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uh people with radio receivers at that time is they put radio receivers in
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theaters and sold tickets to go to the theater to hear the playbyplay of the fight and 350,000 people heard uh the
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Dempsey Carpenter fight in uh in theaters in 1921
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That created a lot of public positive publicity about radio as an
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entertainment and information medium and that encouraged RCA and
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particularly general David Sarnoff It wasn't a general at the time but David Sarnoff head of RCA had um not paid too
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much attention to broadcasting but that got his attention and said RCA we should have our own station So they did open a
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station It was 2XR It was in Rosel Park New Jersey Opened on December 4th
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1921 And they took the same transmitter that had been borrowed for the Hoboken
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fight moved it to Roselle Park and that became the uh Hoboken uh the uh the
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first RCA station Uh the call sign was changed to WDY And then in 1922 RCA acquired uh the
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station WJZ in Newark from Westinghouse And they said "We don't need two stations." So they shut down WDY and
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operated um uh from uh from Newark on
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WJZ So 1922 was the year of the radio boom And
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that is um those of us who remember the uh um the growth of the internet which
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seemed to happen overnight from I heard of this thing called the internet what is it to suddenly everybody had it that
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the only other time a technology has been so quickly adopted other than the internet was radio that between January
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and June of 1922 it grew overnight into uh a national fad
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So number of stations grew from 30 in January to 556 in
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December The Department of Commerce which at the time had the responsibility
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for licensing radio stations They couldn't control what frequency they used You couldn't say no but that you
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couldn't operate But they would give you a license to anyone who applied for it
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They couldn't handle the demand that overnight was coming from everywhere And the same with the stores that sold radio
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parts Nobody sold complete radios other than the commercial kind of radios that
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you see here uh in in the back room So uh people would buy the parts in the
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stores and build their own radios Um by 1923 1 million homes in the US had
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a radio compared to uh almost none in
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1921 And also uh RCA and its licences sold millions and millions of vacuum
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tubes over the course of of the 20s all due to the radio broadcasting boom
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So in December 1921 here is the state of radio broadcasting in the country with
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showing where the radio stations were You can see that there were two big areas of early adopters um California
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and the Northeast and other than that there w there was no radio broadcasting in the country This was January of
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1922 Here's February Here's March
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April May June
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July In the course of six months there were more broadcasting
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stations than you could find frequencies for place ways to operate on the band
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They didn't know where to put all the stations any receiver you had like the early uh um crystal sets and uh um the
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Areola Junior and Senior you would be lucky if they'd only received two stations at
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once Um so the first broadcasters transmitted
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on random frequencies just about anywhere from the long waves all all the way up to 400 meters It's thought that
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KDKA was first operating on 99 kilhertz Nobody knows for
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sure but when I mentioned 1921 the Department of Commerce created
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a new class of license for broadcasting um and WBZ received the first one
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Westinghouse asked the FCC or the Department of Commerce to give them a
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single frequency And they thought "We'd like a frequency that our three radio
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stations could use exclusively." And they said "Okay we'll give you 360 m but
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we'll give all of the broadcasters 360 meters Everyone has to share one
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frequency." And they did set aside a second frequency just for weather and crop
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reports But basically if you had a radio receiver you had only two places on the
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dial to tune to And what would happen is it would
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you'd have a radio schedule like this in the newspaper Um it would be uh you
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during the course of the day you'd have a schedule for different programs like you'd have much much later except that
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every program came from a different transmitter Um KZY would come on the air
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and broadcast for 45 minutes They would go off the air KDN would come on and they'd broadcast for an hour and they
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would go off and uh the broadcasters in a community all had to get together and agree upon a
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schedule and decide okay you get Tuesday Thursday and Saturday from 7 to 8:30 at
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night And so all of these stations with varying degrees of power and program
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quality Um it was it was just had to be a mess
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you know for for any anybody who you nobody's around now who was there then but remember uh when I was younger
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talking to people about how this was and it was all very amateur-ish and sometimes
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um station A would forget to turn off their transmitter when station B came on So the two were on the air and fighting
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each other at the same time And then one night a week people
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would complain say well I can't hear Los Angeles or Denver or New York because the stations are on the air locally and
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of course it's all one frequency So um they would have what they called silent
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night and one night a week they would all the stations would go off the air so that um the local DXers could listen for
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distant stations in other parts of the country
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So of those early stations there were a few really grand well financed corporate corporate
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stations I mentioned that RCA bought uh WJZ in Newark New Jersey They moved it
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to Aolon Hall in New York City in 1923 broadcasting with 500 watts which
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was high power at that time Um then they opened again their uh the the Hobboken
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station WJY as a second station and both stations operated in New York City uh
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from the uh from that same antenna You can see here there there are three
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transmitters So they had one for each station and then a third as a backup that would would be used for either
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station And that was their uh uh one of their two studios that they had at the
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same time Um WJZ was considered to be the highbrow station and WJY had its own
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studio in the same building and that was more lowerass programming jazz and and
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entertainment So they actually had what you might call radio formats In
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1923 its competition across town in New York was WEAF owned by
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AT&T and that was probably the country's most prestigious and well financed
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station at the time Um um uh big studio complex as you could see They got the
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finest entertainers the opera singers uh from the New York Metropolitan Opera um
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symphony orchestras um uh incredible good quality
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programming uh some of the best technology in terms of transmitting and
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audio equipment So it had one of the best quality signals on the air and was heard all up and down the East Coast
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Another station that opened at that time was WGY opened by General Electric in
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Skenctity New York in February of 1922 If you know anything about your radio
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history you know that um AT&T General Electric Westinghouse they were all the
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owners of RCA They were the the companies that banded together with their patent pool to create RCA as a uh
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radio monopoly And so all of these companies had their hands in uh early
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broadcasting as well WGY quickly became one of the country's most important
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stations It was one of the first to do uh radio drama and uh live music It was
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a higher power station than most Actually had a whole 1,00 watts It was heard all over the
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country Following the success of WGY General Electric also opened two more
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stations They opened KGO in Oakland May she rest in
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peace And uh KOA in Denver You can see they they they had the same architect
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for all of these all of these buildings
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But other than these few corporate stations most radio stations at the time
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were small little operations by amateurs tinkerers Um they were just playing
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playing with the technology with the concept trying to get in on the ground floor This was uh the Fairmont Hotel
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radio station uh KDN It was on the air
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starting in 1922 and only operated for uh a year or so until the owner uh Leo
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Marberg who owned a radio parts distribution company until he passed away and then nobody had interest in it
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so they shut it off But for a couple of years this little station on the roof of the Fairmont was the Bay Area's most
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prestigious station Okay Uh you had little stations like this operating in a
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uh uh in a lighting store Uh this was KRE in Berkeley which was in the
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Claremont Hotel and operated by a uh an electrical company This radio station
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was in a uh mortuary So who who were some of the
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people that would start these stations well they were department stores like KPO at Hail Brothers in San Francisco Uh
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you had car dealerships um radio radio receiver manufacturers
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Grievy Cley Um they all had their own stations Uh WLW of course was started at
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uh by Cley in order to uh help promote the sale of radio receivers Also radio
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equipment suppliers those who sold uh equipment and parts Newspapers saw radio
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as an extension of their business and wanted to get in on the ground floor
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Banks farm and seed houses in the Midwest These uh uh um three radio
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stations sold all advertised and sold all of their farm and seed products over
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the air Um listen to the program write in get a catalog order your seeds uh
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from uh from the uh um from the company as they advertise the specials on their
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radio stations insurance companies um WSM We Shield Millions
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uh fraternal organizations like WOW in um in Omaha that was the Woodman of the
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World churches like KTAB here in uh in in
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Oakland that became KSFO Um universities
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um entire cities the city of New York WNYC and San Jose briefly had its own um
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municipal radio station and uh Fort Lauderdale in and uh St Petersburg in
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Florida had a station and they would broadcast at night and promote their cities as tourist destinations to the
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rest of the country And some people who were just hobbyists and had a station in
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their home and they had the money to uh to do up um a pretty decent operation
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for a while As I mentioned San Francisco was
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an early adopter of uh radio broadcasting They had 10 stations on the
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air in 1922 Uh I don't think there was any place in the country you could go to
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find 10 radio stations This was KPO and the Hail Brothers department
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store the way it looked when it first went on the air Of course this is now KNBR Um I mentioned KDN Um the Colin B
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Kennedy Company which uh you know for their receivers they also had a uh their
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radio broadcasting station KLP in Los Altos Um the Oakland Tribune had its
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station KLX which started in the uh Hotel Oakland In
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1922 the San Francisco Examiner had two radio stations KUO and
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KUP And then in addition to those fixed stations there were portable stations So
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there were communities that did not have uh weren't maybe big enough to have their own broadcasting station So there
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were portable stations and they would come to your community for a week maybe for the county fair or or a special
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special event and they would broadcast from your community and then they would move on and go someplace else Uh the
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Grievy company had the world's first marine broadcasting station They would
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show up to uh broadcast different uh uh boat races in different parts of the
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country Uh the Zenith company had this mobile radio station
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WJAZ in mounted in a truck and uh they would pull into a community set up an
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antenna and uh broadcast from wherever Um this radio station WHBL was
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in a railroad car Uh a box car was divided into half One half was the
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transmitter the other half was the studio They would pull in on in a side rail and uh and broadcast from your
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community for a week until uh because they were assigned a specific
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group of frequencies And when it got harder to um control the spectrum and
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prevent interference they finally said "We can't have these people popping up randomly." And so uh they um the Federal
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Radio Commission after it was formed shut down all of the the portable
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stations So all of these new stations were on the air and what were they
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broadcasting what were the programs like um photograph records of course were uh
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uh very common in the beginning because it was easy an easy way to uh uh to fill
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fill a program time Um piano rolls um uh player pianos they'd load music
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rolls in them and uh and do performances like that early lectures Um they would
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get uh uh people to talk on uh any kind
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of random subject whatever they could find that would come and fill up some airtime please Uh poetry
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readings any musical talent they could get that would perform for free This was
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uh a trio of telephone operators Um uh western western and
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cowboy singers were popular Um um small
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small orchestra combos Um the important thing is you
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would play you would you would perform for free and you would show up That was all they needed And the important thing
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was oh my gosh today's program went wonderfully well What are we going to do
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tomorrow quick find somebody And sometimes it was pretty pretty sad
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talent pianists who would uh make frequent mistakes Uh vocalists who weren't always on key
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Um as long as they would sing for free or perform perform for
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free Um what uh uh one radio historian called potted palm music
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um the kind of music you'd hear in the background in a uh in a uh hotel in the
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uh in the dining room Um those kind of uh string string orchestras or or or
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combos Um this was the Aryan Trio They performed on KGO um and later actually
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on NBC out of San Francisco as well Um this is WWJ in Detroit They had a uh
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uh string quartet light opera and grand opera was
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really important then You didn't hear much jazz on the radio except maybe late at night they'd sneak some in but for
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the most part opera was very important to the public um different uh uh well nationally
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well-known um well-known opera singers Um I
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remember uh the engineer from KDN in uh the Fairmont Hotel Station
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told me about Madame Schumanhike who was a world-renowned uh vocalist and she
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came and sang on the station KDN So she had to go up to the roof of the Fairmont
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Hotel and then climb up a ladder to get into the the uh the little shack where
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the transmitter was and and do her singing in front of a
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microphone Um Lree Shaori Vaudeville acts
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um were a uh a big source of entertainment Eddie Caner uh this was
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his first broadcast on the radio Um Weber and Fields comedian Raymond Knight
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had a program where he created an artificial radio station that he called Kuku Cuckoo Radio and uh and did a
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comedy program Will Rogers did um a number of broadcasts in the country The
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first time he broadcast it was on WWJ in Detroit and he really didn't believe
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that anyone could hear him And so I mean he said you know it's it's all the bunk
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He says I don't think you can hear me If this isn't the bunk let me know whether or not you can hear me And he got hundreds of letters and and it really
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surprised him including from Henry Ford who had listened to the program on in his home on his own radio set
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comedians were terrified of radio because um they would tell a joke and no
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one would laugh and and they're you know vaville comedians used to getting the feedback
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from the audience and they would stand in this empty room in front of a microphone which scared them to death
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and tell jokes and they didn't know if anyone was listening were they laughing uh they they'd break out in a cold sweat
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and the stations would finally figured out that they had to get the staff and bring them into the studio so that they
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could have an audience Um you know Edwin was one of the uh the early converts
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from VA who moved into uh radio broadcasting and of course was a big
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name on networks for many years Um so at first the audiences were invited but
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they were hidden behind glass because they didn't want the sound of the audience to break in to uh to and
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interrupt the broadcast Um Edwin was the first one to change that and he said um
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I want my I want people to hear the laughter I want people to hear the audience reaction So um some of the uh
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the first broadcast that they would do on a live stage they'd have a great big
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glass curtain that they would drop down between the audience in the theater and
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the performers on the stage And then they finally learned we can get rid of
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those So sporting events were very important both live and recreated If uh
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if the broadcast was in your city you'd put a phone line down into the stadium
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and uh pick up the announcer doing the broadcast from his uh from the stadium
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If it was out of town uh boy those line costs are really expensive We can't afford a a line just for one day from
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here to Los Angeles to broadcast the away game of the Oakland Oaks
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So the uh uh they would receive the results of of the game each of the
37:55
action as it went along uh by Morse code and someone would write it down and hand
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it to an announcer who would recreate the game in the studio as if he was in
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the stadium even to the point of having sound effects in the background
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Um it was it was an important uh sports were very important early in
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broadcasting as they are today Andrew White who I had mentioned earlier with the Hoboken station he was
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uh one of the business's first uh uh real sports
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announcers Uh Ty Tyson was at WWJ in uh Detroit in the 20s He was uh an
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important announcer Ted Husing um at CBS He was uh trained he was the understudy
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of um of uh of White and he learned uh
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sports broadcasting from him Tris Speaker WNR in Chicago Ernie Smith at
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KYA here in uh San Francisco and Graham McName at WAF was
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probably uh radio's first star announcer both in sports and in other events and
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interesting stories about how he came to be in uh um doing sports broadcasting He
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was a studio announcer for the AT&T station WEAF And so all he ever had to
39:32
do was to read copy between the and announce the the names of the program
39:37
stars And they sent him out to the World Series broadcast as the backup to a very
39:43
formous famous uh newspaper uh sports writer And the sports writer was to do
39:50
the uh the broadcast But a sports writer what he would do is he would say
39:58
um strike um runner to first base and then there'd be a pause until something
40:04
else happened Then he'd say uh uh strike you know he's out end of the
40:10
inning and then there'd be these long pauses in between So about the fourth
40:16
inning he got tired of this and he says you know I don't want to do this anymore I'm out of here And so he turned the
40:21
microphone over to Graham Mcto and he started realizing I got to fill these
40:27
times in between So he would start talking about what the weather was like
40:33
and here are the people I see in the stadium and uh oh I see the coaches over
40:38
there in the in the dugout and he's having a conversation with the pitcher Uh maybe we'll have a change of pitcher
40:44
here And so he started adding color and he realized that in 1923
40:52
1924 no one in the history of the world had ever had to describe an event in
40:59
words live to an audience It was a it was a uh it was it didn't exist as an
41:06
art form It had to be invented And Graham McName was one of the key people
41:11
who invented the art of describing a scene and an event in a colorful and
41:17
interesting way to uh an audience And really all of the sports casters today
41:22
and and uh people who do political um analysis at conventions and so forth
41:29
they all owe it to Graeme McD and the others back then who really created the
41:35
art that they are practicing today and showed them how it can be done
41:41
Remote broadcasts of things other than sports were important Um with what you
41:49
would do now with a little tiny mixer or a computer they needed a couple hundred pounds of equipment and batteries and
41:56
telephone lines to go out and do a broadcast
42:02
Um NBC here had it had its own truck Uh there's a picture of this same truck
42:08
over there I noticed uh on that table that they used to uh to do broadcast in
42:13
the local area Um hotels were a great uh
42:19
location for radio broadcasting stations They they it was prestigious for the
42:24
hotel to have an antenna on the roof and the radio station liked it because at that time they thought antennas had to
42:30
be high in the air so they could propagate their signal better and they would run a wire down to the ballroom
42:38
and do nightly broadcasts of the hotel orchestra which for the hotel was good
42:44
publicity because they'd encourage people to uh to come in and have dinner
42:49
and listen to the orchestra that they heard on the radio So it was a symbiotic relationship between the radio stations
42:56
and the hotels And that was one of the common remotes that you would hear with a nightly broadcast of uh um of the uh
43:06
of the hotel orchestra So here's the San St Francis
43:12
Hotel Orchestra from from that time Some stations went farther They had
43:19
their own staff studio orchestras Um the musicians union would uh would require
43:26
if they were going to have broad if they were going to have uh music broadcast in
43:31
their in their station well they had to hire them for so many hours You just couldn't say play for a half hour and
43:37
you're done So as long as we're doing that we might as well have our own orchestra This was
43:44
WTMJ in Milwaukee KSTP in St Paul where
43:50
at the time it was common for all the musicians to wear these artist
43:55
frocks Uh KO in Seattle Uh WWJ in
44:01
Detroit WCCCO in Minneapolis were all important stations but they all were
44:07
well enough financed to have their own studio orchestras
44:12
political candidates realized the importance of radio and would get on the
44:18
air get some airtime to uh to give their speeches and uh and they started to realize that uh it was good publicity
44:26
good for their campaign Um the uh the early the stations and
44:33
early networks broadcast the political con the conventions of the political parties before the uh um before the
44:42
elections and the presidential elections And sometimes these broadcasts would go on for days all day long of broadcasting
44:50
live the proceedings of the uh political conventions around the country
44:58
Child performers were a big draw Um people loved to hear children on the
45:03
radio So uh um whether they were speaking or singing playing the piano um
45:12
children's programs were uh uh very popular particularly bedtime stories or
45:17
after school uh children's programs Um a number of stations had the character
45:23
they called Big Brother KPO in San Francisco had one This one uh Bob Emory
45:29
was uh uh the big brother in uh WBZ in
45:37
Boston More children broadcasting I found this one
45:43
interesting One station that did art lessons over the radio You figure that one out But
45:49
somehow uh chess games and bridge
45:56
games So they would do bridge lessons on the radio and then would broadcast a game announcing the moves that each
46:03
player made Several weddings were broadcast live Anything they could find that they
46:10
thought would be of interest to people Stunts um uh someone jumping out of an
46:15
airplane with a parachute and a backpack transmitter and describing his as he
46:21
came to Earth Um as we know lots of uh blackface
46:26
and race comedy that was part of VA at the time and that made its way onto
46:31
radio Uh uh Amos and Andy being the uh the longest surviving of those of that
46:38
group One thing I found particularly interesting is that um WGY in Skenctity
46:46
the General Electric Station was the first to broadcast a radio drama Several
46:52
had done plays before where they put the microphone on the stage and broadcast
46:58
the sound of a play but that was confusing to the audience because they couldn't see what was going on And a
47:04
play was written to be visual Um um WGY
47:09
started broadcasting variations that were made specifically for radio where they would describe uh the activity You
47:18
know they uh you know no put that gun away please You
47:23
know you had to tell you know you you had to you had to know don't shoot Um
47:30
the first this was the first um radio drama broadcast in September of 1922 was
47:37
a play called The Wolf that was specially written for radio designed to be heard
47:45
on Is that in the phone booth would somebody get the phone
47:51
please um it was the uh um first program done
47:56
for radio They timed it to actually be a 45minute precise precisely timed out
48:03
performance And it was so successful that that year they did 43 more radio
48:10
plays and they had a stock company called the WGY radio
48:16
players Um and that was so successful that when General Electric opened their
48:22
station here in uh Oakland KGO they said "Let's do radio plays on KGO." Um and
48:31
they starting in 1924 these are pictures from KGO of uh broadcasts of uh early
48:38
radio plays they hired um WA Wilson Church who was a drama teacher at Mills
48:46
College to be the uh um the uh radio
48:51
uh producer and director She was someone who really invent helped to invent radio
48:59
drama for uh um drama for radio for uh situations
49:06
where the audience could not see the performance Uh learned how to create
49:12
sound effects that would go with the play Um in this picture on the right she
49:17
is directing the performers but she's not in the studio with them She's in the control room She wants to hear it come
49:24
through the speaker so she understands what it would sound like for the audience without the advantage of seeing
49:31
the performers So and then she would direct them through a microphone back into the the studio So it was really um
49:40
this was one of the places where radio drama really was advanced and KGO was
49:45
one of the um prime um prime uh motivators of that um of
49:53
that genre of programming throughout the 20s
49:59
Another was um the first radio variety show was done here in San Francisco That
50:06
was KFRC's Blue Monday Jamberee and it was broadcast from 1927
50:13
to 1935 uh from KFRC Um and it
50:20
was very likely the very first radio variety show a format that became really
50:26
popular in the 30s and [Music]
50:32
40s Lipton's begins at 9 From San Francisco the city by the Golden
50:39
Gate we present the Pioneer Fun Show of the West Coast the Lipton Tea
50:44
[Music] Jamberee Harrison Holloway master of
50:50
ceremonies Claude Sweden musical director
50:57
[Music]
51:11
[Applause] [Music] So that was a uh that was a late
51:17
incarnation of the program They had changed the name from Blue Monday uh Blue Monday Jamberee to uh the Lipton
51:25
Jamberee because they had they finally had a sponsor But that was uh a program
51:30
that was immensely popular carried on the Don Lee stations uh up and down the West Coast for um for a number of years
51:38
It was like a two or three hour extravaganza every Monday night And uh
51:44
in between the show was so popular that um uh the stars in the show would travel
51:51
to different cities and do performances in theaters to local audiences So it was
51:57
I can't explain how what a big deal this was um in uh as I said starting in
52:06
1927 and Harrison Holloway was the man who started KFRC as a very young man um
52:14
developed this program and um com combined with the Don Lee network and
52:20
later went on to be the general manager of KFI in Los Angeles So in the
52:26
beginning advertising was not allowed on the radio Um and as a result many
52:33
stations didn't have revenue and they and they closed So if if you go back into the 20s um probably twothirds of
52:41
the radio stations that were operating during the 20s ended up closing for uh financial reasons
52:48
Um finally after a and the government was uh um was in the hand had a hand in
52:55
this because they said no this is a public service it shouldn't be spoiled by
53:01
advertising Eventually they realized nobody else is going to pay for this It has to be advertising and that was when
53:09
things started to change for the better for broadcasting Uh in the beginning it was just institutional advertising
53:17
Advertisers would get name recognition benefit for sponsoring a program like
53:23
the Cleico Club Eskimos from Cleco Ginger ale or the Everready Hour
53:30
um much like uh um uh NPR program name
53:36
sponsorship today where they don't actually do commercials but they just bring you the program courtesy
53:44
of So let's go from uh the subject of uh
53:49
the programming to the technology Um early radio technology was
53:55
um all generally all of the transmitters everything was handbuilt with varying
54:01
degrees of quality Uh the corporate stations of course they had the best equipment they had access to all of the
54:08
patents that uh uh that only they had the right to use Um most early stations
54:16
built their own transmitters Some were beautifully built like this one from Doug
54:23
Pum Others were not quite so perfect This one was pretty much of a
54:30
mess I think um this was a uh 50 watt transmitter of
54:37
a shortlived station KZC in Seattle and it's now at the Science and History
54:42
Museum in uh Seattle The story about this one is it was uh when the station
54:49
shut down in the early 20s the uh uh the
54:54
studio transmitter room was remodeled and they basically put a wall in and
55:00
walled the transmitter into the wall and it wasn't discovered for another 70 years
55:08
Uh in 1921 Western Electric introduced the first factorybuilt transmitter which
55:14
was the model 1A a 500 watt uh transmitter This was just the uh
55:21
transmitter part There was also a power panel and there were motor generators and batteries uh self-exited oscillator
55:29
um with Heising modulation If if for those of you who know what that means it
55:35
was immediately replaced with an improved model the 1B because they found that uh as the antenna would move in the
55:42
wind the station's frequency would go up and down and people would keep having to chase the the station in their radios
55:49
Um and it was soon sold as part of a complete broadcasting station package
55:55
where you'd go to Western Electric and they would sell you everything you needed to put a radio station on the air
56:02
Um the the receivers the microphones the the speakers Um and they give you a
56:09
suggested floor plan of how you were to put a uh radio station together This
56:15
looks very much like the the uh picture that I saw of KLX when it was the first
56:24
uh iteration of KLX in the Oakland Tribune Tower It was basically this
56:29
exact same arrangement And uh because Western
56:37
Electric had the best equipment they its transmitter was the um transmitter of
56:44
choice for about 35 of the country's most affluent broadcasters like W This
56:50
was KGW in Portland KNX in Los Angeles KPO in San Francisco KHJ Los Angeles
57:00
um WWJ in Detroit These were uh some of the first users of those of those
57:07
transmitters At the time it was believed that the best kind of antenna was to build towers on top of a tall building
57:14
and put uh horizontal wires what's called a flattop antenna uh between them
57:21
And basically at the time that's the only kind of antenna that people knew because it was an adaptation of antennas
57:28
from uh ships at sea where on a ship you had a a a mast in the in the four and a
57:35
mast aft and you strung the antenna between that So they they figured well this is the best kind of antenna And
57:42
only years later did they discover no actually a uh a vertical antenna sitting
57:48
on the ground is a much better radiator So these kinds of antennas tended to go
57:54
away uh through the years But as I mentioned hotels love to have towers on
58:02
top of their roofs It was very prestigious for them because it showed they were up to date with the latest
58:08
technology RCA GE Westinghouse and AT&T were the
58:16
companies that really developed the technology of radio while uh everyone
58:22
else was building uh and copying the circuits that were already known These
58:28
were the companies that were developing new technologies higher powered transmitter tubes high voltage rectifier
58:36
tubes fre transmitter frequency control with crystals
58:41
um 100% modulation I I apologize for those of you who aren't technical but
58:46
some of you guys know what I'm talking about Um higher powered RF levels going
58:52
from a,000 watts to 5,000 10,000 and 50,000 and above And these companies
59:00
were using their own radio stations as test beds for the development I know in
59:05
the case of WGY which is very in skenctity very well documented GE was
59:11
constantly changing modifying updating equipment continually in a process of
59:17
experimentation and innovation on the engineering side which was completely separate from the people doing the
59:25
programming By 1928 GE had developed a a
59:30
a series of water cooled tubes that went up in power as as high as 100 kilowatts
59:37
each Um and I saw a tube like this smaller version uh here in the building
59:44
but the uh the bottom half of it is a water jacket It's the anode of the tube and it is cooled by uh water that's
59:51
being continually flowing across it So uh um that was the way they were able to
59:57
keep the tube cool in order to go to higher and higher transmitter
1:00:02
powers They General Electric developed many other improvements They they were
1:00:07
the people who created mercury vapor rectifiers uh uh crystal
1:00:13
control and they built high- power transmitters up to 100 kilowatts The the
1:00:18
picture in the lower right is an experimental 100 kilowatt transmitter in
1:00:24
the GE laboratories and it's there there were no cabinets It's all over the
1:00:32
room In 1925 through 1927 we saw the first 50 kowatt high-powered
1:00:39
broadcasting stations Uh I mentioned WGY in Skenctity
1:00:45
Um this was uh WJZ in New York in 1925
1:00:51
with a transmitter built for them by Westinghouse This was at WEAF in uh on
1:00:59
Belmore Long Island and they made 50 kilowatts They didn't have a single tube
1:01:07
that would do it So the the highest powered tube at that time was 5 kilowatt So they needed 10 of them plus a couple
1:01:14
of spares in a in water cooled jackets to make 50 kows all operating in
1:01:20
parallel This is a picture of what that transmitter looked like Um a year later
1:01:25
it was obsolete as they had higher powered tubes Um Western Electric built this 50
1:01:33
kowatt transmitter for WLW in Cincinnati in 1928 It's still there today and is
1:01:42
said to still be operable Western Electric did several other new commercial models Um the 6B
1:01:50
was uh 1 kilowatt that was very popular transmitter It was used all over the uh
1:01:55
by stations all over the country well into the late 40s Um the uh 5 kilowatt
1:02:04
transmitter This was this is an interesting story AT&T tried to claim patent rights They said "We own the
1:02:11
patent for these circuits and all these radio stations in the country that aren't using our transmitters Um you owe
1:02:18
us royalties because you're using our circuit in your transmitters." And 500
1:02:25
so radio stations said to heck with you Um they even
1:02:32
wanted to patent the concept of broadcasting which is to say um you have to sign an agreement you have to pay us
1:02:39
a royalty and you have to assure us that you will never broadcast advertising because only we are allowed to broadcast
1:02:46
advertising So they went so far as to sue a radio station WHN in New York and
1:02:55
they won the case but the negative publicity they received from all of this
1:03:01
was so overwhelming that they backed off and never
1:03:08
um never pursued the case farther But for a while they they they were trying to completely control the concept of
1:03:15
broadcasting in the United States And two years later they said "That's
1:03:21
enough Let's get out of broadcasting." For $1 million they sold WAF to RCA and
1:03:28
completely exited the broadcasting business Um one reason that they did
1:03:34
that is they recognized that the money was not in broadcasting It was in leasing phone
1:03:41
lines to tie radio stations together Because now we started to have the
1:03:47
concept of radio networks Why should I create a program here and you create a
1:03:54
program in another city and we each are paying for this when we can just run a phone line between us and I'll do one
1:04:01
program on for both stations You do a program for both stations AT&T was the company that
1:04:10
pioneered this because of course they had the phone lines They
1:04:16
um figured out how they could equalize a phone line so that they could get broadcast quality audio not just
1:04:23
telephone audio but higher quality audio in across a specialized phone line and
1:04:28
connect cities between it So in 1923 they installed the first equalized lines
1:04:36
from WEAF in New York to WNAC in Boston
1:04:41
and started sharing programs In June of 1923 they had a line that went to
1:04:46
Washington um and uh President Harding
1:04:52
broadcast a speech and it was heard over KSD in St Louis WF New York and several
1:04:58
other stations Um they connected with WAF in
1:05:05
Massachusetts They opened their own station WCAP in Washington and it was a rebroadcast of WAF So now they had their
1:05:13
programs going out through transmitters in New York and Washington And RCA said
1:05:19
"Well we can do the same thing." So they opened WRC in
1:05:24
Washington AT&T wouldn't lease phone lines to them They said "No that's ours
1:05:29
nobody else can have it So they went to Western Union and leased line uh
1:05:35
telegraph lines and broadcast through the telegraph lines The quality wasn't as good and there were key clicks
1:05:42
because because of other the other lines in that bundle that were broadcasting
1:05:48
um uh Continental Morse code So um in October WF begins regular
1:05:55
broadcasting with uh uh combining with WJR in Providence Rhode Island RCA
1:06:02
starts feeding programs from WJZ to WGY and Skenectity So there now
1:06:08
we have these two competing station hookups
1:06:14
1924 KDKA Pittsburgh uh WBZ in Boston KW KYW in Chicago They
1:06:23
joined the radio group hookup That's the WJZ uh RCA hookup The uh the RCA stations
1:06:30
are now putting together a pretty significant network
1:06:35
March 1925 the uh Koolage President Kulage inaugural broadcast was done in a
1:06:41
temporary hookup for 22 stations And finally in
1:06:48
1926 AT&T decides to get out of the radio broadcasting business When they
1:06:54
sell WEAF to RCA they also sell its their network the network that they had
1:07:01
built And this is what that network looked like at the time So um AT&T said
1:07:08
"We're out of the broadcasting business We are now in the business of renting phone lines." And by the way RCA now we
1:07:14
will lease phone lines to you So RCA now finds itself in the business of network
1:07:21
broadcasting but they've got two networks because they have the one they had before uh their own network and now
1:07:27
they have this one from AT&T And a lot of the stations are in the same cities Well what are we going to do we can't
1:07:33
combine them So they created um they formed a company called the
1:07:40
National Broadcasting Company It had 25 stations That was the original WAF group
1:07:46
and they called that the Red Network And then the WJZ network they uh changed the
1:07:53
name to the NBC Blue Network So simultaneously now they are programming
1:08:00
from New York City um two full competing
1:08:05
network The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air in 1927 with 16 stations
1:08:12
also leasing lines from AT&T AT&T is now finally making really good money because
1:08:19
those lines were damned expensive Um in December 1928 NBC AT&T
1:08:27
finally completes lines that go all the way across the country to San Francisco
1:08:33
and they complete a coast to coast network with 58 stations On January 1st 1927 the NBC
1:08:42
Pacific Coast Network opened with six stations This is before the Coast to Coast Network existed So they had no way
1:08:51
to um to bring the New York programs to the Pacific Coast Well what are we going
1:08:56
to do let's open a studio in San Francisco at 111 Sutter Street and let's
1:09:03
complete and duplicate the programs that are being done in New York for the West Coast
1:09:11
So um one of the people that I had the pleasure of knowing um early when I was
1:09:17
in college was Bill Andrews He was NBC's first announcer in San Francisco And um
1:09:24
I interviewed him and he described the operation The National Broadcasting Company of course had its headquarter in
1:09:30
New York and had a studio operation out of Chicago but the network did not exist
1:09:35
transcontinentally There were not broadcast lines across the country So here we were on the Pacific coast
1:09:42
practically duplicating the work that was being done in New York All of the programs originated at what is still 111
1:09:50
Sutter Street San Francisco on the 22nd floor Now these programs were in a sense
1:09:56
duplications of what was being done east of Denver At the conclusion of the
1:10:01
program in New York the copy the scripts the musical scores all of this for the
1:10:07
orchestra were put on a train in a regular United States Postal Service and mailed to San Francisco They didn't get
1:10:13
out here for about 4 days But it meant that after a 3-day delay including
1:10:19
rehearsals and whatnot we were able to do the program here as it had been done in New York Uh I think it should be
1:10:26
emphasized that at NBC alone in the early 30s we had a staff of over 250
1:10:31
people We had a thoroughly competent complete staff of performers announcers
1:10:38
producers writers musicians plus management and sales to the amount of
1:10:44
about 250 employees And all of that was here in San
1:10:49
Francisco And those programs went up and down the coast to uh uh six affiliated
1:10:57
radio stations And um San Francisco was the big deal It came to San Francisco
1:11:03
for two reasons One is there wasn't much in LA at that time Um it was still a
1:11:09
much smaller uh community It had uh the the motion picture industry but the
1:11:17
theater owners and the motion picture producers felt that radio was a competition Uh nobody's going to go to
1:11:24
our to see a film if they can stay at home and listen to a radio program for free So they didn't allow at that time
1:11:32
uh movie stars and other personalities to be heard on the radio
1:11:37
Secondly all of the telephone circuits
1:11:42
on the west coast emanated out of San Francisco So it was the natural connecting point for the uh uh for the
1:11:50
transcontinental lines to both phone lines and the broadcast lines to come to San Francisco and then emanate from
1:11:59
here And if a program was to come from Los Angeles to San Francisco well that
1:12:06
was difficult because the amplifiers pointed south The audio went from San
1:12:12
Francisco to LA It didn't come the other way until they learned how they could reverse the direction of the amplifiers
1:12:18
So if performers from Los Angeles wanted to be heard on the radio on the network
1:12:24
they had to get on a they had to get on a plane and fly to uh San Francisco and
1:12:30
do the program So this was the uh Pacific Coast AT&T broadcast line
1:12:36
arrangement in 1929 once they finally completed the coast to coast network Um
1:12:44
first they had to go the lines originally ended in Omaha They extended them to Denver so they could pick up KOA
1:12:52
And then finally in December of 1928 the uh was the completion of the
1:12:57
transcontinental phone line the first broadcast line coming to San Francisco And the first program to be
1:13:05
heard nationwide was on New Year's Eve 1928 the General Motors Party from New York City
1:13:12
It was the first time that a program had been heard on the West Coast Actually uh
1:13:19
um the uh on New Year's Day I think
1:13:24
1929 the Rose Ball was broadcast nationwide but it was broadcast from uh
1:13:30
Pasadena on a regular telephone call So the audio quality was was pretty
1:13:36
poor So NBC now has 58 stations coast to coast
1:13:46
In February of 1927 there are now 733 radio stations on the air in the United
1:13:53
States That's too many They are interfering with each other Um because
1:13:58
the the Interstate Commerce Commission was not allowed to deny
1:14:04
anyone a license If you asked for a license they had to give you a license They had to give you a frequency
1:14:11
but they couldn't say no So there were too many stations and they're interfering with each other The public
1:14:18
is complaining because they can't get clear radio
1:14:23
reception It's interference It's uh um uh they're hearing multiple stations at
1:14:28
once They're hearing hetrodines uh from other stations on the frequency because the frequencies weren't well
1:14:34
controlled Um there were what they called wave jumper stations and that's a station
1:14:40
that says "I don't like my frequency There's too much interference I'm going to move to another channel so try and
1:14:45
stop me." Um horrible interference ensued
1:14:52
Um there were um I would say questionable quality of
1:14:58
programs on the air such as fortune tellers um medical frauds like the the famous uh
1:15:07
uh John Brinkley uh the goat gland doctor um Norman Baker from
1:15:13
KT&t in Iowa who broadcast that his uh cures for cancer
1:15:20
um radio preachers including the famous Amy Simple McFersonen
1:15:29
Um the pirates of the airwaves um the Zenith radio station WJAZ in New York
1:15:37
They were assigned only two hours a week on 9:30 kHz on a night when KOA was off
1:15:45
the air They said two two hours a week is not fair We're a big corporation We
1:15:50
should have more Department of Commerce says no They said to heck with you We're
1:15:56
moving to a Canadian clear channel And they expanded their broadcast hours And
1:16:01
they even went so far as to publicize with postcards and programs on the air They did programs on the air that were
1:16:07
the radio pirates And it was all in the face of the Interstate Commerce Commission and
1:16:13
the whose leader at the time was Herbert Hoover So Hoover says to heck with it
1:16:19
I'm taking WJEZ to court as a test case And he loses because the court says
1:16:25
"Well the the Communications Law of 1912 does not give the Department of Commerce
1:16:31
the the rights to control the the spectrum The law isn't written well
1:16:37
enough So this finally leads the our Congress
1:16:44
to enact the Radio Act of 1927 and they create what's called the Federal Radio
1:16:50
Commission and its job is to put order to the to broadcasting They had their
1:16:58
first meeting in 1927 and they are tasked with the job of eliminating 150 radio stations in the
1:17:06
country in deciding who can broadcast and who cannot and who deserves to
1:17:11
broadcast who has programs that are worthy of the public interest convenience and necessity and who is
1:17:17
just abusing or wasting spectrum
1:17:25
So at that time all broadcasters receive three month licenses Every three months
1:17:31
they have to apply for a license renewal Um in April 1927 they're
1:17:39
required uh to improve their transmitter technology to keep the frequency within
1:17:44
500 hertz That's to eliminate the hetrodines that um the uh the wh the
1:17:52
whining noises that would come out of broadcast of uh receivers In 1928 they
1:17:58
canled or set for hearing 164 stations In August 1928 they came out
1:18:06
with a new ban plan All stations had to move to new frequencies and they kept shifting stations around uh every couple
1:18:14
of months say you're now on 1280 You have 2500 watts You have you can only
1:18:21
broadcast in the daytime Um in 1930 they set new transmitter standards Stations
1:18:28
that didn't have the money to uh invest in good quality transmitters that provided good quality service uh were
1:18:36
not operating in occurrence with concurrence with the law and risk their licenses
1:18:42
Um there was uh uh some cases of uh of unfair decisions They gave favorable
1:18:49
treatment to all of the stations of the RCA group They all got 50 kilowatt clear channel frequencies and uh educational
1:18:58
and religious stations were um renegaded to poor frequencies low power and
1:19:06
sharing time and a lot of them did not survive because they weren't given adequate operating
1:19:14
conditions So finally though the technology the equipment is now stable
1:19:19
The broadcast band is orderly thanks to the Federal Radio Commission There's less interference The audio quality is
1:19:26
good Radio receiver manufacturers are now making really good quality receivers
1:19:31
with um good audio quality and sensitivity and people are able to enjoy
1:19:38
um the the service of radio broadcasting This uh uh picture on the lower left is
1:19:46
the 50 kilowatt transmitter at KPO in uh San Francisco in Belmont actually where
1:19:53
it's where it remains today in the same building Advertising is finally accepted
1:20:00
and now big money is coming into radio It's pushing the small-time operators out of the way And we're seeing
1:20:08
expensive programs being fed across the country on networks with uh with big
1:20:14
money behind it and sponsored sponsored programs The depression comes along and
1:20:21
it's really good for radio because vaudeville is um uh vaudeville is dying
1:20:28
because people don't have the money to go to uh vaudeville They don't have the money to go to movies in a lot of cases
1:20:34
but radio is free It's at home If they have a radio they have free
1:20:40
entertainment So free over the air radio becomes the most important form of entertainment that uh the country had in
1:20:47
the 1930s So this begins radio's golden era
1:20:54
of the 1930s And that's a subject for another talk on another day
1:21:01
[Applause]
1:21:09
We can open it up for questions Um you were first Uh John what
1:21:15
was the first commercial radio station cuz it's between KKA and some people say
1:21:22
it's in California Could you clarify the misconception well the what was
1:21:29
supposedly the first radio commercial was on WEAF the AT&T station in New York
1:21:35
They believed that their business was to be a a uh uh a station that sold airtime
1:21:43
that um they weren't program creators They would simply um sell the time And
1:21:49
so a commercial in 1924 for a uh an apartment complex was the first
1:21:58
identified formal radio commercial but radio advertising from that point really
1:22:04
grew very gradually and and you can't point to one station and say they were ahead
1:22:10
KBO So I see KBO labels on radios every now and again old radios What did it
1:22:18
become became became KMC and then KVR Okay And
1:22:24
then and then was it 680 was was um I think it was on 680 even before the
1:22:33
the NAFTA 13 I think What was it i think it was
1:22:38
813 originally Oh well going way back Yes But um and so the second question is
1:22:46
you just said that the transmitter is still there in Belmont Well the transmitter building is Oh the building
1:22:52
Yes This the the building the same tower location where they are now is the one that NBC developed in uh the early 1930s
1:23:03
Could you comment on the border blasters oh boy that's another whole wonderful
1:23:09
wonderful subject But um uh and I mentioned briefly um John
1:23:16
Brinkley uh the goat gland doctor and the Federal Radio Commission decided
1:23:23
that uh his advertising his goat gland transplant uh hospital over the air was
1:23:31
not in the public interest and they took his license away at station KFKB in Milford Kansas And he had made so much
1:23:39
money doing this surgery in his hospital in Kansas that he opened a hospital in
1:23:46
Del Rio Texas went across the the the border to Soda Akuna in Mexico and
1:23:53
convinced the Mexican government to give him a license for 150,000 watts Wow Um
1:24:00
to broadcast back into the United States and he uh he built um a powerful radio station
1:24:09
eventually went to 525,000 watts and uh would only
1:24:14
broadcast at night and was heard all over the country and he was selling uh you know promoting his own uh
1:24:21
medications his surgeries his hospitals um um selling uh uh all matter of patent
1:24:30
medicines and so forth and programming Um the uh Carter family was first heard
1:24:37
on the radio over his station Uh and then several other people said that's a
1:24:44
good idea Let's do that And so um let's do that too So about half a dozen border
1:24:50
blaster stations opened up along the Mexican border broadcasting back into the United States Um and that went on
1:24:58
until the 1940s when in exchange for giving Mexico some clear channel
1:25:05
frequencies of his of its own the Mexican government agreed to shut down all of the border blaster stations But
1:25:12
they did come back in a a in a lesser form in the 50s and 60s and uh they gave
1:25:20
us Wolfman Jack among a few other things Yeah Yeah Um the early stations were like 1 XP and
1:25:28
2XR or whatever they were and then they got to call letters and and the East
1:25:34
Coast has the W's and K's out here Uh why the original blank X blank why
1:25:42
did they change to letters and why oh they've had different systems of call
1:25:50
signs over the years the uh uh original ones the X indicated experimental and
1:25:57
the number indicated the uh the radio zone just like we have uh were in zone 6
1:26:05
for amateur call signs That was zone 6 back then So 6XE indicated it was a an experimental
1:26:13
station in zone six And then they went to uh three-letter calls and then
1:26:18
four-letter calls which at that time were only being used by uh um shore and
1:26:25
ship and shore stations Um and and
1:26:30
eventually uh that became the standard and then they did divide the country into two parts because there weren't
1:26:36
enough call signs to go around John John expanding on that last good question Uh
1:26:43
it it looked like the radio operator the ham radio operators and then the commercial broadcasters were using the
1:26:49
same type of call sign you know for what were we calling a uh none by two yes And
1:26:58
uh was there any one by one one were there any differences in
1:27:06
the licenses that were learning the licenses that once the broadcasters have
1:27:14
well like I said in the beginning there were not there was no such thing as a broadcast license You got a you got a
1:27:19
commercial land station license or you could get different classes of licenses And some of the early operators said the
1:27:27
easiest kind of license to get is a ham license so I'll just do that Or this starts with a
1:27:35
hamst they can do audio So they start doing programming and it grows up from there But the uh uh it wasn't until
1:27:44
1923 when the uh Department of Commerce prohibited amateurs from broadcasting
1:27:51
entertainment or music that those stations then had to move and get a
1:27:56
commercial license By that time broadcasting licenses existed So
1:28:03
um 2XE becomes uh becomes a three threeletter call sign with a broadcaster
1:28:10
license
1:28:15
I thought you'd give a little bigger pitch here to the city that you live in now and I lived in for eight years and
1:28:22
the one of the radio pioneers of the day Barker Gates King Gates Radio Company they were born in 1922 They were Gates
1:28:31
Radio started in 1922 and it started making uh audio equipment um for theaters
1:28:40
um and and it wasn't originally a radio company but um Parker Gates and William
1:28:47
Lear and um Elmer Wavering got together one day
1:28:55
Um they were young radio experimenters Uh William Leer was a little older but
1:29:01
they they they had girlfriends and they like to put radios in their cars and go up on the uh on the hills at night and
1:29:08
entertain their girlfriends on the radio and make out And um
1:29:14
yeah but it radio didn't work too well in a car You know there was so much
1:29:19
interference from the car's electrical ignition system where do you put the uh where do you put the antenna it runs the
1:29:26
battery down in the car Um so they worked together and created the first
1:29:32
practical automobile radio design and then they took it to Chicago and um they
1:29:42
demonstrated it to uh names names they demonstrated it to
1:29:49
to Galvin Engineering Company and they said yes we could produce that and they
1:29:55
did start to produce it successfully uccessfully and sold aftermarket radios into the automobile market And that
1:30:02
company was so successful that they changed their name to Motorola But all of that started in Quincy Illinois And
1:30:09
Parker Gates went on then to do audio equipment for radio broadcasting stations and then finally radio
1:30:16
transmitters Built 50 100 500 kilowatt shortwave transmitters TV transmitters
1:30:23
They're still in business today operating under the name Gates Air So uh um the factory still in Quincy
1:30:31
and the factory is still in Quincy Illinois And
1:30:37
um interesting interesting technology um that came that came out of the
1:30:45
Midwest Anything else i've I've held you for a long time could comment when you
1:30:50
were talking about the network uh orchestras Yes Or the radio station orchestras
1:30:57
My grandfather's brother whose name was Cyrus Troboitz Sai Troy And because
1:31:06
Troboitz was not a very good entertainment name he changed his name to Sai Troy Yes And he was the leader of
1:31:14
the the NBC orchestra at the Palace Hotel or was the KPO orchestra he was he
1:31:21
was uh a a program performer at uh led an orchestra on KPO and then later on
1:31:27
Kya when it was a Hurst Broad broadcasting station and uh uh was a violinist with the San Francisco
1:31:34
Symphony for many years I inter interview interviewed him in when I was in college in early 70s Well I I knew
1:31:41
him when I was a little boy All right He was part of our family On my website there is the audio of the interview with
1:31:48
him Oh I got to look I got to look it up Yeah And and what it and when I was a tiny kid all radio went to meant to me
1:31:55
was where I could plug my crystal set in and not the history and not that my uh
1:32:01
that my cousin was a famous conductor on the radio That's wonderful Yeah he was really important in San Francisco in
1:32:08
radio in the 20s and 30s and and and for that matter so was Meredith Wilson uh who um was the uh uh
1:32:18
lead floutist with the um with the uh um
1:32:26
well he he in with orch with orchestra in New York City He and he came west to
1:32:34
KJR in Seattle in 1929 to do a summer concert series And when he did that he
1:32:41
brought a lot of musicians from New York with him And KJR went bankrupt and the
1:32:47
musicians never got paid So he couldn't go back to New York to continue playing
1:32:52
with orchestras there because a lot of people that he worked with were mad at him So instead he got a job at
1:32:59
KFRC in San Francisco as their first music director Uh later moved to NBC in
1:33:08
um in San Francisco as an orchestra leader and a composer and then moved to
1:33:15
Los Angeles and Hollywood um was a uh uh character on the Burns and Allen show
1:33:21
for many years and then um wrote of course the uh the the music and the
1:33:28
script for the music man and he started in radio and he started here in San
1:33:34
Francisco One more one more quip about site trophy
1:33:40
at some point later in his career He was a an instructor at San Francisco State
1:33:45
College Yes Now you know how I met him Here you go And my sister who's 9 years
1:33:52
older than me had him as a took one of his classes and he was very strict No
1:34:00
women in his class would wear pants Every woman had to have a skirt or
1:34:06
a dress on Yeah And he had a tie Yeah Yeah
1:34:14
Any more questions well this has been fun for uh coming out
1:34:20
seeing us Thank you Steve And uh it was it's a pleasure to to to
1:34:27
get reminded of the great history that radio has brought us [Music]