Radio Survivor

Personally I’m invested in this, as I’ve done quite a bit of research to uncover the hidden history of radio at Haverford College, where I got my start in radio. Students at Haverford College built a radio station in the 1920s and achieved a great deal of press and attention for both the station and their radio experiments (including a chess match with Oxford students by radio).

While investigating the Haverford station’s history I’ve also run across a number of other histories of college radio stations, often compiled by students or staff members. One such history is Dave de Anguera’s book Ethereal Messages: A History of Beloit College Radio 1907-1994.

Radio experiments began at Beloit College with the arrival of Physics Instructor Charles Aaron Culver in 1907. During his time at the college he initiated pioneering work in radio and wireless, leaving in 1920 to join the faculty of Carleton College (where he was also instrumental in college radio). As Hugh Slotten pointed out in his interview with me, Beloit College held one of the earliest licensed stations at a small college, with WEBW, having its initial broadcast in October, 1924. Beloit’s current station, WBCR-FM, is still going strong today.

WEBW log - first entry, 1924 (Beloit College Archives)

I reached out to Beloit College radio historian Dave de Anguera, as I thought he would be a perfect addition to the Radio Obsessives series here at Radio Survivor. From my own experience, I know what a challenge it is to dig through the archives of college radio stations, in which history is not necessarily documented all that methodically.

In his interview, Dave shares with me why he was inspired to research the history of radio at Beloit College, his take on how the trials and tribulations of college radio today are similar to its struggles in the past, and provides some perspective about the role of technology in college radio in 2010.

Jennifer Waits: What prompted you to research and write the history of radio at Beloit  College?

Dave de Anguera: I’ve always loved radio and have been a lifelong history buff to boot. So, when I kept coming across information on WBCR’s history, and the fact that it stretched back so far, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer and thus started investigating further.  I eventually made a proposal to the college (with the support of Beloit College archivist Fred Burwell and Professor Carl Balson) for writing and publishing a book on the subject. (more…)

A ghostly wax figure at the Cork Gaol (Jail) and Radio Museum, Ireland

Coming up this weekend on the evening of Sunday, July 25th, BBC Radio 3 will be airing a 90 minute radio drama that explores the life of wireless radio pioneer Sir Oliver Lodge.

British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge transmitted radio signals in 1894 (before Marconi), studied wireless transmissions and also investigated psychic phenomena such as life after death.

This weekend’s radio drama is in part drawn from transcripts of seances in which Lodge communicated with his deceased son. According to the drama’s co-author, media historian David Hendy, the radio play “Between Two Worlds” is:

“…about Oliver Lodge, one of the ‘inventors’ of radio, and focuses on the  links between his work on wireless and the ‘ether’ and his personal interest in spiritualism: it’s a kind of ghost-story with physics - plus a bit of media history!”

There is something so magical and mystical about radio and the way it transmits voices from afar. It’s not surprising that a radio scientist would also be fascinated by the possibility of communicating with loved ones through the ether after they have passed on.

Anyone interested in how broadcast radio and international politics merged in the late 20th century should watch Alexandru Solomon’s masterpiece, Cold Waves, a documentary on Radio Free Europe’s role in Romanian society from the 1950s through the Cold War. LinkTV ran it over the weekend here in San Francisco.

“I grew up with it,” Solomon explains on the film’s page on BrightWide. “Every evening, in an underground atmosphere, my father listened to Radio Free Europe as anyone else did. It meant more than information. While Ceauşescu’s propaganda had less and less to do with reality, Free Europe’s Romanian section provided – apart from news – some hope. We had no idea it was a CIA operation. Simultaneously, in thousands of houses and blocks across the country, millions of people performed this daily ritual. And, the next day, the words of Free Europe were on everybody’s lips.”

That’s Nicolai Ceauşescu he’s talking about—Cold War Romania’s cunning dictator, who ran a police state while to some degree convincing the international community that he was a “reasonable” communist leader. The film is strongest in conveying how important RFE was to Romania’s educated class. Listened to every night, the station offered them the only grain of hope they had for getting through those terrible years. The documentary is full of fascinating, candid interviews with RFE’s passionate hosts who, from their station in Munich, Germany, poured their hearts out to their country.

Cold Waves is also a beautifully produced work—complete with dark “new wave” stage sets designed to set the mood of the times, and compelling footage from the era creatively mixed in with the film. (more…)

Earlier this year, Focal Point radio host Bryan Fischer interviewed conservative author Robert Knight. The interview centered largely around President’s Obama’s administration, specifically discussing media. Both Fischer and Knight believe that the Obama administration is victimizing conservatives. Knight states at one point, “Those on the left hate democracy!” Knight has a new book out:  Radical Rulers: The White House Elites Who Are Pushing America Toward Socialism. The publisher (Coral Ridge Ministries, where Knight is a Senior Writer) describes it  as “a shocking expose of the most radical administration in American history. Author and journalist Robert Knight presents the amazing truth about White House elites (including President Obama) who are working to push our nation toward socialism.”

Knight’s book isn’t a surprise given the current political environment. What is interesting however is that most Republican presidents of the past 100 years would meet Fischer and Knight’s description of Obama . . . socialist! Talk radio conservatives such as Fischer describe socialism as a large government that spends its citizens money on public programs (despite how they might help said citizens). Far more famous radio and TV host Glenn Beck has pretty much driven Theodore Roosevelt out of the Republican party, condemning him as a “progressive.”

So what about these Republican presidents, what did they do? (more…)

source: Hoover Institution

No doubt many Radio Survivor readers remember and still love Nena’s 80s rock song, Ninety Nine Red Balloons. It’s about a couple of kids who let loose a slew of balloons, and trigger the early warning systems of Europe, unleashing nuclear war.

Ninety-nine dreams I have had
And every one a red balloon
It’s all over, and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go

It was a popular song for the Reagan/Gorbachev era anti-nuclear movements of both the United States and Europe. But not that many people know that next year will be the anniversary of a much bigger balloon story, Radio Free Europe’s Operation Prospero.

From August 1951 through November 1956, RFE launched millions of balloon carried leaflets into Communist Eastern Europe. They urged Czechs and Slovaks to boycott national elections, and told Poles about corruption scandals in their country. “The balloons also provoked a degree of official Communist fury never elicited by RFE broadcasts;” writes Arch Puddington in his history of Radio Free Europe. “Regime leaders were reduced to profanity when the subject of the balloons came up, and the balloon campaign ultimately wound up as an issue before the United Nations.” (more…)

Bertolt Brecht (source: wikipedia commons)

I am rereading portions of German composer Bertold Brecht’s famous 1932 essay “The radio as an apparatus of communications,” and I am confused. Is he really talking about radio?

The medium, Brecht wrote, “is one-sided when it should be two- . . . ”

“It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by the radio to give a truly public character to public occasions is a step in the right direction.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a guy who is talking about the Internet, not radio. Or at least that’s what he seems to want. Given how distant the reality of the ‘Net was to 1932, however, he probably meant something along the lines of community radio. Brecht thought little of schools and other institutions where people go to receive an “education” that “leads nowhere and has come from nothing.” He loved the interactivity of the theater—his career at its height with the Weimar era release of his and Kurt Weill’s masterpieces: Three Penny Opera and Mahagonny. (more…)

Folks in Bellingham, Washington are lucky to have an amazing resource for radio history right in their backyard.

What is now known as The American Museum of Radio and Electricity (AMRE) began in 1985 as the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum as an outgrowth of Jonathan Winter’s personal collection of vintage radios and radio-related objects. As his collection grew, he sought out a bigger venue and eventually joined forces with fellow radio collector John Jenkins.

With their move to bigger quarters in 2001, the museum’s name was changed to The American Museum of Radio and Electricity to reflect its now broader mission of presenting exhibits focused on a variety of scientific innovations. According to their website:

“Today, the Museum is dedicated to the interpretation of the relationship between the scientific exploration of electricity and the development of broadcast radio into its Golden Age—a story with immense cultural, historic, aesthetic, and scientific significance. Among the Museum’s current holdings are unique examples of early scientific instruments and 19th century electromagnetic apparatus, an outstanding collection of more than 10,000 vacuum tubes, and an authentic reproduction of the radio room on the Titanic displaying an original Marconi wireless set.”

The museum galleries contain interactive exhibits recounting nearly 400 years worth of innovations related to electricity and wireless, from the “Dawn of the Electric Age,” to the early history of radio, to the radio’s “golden” age. AMRE also houses more than 1000 radios, operates a low power FM radio station (KMRE-LP), and hosts science education classes for kids.

I talked to founders Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins in order to learn more about the museum and find out how their collective passion for radio inspired its creation. (more…)

Radio's Hidden Voice

In light of the 70th anniversary of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System’s (IBS) annual conference last weekend, it’s a good time to reflect on the college radio pioneers who rarely get mentioned in radio history discussions.

My fascination with the early days of college radio began when I started diving into the history of the radio station at my alma mater, Haverford College. Although Haverford’s first radio station, WABQ, drew much press and attention during its short run from 1923 to 1927; few people outside of the college are aware of the triumphs of this student-built station that was for a time the most powerful college radio station in the United States.

So, it was with great interest that I sought out Hugh Richard Slotten’s 2009 book Radio’s Hidden Voice: The Origins of Public Broadcasting in the United States.

In the book he points out that,

“Radio stations at universities were particularly important because they pioneered some of the earliest experiments with radio in the United States and they played a key role in the establishment of an alternative, noncommercial, public service model for broadcasting.”

Also of interest to me is Slotten’s acknowledgment that college radio faced competition from commercial stations way back in the 1920s. He writes,

“As early as 1922, President Jardine at Kansas State College wrote to a colleague about his fears that commercial interests were actively ‘trying to eliminate’ college radio stations.”

It’s not surprising, considering the huge growth of radio in the United States in 1922. According to Slotten, on January 1, 1922 there were only 28 licensed broadcast stations in the U.S. This number soared to 570 by December 1, 1922.

In the book, there’s a big emphasis on the importance of stations at land-grant universities, many of which offered extension courses and home study courses over the radio airwaves (particularly in the 1920s) for residents in rural areas. Slotten points out that by the late 1920s there was even more competition for space on the radio dial and that many stations were forced to share frequencies and commercial stations seemed to be favored in the Federal Radio Commission’s decisions surrounding assignments.

In order to gain more insight into his research into the early days of educational radio in the United States, I spoke with Hugh Slotten over email. In our conversation he talks about how he became interested in college radio, explains why much of college radio’s early history has been unwritten, and offers up his take on why pinpointing the “first college radio station” is such a challenge. (more…)

NPR Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard (source: npr.org)

It has been two weeks since National Public Radio more or less apologized for its controversial All Things Considered obituary of the historian Howard Zinn, and the bitter listener comments are still coming in.

“I have read your post on the Zinn Obit and find it to be wordy gobbledeegook,” a listener responded several days ago to NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard’s blog commentary. “Your explanation at the end was sufficient! . . . Wordiness is no substitute for the simple conclusion you reached!”

The conclusion that Shepard finally reached in the last paragraph of her essay was that quoting former leftist and now decidedly right wing ideologue David Horowitz in the piece was inappropriate. “There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,” NPR quoted Horowitz as saying. “Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.”

The Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting group jumped on that quote in a hot second. “NPR Finds Right-Wing Crank to Spit on Zinn’s Grave,” ran FAIR’s headline, “David Horowitz in ATC obituary with substance-free attack.” A gazillion furious e-mails later, Shepard replied, noting that the story had included words of praise from Noam Chomsky. But in the end she had this to say about the Horowitz quote: “Critics are right that NPR was not respectful of Zinn. It would have been better to wait a day and find a more nuanced critic—as the Washington Post did two days after Zinn died—than rushing a flawed obituary on air.”

But it’s also clear from the many subsequent responses to Shepard’s  post that NPR listeners are still bitter about the story. (more…)

Prominent historian and activist Howard Zinn passed away last week on January 27, 2010, at the age of 87 years old. Best known for his book A People’s History of the United States, which has sold almost two million copies to date, Zinn wrote history from the “bottom-up.”  I had the pleasure of seeing Zinn in person in San Francisco last year during his Voices of A People’s History event, a tour that recruited actors and actresses to read excerpts from Zinn’s book, such as Tecumsah’s Speech of the Osages, Mary Ellen Lease’s Wall Street Owns the Country, and Vito Russo’s Why We Fight. In honor of Zinn’s memory, in this article I will be listing some audio files of Zinn speaking, some of my favorite Zinn books, and some biographical information to anyone that might be interested in learning more about such an amazing individual.

Listening to history

Zinn’s Artists in a Time of War is an overview of the history of the United States and features Zinn discussing a number of important themes and events, such as patriotism in modern times and the Spanish-American War. LearnOutLoud.com also hosts a sizable amount of Zinn audio files, which can be found here. Another possible method that I feel doesn’t get enough attention is looking into audio CDs and/or tapes of some of Zinn’s books, such as A Peoples History of the United States, on CD. (more…)