Professor Charles Culver at the controls, about 1910 (Beloit College Archives)

The early history of college radio has not been documented sufficiently and much of it is sequestered away in the archives of colleges and universities.

Last year I was thrilled to see Hugh Slotten’s book, Radio’s Hidden Voice: The Origins of Public Broadcasting in the United States, as it is one of the first publications to give credit to college radio pioneers in the very early days of radio.

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.

Jennifer: Can you give a quick snapshot of the history of radio at Beloit and why you think it’s a significant piece of college radio history?

Dave: Beloit College started experimenting with “wireless telegraphy” in 1907, established a wireless station a few years later, and eventually operated one of first college radio stations (WEBW) in the ’20s.  After a hiatus during the Depression and World War II, a new carrier current station (WBWR) was constructed in the late ’40s. Eventually WBCR-FM was established in the mid-’60s, evolving from 10 to 100 watts in 1983, where it continues today. It’s important because they became involved very early on and (except in the ’30s and ’40s) have endured for so long. Also, the changes they went through reflected so much of what was happening in the larger world of radio.

Inside WBWR, c. early 50's (Photo by Ray Metzker, '51 -Beloit College Archives)

Jennifer: What accomplishments do you think have set the Beloit College radio station(s) apart from others?

Dave: Being ahead of the game on radio experimentation, essentially due to Dr. Culver’s pre-WWI work. Of course, there were other colleges that did research on this, but for a small institution such as Beloit it was unusual, to my knowledge.  Also the notoriety of operating two stations at once, twice during its history: Briefly in the late ’40s with a very early commercial FM station (WBNB) and a carrier current station, and later from the late ’60s through the early ’70s with WBCR-AM (somewhat sporadically) and WBCR-FM, which for the most part had separate programming.

Jennifer: What were some of the most interesting things that you learned during your research into the very early years of radio on campus?

Dave: How similar the budget woes, equipment snafus, and bureaucratic hassles were to what we were enduring at that time (late 1980s and early ’90s), and indeed, throughout its history.   Also fascinating was how, due to the lack of federal regulations (at least early on), stations could broadcast as far as money and technology would allow: Even WEBW could be heard out in Cuba! And that such heavy and cumbersome equipment was at the same time so incredibly fragile.

Jennifer: Can you tell me a bit about Beloit College and the role that radio played on campus when you were there? Was it purely a student station or were community members also involved?

Dave: It’s a liberal arts college located in Beloit, Wisconsin (90 miles northwest of Chicago), with currently around 1250 students and over 100 full-time faculty. At the time I was there (1987-91), there was a great deal of student involvement – it was one of the biggest organizations on the campus. But there were also a number of djs from the town and surrounding areas (as well as Alumni), which was important to WBCR’s sense of diversity and community outreach.

Jennifer: Are students/DJs at the Beloit radio station aware of the lengthy history of college radio on campus?

Dave: Prior to the book’s release, there was apparently little knowledge of it.  But now it seems that Ethereal Message’s objective of giving a sense of history to incoming students, at least those who become involved in WBCR, has been attained to some degree, judging by the feedback I’ve received.

WBCR 2010 Broadcast studio

Jennifer: Your history covers the years 1907 to 1994. Do you have any plans to update the history to include the last 16 years?

Dave: Not right now, but eventually I would like to find the time to update it.  There are many developments – including the obvious technological ones – that need to be documented, and I’ve also been itching to make a number of improvements to what’s already been written, as I’m rather critical of my work.

Jennifer: Are you still involved with radio? Do you have connections to the current WBCR?

Dave: Not presently, though I’d love to get involved again in some manner. I still have an infatuation with radio, and listen to college and public stations quite often:  I’m a fan of certain radio shows with an intensity most others reserve for television.  I don’t currently have any direct connections to WBCR, aside from Fred Burwell, who is on the advisory board and does a summer program: Red With Purple Flashes (Wednesdays 6-8 pm CST)  “Rare and obscure rock ‘n’ roll from the 1950′s-1960′s.” Listen in on www.beloit.edu/wbcr!  It’s a great show, so by God I’m plugging it…

Jennifer: Why do you think college radio history hasn’t been fully documented?

Dave: College radio has a much lower profile than its commercial counterpart, due to the fairly constant turnover in personnel and the (usually) much shorter broadcast range. This (along with the relative inexperience of the staff) also results in a complete absence of well-known national and regional radio personalities, which many histories tend to focus on.  This is unfortunate, as college radio’s history is a fascinating story waiting to be told.

WBCR-FM production room, March 1970. (Photo by Bob Wieland, '71 - Beloit College Archives)

Jennifer: Anything else you’d like to add?

Dave: Some friends of mine have expressed concerns (which I tend to share) about a dissipating interest in radio among college students, particularly due to the internet’s increasing demands on their attention. There’s also the growing reliance on “loop shows,” where pre-recorded material is used to fill air-time, thus taking away from the spontaneity that college radio has thrived on for so long (though it’s uncannily similar to the taped reel-reel programming that stations such as WBCR used in the 1950s). Still, many stations have utilized technology in more constructive ways, such as creating web sites for their stations and podcasting their shows. The key is for college radio to continue to embrace and evolve with the ever-changing technologies while maintaining its unique voice and independent spirit.

I couldn’t agree more! Thanks to Dave for chatting with me about the history of radio at Beloit College and for sharing some amazing archival photos.

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

#6 & #7: Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins of American Museum of Radio and Electricity

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.

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.

Jennifer Waits: When did you start collecting radios?

Jonathan Winter: My first radios?   I came across a one tube radio …….(I cannot remember exactly where) when I was around 15 and remember taking it over to a neighbor who was quite old,  and asking him how it worked. He spent some time getting it working and described how it worked. That was the beginning for me. I learned more about radio and have had an interest ever since.  For me it is a combination of technology, craftsmanship, art and science. I my mind they are all connected.

John Jenkins: My first radio was a set I found in my grandparents basement when I was 13. I tinkered with electronics at lot at the time, I took it home and got it working.  From the minute I heard music come out of it, I was hooked.

Vintage Sparton Model 738 from 1935. Image courtesy AMRE

Jennifer: What about radio was and is so captivating to you?

Jonathan W: As mentioned above, it was the object…… one could almost say it was the “Art”  of these early radios that drew me to them. Of course understanding how they worked only deepened  my interest.

John J: At the time I was fascinated by the beautiful wood, the smell of the vacuum tubes when they heated up. I loved looking at the circuit diagrams and figuring out how everything worked. Later I became much more interested in the history, the inventors, what inspired them, how the chain of ideas connect together. That is the theme in all of my lectures: invention as a process, not an event.

That interest was reflected in my collection, I started with radios from the 1920s as a kid, but as my interest and curiosity broadened I worked my way backward, the oldest object I own is the oldest known existent book that investigates electricity and magnetism, printed in 1560.

Jennifer: Jonathan, Tell me a bit about how your passion for collecting and for radio turned into the creation of the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum.

Jonathan W: The Bellingham Antique Radio Museum:  A long story which I will shorten. Around 1979 I was becoming more and more aware of how fast we were moving into the “digital world.”  I thought I might use my collection or early radio as an educational resource. At the time I was storing most of the collection. It seemed to me that I might spend the same money for a space I would call a Museum.  I rented a small room in the “Marketplace” building in Fairhaven and called it “The Bellingham Antique Radio Museum.” That was the beginning.

The “passion for collecting” is really not what moved me to make a Museum here in Bellingham. It was rather the desire to share what I perceived as a valuable collection with my community. I have always felt that the value of any good collection lies in what it can bring to the future….  We can learn so much from the past.

Jennifer: John, how did you end up connecting with Jonathan and becoming more involved with the museum?

John J: I grew up in Bellingham. I discovered the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum about 1995 or so, long after I had moved away (my mom & dad still lived there). I was too busy at Microsoft to get involved, but after I retired in 2001, I joined the board.

Jonathan’s collection starts in the 1920s and goes forward to the 1950s, and mine ended in the 1920s and goes backward to the very beginning of electrical discovery. We realized that by combining our collections we could tell the entire story of electricty and radio from the beginnings in the 16th and 17th century through to the golden age of radio. I bought the building on Bay Street in Bellingham, and we founded the new museum.

Jennifer: Have you ever worked in radio? If so, where?

Jonathan W: I have never worked in radio other that here at KMRE-LP.

John J: I worked as a dj on the college radio station for a couple of quarters.

Jennifer: What are some of your favorite items in the museum’s collection?

Jonathan W: It is impossible to say which  is a favorite.  The depth and breadth of the artifacts here at the Museum really preclude picking a favorite.  There is one piece that I am very proud of being able to exhibit here though. It is one of perhaps less than 20 working examples of the first color TV set. Made in 1952, RCA only made 1000 of these and very few exist today.   We spent well over a year restoring this one and I get a personal satisfaction knowing that we were able to preserve it and display it working to the public.

John J: This is always a very hard question for me to answer. I can’t point to a specific piece, but I can say that I especially like the pieces that represent an important step in development. There are many of them on display at the museum.

Jennifer: Tell me a bit about the community radio station that you operate: KMRE-LP. What type of programming do you air and how is it integrated into the activities of the museum?

Jonathan W: KMRE-LP came about because it seemed like a good idea to have an exhibit which extended beyond the four walls of the Museum. The station broadcasts the music of the 1920s through 1940. We operate much like the early local stations did.  We also keep the community informed about the activities at the Museum such as classes we offer,  special speaking events, and some community news.

Jennifer: I love that you offer hands-on science classes to kids, including one that taught youngsters how to make crystal radios. Do you think that helps to keep younger folks interested in the medium of radio?

Jonathan W: Children today are not as exposed as they once were to the fundamental workings of science and physics. For most,  that connection is through the keyboard, the computer screen and the television. Our classes are designed to give children the opportunity to discover  on their own by using and or doing the very experiments that  led to great insights and discoveries.

When a child makes a meaningful discovery, there is a sense of accomplishment and a desire to repeat the experience and  continue learning. Our hands on approach is all about that. We want to help kids to discover the huge playground of science, math and physics. Hands-on is the way to do it.

John J: Most of the kids classes are about science, not radio, and even the crystal set class is more about the magic and mystery of how you can pull sound right out of the air without using electricity. We try to get kids excited about science.

Jennifer: Anything else you’d like to add?

John J: If you haven’t seen my book, Where Discovery Sparks Imagination, you should  - it does a pretty good job of highlighting the museum and the objects on display. There are a lot of beautiful photos of early radios in it also, which your readers would appreciate!

What we are about [at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity] is broader [than just radio]: helping folks (especially kids) discover the wonder and mystery of electricity and science. We talk alot about electricity and electrical inventions; most of our demonstrations are more about electricity than radio. Some of our most important and rare objects (such as one of the original electric lights made by Thomas Edison) have nothing to do with radio.

That said, we do have one of the largest and most complete collections of early radio on display in the world.

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

Ginny Gordon and the Broadcast Mystery image from Feliks Banel

It’s hard for me to resist the lure of vintage books and I was pleased to see that our friend Feliks Banel posted a online exhibit called Radio with Pictures: Iconic Cover Art from Books about Radio on his I STILL Love Radio blog.

Feliks is a radio historian, so he’s managed to curate a lovely collection of images, ranging from radio history books from the 1920s, to collections of vintage radio scripts, to tomes about the use of radio during wartime, to first-person accounts from radio announcers, to some campy pulp novels with radio themes.

On a somewhat-related note, I recently ran across the highly addictive Vintage Ad Browser search engine. If you’re into retro radio imagery, try out the radio search and you’ll find some real gems. On their companion site, Cover Browser, there’s also a collection of 600+ book, magazine, and comic cover images related to radio.

Bay Area Radio Museum Gets Reprieve

I was happy to read in Ben Fong-Torres’ Radio Waves column yesterday that the Bay Area Radio Museum has been saved.

As we reported earlier this month, the online-only museum had scaled back recently under mounting costs.

Well, not only has the California Historical Radio Society stepped up to provide some help; but the site’s hosting service also pitched in with some free bandwidth.

As with many ventures such as this, volunteer help is still needed and perhaps some of you radio fanatics out there might be willing to help with digitizing material, conducting research, and writing articles for the website. Of course they are also happy to accept cold, hard cash.

Take a look at the Bay Area Radio Museum’s website to learn more about San Francisco Bay Area radio history, listen to old airchecks, scan through vintage broadcast schedules, and peruse individual station histories (along with tales, photos, and miscellaneous artifacts).

Bay Area Radio Museum

I think it’s extremely important to honor radio’s history, so I’m always impressed when there are folks out there who are actively working to support that cause.

The Bay Area Radio Museum has been a labor of love for its Executive Director David Ferrell Jackson for the past 5 years. This online museum is an amazing place to learn about the history of radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can check out profiles of DJs from days gone by, peruse station histories, and look at vintage photos. Previously there were also links to old airchecks, but due to the high cost of bandwidth, Jackson has decided to scale back until he obtains outside help.

As Ben Fong-Torres reported in his “Radio Waves” column in the San Francisco Chronicle today, Jackson will continue to maintain the website, but has taken down media-rich material (like audio archives):

“Beyond volunteers – ideally skilled radio and broadcasting students at local schools – Jackson wishes the museum could attract a chief executive officer ‘to run it and get volunteers and financial help.’ And, he said, to develop a plan ‘to assure that these recordings, photographs and documents will be collected, stored and displayed in a manner befitting a world-class media museum.’”

In addition to the online museum, Jackson also spearheaded the “Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame,” whose most recent inductees were honored at a ceremony on September 29th.

It’s sad to think that this might be a sign of radio’s decreasing relevance to not only listeners, but also to museums, funders, and cultural institutions. I’m hopeful that someone will step up (another museum? a broadcasting-oriented university’s library?) to help out so that this history is properly preserved. With such a rich history, the San Francisco Bay Area deserves a Radio Museum.

But I guess the question remains: if it opens (even online), will people come?

For those of us who do care about radio, it’s important to support efforts like this; so I’d encourage you to take a look around the museum and see how you can help.

My dream is that the museum will survive and that it will expand into non-commercial territory, doing more extensive profiles of some of the amazing college, community, low-power, pirate and public radio stations that are also on our jam-packed radio dial in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Radio Museum at Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, Ireland

Along with my obsession for radio I also have a special place in my heart for wax museums; so imagine my glee when I discovered the bounty to be found in Ireland at Cork’s Radio Museum.

One of my first stops during my vacation to Ireland last month, the Radio Museum Experience is located in the Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre. The gaol (or jail) opened in 1824 and housed prisoners until 1923. After the inmates left, radio set up shop on the old jail site.

Beginning on April 25, 1927, radio broadcasting began on the premises in the Governor’s house. The early station, 6CK, became part of the national radio network of Ireland: Radio Eirann (later Radio RTE) and broadcast from the old jail until the 1950s. (By the way Radio RTE has a portion of its website devoted to history of the network’s public service broadcasting, including photos from the 1920s.)

Wax Figures at the Cork City Gaol

My trip to Cork’s “Radio Museum Experience” began with an audio tour of the jail; complete with cells filled with creepy wax figures.

As we ended that tour and returned the old school museum-issued cassette player/headphone combos we asked about the radio museum. We were told that it was closed because it wasn’t working. After we explained that we were there mainly to see the radio museum, they invited us upstairs to check it out.

I thoroughly enjoyed poking around the Radio Museum. I’m not entirely sure why it was closed, except for the fact that lighting was dim in places and some of the audio components weren’t working.

Radio Museum Artifacts

On display were collections of old radios, vintage broadcasting equipment, and a re-creation of the original studios of station 6CK. You could also catch tidbits of old radio broadcasts, see a map of early broadcasting stations from around the world, and read about the history of radio in Ireland. A bonus for me was seeing the corpse-like wax figure propped behind the board in the old studio.

Since I’ve been reading a lot about radio in the 1920s recently, my visit to the Radio Museum in Cork was timed perfectly for historical reflections.

I’m glad to see that these artifacts are being preserved and that there’s an opportunity for people to take a look at Irish radio history.

But it also saddens me that the exhibit wasn’t really open to the public. Hopefully it will be up and running again soon for all to enjoy. Otherwise it becomes yet another example of radio increasingly fading away from view.

Jose Fritz

I’m awed by all the radio enthusiasts, collectors, historians, and scholars out there; so I’m going to try to feature some of my favorites on Radio Survivor in a new feature called Radio Obsessives.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my interview with Garrett Wollman about his fascination with radio towers is what prompted me to begin this quest to profile radio obsessives; simply because I love talking to other radio fans about radio.

“Jose Fritz” lives for radio and regularly blogs about radio factoids from the olden days on his blog Arcane Radio Trivia. In many ways I’ve found a kindred spirit in radio reportage, as Jose is also a fan of non-commercial radio and continues to remain optimistic about the future of college radio.

Interestingly, he’s opted on his blog to focus entirely on the past, avoiding “topical” stories for the most part. Consistently writing an impressive 5 posts a week, he’s covered everything from the long-forgotten radio show “The Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour,” to WXPN’s scandalous student radio past, to James Brown’s career as a radio station mogul, to little-known radio pioneers like Reverend Jozef Murgas.

I had an email chat with Jose Fritz to learn more about his radio obsession and to attempt to peel back some of the layers of his secret identity. I can tell you that he’s an engineer by day, is a blogger by night, has a music and radio past, and writes a fun and educational blog. On to the interview:

Jennifer Waits: When did you start Arcane Radio Trivia and what prompted you to begin writing the blog?

Jose Fritz: I began Friday, May 13th 2005. I decided one day maybe a few weeks prior that I needed a structure that would compel me to write more regularly.  I gave myself a set of strict rules and started that Friday. It’s been 5 posts a week since then for 220 weeks; that’s 1047 posts not counting today.  I keep thinking I should edit and compile them into a book.

I though it would make my other writing more productive. I was wrong.  I did write more, but I wrote more about radio, instead of becoming a writing exercise it became a consuming hobby.  I still manage to get the rest of my writing done, but I often end up posting after midnight.

Vintage Radio Ad Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: Why are you obsessed with non-commercial radio?

Jose: Because commercial radio is homogeneous, and worse yet, boring. Non-commercial stations are more free, more varied, less structured and much more regional and local.

Even when a college station is bad, it tends to be exceptionally bad, strikingly bad, even entertainingly bad. I’ll choose entertainingly bad over inoffensively boring every time.

Commercial radio has been in a 30-year death spiral.  When it’s all said and done they’ll have squeezed out every drop of what made them interesting.

Jennifer: Have you worked in radio before? Where?

Jose: It’s not just radio. It’s music too.  I’ve booked shows.  I’ve been in bands.   I have been a music critic at newspapers, zines and webzines.  I’ve worked at record labels, promotions companies and three radio stations. I really would like to volunteer at a local community station but it’s hard to find the time these days.

Jennifer: What do you love about radio?

Jose: That’s kind of a broad question.  I really like being turned on to a band I’ve never heard of, a format that nobody ever tried before.  I like old radio dramas. I also am fascinated by radio history as is evident from the continued existence of Arcane Radio Trivia.

Jennifer: What kind of radio do you listen to? (music/talk/college/etc.) Any favorite stations?

Jose: I like eccentric programming.  As I travel the country I make note.  I’ll listen to a screamin’ and hollerin’ preacher on the AM radio at night in New Orleans, I’ll listen to a Polka station in Chicago, A doo-wop show in Quincy, MA, a indie rock show, a great interview…

So let’s name names I think the Minister on WWOZ has spectacular taste as a jazz-man.  I think that Jonathon Solomon on WPRB is constantly good with his playlist of indie rock.  Joe Belock on WFMU has a Phd in garage rock.  There are a plethora of good shows on NPR including This American Life, Fresh Air, American Routes, etc. WRAS, WSOU, KEXP, KCMP…all very reputable solid stations but low power, small market college stations like WHUS, KAOS, KXUA and others are also truly great.

Radiomans Guide Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: You seem particularly interested in radio’s history. Why is radio history so compelling to you?

Jose: There are a couple reasons.  History is easier for me to write about than current events. By definition there is more in the past than in the present. I also wanted to avoid being topical. I don’t want to focus on opinion pieces. I cover current events when I find them to be either A. directly tied to historical events.  or B. so crucial I think people need to know.

Jennifer: What are your thoughts about the future of radio?

Jose: I think college radio despite some setbacks will persevere.  I think they will weather things largely unchanged. Young people and hobbyists are great at adapting to change and adopting new technology.

Sadly commercial radio will continue to target that lowest common denominator in each demo and age bracket.  The larger radio groups will cut costs, syndicate, simulcast, voice-track and automate every last drop of life out of the media platform.

My car stereo has a USB port. I don’t need to listen to the radio if I don’t want to.  They often make me not want to.

Demonstration Record Warning Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: How do you track down all the tidbits for your blog? Are you a collector of radio memorabilia?

Jose: Every time I read about something post-worthy, I start a draft. The backlog is several hundred unfinished posts deep now.  I keep a set of radio reference books on my desk, I take notes, and I listen. When a “new” post goes up it might actually have been started 4 years ago.  I add to them as I find out more information.

I don’t collect radio memorabilia so much, though I have a few items mics, and acetates and an absurdly large record collection.

Jennifer: What’s your day job?

Jose: I work for a radio monitoring company.  I am the head field engineer traveling the country continually keeping the services up, the antennas secure and the contracts valid.

Jennifer: Is Jose Fritz your real name?

Jose: Nope.  Different arenas of my writing get their own pseudonyms.

Jennifer: Anything else?

Jose: I keep thinking I can’t do this forever, but then can’t think of a good reason or time to stop.

Thanks so much to Jose Fritz for the interview and also for all of his work documenting radio’s past. In the coming weeks I’ll be featuring more Radio Obsessives.

WLS Radio Tower Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Fandom is an amazing thing and thanks to the Internet it’s easier and easier to find like-minded obsessives who share one’s passion for the most obscure objects, idols, and idiosyncrasies. Radio is no exception. Loads of websites document radio history, with nostalgic archivists collecting ephemera, airchecks, and reminiscences from San Francisco to Boston. Various forums also exist, like those on Radio-Info.com, allowing listeners and industry types to talk shop and share current radio gossip.

And then there’s Garrett Wollman. I recently ran across some of his photographs of radio towers and was fascinated. As part of his work with The Archives @ BostonRadio.org, he’s been traveling around the country meticulously photographing every radio tower that he can find. Sometimes he even ventures into radio and television stations; but for the most part it’s the outside architecture and landscapes that he finds so compelling.

In order to learn more about this project, I contacted Garrett to get the scoop about his love for radio towers and his work to help document the history of radio and television. I was surprised to find out a couple of things: 1) Garrett’s a young guy—a rarity in radio history circles and 2) He’s not a big fan of current radio offerings. After chatting with Garrett, I also was made aware of pursuits like DXing and county counting, making me realize that there’s so much more to the radio scene than I ever realized. On to the interview:

Jennifer: Can you tell me about the background and purpose of BostonRadio.org? And the Archives?

Garrett Wollman: The Archives @ BostonRadio.org (originally The Boston Radio Archives) is, so far as I know, the oldest broadcasting-history Web site on the net.  Scott [Fybush] and I started it in January, 1995, with a simple listing of information about the stations in the Boston market…Scott was already writing his New England RadioWatcher columns (now NorthEast Radio Watch)…and I started to archive them.  I also started creating radio and TV dial pages for other markets in New England, and I think around that same time we started writing histories of all the stations…Eventually, the dial pages became too hard to maintain, and other Web sites (like Chip Kelley’s original 100000watts) were doing it better, so I dropped them, but kept the histories.

My first tower-hunting trip was to Cape Cod, in March, 1994.  A couple years later — this is still before the days of good digital cameras– I started taking video of the tower trips.  Eventually, digital cameras became good enough, and I bought on in late 2000; that’s when I started developing the photo galleries that you see in the Archives. What you see is, by the way, less than half of what I actually have “in the can” — I have several thousand more photos from 2001 through last month that I have not yet published.

Radio Station Park Photo Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Each photo gallery involves about 20 hours of work to write and edit, even though the images you see are rarely processed in any meaningful way.  Often, when doing a photo gallery about a market, I will do research in the FCC files, in other reference books like /Broadcasting Yearbook/, and in Web resources like mailing-list archives and Wikipedia, to fill in as much as I can about the history of a facility.

I try to identify the correct callsign, community of license, channel, and station class (FM) or antenna mode (AM) for each station at the specific time the photos were taken.  I want to get more semantic tagging into the photo galleries, so that it would be easier to identify, for example, all the photos (across multiple galleries) of a particular station or tower, but thus far this has been stymied by my rather antiquated, homebrew workflow.

Garrett: Well, I’m not sure that I am.  I’m really passionate about geography, history, and some aspects of architecture, and touring the world’s broadcast sites unites a lot of those interests.  I find much of today’s radio unlistenable and television unwatchable.

On the other hand, I grew up in the 1980s — during the second round of CHR [Contemporary Hits Radio] Wars — at a time when radio still meant something to a lot of people.  It still mattered, when I was going school, what station you listened to; those of my classmates who listened to Q-99 or B-100 were looked down upon by the 95 Triple X crowd, and those of us who listened to Triple X were considered hopelessly bereft of taste by the rock snobs who listened to The Wizard.

By the early 1990s, CHR formats had left me behind (at the ripe old age of 20!), and when I moved to Boston I eventually gravitated to AAA…I learned to listen to — if not always like — some great evening talk hosts, like the late Dr. David Brudnoy on WBZ, and I still enjoy (but don’t listen very much) to the meandering, but usually non-political, Steve LeVeille on WBZ overnights.  Most of my listening today is to the BBC (both World Service, heard here on WBUR, and domestic Radio 4 over the Internet), and in the car to WXRV (92.5B Haverhill), WBZ, and the XM decades channels (particularly 80s on 8 and 90s on 9).

On the gripping hand, I have an engineering (specifically computer networking) background, so I have both an appreciation for the behind-the-scenes work that engineers of all kinds do, and the sort of curiosity that makes me want to know how stuff works, and why, and who built it, and where does it come from.  When I’m not doing this stuff, you’ll find me reading planning documents about a local highway project, or writing a Wikipedia article about a recent Supreme Court decision.

I seem to be running out of limbs here…One final factor is that my parents absolutely refused to pay extra for an FM radio in their cars when I was growing up.  For much of that period, we lived well east of Burlington, Vermont, and thus well out of the night patterns of the AM stations there.  In the winter months, as my father was driving my home from a Scout meeting or other evening event, I would tune the radio and listen to all the other things on the radio — and back then, the AM dial wasn’t filled with satellite talk at night — so we might hear something completely different from anything available locally.

I particularly remember hearing Wolfman Jack on W****N****BC on these late nights.  So I became, unintentionally, something of a DXer as well, and that fed into the geography interest, at least until the AM dial became so filled with indistinguishable satellite junk that there was no longer much interest left.  I joined some of the DX clubs, but eventually dropped out when it seemed that they were mostly interested in yammering on forever about how much better it was in the decades before I was born.  (I’m still a member of the Worldwide TV-FM DX Association, which is a bit less prone to this sort of nostalgic excess.)

WCNK Tower Photo Copyright 2001, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Garrett: Never.

Jennifer: How many towers have you photographed? What states have you visited?

Garrett: I have visited all of the lower 48 except North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi.  I will fix all of these at some point.  (A friend of mine, George Greene, is a county-counter, so he has actually visited every single *county* — a much more difficult challenge.)  I’ve done five Canadian provinces, all in the east.

On my current camera, I’ve taken about 10,000 shots.  I think I was somewhere close to 3,000 on the old camera.  (What a difference bigger memory makes!)  Of course, many of those pictures are junk, and will never be seen on the Web site.  But given all that, I believe I’ve seen in excess of 3,000 stations, and photographed over two thirds of them.

Garrett: Touring radio stations is something that’s normally arranged by my partner-in-crime, Scott Fybush. As a freelance journalist in the trade press, he goes to trade shows and meetings of industry organizations, and knows a lot of people who can open the doors for us at various station groups.  It can be a lot easier to get a tour when you can start your conversation with “I spoke to [name of CEO] at NAB last year, and he said I really ought to see your stations.”  I can’t do that — it’s strictly a hobby for me — so when I travel alone it’s mostly the outsides of things that I see, unless it’s a business day in a small market and I can just walk in the front door and get an impromptu tour.  (Such things do happen!)

We do try to make maps that show where all the studios and transmitters are, also noting any particularly significant historic studio locations. Currently this is all on paper; some day soon, GPS systems will be good enough to assist us in the navigation, although I will probably still want paper maps for my own reference after the fact.  (I’ve been able to piece together photo galleries from seven-year-old photos because I still had the maps and could figure out what route we had taken through a market.)

WHSD Antenna Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Jennifer: Have you visited any college radio stations? If so, which ones?

Garrett: I’ve seen a good number of college stations from the outside.  As far as inside tours go — and excluding college-owned public radio — I’ve seen WBRU (95.5B Providence) and WREK (91.1C2 Atlanta) this year.  In the past, I’ve seen WHRB (95.3A Cambridge), WMBR (88.1A Cambridge), and a few others that I can’t readily remember.

Garrett: There was the time, back during “Big Trip 2001“, when we were in Floyd’s Knobs, Indiana — across the river from Louisville — and an elderly local accosted us and insisted that we were government agents who had some control over the radiation in his neighborhood.

There was also one time — I forget which year this was — when we went to see the tower of WHPE-FM (95.5C1 High Point), and had the security manager of the chemical plant across the street call us in to the police as suspicious characters.  Thankfully, the rental car was not in my name that trip….

Garrett: Yes and no.  As a medium, absolutely.  There will always be a place for a medium of information and entertainment that does not demand all of our attention at once.  There’s no substitute for radio when driving or doing any number of other, primarily visual tasks.

As a means of delivering prerecorded music, not so much.  Radio programmers and record companies have so segmented the market that there is no longer a mass audience for musical entertainment any more.  The days when a CHR could pull a 25 share are gone, in every market.  With dozens of choices on the radio today, none of which are precisely what I want, why would I set through the endless commercials (or endless fundraisers) when I can get exactly what I want from Pandora or my iPod?

The specific technologies of over-the-air broadcasting are clearly on their last legs in the developed world — I give them another decade, maybe two if the broadcasting industry succeeds in its drive to put non-broadcast radio at a competitive disadvantage (through, e.g., the “Local Radio Freedom Act”, which preserves in law the subsidy regime whereby analog broadcasters can use recorded music for free, but digital broadcasters have to pay).  In the developing world, probably about twice as long, because the economics of broadcast are much more favorable there (traditional analog receivers are small, light, cheap, and battery-powered, whereas transmitters are big, heavy, expensive, and require an external power source).

All this, of course, is reason to go and see these facilities while they are still around.  I almost certainly won’t get to all 14,000 — and some of them really aren’t worth getting to — but I am making an effort to see all the significant sites in all the significant markets while they are still with us.

Garrett: I like non-comm AAA and Americana formats, particularly WXPN (88.5 Philadelphia) and WNCW (88.7 Spindale) of five to ten years ago.  I think a lot of the NPR news and talk programming is excellent, but it honestly doesn’t do anything for me.  The best spoken-word radio station in the English-speaking world, in my view, is BBC Radio 4 — it’s everything that I wish NPR was but could never be.  (What other English language radio station is still commissioning new drama?)  If this were Britain, that would be making a pretty strong statement of my social class, but thankfully it isn’t, and they provide “Listen Again” worldwide for most shows, so I can get my fix of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” or “The News Quiz” or even the Shipping Forecast at a time that fits my leftpondian schedule.

Most of today’s music formats turn me off.  If I’m stuck in a market where there’s nothing else to listen to, I may find a local Hot AC or Modern Rocker, but I’m just as likely to turn the radio off.

KYCA Studios Photo Copyright 2009, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Garrett: Rarely.  There are plenty of college stations around Boston, and some of them even do worthwhile programming at least occasionally, but they’re never dependable enough, and there are lots of other choices here in market #11.  Some of the smaller college stations, and most of the high school stations, show little evidence of understanding what operating a radio station is about; if they have any listeners who aren’t actually in the studio, it would be a surprise.  Many of them seem to look at it as a glorified iPod, and put little or no effort into presentation.  But there are occasional gems.

I remember about 18 months ago, on the little class-D high-school station in Acton, Mass., hearing a student on the air who actually seemed to have some idea of what a jock is supposed to do; I actually sent him an email complimenting him on his presentation and suggesting that he look for colleges that have a student-run station.  (Of course, he then spoiled the impression by dumping carrier without a legal ID when his shift was over — stations with limited schedules like that really ought to get hooked up with a radio reading service.)

But the thing that was really fun to find is from the October 15, 1935 issue of Broadcasting. In an editorial called “Murder of Music,” publisher Martin Codel writes about an “ASCAP…propaganda campaign against broadcasting.” Wow. Sounds like 2009! Here’s more text from the editorial:

“In a publicity release issued this month, ASCAP asserts that ‘murder of music’ by radio was accomplished last year when the 85 leading tunes of the year were played 1,255,669 times by the two principal networks. About two years ago ASCAP issued a propaganda blast titled Murder of Music in which it set out to prove that radio had killed sheet music, phonograph record and other musical instrument sales.”

The editorial goes on to point out that ASCAP is arguing that radio should pay up in order to make up for the loss of sheet music sales. And, it also brings up the age-old practice of pay for play:

“ASCAP does not recite in its handout the well known fact that radio tends to popularize the works of composers. Moreover, it does not bring out that composers and publishing houses are constantly plaguing the networks, stations and performers to ‘plug’ their numbers. Innumerable cases of bribery of orchestra leaders and performers have been exposed.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.