The late 1980s were a turning point for AM radio in the US, as music gave way to the rise of talk. By the 1990s most of the music on the AM dial was limited to old time country and easy listening; essentially music favored by truckers, in the case of the former, and senior […]
Back in January I took an amazing tour through the radio collection of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Led by Bill Ruck, a maritime radio historian and chief engineer of college radio station KUSF, the tour took the 20 or so visitors through the normally off-limits radio artifacts housed at Aquatic Park. Tomorrow, Ruck will […]
“Little broken-hearted Sammy,” the tune begins: Sitting on his daddy’s knee Listening to the radio But his heart was aching so Alas, Sammy’s mother has died, the song explains, and so when his father falls asleep, the boy turns to the device for solace: Mister Radio Man Tell my mammy to come back home Won’t […]
On the heels of Radio Caroline’s 47th birthday last week, the New York Times published a story reporting on the outfit’s attempt to garner an actual license to broadcast in the UK. Caroline is pursuing 531 KHz on the mediumwave band (known as AM in the US) which was recently vacated by the BBC. While […]
I am reading Tim Weiner’s disturbing history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes. The tome portrays the agency as a dysfunctional outfit which often failed to achieve its goals. When the CIA did get something done in its formative years, it was usually a dastardly deed, accomplished by a combination of brute force, bribery, and […]
One of the most famous off-shore British pirate stations of the 1960s celebrates the 47th anniversary of its first successful broadcasts today. Gibson’s This Day in Music Spotlight reminded me of the occasion. As writer MIchael Wright retells, the next day, the 29th, was Easter Sunday and Caroline was ready to officially launch. At 12 […]
Everybody knows by now that legendary screen actor Elizabeth Taylor has died at the age of 79. You can expect plenty of well deserved praise to be heaped on Taylor over the next few weeks —for her terrific performances in movies like Suddenly, Last Summer, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff, and Cat on a Hot […]
Reader Mary Payne, webmaster of the Radio London website, took a moment to correct and expand upon my surface gloss of UK pirate radio history in my post about a documentary on 90s pirates told through cassette airchecks. In particular, Ms. Payne notes that the BBC didn’t ban rock music in the 60s. Rather, the […]
One of the nation’s most prominent self-appointed Presidential scholars gave his audience a history lesson today, minus a fairly important detail. Radio rantmeister Rush Limbaugh was musing on the latest economic statistics, which are disappointing. The unemployment rate has dropped to the still high rate of nine percent, indicating that the tepid recovery will continue […]
I’m a college radio history buff, so whenever I run across someone who has taken the time to document the early history of a college radio station I am beyond impressed. Lew Houston, formerly of WRKU radio at Kutztown University (now known as KUR radio), researched, compiled and wrote, “Finding WRKU: A History of College […]
