A few months back, in honor of High School Radio Day, I wrote about possibly the oldest high school radio station in the United States, KBPS-AM in Portland, Oregon. In the course of researching the Benson Polytechnic High School radio station, I learned that one of its General Managers, Patricia Green Swenson (who led the […]
Tag Archives | radio history
Sound History is Cultural History: Primary Documents and Progressive Radio Research
A few weeks ago, FlowTV published a special issue devoted to the Radio Preservation Task Force. The issue features articles on a range of topics in radio history. In the coming days, we will share a brief reflection of all the articles in the issue, but for now, we would like to share (or, rather, […]
Where is the Oldest High School Radio Station in the United States?
Happy High School Radio Day! Because of my fascination with radio history, it seems like a great day to delve into the history of high school radio. As is the case with college radio, multiple stations lay claim to being the first on the air. (more…)
Grassroots radio gets profile in new online archive
There’s a lot of remarkable stuff to check out in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s new work-in-progress website. Sure, there will be plenty of public TV footage of George Lucas and John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and wuddever. But the content will also include a boatload of material from the Pacifica Radio Archives, WFMU in Jersey […]
Saving the Endangered Sounds of Detroit’s Radio History
From time to time, the Radio Survivor Academic Series has been pointing to noteworthy articles and posts that have been shared by other excellent sound and audio related blogs and which are connected to the Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF). Recently, Sounding Out! has been featuring specific archival collections that are a focus of the […]
Thinking through Radio History: An Interview with John Durham Peters – Pt. 2
This week, we are pleased to bring you the second part of an interview with media historian John Durham Peters. Last week, part one of the interview touched on intriguing issues in radio studies such as questions about the future of radio and radio’s non-human element. This second post asks about communal listening practices (and […]
Thinking through Radio History: An Interview with John Durham Peters – Pt. 1
Once again, we are very excited to present an interview with a leading media historian for Radio Survivor’s Academic Series. John Durham Peters is a media and cultural historian and social theorist who is currently the A. Craig Baird Professor in Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also a consultant and participant […]
REC Launches Radio History Project
Today REC Networks announced that it has begun work on the REC Radio History Project. It has started to mine the FCC database for historic AM station information and will be adding that material to the REC Broadcast Query tool. So far, it’s added information related to Los Angeles stations KFI and KHJ. According to […]
Today’s Rich Audio Environment: An Interview with Michele Hilmes
As part of the Radio Survivor Academic Series, we share an interview with scholar and radio studies luminary Michele Hilmes. Hilmes is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading scholar of radio and broadcasting. (more…)
The Latest FCC Call Sign Changes Herald the Return of WRVU (LP) and the End of WIP
As I perused the list of the most recent call sign changes issued by the FCC, I found some interesting tidbits. The call sign for the former Vanderbilt University FM radio station, WRVU, is making a terrestrial radio comeback of sorts (WRVU.org is still used by an online station at Vanderbilt, but the now sold […]