August 20 Is National Radio Day, What’s Your Favorite Station?
August 20 is National Radio Day, a day designed to highlight the invention of radio and its contribution to society.
The first commercial radio stations began broadcasting in the 1920s. There are now well over 15,000 commercial radio stations in the United States.
Radio has certainly changed over the past 100 or so years. I began my radio career in February of 1982 at WRUN/KG104.
Back in the day, AM radio ruled the dial, with FM just starting to picking up footing. The biggest change over the years of course, is technology.
There were no computers or digital music back in 1982. There were turntables, with all the music played on vinyl. That eventually gave way to CD’s and finally digital music.
"Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener." ~ Marshall McLuhan
Working in the newsroom was a challenge, especially writing news stories on a typewriter! If you made a mistake, well, there was always White Out.
If you made too many mistakes, you had to rip out the paper and start again, no deleting and copy and paste here or backspacing.
Associated Press (AP) and all of the news services are now available on demand on your computer, but back in the 1980s there was the teletype machine.
The machine would spit our news copy, 24/7 and needed to be cleared every hour our so. And don’t ask me about changing the ribbon on the machine!!!
There was also no internet either, making it a challenge to gather news.
"Anytime in radio that you can reach somebody on an emotional level, you're really connecting." ~ Casey Kasem
But has much as things have changed in radio, the mission remains the same – keeping the audience informed and entertained.
Celebrate National Radio Day And See How The Decades Of The Job Have Changed
So keep listening and Happy Radio Day!
"A good radio show will captivate you, and it's active listening. It's not in the background." ~ Rush Limbaugh