2024-03-25 17:38
In the world of college radio, WHCM is a relatively young radio station. They only won their FCC license in the year 2000, buying it out from the EMF station WCLR. It's the only occasion I k… Read More
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Arcane Radio Trivia Blog
tenwatts.blogspot.com
It's the exceptions that make us what we are, not the rules.
2024-03-18 14:36
David Brenner Live was a very short-lived program by a comedian who was very famous at the time. It's so brief that some of the articles about the debut, didn't run until it was almost over… Read More
2024-03-07 16:32
I first found Mr. E. Rodney Jones on the back of a cassette. It was the back of the album: War Live UA-CA193-J to be specific. (By the way, it's a fine album) Looking online for more i… Read More
2024-02-19 16:54
Here's an oddity, and I've never seen one before. It's labeled "8TC Protective Cape." The "p" is shaped a bit funny but only a couple possible words made sense. [I doubt it's cave… Read More
2024-02-11 18:38
There are two gentlemen pictured here, C.J. Ingram and Frank Bremer and this is a Prohibition joke. It appears in a 1923 issue of Radio News. First— the gag: In 1919 the Eighteenth Ame… Read More
2024-02-06 15:25
On a drive across New England I picked up a free issue of Neighbors magazine. In it I found a lengthy article by Dean Farrell aka Dean Fiora. He was singing the praises of some obscure soul… Read More
2024-01-29 16:49
Caveat: I do not normally watch this Youtube channel. This was sent to me in the form of a clip showing the inside of an abandoned radio station in New Jersey. From that clip I found this or… Read More
2024-01-22 16:36
Early regional and national flour brands were frequent radio sponsors in the golden era. In a previous post, back in 2007 I wrote up [LINK] the radio contributions of nine brands Light Crust… Read More
2024-01-17 22:53
It weighs just a few ounces and measures 2 3/8 inches in diameter, and is 3/8 inches thick, not counting the binding post. On the back it bears a yellow label for Bromwell's Radi-O-Trap Aeri… Read More
2024-01-12 22:16
I found this image online with no attribution but dated to January 12th, 1935. But I do recognize it as a column from the New York Daily News. I'm going to assume that date is real and extr… Read More
2024-01-08 15:12
These articles usually start with a chance find, and then basic research to block in the timeline. John Daniel was unknown to me, even in the context of WSM. So the multi-decade career was v… Read More
2024-01-01 22:54
The sign reads "Radio Sales Service, Malcom D. Burdick; Hampton, Conn, Call 1011-2, Complete service to All Makes of Radios. Modern testing Equipment. Reasonable Rates. RCA Radios RCA Tubes… Read More
2023-12-29 22:39
Not Danny Kaye or Carol Kaye, Harold Kaye, Lenny Kaye, Nora Kaye, Sammy Kaye, Paul Kaye, not even Buddy Kaye. There are after all quite a few successful and at least semi-famous Kayes. (He's… Read More
2023-12-21 00:41
We are now in year 18, (a Harshad number), and I stand by my statement from 7 years ago...
"it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the
rabbit-hole." This blog be… Read More
2023-12-03 16:01
Cassettes have always sounded a bit crap. CDs can flawlessly reproduce the entire range of human hearing, from about 20 hertz all the way up to 20 kHz. Cassettes roll off everything be… Read More
2023-09-10 14:04
K-Tel is still in business today. But their music footprint is mostly limited to licensing songs for film and television now. Not that they were always in the business of cheap comps. K-Tel… Read More
2023-09-02 21:18
Sometimes at the odd antiquarian book shop I find an odd antiquarian phone book. Sometimes, those old phone books list off radio stations. Below is an image from Might's Greater Toronto city… Read More
2023-07-04 16:50
I recently found a Leon Russel bootleg cassette. Scribbled on the J-card it reads "Live in Los Angeles FM & TV concert." A second line of text dates the recording only to 1970. Am I a Le… Read More
2023-06-18 14:16
2023-06-13 00:01
This transistor radio bears both the "candle" branded and 6 Transistor branding. The ad above is from 1964, which is interesting as 10-trnsistor models had been on the market since at least… Read More
2023-06-05 19:10
I really like finding old radios that have presets will call signs on them. This one only has three but it still narrows down the era and the location. Lets dig into it. WJZ - I've writ… Read More
2023-04-10 14:19
This was another tough topic to research. WOR-AM has been operating since February of 1922. So we have a solid 100 years of history to sort through to rediscover this radio program. I… Read More
2023-02-27 20:32
I was doing a bit of soldering and it suddenly occurred to me that my tin of Rubyfluid was older than some of my friends. It's dented yellow 4 oz tin that would fit inside a coffee cup. I go… Read More
2023-02-25 19:35
I write about radio history. History can be dry, academic even boring for some. But my background was in rock music and radio so sometimes a bit of blasphemy or profanity, creeps in; m… Read More
2023-01-31 17:03
Technical Author's Bureau Books was based in Blue Ridge Summit, PA on the Maryland border about halfway between Gettysburg, and Hagerstown. It's s small town, even today the population is ju… Read More
2022-12-07 20:30
There is something oddly endearing about this tiny book with it's awkward idioms on the inside and rear cover. I was most taken with this one, a true product of the 1950s: "The insects mus… Read More
2022-12-04 16:09
We are now in year 17, (a nice respectable prime number) and I stand by my statement from 6 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole… Read More
2022-08-29 12:17
Bill Thailing was a long time fan, trader, collector and dealer of comics, newspapers, radio programs, magazines, pulp magazines, books and ephemera in Cleveland, OH. He published his… Read More
2022-08-22 14:11
It's very difficult to write about the Basque as an outsider not speaking Euskara. Because very few people speak Euskara there's very little editing to information webpages. Even within the… Read More
2022-07-25 20:32
Don and Norman Blisard were the Blisard Brothers. One promotional photo shows them in cowboy hats with a mandolin and a guitar standing in front of a microphone bearing a KUOA badge. Their p… Read More
2022-07-04 20:37
Herman Edward Darewski was a composer of what was then called "light music". Lets take a quick detour to explain what that actually was. These are short orchestral pieces, often just 3… Read More
2022-05-09 18:41
Anyone with any level of interest in the Kennedy assassination from the student, to the historian, to the conspiracy theorist knows who Jack Ruby is. But many of them won't know anything abo… Read More
2022-03-26 20:55
Kait Moon aka DJ Glas has dug into her archive and posted a few episodes of her old radio program on KAOS some 20 years ago. The audio quality is actually really good, maybe even better than… Read More
2022-03-10 14:51
I'm doing a program over at WLOY that's airing tonight. You can check it out HERE Read More
2022-02-14 16:23
Normally when I read about LoRa, I am reading a story about IoT devices in a smart-home installation, and always in the future-tense. As of late a few LoRa devices have made it to market, mo… Read More
2022-01-28 21:25
I may have bitten off more than I can chew. This is a Montgomery Ward Airline 62-254 radio. This superheterodyne tabletop model was made in 1936 - 193. Notably it does not run on 110v AC pow… Read More
2022-01-10 13:04
This is a schedule from the radio station 90.1 WECS from the late 1990s. being abotu 20 years old it's no surprise to see a few changes. Following a national trend with NPR affilates, the af… Read More
2021-12-23 13:13
Drôle de guerre (2008) I'd like to start in 1940 before we rewind to 1866. Radio Londres was a radio station broadcast from 1940 to 1944 by the BBC in London to… Read More
2021-12-20 13:06
We are now in year 16, and I stand by my statement from 5 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog began in April of 2005… Read More
2021-12-13 13:51
I am pleased to report that my mad midnight scribblings are back on actual newsprint. Thank you to the Slingshot Collective for keeping that dream alive. I wrote a few zine reviews whi… Read More
2021-11-24 13:25
I had a chance discovery in the book Another Life: And, The House on the Embankment by Yuri Trifonov. It's actually two books, urban novellas in the Russian povest genre. It's translated fro… Read More
2021-11-14 14:27
Our story starts with two radio announcers born only a few years apart with similar names, both working as radio announcers on national networks. Donald Harlow "Don" Wilson and John Donald W… Read More
2021-10-18 12:33
The diary has arrives and even since that date another reminder letter and I think at least three phone call reminders have come. I got one on my voicemail and I hung up on the other two. I… Read More
2021-10-11 12:34
Since the second letter arrived the diary has also landed; I've not scanned any of it yet. But at first glance, it looks very similar to the last one. [LINK] This communication came wi… Read More
2021-10-04 12:29
Tropical Fish Capacitors are one of those obscure electronic components really only known about in the DIY electronics community. Even people with a passing knowledge of electronics li… Read More
2021-09-20 15:42
The first print reference I found to the Humbard family was in the Indianapolis Times, September 5th, 1949. The Humbard family was performing at 4:30 PM on 1260 WFBM. I didn't immediately co… Read More
2021-09-13 12:47
The FCC's description of the service is a bit dry"A subcarrier, known also as Subsidiary Communications Authority or SCA, is a separate audio or data channel that is transmitted along… Read More
2021-09-06 17:31
Phillips Haynes Lord was a radio program writer and producer who was very active from the 1930s into the 1950s. He created the Gang Busters program that ran from 1935 - 1957. He had an idea… Read More
2021-08-24 13:49
I actually enjoy getting the occasional Nielsen survey. I make a quick $6 even if I only complete the initial form. I can't imagine I help their data much as I am listening to non-comm… Read More
2021-07-19 17:36
For the third time in all the dozens of places I've lived, my home has been selected for a Nielsen Radio Survey. Then just as now the initial communication came with two crisp dollar bills… Read More
2021-07-14 12:35
I reached out to Dr. Michael Nevradakis about the radio program Radio Dialogos ... He is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, College professor, Editor & Writer at Orthos Logos News and a DJ. IN 20… Read More
2021-07-04 15:06
There is some real entertainment value in old hokum medicine. At the end of the snake-oil medicine wagon era, early radio technology became just another bit of voodoo for the scam artists. I… Read More
2021-06-06 20:33
In the book Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin was a single passage about radio. [It's quite a good read by the way.]"By far the most trusted source of news are the daily radio pr… Read More
2021-06-01 12:36
Round the Horne was a BBC Radio comedy program starring Kenneth Horne. The format was an old fashioned revue, mixing music and comedy. The BBC aired weekly episodes over 4 seasons from 1965… Read More
2021-05-10 19:24
Vibe Highway radio is a trimulcast targeting drivers on I-15 and I-40 from San Bernadino to Las Vegas. That target isn't a single community per se, but travelers, commuters, lost campers, to… Read More
2021-05-03 13:03
Football is a hell of a drugNovember 5th 2020 The Montgomery Advertiser opened an article with the sentence "Once one of Alabama's most powerful politicians, former House Speaker Mike Hubbar… Read More
2021-04-26 13:08
In some ways, Rev. William B. McKay was the original Florida man. Faith healing is, and always was, a bald huckster's scam. But back then just like now, successful scams are big business. Bu… Read More
2021-04-14 13:55
The Secret Life of Machines was an educational TV series presented by Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod. It aired on BBC Channel 4. The pair explain the invention and function of various commo… Read More
2021-04-05 12:45
When New York has black outs they can make history. Readers may remember the 2019 New York black out that left 73,000 New Yorkers in the dark if only for 5 hours. I can attest that it was ha… Read More
2021-03-15 12:12
A good cover tune is truly something to behold. A cover can even surpass the original. This can even happen with top-tier artists. The Jimi Hendrix version of "All Along the Watchtower" is s… Read More
2021-03-08 13:24
With thanks to the Santa Rosa history website, I ran across a KSRO program schedule from September 24th, 1937. It was the station's 25th anniversary. But today that schedule is almost… Read More
2021-03-01 13:54
You will have to excuse the title. It kept coming to mind as a lot of old radio engineers refer to these capacitors as "tin cans." In the USA, Pyranol caps, like all other PCB-co… Read More
2021-02-22 14:00
It's always fun to catch a bit of an actual radio broadcast in an old film. In modern films for copyright reasons it virtually never happens. There are facsimiles of radio everywhere but act… Read More
2021-02-15 15:35
WPAZ signed on in 1951 and signed off in 2009, 10 years ago. 56 years it a big window. But I've been totally unable to connect the Eckert Family to WPAZ. I can state for the record th… Read More
2021-02-08 14:00
In 1970, when 98.5 WWOM went stereo, Billboard Magazine buried the Dec 5th issue headline on page 36 of the magazine. The article stated that WWOM had switched from easy listening to progres… Read More
2021-02-01 14:00
To be clear, there was no way in 1913 that the Department of Commerce could produce a canonically complete list of every U.S. entity with a radio transmitter, licensed or not. So I argue th… Read More
2021-01-25 15:49
As government agencies go, the FCC is very high-functioning. I believe it comes to them naturally, as a large number of their decisions and functions come from the reality-based, engineering… Read More
2021-01-18 13:53
In December of 2021 The US legally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. This was in exchange for Morocco's recognition of Israel. Two changes which only seems to have ser… Read More
2021-01-11 15:24
The story varies somewhat by source. Things do not always translate well. Time Magazine refers to Yu Miri's work as a "radio host." Her authors biography on Barnes & Noble's… Read More
2021-01-04 13:54
CFCA has unfortunately become a notably over-used acronym. It's the Communications Fraud Control Association, the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, the the Community Fisheries Con… Read More
2020-12-28 14:55
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing a fellow radio researcher, Rafal Alumairy. She is the author of the first Student Radio History of Australia. The book is forthcoming and I… Read More
2020-12-20 13:59
We are now in year 15, and I stand by my statement from 5 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog began in April of 2005… Read More
2020-12-14 14:20
Frank Boscoe has done everything. Back in the 1980s he was helping to cook up a indie-rock renaissance in Pittsburgh. He was a DJ on WKPS, and WLVR. He was the Music Director at WRCT, helped… Read More
2020-11-30 14:35
On The air, the Encyclopedia of Old-Time radio by John Dunning describes the 30-minute program in one sentence: "`Singer Doris day with such guests as Danny Thomas, Kirk Douglas, Jack Smith… Read More
2020-11-23 14:00
Daniel DeFoe was inspired to write Robinson Crusoe was an account of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk. Selkirk was marooned on an uninhabited island known as Más a Tierra l… Read More
2020-10-26 12:22
I found this logo stamped on an old LP. Sadly I lost track of which one. So I can't fully close the loop as to the hear that logo was in use. But we can work out the timeline quite nic… Read More
2020-10-16 12:00
Don't you want to ask what's in the box? We can answer that but let's begin at the beginning. Glaskarten was a goth and industrial radio program that ran from 2000-2005 on KAOS 89.FM… Read More
2020-10-11 21:23
Chinua Achebe is known the world over as a Nigerian novelist, poet, and professor. He has written over 30 books, won numerous awards and holds honorary degrees from multiple universities. So… Read More
2020-09-26 13:00
It was a decade ago when I first encountered Dig Up The Roots. It was a radio show on 90.3 KFAI which ran from 2004 to 2011. The name or the program was very memorable, and I wrote it in a m… Read More
2020-09-20 15:02
Back in May of 2015 LA Weekly ran the story "L.A.'s Smallest Radio Station, 97.5 KBUU, Broadcasts Out of a Malibu Bedroom." Station founder Hans Laetz figured prominently. Thought prob… Read More
2020-09-14 00:32
I'd like to open by quoting band leader Jack Norton, who literally wrote the book on Fisher. The 800+ page paperback Cornstars: Rube Music in Swing Time was published in 2020. More here."[Fr… Read More
2020-09-07 13:52
Even though you probably have not heard of Intermodulation distortion, you have already heard intermodulation distortion (IMD). But this is something you might not readily recognize in all i… Read More
2020-08-31 12:50
I want to open by stating that Nokorode® is still manufactured today. But do not take this as a product endorsement. This is a product more than a century old, so there's a lot of histor… Read More
2020-08-23 22:51
from houstonlgbthistory.orgThe first LGBT radio program in Houston was probably "Come Out Together Through the Hole in the Closet Door." It aired on alternate Sundays at 5:30 PM on 90.1 KPFT… Read More
2020-08-17 10:50
In April of 2010 I wrote the following:"...The modern usage of "metal" in the musicological sense date back to 1968... This leads me to believe that no radio show can claim to have begun be… Read More
2020-08-10 12:12
From Arlington Public LibraryMore recently I found a WGTB program guide from April of 1978. This is [LINK] It's very rare to have such a long series of college radio schedules so well… Read More
2020-07-31 12:24
Georgetown University fired station manager Ken Sleeman in December of 1975 trying to purge the liberals, hippies and other radicals from the station. God forbid that gay people exist o… Read More
2020-07-27 12:45
Scan by Andrew Ratliff I was reading a few back issues of the magazine FM Forecast on the marvelous website American Radio History and happened upon some entries for WGBT. Now WGBT began as… Read More
2020-07-20 12:43
The book Airwaves of New York makes a passing reference to the Black Panther party having its own radio program on WLIB-AM in 1969, "The People's Information Slot." There are few corro… Read More
2020-07-13 12:40
You can be forgiven if you have never heard of the American Labor Party (ALP). It was established in 1936, splitting from the Socialist Party of America (SPA). It's political activity was al… Read More
2020-07-06 12:16
The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street has one of the longest radio program names in radio history. So for the purposes of this article let's use the acronym CMSLBS. It aired for ov… Read More
2020-06-29 12:34
I wish I could remember which Art Hodes LP I found that quote on. But it was how I first found that Art Hodes was a DJ in addition to being a jazz writer, and frequently recorded jazz… Read More
2020-06-22 12:42
The time-line of WWII is very complicated and there were some conflicts within the war that began beforehand, and others which only continued unabated into further conflict afterward. In the… Read More
2020-06-15 12:04
The book House of Gurney was published in 1929 commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the Gurney Seed and Nursery company but also the 8th anniversary of 570 WNAX-AM which had signed on in 19… Read More
2020-06-09 12:03
I was wondering the other day if broadcasters has ever decreased. In modern times, it seemed possible that as listeners move away from the AM band. But it has not happened yet. Even in Canad… Read More
2020-06-01 12:29
Washington D.C. was home to 99.5 WGAY from 1960 to 1999. It was not an LGBT station but what a lost opportunity. The earliest LGBT radio program in Washington D.C. was probably Friends. Ther… Read More
2020-05-25 17:45
The LPFM license is in a precarious position on the best of days. But co-channel protections on US territorial islands are even more challenging for one primary reason: spacing. The co-chann… Read More
2020-05-18 12:32
From Transistor Transmitters for the Amateur by Donald L. StonerFor decades, possibly up to a century "peanut whistle" has been slang for a low power transmitter. The two words have been bou… Read More
2020-05-11 13:30
DJ Spotlight was a section in the Rhythm & Blues section of Billboard Magazine. Their Rhythm & Blues section itself goes back to at least July of 1952. It was a different era. Billbo… Read More
2020-05-04 12:04
4VEH transmitted its first radio program in Haiti on June 2, 1950. the station was founded by a missionary named Green Tolbert Bustin. The station was called "La Voix Evangéliqu… Read More
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