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1. Who is credited with developing the wireless telegraph?
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) transmitted a wireless signal across his Italian estate in 1896.
2. When did he first transmit a message across the Atlantic Ocean?
1901. Marconi transmitted the letter "S" ( "dit-dit-dit" in Morse code) 2232 miles from Cornwell in England to St. Johns, Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in wireless communication.
3. Who were the first people to exploit wireless communication?
The navy and merchant marines. In 1900 the Marconi Wireless Corporation installed its first marine wireless station on the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. By 1910, Marconi had established a network of shore based stations and 781 ships, both naval and merchant marine, carried wireless equipment. Inefficent spark gap transmitters broadcast with 1.5 or 5 kilowatts of power on 300 (1000 KHz) or 600 (500 Khz) meters. The daylight coverage ranged from 70 to 300 nautical miles. At night the range of the more powerfull stations was close to 2000 miles. Many ships had only one operator, and he often signed off between 10pm and 6am. It was not until the sinking of the Titanic on the night of April 14-15, 1912, that the ship board operators were required to monitor the air waves 24 hours a day.
4. When was recorded music first broadcast over the air?
1906. On Christmas Eve, 1906, a Candian inventor, Dr. Reginald A. Fessenden (1866-1932) broadcast a religious program which included readings from the Bible (the Christmas story from Luke), a live violin solo, and a recording of Handel's Largo from the 420' tall antenna of his wireless station (Call sign: BO) in Brant Rock (near Boston), Mass. This broadcast was heard by ship board wireless operators as for away as the West Indies.
5. What was the first commercial American radio station?
KDKA. A station's call letters are not initials, they have no meaning. The letters are assigned by a government agency (the FCC). With a few exceptions (for example: KDKA in Pittsburgh and WNAX in Yankton, SD), stations east of the Mississippi begin with "W," and stations west of the river begin with "K."
Where was it located?
East Pittsburgh, PA.
When did it go on the air?
November 2, 1920. The first broadcast was the returns for the Warren G. Harding / James M. Cox Presidential election. Approximately 1000 listeners heard Harding declaired winner with 60.4% of the popular vote from this tiny 100 watt station.
6. Who owned the station?
Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
Why did they put it on the air?
Westinghouse was planning to market, for $ 25, a radio receiver: The Aeriola Jr.. They knew the public would not buy their sets if there were no programs broadcast to which they could listen. Adjusted for inflation, that set would cost approximately $ 250 in 2006.Because of the cost, many radio listeners in the early 20s built their own receivers from the plans printed in Circular No.120 -- Construction And Operation Of A Very Simple Radio Receiving Equipment published by the US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Standards. (Link to a PDF copy of Circular No. 120). According to the twelve page pamphlet, a listener should be able to hear "medium power stations within an area about the size of a large city" or "high power stations within 50 miles." This simple home made receiver, a "crystel set", was composed of a 4" diameter, 80 turn coil of wire (Cost of the wire in 1922: 75¢), a galena (Lead Sulfide) crystal (Cost: 25¢), and a pair of head phones (Cost: $4 to $8). Twenty-five years later, American soldiers in Italy used the same plans to construct the Foxhole Radios they used to listen to the jazz music (with propaganda from Axis Sally) broadcast by Radio Berlin. The galena crystal of 1920 was replaced with a used blue-steel razor blade.
In 1916, David Sarnoff (1891-1971) a New York based Marconi wireless operator wrote the following letter to his station manager...
I have in mind a plan of development which would make radio a household utility. The idea is to bring music into the home by wireless. The receiver can be designed in the form of a simple radio music box and arranged for several different wavelengths, which could be changeable with the throwing of a single switch or the pressing of a single button. Baseball scores can be transmitted in the air. This proposition would be especially interesting to farmers and others living in outlying areas.In 1921 Sarnoff was named General Manager of RCA. He was instrumental in the creation of the first radio network (NBC) and NBCs move into television.
What was the first broadcast station in South Dakota? When did it go on the air? From where?
WCAT, which began broadcasting from the campus of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City in May 1922. is generally considered South Dakota's first radio station.
7. Why were the commercial radio networks established?
It soon became obvious to the broadcasters that every station could not create its own, locally produced, high quality programs. By joining several stations together, the stations in the largest markets (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) could develop programs which they could distribute over land lines to the smaller markets (Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, etc.).The Red network of the National Broadcasting Company, NBC-Red, began operation in December of 1926 with a hook-up of 20 stations. The following month, January 1927, NBC-Blue (the cultural network) was organized with only 5 outlets. The Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS, came on line with 16 stations in September of 1927. In December 1928, NBC-Red had completed a coast-to-coast hook-up. By 1930, the three major radio networks had been established. In October 1943, NBC-Blue was sold to the American Broadcasting System and became the American Broadcasting Company, ABC.
8. When did drama become a mainstay of network radio programming?
In the late 20s or early 1930s. The first dramatic radio series, an anthology program, was introduced on WGY, a General Electric station in Schenectady, New York in September 1922.An actor by the name of Edward H. Smith is credited with first suggesting the idea of real radio drama. He was associated with "The Masque," a theatre group in Troy, NY, and in the summer of 1922, approached WGY Program Director Kolin Hager with the idea of doing radio adaptations of some popular plays.Hager liked the idea, and agreed -- on the provision that none of the plays run more than forty minutes. He was concerned that the attention span of the audience might not be up to the challenge of a longer production, so new was the idea.
Smith immediately went to work on an adaptation of a play by Eugene Walter, entitled The Wolf (1908). This three act drama was cut down to exactly forty minutes by focusing on the action of the second act, adding just enough of the material from the first and third acts to make the story comprehensible. In agreeing to allow the adaptation, the playwright insisted that the presentation be given with a full cast, and Smith selected several of his colleagues from "The Masque" to play the roles:
The play was aired following several rehearsals in September 1922, and the station received more than two thousand letters from within a five-hundred mile radius. One letter from Pittsfield, Massachusetts claimed that the screams of the character "Hilda" were so real, that a policeman overhearing the program thru a window burst into the writer's home to stop the "assault."
The success of the first production caused Hager to commission a series of plays, to be offered thru the fall, winter and spring of 1922-23. By the end of the season, a total of forty-three plays were presented, all featuring the same group of actors. The WGY Players remained a fixture on the station thru the rest of the 20s
Copyright © 1998 by Elizabeth McLeod
9. What was radio drama's first hit show?
Amos 'n' Andy. In 1925 two white actors, Freeman Gosden (1899-1982) and Charles Correll (1890-1972) presented Sam 'n' Henry, a "black" sitcom, on Chicago's WGN. Two years later they left WGN for WMAQ, also in Chicago, and the program's title was changed to Amos 'n' Andy. In 1929 they joined the NBC network and became radio's first major hit.In 1930, RKO introduced Gosden and Correll as Amos Jones and Andrew Halt Brown in Check and Double Check. Amos 'n' Andy, with an all black cast, staring Spenser Williams Jr. (Amos) and Alvin Childress (Andy), moved to CBS television in 1950. Growing anger over black stereotyping drove the show off the air in the summer of 1953. CBS pulled the TV series from world wide syndication in 1966 . Perhaps the finest tribute to the show came from English playwright George Benard Shaw. "There are three things I'll never forget about America:" he said, "The Rocky Mountains, Niagara Falls, and Amos 'n' Andy. For more information link to The Original Amos 'n' Andy Web Page.
What type of program was it?
The program began in the serial format. 4,090 fifteen minute episodes were broadcast (5 days a week, 52 weeks a year) between 1928 and 1943 when Amos 'n' Andy became a weekly half-hour situation comedy. In 1954, the year before the last broadcast of the weekly sit-com, CBS created a new show: The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall with the two title characters becoming glorified disc jockeys. They left the air in the fall of 1960. When the cancellation was announced, Charles Correll told a reporter "The DJs and the newscasters have taken over -- and there's no room for us anymore."
From what city did it originate?
Chicago.
10. What is the difference between a dramatic series, serial, and anthology program?
11. Give an example of each from the current television season.
12. Where did soap opera's get their name?
Many early daytime dramas were broadcast from Cincinnati's WLW and were created and produced by the advertising department of Procter and Gamble, the makers of Ivory soap. Between 1934 and 1939, WLW, broadcasting at night with an experimental 500,000 watts (10 times the official legal limit), was the most powerful radio station in the United States.
13. What are the four basic elements of radio drama?
14. Which element is used to establish the environment?
Sound effects
15. What are the three basic functions of music in radio drama?
16. What is the importance of the Mercury Theatre on the Air's production of War of the Worlds?
War of the Worlds is undoubtly the most famous radio broadcast of all time. It proved to management that the listening audience would accept a radio drama as real; that they would believe what they heard.
Who was the director? The star?
Orson Welles (1915-1985) was both the director and the star.
When was it produced?
Sunday, October 30, 1938. It was, according to Welles, the "Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying boo."
How did it affect the audience?
Many listeners panicked believing the United States was being invaded by Martians. Men staggered into bars, babbling about the end of the world. Students at a college campus in North Carolina fought over the few available telephones. More than twenty people were treated for shock by a Newark (NJ) hospital. It was rumored that millions had been killed in New York when the city was devistated by a "planetoid." Families gathered on roof tops in Boston to watch the red glow in the southern sky as New York burned.
17. Who was, in the opinion of a number of writers, "the perfect radio hero?"
The Shadow. Radio's man of mystery was originally performed by a 22 year old (in 1937) Orson Welles. The show remained on the air, with new scripts, to the end of 1954.
Why?
The Shadow was only a voice. He was never seen, only heard. As the announcer told the listening audience at the opening of each show, "Several years ago in the Orient, Lamont Cranston, wealthy young man-about-town, learned a strange and mysterious secret...the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds..."
18. When did radio begin to lose its prime time audience?
Radio began to lose it's evening audience in 1948 when The Texaco Star Theatre, starring Milton Berle, became a national phenomenon. In 1951 I Love Lucy became the talk of the town. By 1954 radio drama had become a memory. CBS did continue to carry a few selected programs on Sunday afternoons until the early 1960's.Radio's last great dramatic series was Gunsmoke (1952-1961) starring William Conrad as U. S. Marshall Matt Dillon. During it's nine years on radio, CBS presented 480 performances of 413 (46 per season) scripts. Many of these episodes were adapted to television. Link to Gunsmoke: Radio's Last Great Dramatic Series to see a publicity photo of the radio cast and a transcript of the show's opening sequence.
In 1974, CBS briefly revived serious radio drama with the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre (1974-1982), a nightly, one hour anthology program hosted by E. G. Marshall. Today only a few commercial radio stations broadcast dramatic programs. One of those stations is Chicago's WBBM, AM 780, which broadcasts When Radio Was, an hour of old-time-radio, starting 5 minutes after midnight, Monday through Friday night. The station can usually be heard in Aberdeen.
Why?
Because people began watching TV instead of listening to the radio.
19. What is currently radio's prime time?
Drive time: From 7 to 9am, and 4 to 6pm. Today program content is typically either all music (country, rock, pop) or all talk (news, interview, sports).