Readers of a certain vintage will remember a time nearly unfathomable to younger connoisseurs of digital downloads, streaming services, and the like – that is, when access to entertainment was an unpredictable and sporadic affair, whether one sought to catch a favorite song over the radio airwaves or favorite television show on the family set, all of it broadcast in real-time in the air via glorious analog technology.
The original access “game changer” in many ways, however, was radio’s invention and widespread availability.
Of course, recorded music had been widely available following Edison’s invention of the phonograph machine in 1877, allowing within a decade or so for the average consumer to purchase recordings to listen to at their leisure in their own home. But the advent of radio ushered in an era of widespread mass-media broadcasting that has only grown, of course, in the century since.
PIONEERING DAYS
It’s difficult for most of us today to grasp the marvel that was radio broadcasting when it hit the scene, not so many years removed from pre-electricity days, and in an era when print was the prime means of communication for most of society.
The technology behind radio was initially developed in the 1890s with the first wireless transmissions, engineered by Guglielmo Marconi in Europe. Interestingly, the first such transmissions in the U.S. took place in the Lakes area’s backyard, at the University of Notre Dame, facilitated in 1899 by a professor there named Jerome Green.
The growth from those early endeavors to radio broadcasting as we know it today was gradual and involved a series of technological improvements, though an important figure in moving the process forward was Lee de Forest, who was convinced of the possibility of widespread, entertainment-based broadcasting and worked to improve existing technology to facilitate its occurrence, starting in 1907.
California’s Charles “Doc” Herrold is credited as the first in the U.S. to actually broadcast regular entertainment-based radio programs, starting in 1909 (San Francisco’s KCBS carries on today as the long-term result of Herrold’s radio legacy).
By 1916 de Forest was back on the scene utilizing the recently developed vacuum tube transmitters to set up an early radio station in New York City. News and entertainment broadcasts were underway in the fall of 1916, though World War I restrictions put a halt to most radio broadcasting development across the country for the following few years.
While irregular broadcasts in 1920 from the Precision Equipment Company in Cincinnati caught national attention, Pittsburgh’s KDKA (which started out in November of 1920 as 8ZZ) stands as home to the world’s first regularly scheduled broadcast in radio. Creation of the station was tied directly to the manufacture of radios out of Westinghouse’s East Pittsburgh plant, and by the following year the company created three similar stations in the areas of New York City, Chicago and Boston.
The growth of radio became explosive during this period. By December 1, 1921, the U.S. Department of Commerce created regulations denoting a broadcast (as opposed to an amateur, localized) station. One month later, 29 recognized broadcast stations were populating the airwaves, and by the end of 1922, the year of the radio craze, more than 500 stations were reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners (the first radio broadcast by a U.S. president took place in May of that year, when Warren G. Harding’s speech to the Washington, D.C., Chamber of Commerce was broadcast).
In 1921 there were fewer than 50,000 radios in use in the U.S., but by 1922 there were between 600,000 and one million, reflecting the rapid and ubiquitous growth of the medium and its impact in the everyday lives of Americans. Access to radio was also enhanced by the availability of “crystal” sets, which could be purchased inexpensively and built using simple household items like oat boxes.
Radio changed the world in a myriad of ways, not least of which was its unprecedented accessibility of information and entertainment to residents of even the smallest, most remote communities. As the Indiana Historical Society wrote, “Radio gave everyone, rural and urban alike, access to a broader world and new ideas. Beyond providing entertainment, radio had the ability to alert people to important news faster than newspapers could. During natural disasters, broadcasters organized relief efforts, provided vital information, and calmed fears.”
THE HOOSIER AIRWAVES
According to the Indiana Broadcasters Association, the first commercial radio broadcast in Indiana took place on New Year’s Eve in 1921, in a garage that served as the headquarters for radio station 9ZJ. There, as the association website notes, “Indianapolis Mayor Lew Shank posed his immortal question, ‘Do you mean to tell me that people can actually hear me over that damn dingus?’”
The South Bend Tribune company actually launched the state’s first radio station, WSBT, in 1922, according to the Indiana Historical Radio Society, while Indiana’s first campus radio station began the same year at Purdue University (WBAA). Both stations are still on the air today.
Among other Hoosier state “firsts:”
-The first cities in Indiana to have FM radio stations were Elkhart, Terre Haute, New Castle and Muncie, all in 1947.
-The first radio station to broadcast the Indiana state high school basketball tournament finals was WOWO in Fort Wayne, in 1924.
-The first police department in Indiana (and third in the world) to obtain a radio license was the Indianapolis Police Department in 1928 (though the station didn’t go on the air until 1935). The first (and only) radio station operated by prison inmates was WIRP, at Pendleton. The station’s call letters were derived from the institution and town: the Indiana Reformatory, in Pendleton.
-Indiana not only pioneered numerous facets of the automobile industry in general, but the first push-button car radio was also produced in 1938 by the Delco radio division of the General Motors Corporation in Kokomo. The same plant also produced the very first all-transistor car radio, reflecting the latest innovation in the medium at the time, in 1957.
In September of 1927, the aforementioned Fort Wayne station WOWO was one of 16 others nationally to become a pioneer station for the CBS network, even as other stations would become affiliates of rival network NBC around the same period.
Closer to home in the lakes region, of course broadcast radio reached portions of northwest Indiana with the advent of Chicago’s first radio station, KYW, in 1921. But Miller, Indiana, holds claim as the site of the region’s first locally based station, WJKS (“Where Joy Kills Sorrow”).
This despite the fact that Hammond’s WWAE (today’s WJOB) was first licensed in 1923. The Hammond station did not actually begin transmitting until nearly a year after WJKS (today WIND) in Miller, where, according to the Gary Post-Tribune of August 29 1927, dozens wearing evening attire converged on the town’s Gay Mill Gardens for the station’s first broadcast. WWAE in Hammond began broadcasting in July 1928.
According to an article on the history of the Miller area at spicerweb.org, two short-lived stations operated in the area in the 1920s. WRBC (“World Redeemed by Christ”), owned by Immanuel Lutheran church in Valparaiso, was on the air from 1925 to 1929.
WLBT (“Where Lovers Become Tied”), based in Crown Point, broadcast from 1926 to 1928. Writes spicerweb.org: “Put together by radio enthusiast Bud Wendel from spare and homemade parts attached to windmill towers it broadcast at 100 watts of power news, public service programs, and music. The call sign reflected Crown Point’s reputation as a ‘marriage mill,’ where couples from outside Indiana could come to get married as Indiana had no marriage laws governing anything, least of all a waiting period.”
Various schools through the years have created their own radio stations, but Culver Military Academy’s venture into the world of radio was quite early. WHBH radio began broadcasting from the second-floor balcony of the school’s Recreation Building (still in use today), utilizing 150-foot towers. Much of the remarkable geographic breadth of the station’s signal was owed to the capacity of AM radio wave frequencies to travel much farther than the FM signals of today, combined with the relatively low amount of interference from competing signals at the time.
In 1926 the station changed its call letters to reflect the name of the school (WCMA) and, after its broadcasting equipment was upgraded, congratulations came in from listeners (who were treated to, among other programming, a guest broadcast from Hollywood legend Will Rogers, whose son attended the school) on both coasts, Alaska, Colorado and even New Zealand, among other far-flung locations.
With difficulty maintaining consistent broadcasts while continuing the busy operation of the military academy, WCMA’s final broadcast took place in 1932 and the equipment was donated to the Indiana State Police.
It’s worth adding a recollection of Indiana-related radio notable Jean Shepherd. Raised in Hammond, Shepherd is considered by some to be the father of free-form talk radio, and spent decades on the air in Cincinnati and New York where he gained fame and popularity for his humor and wit. Most recognizable to many today were his broadcasted recollections of his Hammond childhood, some of which made up the contents of his several books and formed the basis of the classic film “A Christmas Story” (which Shepherd himself narrates and in which radio plays a significant role).
ON THE DIAL TODAY
The growth of clearer, sharper (though not as far-reaching) FM (for frequency modulation) radio, especially in the 1960s and into the ’70s, brought new stations and listening experiences to the fore. Even more significantly, the rise of television in the 1950s radically shifted the role of radio in the lives of most Americans. While music and some news remained relevant to listeners on driving commutes or in situations (such as workplaces) where radio was utilized as television couldn’t be, the years of families gathered around a large radio set in the living room, engaging a sort of theater of the imagination in listening to comedy programs from Jack Benny or George Burns, adventures like “Little Orphan Annie” or “The Shadow,” and an array of variety shows, religious programming, westerns and more, were at an end, as the household TV set took their place.
Most of the radio stations currently in operation in the lakes area came into existence in the more recent decades of the medium and oriented primarily towards music and localized talk and news. Michigan City, Indiana, radio station WIMS got its start in 1947, and WEFM in 1966. WKVI radio of Knox began broadcasting in 1969, and WTCA in Plymouth in 1963. Rochester’s WROI went on the air in 1971, and WSAL of Logansport dates to 1949.
That said, for many listeners in the lakes readership area, the more powerful signals from larger cities such as South Bend or Chicago for many years have made up a portion of the radio listening experience and continue to do so today, even if access to music and news via the World Wide Web has put a dent in the medium’s audience as a whole.
The internet notwithstanding, radio is far from dead, even after more than a century from its Indiana debut, and its legacy lives on as an important part of the culture and memory of Hoosiers across the state.
Jeff Kenney serves as museum and archives manager for Culver Academies, and on the board of the Culver Historical Society.
