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Captiol Riot Radio
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 side of...
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The Last US States Without Radio
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 that even in...
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The Ballad of Mother Radio
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 progressive rock...
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The Eckert Family and WPAZ
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 that the Eckert...
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KSRO & Alfred Hitchcock
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 actual radio...
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Tin Cans With Strings to You
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-containing...
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KSRO Schedule
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 85 years old....
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Murdering the Classics on WFMU
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 so solid...
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The Great Black Out of 1965
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 hard to sleep...
View ArticleThe Secret Life of Radio
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 common machines and...
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The Bible Healing Hour
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. But not every...
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The Fall of Michael G. Hubbard
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 Hubbard [R] is...
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The Highway Stations
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, tourists,...
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Polari on BBC's Round the Horne
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 into 1968....
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Radio Burma
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 programmes...
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Jazz Causes Cancer
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. It seems...
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Radio Dialogos
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 2010 he...
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Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 1)
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 and the...
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Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 1)
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-commercial radio and...
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The Cruise of the Rev Seth Parker
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 for a...
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