It's Radio's 90th Birthday

[RoddyFreeman]

Ninety years ago tonight, KDKA in Pittsburgh signed on and broadcast the presidential election results.

Master voice specialist John Young cut some promos for KDKA for broadcast today:

http://dcmemories.com/KDKA_ANNIV_ID.mp3
http://dcmemories.com/KDKA_ANNIV_REJ4.mp3

This is the Atlanta board, but you can pick up KDKA at night in Atlanta.

 

[TheRealOtherNeil]

The audio is amazing. I especially like the bit where the election results will be announced after 98 minutes of Pittsburgh's best variety of soft Opera. Oddly enough a republican, Warren G. Harding, won the race. The midday show on KDKA, Raymond Limbaugh said the GOP was "hitting on all sixes" blasted the Dems saying they "were all wet" after these results. Lastly, there was a fringe element to the election, the "Gin Mill Party" who held rallies demanding their country back after the incompetency of Woodrow Wilson.

 

[radioworld]

But will radio live to see 100?

 

[DToTheJ]

The audio is amazing... there was a fringe element to the election, the "Gin Mill Party" who held rallies demanding their country back after the incompetency of Woodrow Wilson.

Boy, talk about "ginning up" fear...

 

[Talk_Dude]

But will radio live to see 100?

If you mean radio, as a means of broadcasting audio signals to receivers over a broad expanse of area, of course it will be around. But if you mean broadcast radio as we currently know it today, there is an excellent chance it will change. The changes might be evolutionary or revolutionary, I don't know.

I'll wager that Frank Conrad and his colleagues never would have dreamed back in 1920 that broadcast radio would have degenerated into little more than a background noise jukebox.