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What's the first memorable news story you heard about on radio?

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
What is your first memory of hearing about a news event on radio? What was your age, where were you, what was the news event, and what station on radio or network on TV did you hear it on?

I was around 11 when I convinced my 4th grade teacher to let us hear the coverage of the Sputnik "beeping" from space in 1957. We listened to the CBS station, WGAR, 1220 AM in Cleveland.
 
I've been a news junkie since I was a kid – learned to read by reading the paper, I'm told – but the first story I remember was the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the papers, on radio and on TV. I was in first grade.
 
I was 7 and one Saturday morning right after my Dad got transferred to Chicago, I woke up at dawn while my parents were still sleeping so I turned on my trusty pocket radio very low and started playing with my toy soldiers as to not wake up my parents. About 10 minutes later either WLS or WCFL did a tornado warning. I woke my my they turned on their bedside clock radio and the warning was on the other side of Chicago. They were not happy.
 
About a year or two later we went to a movie it was sunny when we went in. After the movie we turned on the car radio and there had been a tornado that killed some people in Crystal Lakes while we in the theater. I guess was the first "real" news story I heard about on the radio first.
 
I'm not sure I can give you an exact event, but the Palm Sunday tornadoes comes to mind in 1966, and remember my grandmother trying to find WSBT on the radio, which was normally on WOWO. (I'd have been 9).Of course I heard plenty of radio news on WOWO, but I'm not sure can name a specific event. I don't remember if we listened to JFK coverage on the radio.
I do love good radio coverage of breaking news to this day. When the JFK assassination anniversaries roll around (60th this year!!) you can have all the conspiracy theories; I like to revisit David Von Pein's JFK channel and WBAP, WLW, radio network news and other coverage.

If you can see this...as it isn't on YouTube. Even with CKLW 20-20 News being known for graphic coverage of Detroit murders, here's a newscast from October 1972, when we at least thought the Vietnam War was ending. It's exceptionally well-done.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156300552139104
 
I remember hearing that Elvis Presley had died as I was pulling out of a bank parking lot. Weird how that's stuck with me considering I've never been a huge Elvis fan.

I also heard about the 9/11 attacks on radio first, on my way to a doctor's appointment. I had been watching Good Morning America earlier that morning but turned it off about a half your before the first plane hit the Twin Towers. My car radio was tuned to WPLR New Haven, a rock station with no news department, so what I heard was the morning show hosts reacting to what they were watching on TV in the studio, lots of "Oh my God" and "This is unbelievable," not much journalism.
 
The first event I remember hearing on the radio was that John Lennon had been shot and killed. It was the day after as his death was actually announced the night before during Monday Night Football almost immediately after it had happened. I can't remember the station, though I would guess it was KELI 1430 in Tulsa, and I was just shy of my 6th birthday.
 
Also, I was driving back from covering a high school basketball game for a small newspaper in Arkansas and listening to the Patriots-Dolphins Monday Night Football game on the radio when the announcement of John Lennon's death was made. Can't recall what station -- there were plenty of sky wave choices on the AM dial in those days. I must have been the only person listening to the game on radio, because Howard Cosell figures prominently in every other account I've ever heard or read of that night!
 
CTListener said:
Also, I was driving back from covering a high school basketball game for a small newspaper in Arkansas and listening to the Patriots-Dolphins Monday Night Football game on the radio when the announcement of John Lennon's death was made. Can't recall what station -- there were plenty of sky wave choices on the AM dial in those days. I must have been the only person listening to the game on radio, because Howard Cosell figures prominently in every other account I've ever heard or read of that night!
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I was told that was the event that made broadcasters universally adopt the policy of not revealing deaths until the next of kin had been notified. Apparently, his son was watching that game, and that was how he found out his father was dead.
 
Kent said:
I was told that was the event that made broadcasters universally adopt the policy of not revealing deaths until the next of kin had been notified. Apparently, his son was watching that game, and that was how he found out his father was dead.
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Killings of public figures like Lennon are still treated as breaking news, especially when they occur in public. No one is going to wait for the entire Biden, DeSantis or Trump family to be notified if someone were to assassinate one of them at a campaign stop, just as the media didn't make sure that the entire Kennedy clan knew before breaking the news about JFK or RFK.
 
November 22nd, 1963. I was five years old, sitting on my fathers lap while he turned the dial of his Hammarlund HQ-180 receiver. He suddenly stopped on a VOA frequency. They were reporting the assassination of President Kennedy.
 
CTListener said:
Killings of public figures like Lennon are still treated as breaking news, especially when they occur in public. No one is going to wait for the entire Biden, DeSantis or Trump family to be notified if someone were to assassinate one of them at a campaign stop, just as the media didn't make sure that the entire Kennedy clan knew before breaking the news about JFK or RFK.
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I recall hearing that Walter Cronkite insisted on making sure that JFK was indeed dead before making the announcement, even after CBS radio had done so, and had a moment of silence.
 
CTListener said:
Also, I was driving back from covering a high school basketball game for a small newspaper in Arkansas and listening to the Patriots-Dolphins Monday Night Football game on the radio when the announcement of John Lennon's death was made. Can't recall what station -- there were plenty of sky wave choices on the AM dial in those days. I must have been the only person listening to the game on radio, because Howard Cosell figures prominently in every other account I've ever heard or read of that night!
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I'm sure there were others. The Monday Night games were on Mutual then, and didn't know whether or not they had made the announcement.

I made my own announcement on a small station in Western Ohio after bein alerted by the AP wire. Once I got off the air I tuned in WABC on the way home and when I got home.
 
Kelly A said:
November 22nd, 1963. I was five years old, sitting on my fathers lap while he turned the dial of his Hammarlund HQ-180 receiver. He suddenly stopped on a VOA frequency. They were reporting the assassination of President Kennedy.
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Your grandfather had exquisite taste in communications receivers; in the same era I also had an HQ-180! It had enough tubes to keep my bedroom in Cleveland warm on a winter night.
 
gr8oldies said:
I recall hearing that Walter Cronkite insisted on making sure that JFK was indeed dead before making the announcement, even after CBS radio had done so, and had a moment of silence.
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Confirming that he was dead does not necessarily mean that every one of JFK's relatives in Washington and Hyannis Port was notified before Cronkite made his announcement.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Your grandfather had exquisite taste in communications receivers; in the same era I also had an HQ-180! It had enough tubes to keep my bedroom in Cleveland warm on a winter night.
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I had the HQ-170, which I acquired used during my very brief time as a radio amateur in the '70s and kept for ham band listening right into the '90s. Sensitive and selective, with very little drift for a tube receiver.
 
I heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks off a radio parked next to Mad Maggie's in Burlington. CBS radio's coverage was airing on WBZ-AM 1030 when Gary Lapierre broke in with local coverage of the tragic event. Later on, the 4 FM stations who were part of CBS Radio in Boston at the time began simulcasting the coverage.
 
the gulf war when i was not even 7yo
 
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in '52. Already a DX freak at the tender age of 7.
 
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