cc  Good afternoon, I'd like to  say thank you for coming to our  program, "The Nostalgia of  Radio."  My name is Elizabeth Choi, I  am an MATC student intern who  has been interning here at the  senior center this year.  I would like to say thank you to  the Wisconsin Humanities Council  for awarding us this grant to  make this program possible.  Today I would like to introduce  to you Mr. Randall Davidson, who  received a bachelor's and  master's degree in business  administration from the  University of Wisconsin-Madison.  UW-Oshkosh station WRST FM was  where he began his radio career  and he later worked as a disc  jockey and sportscaster at  commercial station at WHBY-AM in  Appleton.  Randall Davidson spent 18 years  with the Wisconsin Public Radio  in Madison where he was a news  producer and the network's  afternoon newscaster.  He also was the network's chief  announcer, training new  announcers and filling in on  music programs where needed.  Most often on "Simply Folk," the  network's weekly folk music  program.  Randall Davidson is currently at  the University of Oshkosh as a  director of radio service.  Let's give a round of applause  for Mr. Randall Davidson.  (applause)  >> Well, I'd like to  thank everyone for coming out  today on this nice spring day to  talk a little bit about radio. 

 I'm here primarily to talk about  the history of your hometown  public radio station WHA.  I worked at Wisconsin Public  Radio as they said during the  introduction for 18 years and  kind of along the way became the  historian of the network.  Mostly because of an interest in  history, but lots of times we  get questions from listeners  about early programs, programs  of the past, and I seemed to  know where things were in the  libraries and I would look them  up to answer these questions.  And if you know Jean Feraca, one  of the talk show hosts of  Wisconsin Public Radio, about  six or seven years ago she took  a year off to write a memoir of  her experiences in radio and  during the year she was gone I  ran into her one day on the  street in Madison and she was  happy to see because she said,  "You've got to get down to the  publisher.  She said, "They're anxious to  talk to you."  And I said, "About what?"  And she said, "Well, I told  them this guy at WHA knows all  this history and they want to  know if you want to write a  book."  And so I went down to UW  Press, on Monroe Street, and I  met with them, and they agreed  to commission me to write a  history of WHA radio and the  network that grew into Wisconsin  Public Radio and it's called  "9XM Talking: WHA Radio and the  Wisconsin Idea," came out in  2006 and it tells the story, a  very good Wisconsin story of how  the state and university used  radio to benefit people.  We have to go back to the early  days of the 20th century when  the notion of sending messages  through the air using radio  waves was a cutting-edge  technology and this was  something that's being studied  on university campuses,  including Madison.  And what was being sent through  the air was telegraphic  messages, it wasn't voice yet,  it was the dots and dashes of  Morse code.  And industry and the military  figured this was only going to  be useful for point-to-point  messages where you couldn't  string a wire, say to a  mountaintop or to a ship at sea  or a moving train.  But they were hobbyists back  then, who would listen to these  messages through the air.  They'd build a homemade receiver  and you could listen to these  messages right through the air  and eavesdrop on them, in  essence. 

 And some researchers, including  those here at the university,  realized there's an efficiency  here.  You can send one message to many  people efficiently and there's  no added cost to pick up an  additional receptor of the  message.  The cost is all borne by the  person receiving it, there's no  extra cost to the production  end.  There's this real efficiency and  that's kind of where the use of  the word broadcasting comes in.  Broadcasting was a word before  radio.  If you look up the word in an  old dictionary, let's say from  about 1900, the word broadcast  is in there.  It's an agriculture term it  means scattering seeds.  And it was appropriated by radio  as the word for sending one  message to many people at once.  On this campus at the University  of Wisconsin-Madison there was a  physics professor named Earl  Terry who's the real hero of  this story.  He got hooked on radio and its  possibilities early on as he was  studying it. 

 And at the same time that he was  studying radio on this campus  and other researchers were doing  the same, there was this idea in  Madison of the Wisconsin idea.  This is the notion that a  university isn't just for the  benefit of the students but it's  for the benefit for all  citizens.  And these two things happened at  the same time, the Wisconsin  idea and the development of  radio kind of happened kind of  on parallel tracks at the same  time.  And this idea was going around  campus, this notion of serving  people, Earl Terry and his home  built radio station that his  students built, said, what can  we do with this?  What kind of message can we send  that everyone can benefit from?  And they decided to send out the  weather in Morse code.  And that was something they got  from the Weather Bureau, which  was in North Hall on campus at  that time, they got permission.  On December 4th, 1916, this  experimental station with the  call letters 9XM began sending  out the weather forecast in  Morse code at 11 o'clock in the  morning, Monday through  Saturday.  For the benefit of anyone who  could receive it, the state  forecast of Wisconsin.  And people as part of the  message, they encouraged people  to write it down, transcribe  this, take it somewhere in your  town so everybody can benefit,  not just you but everybody.  Take it to the general store, to  the bank, to the post office, to  the fire station, somewhere  where you can post it outside  and people can see it.  We know one town, there was a  single radio receiver, a  hobbyist had a radio they built,  received this message, he'd take  it to the telephone exchange,  and the operator would ring  everybody on the circuit and  read them the weather forecast. 

 (laughter)  And this worked  pretty well.  To the extent if you knew Morse  code.  And this was reported at 11  o'clock in the morning, I should  mention, it was because 11  o'clock was when the most  popular show on radio in 1916  ended.  From 10:55 to 11:00 every  morning the Navy sent out the  time in Morse code.  You have to have exact time for  navigation, they would do this  so ships at sea could  synchronize their clocks.  And from 10:55 to 11:00 central  time they would send out the  time but hobbyists loved this.  High schools would set up  receiver so you could get the  exact time.  Jewelers, in particular, would  set up receivers so they could  set the watches of their  customers.  And so at 10:55 you'd tune into  the radio and get the time, then  you'd dial down to where 9XM  was, get the weather forecast,  and that's all the radio you  were gonna get that day.  That's all there was. 

 So this worked pretty well but  you had to know Morse code.  And to be sure more people knew  Morse code then than probably do  now, there were railroad  operators and people who worked  for the telegraph companies and  so forth.  But almost immediately they  stared experimenting with  sending sound through the air.  This would be something  everybody could use.  And experiments took place on  campus at the University of  Wisconsin, and sending at least  the sound of phonograph records,  not the human voice, but at  least recorded music.  And Professor Terry had it to  the point where it was working.  He could send music through the  air pretty well.  So he called all his colleagues  from the physics department to  have a party at his house.  And the deans were there and  their wives and he said, "For  the first broadcast," and this  was early 1917.  He said, he called down to  Science Hall where the  radio station was at that time,  he said to the operator, we're  all ready. 

 And the guy played a record and  he received it at home.  And to his dismay nobody was  impressed.  They thought it was some kind of  trick.  But a woman at the party,  thirty-two years later, wrote a  letter to our general manager at  WHA and said she remembered the  music that was played.  A song by Ethelbert Nevin called  "Narcissus."  A classical recording, very  recognizable.  And I, a few years ago, bought  from a collector a 1913  recording of "Narcissus" on  Victor Records, which was one of  only three commercial recordings  available before 1917.  We got one from a collector, and  it's in a display case at  Wisconsin Public Radio now,  probably the first piece of  music we every played on the  radio.  And if you look at the Wisconsin  Public Radio website they say,  they always cite 1917 as their  start date because that's when  they started broadcasting sound.  But then the United States  entered World War I, and this  new technology radio was kind of  an unknown.  There was really concern on the  part of the federal government  that the enemy would get some  vital information from the few  little meager stations in the  United States that were  operating. 

 And the rule went down from  Washington that you had to  dismantle all radio transmitters  and all receivers, any, if you  had a radio in your home you had  to take it apart.  You were not allowed to have a  radio during World War I.  It was against the law.  To be sure there weren't that  many, you couldn't buy  commercial radios then, there  were only 12 radios in Madison  in 1917.  Everyone knew who they were, so  it was pretty easy to track down  who they were.  But Earl Terry wanted special  permission to stay on the air,  he started doing special  experiments with the Navy.  And he said I have to have this  transmitter running if I'm going  to continue these experiments,  he got special permission to  keep 9XM on the air during the  war when almost everybody else  was off.  And that's one of the claims  that WHA has to longevity, being  one of the oldest stations is  that it was on during the war  when everybody else pretty much  was off.  As the war progressed the  experiments became more and more  voice broadcasts and less Morse  code.  By the end of the war, 1919,  human voice had been clearly  transmitted by the station and  they were doing experiments at  night, after the middle of 1919,  people were able to reassemble  their radios and start listening  again. 

 So there was an audience out  there.  They resumed doing the weather  forecast, they added the farm  markets in Morse code but in  night, particularly, they'd do  experiments with sound.  And anybody from the physics  department who could play any  kind of musical instrument would  find themselves dragged down  there.  Play your violin on the air,  play the harmonica, we want to  see what it sounds like.  And when they couldn't find a  physics professor or a student  to play an instrument, they'd  play records.  And there was no electronic way  to play a record then, you just  held the microphone in front of  the speaker horn of a Victrola.  That's how you played a record  on the radio then.  And one night, we have a story  that they were playing the new  fight song, "On Wisconsin," on a  record as, for testing, testing  the transmitter.  And they played it, adjusted  something in the transmitter,  they played it again, and they  adjusted something else and they  played it again, and they heard  from a listener who got tired of  this program and they offered to  buy the station a different  record to go with the "On  Wisconsin" record, so even then  there were listeners who were  listening and also felt free  call in and complain about what  was going on over the air.  (laughter)  By late 1920, the  station had been rebuilt to the  point that it was doing a  regular evening broadcast of  music on phonograph records,  primarily for testing, but it  was non-coded radio broadcasting  on a schedule for the public,  which is one of the things you  need to have a claim on being  the oldest station. 

 By January 1921 they  reinstituted the weather  forecast at noon.  It was kind of a hybrid.  They'd do it in Morse code at a  regular speed, Morse code at a  slow speed, and then they'd just  say it three times for people  that could receive sound.  And that was the broadcast  schedule, Monday through  Saturday, do those things at  noon and that was pretty much  it.  But by the end of the first  month, Friday night, they've  added classical music, on  records.  And pretty soon they added a  professor to talk about the  music and kind of interpret it.  And it's one of the first  examples of adult education by  radio in the United States.  1921 progressed and in the fall  they added the farm markets to  the noontime program.  The department of markets got  involved, so another agency of  state government is now involved  at the radio station.  So there's weather and farm  markets and then this Friday  night program of classical  music. 

 Which had a studio audience.  People would go down to Sterling  Hall, where the station was by  this time, and they'd stand  quietly in the hall and take  turns peeking in through the  door as the professor was  talking about classical music  over the radio.  As 1922 dawned, the station got  its call letters, WHA, the 9XM  designation was abandoned.  It was no longer an experimental  station, it was now a fully  licensed station.  It and the station at the  University of Minnesota were the  first two to receive licenses  for educational broadcasting.  At the beginning of 1922, there  were only about 28 radio  stations in the United States,  by the end of 1922 there were  600.  It grew like mad over 1922.  They added the AM band to expand  more frequencies, they started  with just two, but even at that,  stations had to share.  WHA was sharing frequency with  stations in Chicago, with a  station in Indiana, with  stations in Omaha, with stations  in South Dakota.  They'd have to negotiate with  these stations, I want these  hours, you can have these hours. 

 At this time entire cities would  go silent.  On Monday night in Chicago was  Chicago's silent night, where  all the stations in Chicago went  off the air so people in Chicago  could pick up these new  stations.  You can't imagine they'd do that  nowadays, a station would agree  to go off the air voluntarily  for an entire evening and give  up that revenue.  But back then it was enough of a  hobby that people wanted to  listen to distant stations.  WHA was sharing its frequency  throughout the 20s, and every  time we get a good one, a  commercial station would kind of  glom onto their frequency and  want to share it with them.  And then they'd move again, and  then another bunch of stations,  it would cause a cascade of  moving on the dial WHA had a  whole bunch of different  frequencies in the 20s, and by  1927, was limited to just two  hours on Monday night.  That was the entire broadcast  schedule for WHA radio in  Madison, 7:30-9:30 on Monday  night was it.  And because they were sharing  their frequency so much.  And this was just a disaster for  the station, they used to have  this frequency pretty much to  themselves and could broadcast  to great distances so Earl Terry  negotiated with the federal  government and they said, you  can have 940 on the dial, at a  thousand watts in Madison, but  you only have during the  daytime.  Because at night AM signals  bounce and you can demonstrate  this tonight, after sundown,  tune the radio to 990 on the AM  band you'll hear Winnipeg nice  and clear. 

 'Cause the signals are bouncing  here.  But he wanted to be back on the  air with a good signal, they had  to abandon nighttime  broadcasting.  And so he agreed, he signed the  papers on April 30, 1929, and it  was the last thing he ever did  for the station he founded.  He went home that night and he  died.  Fifty years old, rather young,  and through bad advice, we don't  know why, his wife took all of  his research notes, all of his  papers, and just put them on the  curb, disposed of them.  So for my research it was very  difficult, very little of his  primary writings, other than  some of the speeches he gave and  some carbon copies of letters,  but very little of his voice.  Some of the textbooks he wrote,  though, are still in print.  He was that talented a  researcher.  In fact, one of them was just  reprinted, one on electricity  and magnetism was just reprinted  a couple years ago.  And so unfortunately he died  when he did, because in the fall  of 1929 is when the station  really took off. 

 The programming really took  fire, the farm program became  really firmly established as a  noontime program.  The homemaker segments of the  farm show were split off as a  separate program in the morning.  More of the programs started  being used, more state agencies  got involved.  The farm show and the homemaker  show were split apart in 1929,  they were finally recombined in  1978 to a show called "Wisconsin  Here and Now" which was later  taken over completely by Larry  Mueller, who is still on the  air.  He is the descendant of the farm  and homemaker programming, in  fact he teaches, when he was  teaching at the UW he was  teaching a course called "Farm  and Home Broadcasting."  He's the descendant of that  farm show.  There have been only three hosts  of that show since 1935.  Larry's been on since 1967, he's  still on every weekday at 11:00  to 12:30 hosting his call-in  show.  Before him, Maury White was the  host, he gave up the job in 1967  when he became a dean, but he  hosted back to 1950, I met him a  couple years ago.  And his predecessor, a guy named  Milton Bliss, I met Milton a  couple years ago as well, about  two years ago I met him.  Milton at the time was the  oldest student on the UW campus. 

 He was 96 at the time.  He was host from 1935 to 1950.  So not a lot of turnover at  Wisconsin Public Radio, you have  hosts that stay in for a long  time.  I'll tell you a little aside  about the farm show.  This is one of the  stock-and-trades of the WHA  program schedule, was service to  farmers and homemakers with  university experts, people you  could trust, they're not trying  to sell anything.  They're there to give you good  information.  And right before Milton took  over his predecessor Kenneth  Gapin, they were doing the farm  markets and they noticed in  November of 1944 that pork  prices had taken a big jump.  And he though, you know, people  are going to be butchering hogs  who haven't done it in a long  time, or maybe have never done  it, we should butcher a hog on  the radio.  And this got approved, they  strung a line from the radio  station over to the swine barn    on campus, got a livestock --  and then right over the lunch  hour, butchered a hog right on  the radio.  Cut up the carcass, told you how  to can it, you couldn't do that  today. 

 You'd get calls, you know.  (laughter)  But that was what the  show was all about, to present  information to rural Wisconsin,  same with the homemaker's show,  was the best advice in  homemaking.  Nutrition, child-rearing,  budgeting, crafts in the home,  things like that.  Another couple programs that  were very popular in the early  days, one started in 1931, the  Wisconsin School of the Air.  I'm going to ask for a show of  hands of people who did School  of the Air?  A couple, sang along with the  radio, drew art with the radio,  always get a few.  This was started kind of in  reaction to the fact that there  were about 6600 one-room  schoolhouses in Wisconsin in  1931.  About 1600 of them had fewer  than a dozen students in them,  isolated, and one teacher, and  how neat it would be to bring in  a radio and have a world-class  educator present a music class.  An art class.  A conservation class.  A class of literature, to your  students. 

 Half the class, all the class,  whatever it might be, but by the  first year we had ten shows on  the air.  For all different ages.  There were shows for little  kids, there were shows for high  schoolers, you could have half  the class listen, you could have  the entire class listen.  And we got all kinds of great  accolades at WHA for this  programming.  One in particular, we got a  letter from a woman, teacher in  a one-room schoolhouse.  She went to tune up her radio  for "Journeys in Music Land,"  Pop Gordon, the music show on  Wednesday afternoons, and the  radio wouldn't fire up.  It was burned out.  And she didn't want the students  to miss.  So she had them all stand up,  put their coats on, they marched  outside and stood by the side of  the road until they saw a car go  by that had a radio antenna on  it.  (laughter)  And they waved them  down, and had him come into the  parking lot, and they said, can  we use your radio for the next  half hour?  And the guy said, I guess, and  he opened the door of the car  and the kids stood all around  the car and sang along with the  radio, and the driver sang along  too, she said. 

 So that was kind of a nice  story.  Also we did a conservation show  called "The Field with Ranger  Mac."  Ranger Mac had been a  forester, he was head of 4H in  Wisconsin.  He got his school kids to plant  over 7 million trees over the  course of the running of his  show.  He believed that once you  planted a tree you'd always take  care of trees.  And the students that listened  to his show took his advice to  heart and planted trees in their  schoolyards and on their home  grounds, too, at their families  farms.  There are millions of trees in  Wisconsin growing at this time  that were planted by his  schoolchildren.  But he caused some problems,  too.  Very irate parents showed up at  his school and confronted the  teacher and wanted to talk to  Ranger Mac.  And she said, well, he's not  here, he's on the radio from  Madison.  What's the problem?  "Well," he said, "I take my kids  out hunting every weekend."  I guess that meant whether it  was hunting season or not. 

 And he said the previous weekend  his son had refused to go with  him, saying, Ranger Mac says  you're not playing fair.  Kids had learned over the radio  the value of having a hunting  season end and conservation of  game resources from that  program.  These shows continued for a long  time.  When I was in the sixth grade,  1970, my grade school in Neenah,  we sang along, even though we  had a music teacher, we sang  along with the show "Let's Sing"  on the radio.  The principal would plug his FM  radio in his office into the  sixth grade classrooms, we had  the book from Madison that we  took out, and we'd sing along.  The host was Norm Clayton, he  passed away just a couple of  years ago, the other host was  Lois Dick, I met her just a  couple years ago, she even sang  for me when I interviewed her in  the studio, it was very nice.  And the guy who played the piano  was Don Voegeli.  Don wrote the theme for "All  Things Considered."  You hear it every weekday  afternoon, that theme you hear  for "All Things Considered," he  wrote that and gave it to NPR  without royalties, so they could  use it as the theme for that  show.  That was a guy who worked at WHA  in Madison.  The companion to the School of  the Air was College of the Air,  this was something that really  ties in well to the Wisconsin  idea. 

 The notion of adult education  presenting the riches of the  University of Wisconsin to  everybody for free.  And the timing was really good.  They started this in 1933.  Social scientists back then were  really concerned that there  would be an entire generation of  young people lost to college  because they didn't have any  money to go because of the  depression.  And they thought, we'll put  these shows on the air, people  can listen to them, not for  credit, but just to keep  interested in learning.  And so maybe when times get  better they'll be able to go  back to college and they'll stay  current with their studies.  So the College of the Air got  underway in 1933, eventually ten  programs as well, morning and  afternoon.  It's kind of, has a remnant on  the air to this day, at four  o'clock this afternoon on WHA  it's the University of the Air,  Norman Gilliland hosts it, along  with Emily Auerbach and every  Sunday afternoon they bring in a  university professor and they  talk about their area of  expertise for an hour.  And you get kind of cutting-edge  scholarship for free over the  radio, just like in the old  days.  So there's those four programs  and then there's a fifth one,  which is also still on, which is  "Chapter a Day."  And "Chapter a Day," this is  the one that caused the most  problems for me when I was  writing the book because I kind  of debunked one of the beloved  legends of WHA, that it started  in 1927, that it's been on since  1927, and it hasn't been, sad to  say. 

 The legend goes that in 1927 a  guest didn't show up and in a  panic the guy on the air, just  to fill the half hour, grabbed a  book he checked out of the  library and read it for a half  hour.  And then I guess people wanted  to know what happened next in  that book, and there you go,  there's your program.  Unfortunately, the program  records from back then aren't  terrifically complete, but the  ones we have don't have any  reference to this programming in  it.  The first reference I have to a  show called "Chapter a Day" was  in the summer of 1932.  A student named Mary Ann Smith,  who had a book called "David's  Day" on the air.  And when "Chapter a Day" started  it was doing just new releases  of literature.  "David's Day" had just been  published.  And so that was the book that we  believe was the first one read  on "Chapter a Day."  I bought a copy of it used  online and I brought into work  when I was still working at WPR  and brought it in to Jim  Fleming, who's one of the  readers, and he read the first  paragraph in his "Chapter a Day"  voice, which I thought was the  coolest thing ever.  It was just really neat.  But it's actually been on sine  1932 kind of as a summer show,  it's been on continuously since  April of 1939. 

 So it's still one of the oldest  radio shows in the world and  what a simple concept to have  someone read a book to you, 25  minutes at a time.  Carl Schmidt is still involved  with the show.  Carl's been involved with the  station since around 1940 and he  still comes up and reads a book  now and again for the program.  I've watched Carl in the studio.  He can read pretty much for  about 25 minutes and not  stumble.  He's probably the best guy in  the history of mankind at doing  this.  He's really, really good.  And that show's still on the  air, still has a devoted  following, and it's a really,  really nice thing.  If you're gonna hang onto one  thing from the past, what a nice  thing to hang onto.  So those were kind of the  lynchpins of the programming  schedule. 

 The network, though, it wasn't  much of a network in the early  days.  It was WHA in Madison and then  there was this kind of odd  station up in Stevens Point,  WLBL, the other AM station in  the network, you hardly ever  hear about them.  And for me this was the most  fun.  There had been no research done  on WLBL.  So everything I found out was  kind of new for everybody to  learn.  WLBL was also owned by the state  of Wisconsin, but not by an  educational institution.  It was owned by the department  of markets, which later became  part of the department of  agriculture.  And its mission was to present  farm market programming.  That's what their job was, they  were there to present farm  market programming throughout  the day but they have a whole  day to fill, they started  putting in other things.  And by the early 30s had added a  program line from Madison, they  were carrying some of the  Madison programming. 

 Farm show, the homemaker show,  School of the Air, College of  the Air, they were carrying  those in Stevens Point.  But doing lots of local  programming.  WLBL kind of had a different way  of looking at service to the  public than WHA in Madison did.  They would try many, many  different things.  They had a, we have almost no  recordings from WLBL but we have  program listings with  tantalizing titles, that I would  love to find recordings of these  shows.  They had a bunch of music shows,  they had "Hillbilly Selections,"  which is, they had country music  in the 30s, that's really early  for country music.  "Rumba Time," "Tea Time Dance  Party," "South Sea Serenade,"  and then a bunch of spoken-word  programs that you wonder what  they were.  The "Drink More Milk Club,"  "Rent Control on the Air," which  I think might be listings of  vacant apartments.  A really strange one called  "Postal Oddities," which was a  regular show, and my favorite,  9:15 on Saturday mornings, on  WLBL in Stevens Point, "Bicycle  Traffic Report."  (laughter)  I have no idea,  well, I can imagine what this  is.  If you ran a stop sign on your  bicycle in Stevens Point,  evidently, you had to face the  judge on the radio on Saturday  morning. 

 I imagine adherence to bicycle  laws in Stevens Point was pretty  severe, so a wonderful thing.  WLBL carried the Green Bay  Packers.  Nobody knew this.  This was a completely, even the  Packers didn't know it.  I called the Packers' front  office, and they had no record  of this.  WTMJ in Milwaukee which  originated the broadcast had no  record of this, I had to send  them materials of the history of  this.  From 1933 to 1938 WLBL carried  the Packers and I guess had to  block the commercials because  they were sponsored by, the --  Oil and Grease Company was the  sponsor of the broadcast back  then.  But in 1933 there were only  three radio stations in  Wisconsin carrying the Packers.  WTMJ in Milwaukee, WLBL in  Stevens Point, and a commercial  station in La Crosse.  That was it. 

 That's how unimportant the NFL  was in the early 30s.  So WLBL was the other station I  should mention also, I got to  give thanks to the Educational  Communications Board which owns  the station now.  They gave me permission to get  into the building.  I called up there, and it's the  oldest building of Wisconsin  Public Radio stations, 1937.  And I called the engineer and I  said, "Can you let me in there?  I'd like to look around."  "Sure," he says.  I said, "Was there anything  historic in there?"  "No.  Well," he says, "There's that  file cabinet full of stuff from  the 30s."  Well, like that!  So I went up there, and I  mentioned this across the hall  from my office at Wisconsin  Public Radio to Wisconsin Public  Television that I was going up  there.  Well, Art Hackett and a  videographer joined me up there  because they wanted to see what  I was going to find when I  opened up this file cabinet.  Kind of like Al Capone's vault,  you know?  Didn't know what kind of  treasures there might be.  So I got in there, and with the  cameras rolling, I opened the  cabinet, and one of the first  things I pull out is a memo from  one of the engineers asking for  time off to get his hernia  fixed. 

 (laughter)  So there's a real  valuable relic.  But there were some valuable  things in there.  The ECB did let me kind of  inventory them and get them out  of there, and they're in  climate-controlled storage now  at the headquarters here in  Madison so the record of that  station has been preserved.  But WLBL and WHA were it for the  network, both AM stations, both  into daytime only, you couldn't  pick up either one of them in  the Fox Valley or in Milwaukee  really well, or in the southwest  or in the far northwest.  And there was no money to build  new stations but then this idea  of FM came along.  And here's something that WHA  could use.  Build FM stations and just kind  of relay the signal around this  state.  Not to have people at all these  stations, no studios or  programming, just engineers and  a transmitter and the station in  Madison would transmit over 88.  7, it'd be picked up over the  air in Delafield at that  frequency, retransmitted at 90.  7 and then be picked off the air  in Chilton, they'd retransmit it  at 89. 

 3 and it would be picked off the  air in Wausau.  And it would go around the state  like this.  And they did tests and by the  time they had the whole network  built, by 1952, the tests at the  far end up in -- showed that the  sound quality up there was just  as good as when it left Madison,  you couldn't tell the difference  and it also gave rights to a  special piece of programming.  We had engineers there, why  don't we use them?  Well, we'll have 'em do weather.  They'll take turns doing the  weather.  So in the mornings and  afternoons, they'd have the  engineers come on, in sequence,  and give local conditions.  Cloudy skies in Delafield,  temperature 38 degrees, or they  did how the fish are biting, or  how the crops are growing or  whatever.  And they'd go all the way around  to Highland and they'd throw it  to the airport in Madison for  the weather forecast.  And they did this twice a day.  People loved this. 

 Vacationers would drive out of  their way to find these  transmitters, which are in  remote locations, to meet these  engineers that they'd hear on  the weather roundup.  And the engineers loved it, they  don't get to be on the radio  ever, and if you hear some of  the tapes, there's reasons why  they're not on the radio ever.  They have some peculiar voices,  but they're fun to listen to.  So we had the weather roundup  and we had this network of FM  stations around the state.  The two AM stations are still  going.  Now everybody in Wisconsin can  benefit.  They can all hear the service  clearly and without static and  it can be on at night.  FM can be on at night.  And now they can do news  specials, presidential  addresses, they can do nighttime  education for working people.  They couldn't do that when they  were on just during the daytime. 

 So that's kind of the backbone  of stations that became  Wisconsin Public Radio.  There were these eight FM  stations, later a ninth, and  then the two AMs and that was  kind of the network for many,  many years.  With these five major programs.  The farm show, the homemaker  show, "School of the Air,"  "College of the Air," and  "Chapter a Day."  And then filled in with lots  of classical music, lots of  public affairs shows,  documentaries, things like that.  And that's the network that  formed the basis of Wisconsin  Public Radio.  Things have moved on since,  we've added more stations, they  had to add some more because  they went to two program  services in the early 80s.  They went to one service being  mostly talk, and one service  being mostly classical and then  the NPR newsmagazines.  There are now more services  because we have HD radio in many  of the markets, you can get  24-hour classical here in  Madison if you have an HD radio  on WRN's digital channel.  So there's more to come, there's  podcasting, there's streaming of  audio, and then the entire  enterprise of public television,  which sprung up.  Kind of built on the backbone of  the radio service. 

 A lot of the same programs, a  lot of the same people were on  both services.  I'll give away the end of my  book, and then take questions.  I couldn't finish this book  without addressing that  historical marker that's bolted  to the side of the building that  says "The Oldest Station in the  Nation."  It always bothered me, even  before I was in broadcasting, I  went to school in Madison before  I was a broadcaster and I see  this historical marker and it  just seemed kind of squishy.  It didn't seem solid, and if  it's true, why isn't in all the  books, why don't all the  broadcasting textbooks say it  clearly?  And so when I approached this  project, I said, I'm gonna take  a look at all the research, I'm  gonna lay it out there, and kind  of give my conclusion and let  others draw theirs.  But the trick is, you've got to  define your terms.  That's always the loophole.  To be a radio broadcast service,  you've got to be first by radio.  There were a lot of broadcasting  services prior to radio that  were on telephone lines.  You could essentially get cable  radio in your home way back in  1912.  Newark, New Jersey had 5,000  subscribers. 

 People would listen to a little  earpiece and get programming all  day.  But that's not radio.  So it has to be radio.  It has to be non-coded.  Can't be Morse code, so that's  the second thing.  It has to be fully public.  It can't be something just  through the Army, let's say.  And it has to have some kind of  radio schedule.  Has to have those things going  for it.  That's the rules. 

 And if you follow those rules it  looks pretty clear like WHA's  probably the second-oldest  continuously operating one in  America.  KBK in Pittsburgh, which of  course gets all the credit, they  went on back in 1920 with the  election night returns when  Warren Harding was elected  president.  That's their first day of  broadcasting.  That's pretty clear, there are  records, they were on then, it's  pretty obvious.  We, WHA was clearly on December  3rd, 1921.  That's really solid, too.  But as I mentioned, there were a  couple once-a-week programs of  phonograph music on Saturday  nights.  Which we did for testing, but  they were for the public,  they're sound, not coded, it's  radio, it's on a schedule.  And the records I found in the  archive seem to indicate that  started November 7th 1920, five  days later, so we missed it by  five days, darn.  Neither one of the stations was  the first. 

 The first station, and this is  new research that's come out  while I was writing the book  actually.  KCBS in San Fransisco, its  ancestor station started in 1909  and had a regular program  schedule pretty clearly, voice  broadcast schedule by 1912.  In fact, there was a film made,  a silent film made, inside the  station in 1912.  The founder of the station had a  young bride with a baby, who'd  just had a baby.  She brought the baby in and held  him up to the microphone, so  people could hear what a baby  sounds like on the radio.  And so there's, actually there's  a frame of film that exists from  that.  So they were pretty clearly on  first, but they had a big gap  where they were off the air  after the war.  They didn't get back on as soon  as they could.  So it looks like KBK is first,  WHA second, but oldest  non-commercial station, and it's  had its license continuously  since 1915.  University of Wisconsin has held  the license to WHA that whole  time. 

 So that's a very long record of  service by the university to the  people of Wisconsin.  And everybody came after that.  So I'm plenty happy to say that  WHA is the second-oldest one in  the country.  That historical marker actually  was written by WHA's PR  director, and of course the  Historical Society then took it  as gospel.  And people took it as, the  Historical Society produced the  marker, it must be true.  So there's kind of a circular  logic kind of thing to that.  But as I said, I'm plenty happy  saying that WHA is the  second-oldest in the country.  First oldest among educational  broadcasters.  I will take questions and I'll  repeat them so everyone can  hear.  Anyone have a question about the  past or the present or anything  else like that?  >> (inaudible)  >> The question  is, do we share programming with  other stations?  We do right now, Wisconsin  Public Radio produces four shows  for national distribution. 

 Most widely-known is "Whaddya  Know?"  But they did in earlier days  as part of the National  Association of Educational  Broadcasters, and we produced  shows on tape and they were sent  around to other stations.  We took shows from others, we  sent shows to others, the big  famous one they did was a series  on the Dead Sea scrolls.  That was one we did that was  really popular.  Another one that was really  popular, Dr. John Schindler from  Monroe had been on, did a thing  on psychosomatic illness one day  in 1949, a one-hour speech.  Everybody wanted to hear that,  it was carried by many stations  around the country.  He turned it into a book, "How  to Live 100 Years Happily," and  it was published in many  languages, and many, many years  later when I was hiring  announcers, I hired his  granddaughter to be an announcer  at WHA, so there's some  continuity there as well.  So, but there's always been  shared programming.  We actually shared the farm show  back in 1929 with WTMJ  Milwaukee.  >> When you were researching  this, did you come across the  name Willy Forest?  >> Willy Forest?  Was he involved at WHA?  >> Well, yeah, in fact he was so  excited about it that he quit  college and he put WIBU on the  air and then he got a --  license.  Right before the war, and he  couldn't get any tower, and he  put that on right after the war. 

 (inaudible)  And someone said,  "Willy, you got a license for  this here station?"  And he says, "what?"  The guy says, "well yeah, you  gotta have a license," and he  says, "how do you get one?"  "You gotta write to the radio  commission."  So he sent them a postcard.  And they sent back a sheet of  paper to fill out for the  license.  And 40-some years later --.  >> In the early days they were  much looser with regard to  licensing in the early days.  Where WHA's tower is now, just  on the edge of the arboretum in  Madison, that tower site was  actually owned by the Wisconsin  State Journal.  The Wisconsin State Journal had  their own radio station, WISJ,  and what they had done is they  had bought the college station  in Beloit.  And just moved it to Madison,  you could do that then.  It's almost impossible to move  an AM station now, but they  bought that, and they merged  their facilities with WIBA, and  took the best of both and built  one really well-resourced  station.  They had these towers left over,  out there by the arboretum, WHA  bought them, got special  allocations to buy those towers  and they remained in use till  probably 1970 and then the one  that was just taken down last  year went up at that time.  So just put a new tower up there  just in the last six months,  probably. 

 But that tower site was  originally owned by a commercial  broadcaster that, again, you  didn't need much in the way of  licensing back in the early  days.  Other questions?  Yeah?  >>(inaudible)  >> How are the  call letters determined?  In the early days they were just  assigned to you on kind of a  scheme, usually the stations to  the east start with Ws, and the  ones to the west start with Ks.  Canada's all start with Cs,  Mexico's all start with X.  Kind of by mutual assent they  kind of agreed to this.  It wasn't till 1924 that you  could request call letters that  had some kind of meaning to you.  So everyone says, WHA, what does  it stand for?  It doesn't stand for anything.  They did try in future years to  get all their call letters to  line up, to start with  WH-something, but all the  legends about "Wisconsin Hails  America" or "Wisconsin Hogs  Agriculture," it's not true.  And the thing that's the proof  of that is that in 1929 they  made a real, real push to get a  station in Columbia, South  Carolina to give up WIS.  They really wanted WIS for the  state stations up here.  WLBLs were actually picked for  that reason, it's "Wisconsin  Land of Beautiful Lakes."  And it's picked for that  reason. 

 The last really full-power FM  station built before this last  round of stations was WHBM in  Park Falls, there's the WH, and  the HBM was in honor of Harold B  McCarty, who was the station  manager from the 30s to the 60s  and had just died.  And so it's to honor his memory  that those call letters were  picked.  >> I noticed that WHA is three  letters and the rest are four  letters, why don't they have  four letters?  >> Why didn't the call letters  go to four?  They were available as four  right away, they gave out threes  early on and were gonna run out  of them.  So as soon as 9XM went away, the  9 stood for the Midwest, X was  experimental, M stood for  Madison.  Well you can see the problem  immediately.  An experimental station in  Minneapolis, they can't be 9XM  because 9XM's in use.  So they became 9XI.  And this was not a useable  system, so they went to these  call letters and when the first  one was KDKA in Pittsburgh and  they had no place to put it,  there was no place for a  broadcasting station in the  licensing scheme of things so  they just put it in as part of  the license categories for  ship-to-shore stations.  And that's why, even though  they're in the east they have a  K.  >> (inaudible)  >> There's Ws in  the west, there's some Ks in the  east. 

 There's a K in Wisconsin,  there's two actually, there's  KWS in Superior, which is a  Wisconsin Public Radio Station,  and it stands for UW Superior,  and there's a K in Fon du Lac, a  pioneer station in Wisconsin  that still uses its K.  >> (inaudible)  >> When did FM begin?  For Wisconsin Public Radio, they  got going in 1947 the first one,  the last one of the original  eight was built in 1952.  And so by the end of '52 they  had the whole state network in  place.  There had been FM before World  War II that was down in 40 and  50, between 40 and 50 on the  dial.  >> (inaudible)  >> FM dates to  much earlier.  And it was very popular in the  northeast, in New England.  And there were a quarter million  receivers in New England, a  thing called the Yankee Network  there.  And after the war, people that  had money invested in AM kind of  lobbied to say, you've got to  move this FM somewhere else.  So that's why non-commercial  radio was able to jump in,  because there was, everyone was  shy about getting into FM,  non-commercial broadcasters  loved it.  You could get right in and do  stuff with it. 

 >> (inaudible)  >> Sure.  Even when I worked in commercial  radio we did school closings.  And we had to give, you gave  each school principal a code to  call in, this guy would say,  "I'm from Pierce Middle School,  schools are closed today," and  you'd say, "What's the code?"  And if it's a kid calling in  to cancel school because there's  a test today, they don't know  the code!  (laughter)  But we'd give each  person, we had a little list in  the studio of all the codes for  each school.  And that way that prevents kids  from closing school  inadvertently, or on purpose,  but we don't go on the air and  close schools then without the  okay.  But yeah, radio still does that,  local radio will still do school  closings.  And now they'll do them on their  website, it's the easiest thing  in the world.  >> (inaudible)  >> AM stands for  amplitude modulation.  And FM stands for frequency  modulation.  It's just the way the signals  are transmitted, the radio  waves.  One goes this way, one goes this  way. 

 The thing with AM, it's affected  by static, it's affected by  lightning and electrical stuff.  FM isn't by and large.  AM, though, has this peculiar  thing where it bounces off the  atmosphere after sundown.  And that's why AM stations you  have to go low-power or go off  at sundown, a lot of them.  Whereas FM stations can be on  all the time, at the same power,  but FM is line of site.  It's from the antennas on the  tower to the horizon.  And that's as far as an FM  station will go, they do not  bounce at night.  But it's tremendous fun to  listen to AM radio at night at  great distances, and the ones  that can stay on full power,  their technical term is clear  channel.  It's not the company Clear  Channel, the company picked that  name because there's this  technical term, "clear channel."  A clear channel AM station can  stay on full power, and it's a  high-power station, can stay on  all the time at the high power  and cover a big chunk of the  continent.  And they're shared between the  country. 

 800 for example is Canadian  clear frequency, so at night you  can hear 800s from Canada.  There's a big one in -- CKLW,  which is a big powerful on 800  on AM band, but there's ones in  the United States that are full  power.  Mexico had a bunch of them and  that's how border radio got  going.  You'd have these high-power  Mexican stations that would  cover the entire United States.  And a lot of early country music  stars, the Carter family, they'd  record programs and then play it  on stations in Mexcio that could  stay on at full power all night  and cover the whole country.  >> (inaudible)  >> I was asked  this question recently,  everybody keeps writing the  obituary for radio.  And it's still around and I  always maintain that if radio  had been invented after  television, people would be  thinking it's so much better.  Because you can do other things  and enjoy it completely.  TV, you've got to watch it.  There's so much available with  radio right now, between  terrestrial radio, is regular  old radio. 

 There's, you can listen on the  internet to radio stations all  over the place.  You can podcast, you can get  shows when you want, you're not  tied to the program schedule any  more.  There's HD radio, where stations  will have a secondary channel,  doing some specialized  programming.  Here in Madison, the secondary  channel of triple M, 105. 5,  is all blues all day long.  What a nice thing.  So there's that available.  I think the future's very bright  for radio.  It still has value, there's  still that sense of wonder when  you stumble on something,  spinning the dial, and you hit  something, where is that from?  What is that?  That's magnificent.  I'm still surprised at radio,  I'm still kind of intoxicated by  the magic of it.  The fact that you can listen and  hear someone instantaneously  giving you information that's of  value to you, to me that's real  value. 

 And it doesn't cost you  anything.  It's still free, over-the-air  service.  Radio in the United States is  still over the air and its model  is that it's free.  In some countries you have to  get a license to have a radio,  you have to pay a license every  year.  It's not that way here in the  United States, radio is a free  service and the air waves belong  to the public.  There's now a new, low-power FM  stations are popping up.  In medium-sized communities  where people can get on the air.  Kind of like WORT in Madison, a  community station, where people  have a voice.  That's wonderful, too.  So I think the future's very  bright for radio. 

 One final question.  >> And the quality of the shows,  Garrison Keillor is better than  most things on television.  >> Well, quality's always an  issue.  There's poor-quality radio and  good-quality radio and you have  to search it out.  And you can do that.  There's a lot of good-quality  radio available everywhere in  America.  You just have to look for it.  It's on the dial and there's  stuff out there of all kinds.  There's news, there's sports,  talk, entertainment, music, fine  arts.  There's lots of wonderful things  on the radio. 

 And that's another nice thing  about radio, people have access  to many, many stations no matter  where you live.  There's many stations for you to  pick from.  I see our time is up here, it's  2:30, I thank you for your time,  I thank you for your attention.  And enjoy the rest of the  program today.  (applause)