1931-12-10 8pm WNYC Programming excerpts
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- This is a fascinating historic document of broadcasting. Today, WNYC is the public radio affiliate for New York City, but its history dates back to 1924, and it has always been a non-commercial station. It was the official municipal voice of the city of New York until 1995, but it remains a landmark institution in the city.
These airchecks arose out of a legal battle between WNYC and WMCA over sharing the same frequency--570 kc. WMCA accused WNYC of broadcasting past its scheduled time on the frequency, thus hindering WMCA's ability to keep its own schedule. WNYC denied the allegations, but to settle the issue, both stations had to submit airchecks to demonstrate that one station was not interfering with the other. Ultimately, WNYC lost the appeal and had to change to 810 kc, which also suffered interference issues with WCCO in Minneapolis, leaving WNYC with more broadcast time but having to sign off by sunset every evening.
These airchecks--which include short excerpts from WMCA as well--are also probably the first "scoped" airchecks. A scoped aircheck focuses on announcements, with most of the content edited out. Scoping is used by radio stations and announcers to highlight the work of star announcers, often forming a part of their portfolios. But here we have an example of scoping to provide evidence in a legal case.
As such, we hear only a few nearly complete programs--very excerpted for a particular purpose, and varying widely in audio quality. Still the listening is fascinating.
This particular aircheck does have several uninterrupted minutes of local programming, allowing us to visit NYC as it sounded in 1931.
These airchecks are available in full, but in segments, with more documentation, examination, and photographs of the personalities at the WNYC archives site:
www.wnyc.org/s...
These recordings are presented here solely for educational, historical, and research purposes, and are not to be used for profit of any kind. As such, they are under fair use if they are not already in the public domain.
