Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Radio Curmudgeons















Radio was initially broadcast over a giant wooden cabinet with an equally large round speaker. Smaller models were soon available but it was the transistor that made these "devices" truly mobile. Radio was where everyone got all the audible news of the world, along with their favorite dramas and comedy shows. The "offline" version was the newspaper. 

Every radio network had a vast number of announcers and correspondents. The ABC network is profiled in the above advertisement from 1950. You are likely dead if you tuned in to these newscasters as an adult. Today, perhaps only three stand out because of their more widespread notoriety, namely Drew Pearson, famous for his Washington D.C. "Merry-go-Round" political column, Louella Parsons with her pulse on Hollywood gossip, and Walter Winchell, famous as a narrator away from his news desk, most notably for the ABC police drama, The Untouchables, nine years later.

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