A Week In the Life of Radio--December 9-15, 1928
On the connected pages, you will find the radio schedules for
clear-channel stations in the eastern and central zones of the United States from seventy years
ago thig week, as distributed
by the Associated Press and published by the High Point (NC) Enterprise daily newspaper. Apparently,
this was the standard radio listing for my hometown paper into the '30s, after which a
generic network primetime schedule (with no station information whatsoever) was carried through the end of
the 1940s.
NBC (still in two varieties--Blue and Red) was two years old, and CBS even younger. In the real world,
the Prohibition Bureau of the Treasury Department had just issued a report showing 75,307 arrests and 58,813
convictions in connection with the illegal liquor trade. In Chicago, John A. Swanson
had just finished his first week as States Attorney of Cook County, and on December 8, the
second Chicago policeman in 30 hours fell to gangster bullets. King George of England was in failing
health, and little hope of his recovery was held as the week began. Argentinians and Bolivians were
engagaed in an armed conflict stemming from a long standind dispute over Chaco Boreal,
a 100,000 square mile tract of land containing virgin timber and rich in oil.
On the hometown front, the High Point area was hit hard by a flu epidemic, to the extent that the
neighboring city of Thomasville was effectively closed--all public gathering places (except
churches) were off limits in an effort to keep the spread in check.
Sunday, December 9
Monday, December 10
Tuesday, December 11
Wednesday, December 12
Thursday, December 13
Friday, December 14
Saturday, December 15
The reader should keep the following concepts in mind while looking through the listings:
- All times listed are PM unless otherwise specified.
- Descriptions of networked programs (where available) will usually be listed beside the
first occurence of the program on the schedule.
- What details couldn't be deduced from reading the AP schedules (using the "Features
on the Air" descriptions for notable broadcasts of the day) were settled using John Dunning's
On The Air. What couldn't be narrowed down using Dunning is left as is. If anybody
can help "connect the dots" please let
me know. All outside contributions will get proper credit.
- Especially
in the first decade of commercial radio, program scheduling on the
local level was a hit-and-miss situation. Sometimes acts were late, or
no shows, and whoever was around had to fill the time as best they
could. Also, the network lines could conk out at the most inopportune
moments. So, needless to say, the programs listed were subject to
change without notice.
- There were also
many active stations in the Western US during this period, but they
were left out of the edition of the listings printed by my (East coast)
local paper. One-line summaries of "regional stations" were also
included after the main listings, but for simplicity's sake, I've left those off my version.
- While I don't usually dabble in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake (an odd thing for an old-time
radio enthusiast to say), while researching this section I found a few interesting
advertisements and articles that were too evocative of the era to keep to myself. All
illustrations on this and connected pages were drawn from the same newspapers as the
schedules. Naturally, none of the offers in the advertisements are still valid, so don't get
any bright ideas.
- Finally, in case you were wondering, it's a fairly safe
assumption at this late a date that few (if any) of the programs from
my chosen week have surviving recordings. In several cases,
however, radio and recording historians have been very lucky in recent
years in finding representative recordings of otherwise completely lost
series. As I rework this section in '04, I'll be making notes of
where these can be found, either online or off.
The connected pages were written by Eric N. Wilson
. First posted: 12/13/98, Last revision: 3/15/04
Return to Wistful Vista main page