Old School
(((Hearing Voices)))
Radio Special

Pop Quiz: Historical Broadcasts

"And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name."

1. On Christmas Eve 1906 ships at sea, who had previously used radio only for Morse code transmissions, heard the first radio audio broadcast. The program included the carol "O Holy Night," (lyrics above), which was sung and played on violin by which radio inventor?
Reginald Fessenden
Guglielmo Marconi
Nikoli Tesla

"Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

2. An elementary explanation by:
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Edwin H. Armstrong

"From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramón Raquello leads off with 'La Cumparsita' --- Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News..."

3. This famous 1938 broadcast followed with a report on:
February 12: German troops enter Austria
October 30: Explosions of incandescent gas on Mars
November 9: Kristallnacht, 25,000 Jews arrested, 91 killed

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."

4. Edward R. Murrow of CBS Radio went on to host several TV series. The quote above, from a 1954 episode of See it Now, refers to what threat to America?
Mao Tse-Tung
Joseph Stalin
Joseph McCarthy

"Here to blow your mind and clean up your face."

5. So began each KYA show, hosted by this Top 40 DJ, who later pioneered the free-form underground radio, and founded stations KMPX, KSAN, KMET and KPPC.
Alan Freed
Tom Donahue
Rodney Bingenheimer

"It was in 1844 that Congress authorized $30,000 for the first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Soon afterward, Samuel Morse sent a stream of dots and dashes over that line to a friend who was waiting. His message was brief and prophetic and it read: 'What hath God wrought?'"

6. About the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, said by:
Ken Tomlinson
Bill Moyers
Lyndon B. Johnson

"In the top of the day's news, the crush, catcalls, flux and flow of the demonstrations in Washington."

7. From 1971, the first introduction in the first All Things Considered broadcast to the first ATC report by this first ATC host:
Mike Waters
Robert Conley
Susan Stamberg

"There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in 'high definition'. High definition is the state of being well filled with data.... Hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience."

8. Marshall McLuhan's mediums run hot and cool. TV and telephones are cool. Radios and movies are hot, as are:
photograph, phonetic alphabet, paper, dialogue, waltz
cartoon, speech, hieroglyphic, lecture, Twist
cartoon, phonetic alphabet, paper, dialogue, Twist

"A radio station should not just be a hole in the universe for making money, or feeding an ego, or running the world."

9. The quote is from the book Sex and Broadcasting: A Handbook on Starting a Radio Station for the Community, written by which of these early community broadcasting advocates?
Lorenzo Milam
Tom Thomas
Terry Clifford

"I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two Lying awake intent at tuning in on you."

10. These words were the first sung on the first MTV broadcast (August 1981). The tune was "Video Killed the Radio Star;" the band was:
The Rutles
Snuggles
The Buggles

| Sources & More Info