Have you ever listened to the radio?
Since it’s 2024, I need to tighten up that question a bit: have you ever listened to terrestrial radio on a device that was picking up the signal out of thin air? Today is National Radio Day, and today, terrestrial radio is getting kind of quaint as people choose satellite radio services, streaming music services, and apps designed to play any kind of radio - terrestrial included – anywhere you are, on whatever device you choose.
127 years ago, radio was born, and about 45 years ago, my career in terrestrial radio began. No one person is credited with the invention of radio – three inventors working independently followed and built upon the emerging science of wireless electricity and voila! A radio signal was first broadcast by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 using discoveries made by Nicola Tesla and Heinrich Hertz.
Broadcast radio made the world feel smaller and more like a community. Two decades after the very first successful test-broadcast, stations used this cutting-edge technology to broadcast national election returns for the first time ever, to allow for communication at great distances on a battlefield, and to broadcast distress signals from ocean liners. It was a Marconi radio aboard the Titanic that broadcast their dire emergency and need for assistance.
In 1930, one out of 5 American homes had a radio. By 1938, that number jumped to four out of 5 and kept spiraling up from there. By the 1960’s and 70’s, radio listening had become the main source of news and entertainment in the US, and each home had at least as many radios as it had people living in it. Now, more than 30% of American households have no terrestrial radio inside the home at all, though cars still come with AM/FM radios as standard equipment.
I remember my 8th birthday vividly. Uncle Sam was moving us from Italy to Germany and we were sitting in an airport having breakfast. Dad left for a few minutes, and when he came back, he presented me with a beautiful turquoise transistor radio. It ran on batteries and on it I could hear the whole world – or so it seemed at the time.
Fast-forward a decade and I was working at an AM radio station in Columbus, Georgia, learning to be a radio personality on a Top 40 radio station. It was the beginning of a great career on the air, and it was also the beginning of a love affair of learning how to create pictures in other peoples’ head with just my words. I loved the intimacy, the imagination, and the immediacy of being on the air, and the ratings told me that those listening loved it, too.
Now, as a professional speaker, author, and podcaster, I use skills learned in broadcasting to give people information and tools they need in an entertaining way. Here are three radio-inspired episodes of the world’s second-shortest podcast – if you have 5 minutes, you can hear them all and still have 30 seconds to spare!
Did an old song just hurt your heart? Here’s a Tiny Bite for that!
Want to revisit the world on the day you were born? Here’s a Tiny Bite for that!
Need help getting over first-day jitters? Here’s a Tiny Bite for that!
(Subscribe to the world's second-shortest podcast to get success tools every day. Apple Spotify YouTube )
Radio is magic.Great radio takes the listener on a journey inside their own mind, creating their own images and feelings about what’s being said. Great radio is intimate, almost like a whisper, because the communication feels like a two-way conversation even though only one person is speaking.
Great radio has always been rare, and today is even more rare as we have fewer small-town stations that employ on-air talent. Instead, their airwaves are filled with syndicated programming from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, or they’re using voice tracks slotted into the songs being played, and somewhere in a studio, the voice track person is laying down tracks for places they’ve never been to and probably never will visit.
Today, celebrate National Radio Day by listening to a broadcast station with a local personality talking to you. If you love their show and are in the habit of listening to them, please let them know that you appreciate them.
Progress means that radio will someday go the way of the telegraph machine, so enjoy this wonderful, magical medium while you still can.
Wags,
Sandy Weaver
The Voice of Wagaliciousness
#podcast #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing
