enjoying the new Jerry Williams book

[Dan.Strassberg]

But wasn't there a fairly long stretch of years during which the FCC
outlawed the broadcast of live phone conversations over the air? And
wasn't some new technology required to legally make such broadcasts
without running afoul of the FCC rule? If so, what was the rule? What
was the new technology that made it possible to legally air phone
conversations live (actually with a few seconds of delay)? And when
did the new technology become commercially available in a form
reliable enough for radio stations to accept it and at a cost that
radio stations could afford?

I think if Donna's book is going to be accepted as the definitive work
on talk radio, it will have to answer those questions.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
To: <kvahey@comcast.net>; "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
Cc: "(newsgroup) Boston-Radio-Interest"
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: enjoying the new Jerry Williams book


> At 11:03 AM 3/9/2008, kvahey@comcast.net wrote:
>>BTW we have had this discussion before of who as the first to put
>>callers on the air and the book hints that it happened in 1934 at
>>WJSV
>>in Washington which I assume would later be known as WTOP. The
>>station
>>put a young man in a studio at the transmitter and he invited people
>>to call in so he could find out how far the signal went.
>
> Umm, not exactly.  In my new book, I've traced putting callers on
> the air back to St. Paul MN (KSTP, still on the air, btw) where a
> performer named Johm Little who was on tour asked the announcer if
> people who had since his band would call in, and a bunch of calls
> from as far away as Texas were put on the air.  That was in 1929.
>
> As with the KDKA myth, it's hard to document "firsts" from back then
> unless somebody wrote about it or unless somebody was actually there
> doing the particular thing.  In the case of Little, a reporter for
> Associated Press was there covering something else and found it
> amusing to see a call put on the air.
>