Photo Book Reveals Early ‘New York City Radio’

Scott Muni (NY Daily News)

The fact that radio is a non-visual medium makes it feels exotic and perhaps slightly forbidden to see what happens in the studio, according to David Hinckley at nydailynews.com.

“New York City Radio,” a new picture book by Alec Cumming and Peter Kanze (Arcadia Publishing, $21.99), is a delightfully random collection of photos and memorabilia that goes back to a March 13, 1921, broadcast featuring Rosette and Vivian Duncan over radio station 2XX.

The book runs roughly in chronological order as we see big bands segue into wartime newscasts, then into great casual shots like the record library at WHOM, a floor-to-ceiling rack of 78s for a station that specialized in foreign-language programs.

A WMGM promo shot shows Gussie Moran from the Brooklyn Dodgers radio team, followed by a 1958 Yankees broadcasting photo with Mel Allen, Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto.

The authors reprint an ad that WINS ran after it kept broadcasting through a blackout. “The station that glowed in the dark,” it declares.

Once rock ’n’ roll arrives, the look of radio changes considerably. The early WNEW-FM staff, for instance, looks a lot different from the WNEW-AM staff of the same era.

WNBC has Imus, Howard Stern, Wolfman Jack and Soupy Sales in the same promo shot.

Many pictures here are bittersweet, echoing eras past: the early WCBS-FM, WHN, all the popular standards stations like WNEW-AM and WQEW.

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Broadcast historian Peter Kanze, who has worked at WHN and the ABC Radio Network, also produces WABC "Rewound."  And with his background, there's lots of WABC in the book.

Co-author, Al Cumming, is billed as a pop historian and television writer/producer who has worked for NBC, USA, Syfy, the History Channel, Rhino Records and Nickelodeon.  Currently, he serves as a history consultant for NBC Universal.