DC Radio: Ed Walker Wins New Fans With 'Big Broadcast'

Ed Walker

Every Sunday night, the Washington, D.C. member station WAMU 88.5 FM  takes a trip into the past. Music swells and guns blaze as dramas from the golden age of radio hit the airwaves again, on the beloved program The Big Broadcast.

Radio Hall of Famer Ed Walker hosts the four-hour show, which has been a mainstay on WAMU's air for decades. He usually starts off with the adventures of Johnny Dollar — the man with the action-packed expense account — before treating listeners to Dragnet and Gunsmoke.

The show ranks first in its timeslot, and its audience is remarkably young for a public radio crowd. "I get a lot of requests, believe it or not, from children — from kids," Walker tells NPR's Audie Cornish. "They have television, but I've gotten emails that say, 'We don't even turn the television on on Sunday night.' And they love it, because with the good sound effects and everything like that, it is — somebody referred to radio as the theater of the mind, which it is."

Walker, who is 81 years old, was born blind, and his close connection to radio started when he was very young. "Radio was everything to me, not being able to see," he says. "The sound on radio was important. Radio took the place of comic books and newspapers and the funnies and all that stuff. So I grew up with it."