March 10 In Radio history

In 1922...KLZ-AM, Denver, Colorado began broadcasting.

Two years earlier, Dr. William "Doc" Reynolds, a dentist, founded Colorado's first experimental radio station, 9ZAF, at his 1124 S. University home in Denver.

The studio was on the front porch and the transmitter was in the back yard.

On March 10, 1922, the station's call sign changed to KLZ, then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover granted Reynolds one of the first commercial broadcasting licenses in the country, and KLZ became Colorado's first commercial radio station.


In 1922…Variety magazine greeted readers with the front-page headline that read, "Radio Sweeping Country - 1,000,000 Sets in Use."


In 1949…In Washington, DC, Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, known as "Axis Sally," was convicted of treason. Gillars served 12 years in prison.


In 1955..."The Silver Eagle" program was broadcast for the last time on Radio.

In 1980…Radio-TV broadcaster/creator of the Ronald McDonald character for McDonald's Corporation restaurants/commercial spokesman Willard Scott became the weather forecaster on NBC-TV's "Today" show. After more than a decade in that role, he is now the substitute for weatherman Al Roker on the program and appears twice weekly to wish centenarians happy birthday.

From 1955 to 1972, Scott teamed with Ed Walker as co-host of the nightly Joy Boys radio program on WRC 980 AM (now WTEM). (This was interrupted from 1956-1958 when Scott served on active duty with the U.S.Navy.)

Scott routinely sketched a list of characters and a few lead lines setting up a situation, which Walker would commit to memory or make notes on with his Braille typewriter (he was blind since birth).

In a 1999 article recalling the Joy Boys at the height of their popularity in the mid-1960s, The Washington Post said they "dominated Washington, providing entertainment, companionship, and community to a city on the verge of powerful change". The Joy Boys show played on WRC until 1972 when they moved to cross-town station WWDC 1260 AM (now WWRC) for another two years. Scott wrote in his book, The Joy of Living, of their close professional and personal bond which has continued to the present, saying that they are "closer than most brothers".


In 2013…Newsman/staff announcer (WGN-TV, WGN-Radio, ABC Radio) Marty McNeeley died at the age of 86.