On May 24, 25, 26 In Radio History

On the 24th In 1844...Samuel F.B. Morse gave the first public demonstration of his telegraph by sending a message from the Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to the B&O Railroad "outer depot" (now the B&O Railroad Museum) in Baltimore. The famous message was, "What hath God wrought?"


On the 26th in 1971...Don McLean recorded the classic hit "American Pie," about the plane crash that killed singers The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.




On the 25th in 1985...CBS Radio began coverage of major league baseball after the game's 20-year absence from network radio. Brent Musburger called the play-by-play for the Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Mets game.

On the 26th in 1989...Radio stations staged 30 seconds of silence at 7:42 AM (EST), to honor Radio.

On the 26th in 1993...Radio dramatist, Carleton Morse, best known for "One Man's Family", died at age 91.

"One Man's Family" centered on a family in the well-to-do Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. The tribulations of its main characters, Fanny, Henry and Jack Barbour, dominated the national airwaves from the time the show began in 1932 until it went off the air in 1959 after 3,256 episodes.
He covered radio and police news for The Sacramento Union before moving to San Francisco, where he worked for several newspapers, including The Call, The Bulletin and The Chronicle. He took a writing job at NBC in 1929 and went on to became a legendary radio pioneer.

At its peak, "One Man's Family" rivaled "Amos 'n' Andy" in popularity.


On the 26th in 2010...Radio and TV host (House Party, People Are Funny) Art Linkletter died at the age of 97.

Art Linkletter

Although he earned a degree in teaching, Linkletter worked as a radio announcer at KGB in San Diego. Radio paid better than teaching, and Linkletter directed radio programs for fairs and expositions in the mid-1930s. In the 1940s Linkletter lived in San Francisco and worked in radio.  In the 1940s, Linkletter worked in Hollywood with John Guedel on their pioneering radio show, People Are Funny, which employed audience participation, contests and gags. The series served as a prototype for future radio and television game shows. People Are Funny became a television show in 1954 and ran until 1961.

Other early television shows Linkletter worked on included Life With Linkletter with his son Jack (1969–1970) and Hollywood Talent Scouts (1965–1966). He acted in two movies, People Are Funny (1946) and Champagne for Caesar (1950).

Linkletter declined the opportunity offered by his friend Walt Disney to build and operate the Disneyland Hotel due to Linkletter's doubts about the park's prospects. But, out of friendship for Disney, Linkletter volunteered his experience as a live program broadcaster to help organize ABC's coverage of the Disneyland opening in 1955.

with Walt Disney

Besides being an on-air host, he recruited his two co-hosts: Ronald Reagan and Bob Cummings. The park opening experience convinced Linkletter Disneyland was going to be a huge success. When Disney asked what he could do to show his gratitude for the broadcast's role in the successful launching of the park, Linkletter asked for Disneyland's camera and film concession for its first ten years, to which Disney readily agreed. This turned out to be very lucrative.  He appeared for two stints of two weeks each, as a guest host of The Tonight Show in 1962 between Jack Paar's departure and Johnny Carson's arrival as its new host.

In the 1950s, Linkletter became a major investor in and promoter of the hula hoop.


On the 25th in 2013...Veteran radio talk show host (WOR-New York City, KGO-San Francisco, WRKO-Boston, WCAU-Philadelphia, WKIS-Orlando)/food critic Gene Burns died of complications from a stroke at age 72.


On the 25th in 2013...Harry Birrell, a Los Angeles radio news reporter and anchor at KNX for more than 30 years, died of complications from interstitial lung disease at 85.