April 30 Radio History

In 1917...United States singer and Radio host, Bea Wain was born. Best known for the program, "Lucky Strike Hit Parade".

Wain was an American Big Band-era singer born in New York City, New York. On May 1, 1938, Bea Wain married radio announcer André Baruch. Their honeymoon in Bermuda was cut short when Fred Allen called Baruch asking him to return to New York to substitute for his ailing announcer, Harry von Zell. They were married for 53 years. Baruch died in 1991.



Following her musical career, the couple worked as a husband-and-wife disc jockey team in New York on WMCA, where they were billed as "Mr. and Mrs. Music". In 1973, the couple moved to Palm Beach, Florida, where for nine years they had a top-rated daily four-hour talk show from 2 PM to 6 PM on WPBR before relocating to Beverly Hills. During the early 1980s, the pair hosted a syndicated version of Your Hit Parade, reconstructing the list of hits of selected weeks in the 1940s and playing the original recordings.

In 1938...Historic CBS Columbia Square Studios Dedicated. Click Here for the full story on this, and all the CBS studios in California.

Jack Bailey

In 1945...“How would you like to be queen for a day?!” was heard for the first time, as Jack Bailey introduced the so-called daily agony show “Queen For a Day” on Mutual radio. The first Queen for a Day was Mrs. Evelyn Lane.  A short time later the radio program moved from New York to Hollywood, where it debuted on TV in 1956 for a further 8 year run.


In 1945...Arthur Godfrey began his CBS radio morning show. His theme was ”Seems Like Old Times”.  Arthur Godfrey Time ran for 27 years until this very same day in 1972. Godfrey’s show was different in that he used live talent and not records. His popularity with listeners was the major reason that several sponsors gave Godfrey the freedom to ad-lib their commercials and often joke about the products as well.





In 1957…At Radio Recorders in West Hollywood, Elvis Presley recorded "Jailhouse Rock."


In 1972...the daily CBS Radio program, “Arthur Godfrey Time,” after 27 years, aired for the final time.

In 1996...the "Howard Stern Radio Show" debuted on WKLQ-FM, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In 2004...Radio/TV Newscaster Rolf Hertsgaard died at age 81.



Hertsgaard was born in Minneapolis to first-generation Norwegian-Americans. He attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., and by his early 20s he had gone into broadcasting. He worked at WCCO-AM in Minneapolis until 1955.

Invited to head the radio and TV news division of the National Lutheran Council, he moved to New York City in 1956. Two years later, WBAL-TV hired him as a news anchor.

In 2005...WOR moved to 111 Broadway, NYC


In 2012...WEPN NYC moved to 98.7 FM, when the Walt Disney Company and Emmis Communications agreed to a 12-year-lease of the 98.7 FM frequency for an undisclosed price.