November 10 Radio HIstory

In 1938...Radio star Kate Smith introduced Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America' to her CBS radio network audience. Smith was only 32 and already the undisputed Queen of Network Radio. Her variety hour on CBS had Thursday’s Top Ten for two years and in 1939 she would move to Friday and dominate the night’s ratings for the next four consecutive seasons.



"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song.

Irving Berlin wrote the song in 1918 while serving the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, but decided that it did not fit in a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside.

In 1938, with the rise of Adolf Hitler, Berlin, who was Jewish and a first-generation Russian immigrant, felt it was time to revive it as a "peace song," and it was introduced on an Armistice Day broadcast in 1938, sung by Kate Smith on her radio show. Berlin had made some minor changes; by this time, "to the right" might have been considered a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Smith always used: "While the storm clouds gather far across the sea / Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free / Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, / As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer." (In her first broadcast of the song, Kate Smith sang "that we're far from there" rather than "for a land so fair".)


In 1950...a radio comedy series The Magnificent Montague starring Monty Woolley debuted on NBC. It may rank as radio’s last original sitcom. Ironically, its final airing was exactly one year later, as TV continued to steal the radio audience.


In 1951…Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey called his counterpart in Alameda, California, to mark the beginning of direct-dial, coast-to-coast U.S. telephone service.


In 1956...Billboard magazine's DJ survey reveals that Elvis Presley is the country's number one male artist on both the pop and country charts.


In 1966...British newspapers break the news that the Beatles will indeed refuse all future offers to tour.



Struggling to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans, the band had grown increasingly bored with the routine of performing live. Recognizing that their shows were no longer about the music, they decided to make the August 1966 tour their last. The last US concert was at Candlestick Park, San Francisco on August 29, 1966.  A crowd of 25,000 saw the Beatles final concert which began at 8:00 pm.The support acts,in order of appearance,were the Remain, Bobby Hebb, the Cyrkle and the Ronettes.The Beatles played from 9:27 pm until precisely 10:00 pm on a stage five feet high and fully encaged by a six foot high wire fence surrounded by security and police

The famous and very final Beatles concert would be the famous Rooftop concert January 30, 1969.

In 1973...The Hot 100..Eddie Kendricks, former lead singer of the Temptations, earned the #1 song with "Keep On Truckin'".  That meant Gladys Knight & the Pips had an abbreviated stay of two weeks at #1 with "Midnight Train To Georgia".  The Rolling Stones' former #1 "Angie" was third followed by "Heartbeat - It's A Lovebeat" from the DeFranco Family.  The rest of the Top 10:  Marie Osmond's "Paper Roses", Ringo Starr had his fourth solo hit and third straight Top 10 with "Photograph", moving from 11 to 6, Billy Preston's instrumental "Space Race" came in at position #7, Cher's former #1 "Half-Breed" was #8, Art Garfunkel slipped up to #9 with "All I Know" and the Carpenters were an amazing 10 of 14 in earning Top 10 hits, registering their eight consecutive Top 10 with "Top Of The World"





In 1975...The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks suddenly in Lake Superior during a storm, killing all 29 men aboard and inspiring Canadian folkie Gordon Lightfoot to write a song about the tragedy, "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald."

Freeman Gosde and Charles Correll

In 1982...Freeman Gosden, the radio actor who portrayed "Amos" on the Radio show "Amos 'n' Andy", died at age 83.

In 1984...The Hot 100..Billy Ocean remained at #1 with "Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)".  Stevie Wonder's former #1 "I Just Called To Say I Love You" wasn't going away, Prince remained at #3 with "Purple Rain" and Wham! had #4--"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go".

The rest of the Top 10:  A solo hit from Chaka Khan ("I Feel For You") moved from 10-5, Hall & Oates had their 25th hit and sixth straight Top 10 song with "Out Of Touch", Tina Turner's comeback was complete with "Better Be Good To Me", David Bowie's "Blue Jean" was #8, Chicago dropped with their great song "Hard Habit To Break" and Styx lead singer Dennis DeYoung picked himself up a solo Top 10 with "Desert Moon".

In 1992...First AM HD Radio broadcast with audio codec.

An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of coding or decoding a digital data stream of audio.

In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file format or streaming media audio format. The objective of the algorithm is to represent the high-fidelity audio signal with minimum number of bits while retaining the quality. This can effectively reduce the storage space and the bandwidth required for transmission of the stored audio file. Most codecs are implemented as libraries which interface to one or more multimedia players.

In hardware, audio codec refers to a single device that encodes analog audio as digital signals and decodes digital back into analog. In other words, it contains both an Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and Digital-to-analog converter (DAC) running off the same clock. This is used in sound cards that support both audio in and out, for instance.

In 2003…Chicago Sun-Times newspaper columnist (Kup's Column for six decades)/syndicated TV talk show host/Chicago Bears radio color commentator/Philadelphia Eagles quarterback (1935) Irv Kupcinet died of complications from pneumonia at 91.

In 2010...the radio/TV voice of the Seattle Mariners for their entire 33 year history, Dave Niehaus was silenced forever after a heart attack at age 75.  He has since been immortalized with his own “statue” on the concourse at Safeco Field.