Radio Celebrates 90 years of Media Content for Profit

Ninety years ago this month, Westinghouse Electric Co. launched the era of electronic mass communications with a radio broadcast for election day in the U.S. presidential contest between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox – heard over Pittsburgh’s KDKA radio station.

You can still hear that broadcast – yes, audio-only – via the radio-changing, radio-challenging Internet.

Calling itself "The Pioneer Broadcasting Station of the World," KDKA was founded by Frank Conrad, a Westinghouse engineer running an amateur home station, 8XK – that played music. Estimates are that only about 100 people heard that first KDKA broadcast, with the news that Republican Harding had defeated Cox. Continue reading...