Speaker 1: 0:01

Ever notice how, every August, radio stations all across the country suddenly remember they exist Suddenly? You see old transmitter selfies, radio save my life stories, and that one picture of a tower covered in snow making its rounds online. That is National Radio Day a holiday with no Hallmark cards, no parades and, honestly, not even a single real rule. But radio people. We go all in, from honor stunts to history, deep dives. Today we're cracking open the story of the world's most stubborn, resilient and downright magical mediums Radio. Hey, it's tyler woodward. Yeah, that broadcast engineer, the one who still likes a nicely racked STL, and well, I probably have too many XLR cables in the back of my car right now. But that's besides the point. Today's a little special. We're dropping this episode as a bonus for National Radio Day.

Speaker 1: 1:46

This is Fully Modulated, the show where we celebrate the beautiful, chaotic world of radio and audio. One weird story at a time. Maybe you're here because you just love radio, or maybe because you're the only person under 40 who still knows what an EAS header sounds like. Either way, you're in the right place. So what's actually up with this National Radio Day? Why does it land on August 20th? Is this about Marconi Sarnoff or Tesla, or some other mustachioed inventor from. I just built this in my garage. Era Spoiler alert historians still don't agree on this. But today we're going to dig into how National Radio Day started, the real and sometimes just plain wild history behind it, and why, even now, radio still makes people feel things in ways TikTok can't even touch, makes people feel things in ways TikTok can't even touch. We'll get into the stories, the myths and even a couple of tricks to make your own station sound just a little more magical on this holiday that someone somewhere just made up. So spin the dial, grab a cup of DJ coffee. Oh, nevermind, we know that coffee sucks, which is basically just regular coffee, but colder and more disappointing. Let's make some RF. But first I have to remind you that this episode, and well the podcast in general, is fully independent. No company paid me to say nice things about their transmitters. These are just my thoughts, plus maybe a ghost or two from the golden age of AM radio.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Let's start here. Nobody actually knows who decided that National Radio Day would be August 20th. There's no law, there's no signed declaration and there's not even a single angry memo from the FCC. It just sort of happened. If you poke around you'll find some folks who say it marks the anniversary of Lee DeForest's first real broadcast. Other people say it's just a day someone got tired of arguing about and threw up a website. That last part isn't even a joke. The current nationalradiodaycom dates back to the early 2000s and it pretty much just said hey, let's call it August 20th. That's radio for you, pure chaos plus community. Now if you ask 10 different engineers or DJs, you'll get 10 different real radio birthdays.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Some people say the very first radio program happened on December 24, 1906, when Reginald Fassenden supposedly broadcast violin music and a Bible reading from Brant Rock, massachusetts. But did anybody actually hear it? To this day people still argue about it. Others insist that November 2nd 1920 is the real starting line, because that's when KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air with election results. Unless, of course, you're from Detroit, then it was 8MK. If you're from San Jose you'll hear about Charles Harold Station. The point is everybody wants the bragging rights.

Speaker 1: 5:39

And then April 15th 1912, gets tossed around because when the Titanic went down, the world found out via radio that was Morse code, frantic spark transmitters and, honestly, a whole new reason to care about wireless. So why did we land on August 20th? Honestly, nobody really knows. Does it matter? Not really. Like most of the great things in radio, the story is messy. Everyone argues about it and I'm pretty sure at least one person was eating a donut at three in the morning when it all went down.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Let me tell you about my first National Radio Day as an engineer. I totally missed it. I was fixing an STL at a little Royal FM and the only holiday feeling I got was trying not to be zamped by the rack's mystery power supply. But that's kind of the beauty of it. But that's kind of the beauty of it. Radio's birthday is whenever and wherever you decide to make it. Every time someone fires up a transmitter somewhere in the world it's a new beginning. The real takeaway is this Radio has been born more times than I can count and more places than I can point to on a map, but every single time it's because someone wanted to make a connection with somebody out there in the world.

Speaker 1: 7:27

If you're digging the show, do me a favor Hit, follow. Leave a rating or tell your weirdest radio buddy to check out. Fully Modulated, no big pledge drives, just one guy trying to keep the audio nerd community alive. Drop a review on Apple, hit a follow on Spotify or find us on Instagram, TikTok or the world's most random Facebook page. Seriously, people from 1920 all the way up to today care enough about radio to give it a holiday, even if it's a made up one, it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 8:29

This Radio is weirdly personal. It's a one to many medium that still feels like it's just for you. Rewind to World War II and your grandmother probably found out about D-Day on the kitchen radio, maybe while canning peaches, maybe while shushing the kids. I mean, we still do that today, don't we? There wasn't any refresh button. If you didn't hear it on the air, it didn't happen. The whole world listened together.

Speaker 1: 9:05

There's this endless debate over the first song ever played on the radio. Some folks say it was Old Holy Night, but others think it was something scratchy out of KDKA. Or Come Josephine and my Flying Machine on some forgotten AM station. The truth is nobody agrees. And that's radio for you. Come Josephine and my flying machine on some forgotten AM station. The truth is nobody agrees. And that's radio for you. It's a game of telephone played with actual telephones. And then there's the classic turn down your radio moment in every call-in radio show. If you've ever run a console, you know the pain. The first time you say it you realize you've become part of a secret club. Let's talk about weird radio stunts, though.

Speaker 1: 9:56

There have been stations where the morning show hosts tried to see who could stay on the air the longest or who could eat the most donuts while broadcasting. One place I worked the morning show once, did a whole hour standing on one foot. Did it help ratings? No, of course not. Was it good radio? I don't know, nobody's seen it. But here's the real magic.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Radio matters because it's messy, live and totally human. It's the last place where you can still mess up in real time, have I don't know a patch of dead air and hear an actual person scramble to recover. When you're streaming, the algorithm usually covers your mistakes On radio. The dead air is part of the experience, and radio is still there when nothing else is. When a tornado knocks out a cell tower, when the power's gone, you find a battery-powered radio and you hear a voice coming through the static. Maybe it's just the weather, maybe it's something more, but you realize that radio sneaks into places nothing else can reach. It also keeps people company in ways nothing else can, if you've ever tuned into an overnight show and felt like the only person awake. You're not alone. A million other people are doing the same exact thing, each convinced they're the only one. So every National Radio Day, when you see those tower selfies and DJ throwbacks, it's not because anyone made us do it. It's because, even now, radio is just a little bit wild, a little bit wobbly and a lot of wonderful.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Here is a few tips on how you can make National Radio Day feel like a real celebration, even if you're the only one in the building. Go find an old air check or dig up a back when we used carts photo and share it somewhere Facebook, instagram, tiktok, youtube, I don't care, put it somewhere. It doesn't need to be polished. Radio is about stories, not perfection. Take a second to thank the people who keep things running behind the scenes. Give a shout out to your broadcast engineers, board ops, it folks and that one person who still knows how to reboot a XDS receiver. No station survives without its tech crew. Have some fun with your sound for the day. Run a special legal ID with a vintage voice or maybe let a DJ go completely off script for the day. Have fun with it. And if you're an all automated shop. You can still record a goofy drop-in or a hey, it's National Radio Day message to run a couple of times during I don't know the afternoon. Call someone instead of sending an email. I promise it's way more radio than typing it in over in Slack. And finally, just remember your why.

Speaker 1: 13:43

Why did you pick radio for your profession? Every single radio person has one of them. The first station you listened to, the first time you nailed a live break, the first time you managed to keep the transmitter from catching on fire for a whole month. Share that story on air or off air, and I guarantee it'll make your day better. You don't need a party, you just need to make the day yours now. Typically in this spot I would throw in maybe a listener question and answer it the best I can.

Speaker 1: 14:39

But I want to tell you about my how I got into radio story. I was five years old, I think. My mother gave me a AM FM cassette recorder. That was it. I figured out that I could record cassette tapes with my own voice. That is the first time I think I've ever heard my own voice played back to me. And of course, no, no DJ actually likes the sound of their voice. I mean, yeah, there's some of them with an ego that probably do, but most of us probably don't and that was it that sealed the deal. As I got older I will I I memorized every call sign growing up. I knew the station's addresses, I knew who was on the air what day part. I could tell you their phone numbers. The station that I used to listen to growing up the most was WFLZ in Tampa. Mj and BJ Morning Show. Z in Tampa, mj and BJ morning show. Mj Kelly, which I follow on Instagram, uh, is still on the air at WRBQ Q one oh, five one oh, 4.7 FM down there Still doing it, still going.

Speaker 1: 15:55

When I was in I want to say middle school, maybe high school, I got to sit in on the last hour of their morning show. This is before BJ Harris left the show and went elsewhere and watching there was probably a crew of five or six guys running around. You had froggy, you had faster, you had MJ, you had BJ Uh. There was probably other people in the room I didn't even know, uh, or even knew what they look like up until that day running around putting putting CDs and getting promos ready, figuring out what they're going to talk about next. I watched those guys for an hour plus and, man, I wanted to do that. And then, as I got into high school, I took television production, I took journalism. I did all that stuff. Uh, I volunteered at a public access station in Tampa, uh. And then I went to the Connecticut school of broadcasting in the evenings while I was still in high school, interned at WWBA and WHBO AM in Tampa.

Speaker 1: 17:00

It wasn't until I moved up to Wisconsin that I really got into the radio business. But I never lost the love for it. I'm still doing it to this day, still still out there, fixing transmitters, making audio pass, carving it out on the network. Five years old is when the fire of radio was lit underneath me. Um, well, by the time this show comes out I'll be 40, still doing it. Man, 35 years later, still like it. I'll probably retire in this business. I don't know if I could do anything else, but that's my story. If you've got a story on how you got interested in radio, let me hear it. Text the show the link is in the episode description or you can send me an email if it's a long one. Tyler at fullymodulatedcom, send me a voice memo. Maybe I'll play it, I'll put it up on the socials or something.

Speaker 1: 18:23

So Radio is packed with legends. Some are true, some are completely made up and a lot fall somewhere in the middle. Let's break down a few. There's this myth that Marconi invented radio. Well, not exactly Marconi was brilliant at marketing, but Tesla, besondon and DeForest were all in the game too. There were a lot of patent fights, plenty of drama and a whole lot of wait. I did that first shenanigans. In reality, radio is more of an accidental group project than one guy's big old idea.

Speaker 1: 19:09

You'll hear people say radio is dying. But here's the reality, folks. But here's the reality, folks. Over 80% of Americans still listen every single month. That's more than the number of people who even know how to set up their smart TV. Some folks still insist that AM is completely unlistenable. It really depends on where you live for that one. In some places AM is still how you get your farm reports, your high school football games and that one preacher who sounds like he probably hasn't slept in three days plus. There's nothing quite like the sound of a classic am radio on a stormy night sometimes. Sometimes, nostalgia is the best feature.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Then there's the endless debate over the first song ever aired on radio. Was it, oh Holy Night? Maybe I don't know, but honestly, the first thing probably that was broadcast was someone reading the weather report or testing a tone into a crusty old carbon mic. So much for glamour. And don't let anyone tell you that nobody cares about antennas. Every radio engineer I know has at least three pictures of their favorite tower, probably still saved somewhere on an old flip phone. Oh, and here's a fact that you can use at your next transmitter maintenance day the very first radio commercial ever aired wasn't for beer or cars, it was for apartments in New York City. Some things don't change. So there it is, national Radio Day, a holiday no one can really explain, but every radio nerd celebrates it in their own way.

Speaker 1: 21:26

That's it for the National Radio Day bonus episode. Whether you're in a studio, a car or just listening from the middle of nowhere, happy National Radio Day and thanks for keeping radio alive. Radio is messy, miraculous and still the best way to hear something real right now from someone who probably spilled coffee on the control board at least once that morning. Us broadcast engineers hate those people. Next time you're driving or shopping or scrolling past an old radio tower online. Just remember, behind every RF signal story is probably a grumpy old engineer doing their best to keep it alive.

Speaker 1: 22:11

If you like this episode, follow us on Apple Spotify wherever you listen, leave a review or send your weirdest radio story. The fully modulatedcom bonus points if it involves dead air or finding wildlife inside the transmitter shack. A snake across three phases at a am site is, uh, still the worst smell, from what I've been told. I wasn't there in person. This show runs on curiosity and your support. If you want to help keep the RF flowing and the studio lights on, head over to fullymodulatedcom. You can leave a tip or just send a note. There's no merch, no secret club, just a bunch of weirdos who love radio. Thanks for listening and keeping the signal strong. I'll see you next time.