NYPR History Notes

July 6, 1928

Amelia Earhart 'the first of her sex to fly the Atlantic' returns with her crew to America.

New York welcomes the Friendship flyers, Louis Gordon, Amelia Earhart and Wilmer Stultz, at City Hall. Acting Mayor Joseph McKee stands with the flyers just to the left of the center pillar following their remarks before microphones from WNYC and other stations, at the right. (Acme News Photo/WNYC Archive Collections)

Municipal vs. Educational Broadcasting

"Well, municipal radio is different from the general concept of educational radio. We're concerned with broad community aims. We're concerned with appealing to all New Yorkers, at least those in the upper cultural portion of the population. We're concerned with rendering services to city departments. As a matter of fact, the law under which we operate, which is the old local law number 5 of the year 1930, and which is incorporated into the city's administrative code, says that we are an adjunct of the police and fire departments and other city departments of the government, and we operate for the enlightenment, instruction, entertainment, recreation and welfare of the inhabitants of the city. This doesn't preclude us from carrying on direct educational programming, and as a matter of fact we do. But we go far beyond the aims and goals of the educational stations. The only thing we have in common with most of the educational stations in the country is the fact that we operate on a non-commercial basis."

WNYC Station Director Seymour N. Siegel in an interview on April 4, 1958 conducted by Paul Ronald Noble for his Boston University Masters thesis, The Progress and Problems on Educational Television in New York City, August 1958.

WNYC first day of broadcast, July 8, 1924 (Municipal Archives Collection)

WQXR's 80th anniversary has come and gone. There was a rebroadcast of the first day's playlist. The Empire State Building was QXR-blue with pride. It might be instructive to reflect on the station's founders, John V. L. Hogan and Elliott Sanger , in their own words.
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Thanks go out this week to Maestro Robert Sherman for giving us an opportunity to digitize some of his Great Artist interviews we did not have in the collection. They include: Leonard Rose, Friedelind Wagner, Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, Michel Legrand, Alicia Alonso, Grace Bumbry, Claudio Arrau, Jose Iturbi, Hermann Prey, Lynn Harrell, Sarah Caldwell, Lorin Hollander, Carol Channing, Joanne Woodward, James Galway, Yehudi Menuhin, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Yul Brynner, and Magda Tagliaferro, among others.
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Also thanks go out this week to Sara Fishko for locating some previously hidden verbal repartee from the 1980s between herself and WNYC's master curmudgeon the late, great Steve Post.

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WNYC celebrated its 92nd anniversary this past July. Just think, 7-and-a-half short years to the big centennial. In this space we'll be linking to various historical WNYC champions, broadcasts and milestones celebrating nearly a century on the air in the public interest. This week: Henry Cowell Talks Modern Music on the Masterwork Hour.
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This week's NEH-funded Annotations blog series features: Dancer Ruth St. Denis on how men and women should share power - since men are such beasts!
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Interested in revisiting some of the 738 previous issues of The New York Public Radio History Notes? We've put up links for editions since June 2013. See: History Notes.
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