April 8, 1935: Louis Zukofsky writes in a letter to Ezra Pound that he is working as a "feature and continuity writer and special  researchist  for WNYC."  Zukofsky was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets and one of the primary forerunners of contemporary avant-garde writing.  From 1938-1940, Zukofsky  was a senior researcher and writer for the WPA-sponsored Index of Design.  The Index was a comprehensive pictorial and descriptive catalog of American craft and decorative objects and remains an invaluable  source  for historians of American art, society and culture.

In late 1939 and into 1940, Zukofsky researched and was interviewed for a series of at least eleven WPA WNYC broadcasts called The Human Side of  Art. The series was based on elements from the Index of Design.  Zukofsky's notes and WNYC scripts can be found in A Useful Art: Essays and Radio Scripts on American Design published by Wesleyan University in 2003.
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                Twenty Years Ago Today

"This week, N.Y.C.'s public radio & TV stations, WNYC-AM, WNYC-FM, & WNYC-TV, kick off their final fund-raising drives of the 1994 fiscal year. But contributors have been outraged since Mayor Giuliani included the sale of WNYC-FM's license in his proposed budget cuts. Giuliani appointed Steve Bauman, a former reporter for WNEW Channel 5, to be president of the WNYC Communications Group. Interviewed in his office on the 26th floor of the Municipal Building, Bauman says, 'It's not just nice classical music. You have a system here that can be utilized as a promotional arm of the city's development.' In what Irwin Schneiderman, chairman of the WNYC Foundation, described as an 'elegant solution,' the Administration wants to sell the station's license & then move WNYC to another slot on the FM dial. But there are no other slots on the local FM dial, and the Board of Education is unlikely to give up its FM station, WNYE--which, in any case, has a weaker signal than WNYC."

Source: James Traub, writing "WNYC is Up in the Air," in The New Yorker, June 6, 1994.