University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2012 Groping in the dark : an early history of WHAS radio. William A. Cummings 1982- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Cummings, William A. 1982-, "Groping in the dark : an early history of WHAS radio." (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 298. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/298 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GROPING IN THE DARK: AN EARLY HISTORY OF WHAS RADIO By William A. Cummings B.A. University of Louisville, 2007 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2012 Copyright 2012 by William A. Cummings All Rights Reserved GROPING IN THE DARK: AN EARLY HISTORY OF WHAS RADIO By William A. Cummings B.A., University of Louisville, 2007 A Thesis Approved on April 5, 2012 by the following Thesis Committee: Thomas C. Mackey, Thesis Director Christine Ehrick Kyle Barnett ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Horace Nobles. I miss you every day. 111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my thesis director, Dr. Thomas Mackey for acknowledging I needed direction and guidance before I realized it myself. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Christine Ehrick and Dr. Kyle Barnett for their enthusiasm, comments, and constructive criticism over these last few months. This project owes a great deal to Dr. Terry Birdwhistell of the University of Kentucky, whose research surfaces throughout. Dr. Birdwhistell was kind enough to lend his time to speak with me and to assist me in accessing a great deal of research material. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family who seemed to take my anxiety over the past three years in stride and more often than not had more faith in my abilities than I did. Your patience and support have meant the world to me. IV ABSTRACT GROPING IN THE DARK: AN EARLY HISTORY OF WHAS RADIO William A. Cummings May 12, 2012 As the historiography on radio broadcasting continues to grow and forces examination from the macro-level to the micro-level, station histories are becoming increasingly important. The story of WHAS highlights the evolution of a nationally­ celebrated, innovative radio station dedicated to the service of its community. However, this thesis argues that WHAS radio's arrival as a viable commercial business distorted the initial trajectories its forefathers intended for the medium thereby diluting its nobler aspects. A technological tool with the unprecedented power and influence -- to enlighten and enhance the daily lives of millions through education, the high art of classical music and opera, exposure to politics, and instant news updates, all filtered through a sense of duty to its listeners -- saw its grand ambitions watered down by the allure of increased profits sacrificing originality and imagination for accessible, light-entertainment programming generated from a handful of single sources. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................ .iv ABSTRACT .............................................................................. v INTRODUCTION ........................................................................ 1 CHAPTER ONE: "GROPING IN THE DARK" .................................... 36 CHAPTER TWO: "THE TONGUE-LESS SILENCE OF THE DREAMLESS DUSK" ..................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER THREE: "THE CALM AND UNIMPASSIONED VOICE" ......... 111 CHAPTER FOUR: "LET US ADJUST OUR METHODS TO MEET THE PUBLIC INTEREST" ..................................... , .......... , ................... 154 CONCLUSION: NEARING THE APEX ............................................. 185 REFERENCES ........................................................................... 196 CURRICULUM VITAE .................... , ........................................... 207 VI INTRODUCTION At 7:30 P.M., on July 18, 1922, "This is WHAS, the radio-telephone broadcasting station of the Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times in Louisville, Kentucky" ripped through the hot, humid Ohio Valley air establishing station WHAS as the first major broadcasting station for Kentucky, Indiana - indeed as one of the first stations for a significant portion of the Midwestern United States and beyond. Perched atop the newspaper offices of the Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, in the Fireproof Storage Company building at the comer of Third and Liberty Streets, WHAS's founder, Robert Worth Bingham, envisioned the station reaching "the farthest confines of the state, where a man can string an aerial from his cabin to the nearest pine tree, and setting before the fire, have a pew in church, a seat at the opera, or a desk at the university." I In rising to meet these expectations however -- as many radio stations that survived the tumultuous decade of the 1920s would -- WHAS struggled with what radio historian David Goodman calls "the endemic creative tension between American radio's entertainment and its educational and civic purposes." Goodman's work attempts a counter-narrative of the development of the American system of broadcasting arguing 1 Quoted in Francis M. Nash, Towers Over Kentucky: A History ofRadio and Television in the Bluegrass State (Lexington: Host Communications, Inc., 1995), 13-14. Nash's work does not include a bibliography and this author's research has not revealed the original source of the quote. It appears in variation throughout decades of Courier-Journal coverage however, never in this exact order. 1 that radio, in particular radio in the United States, had a "civic legitimation and a commercial function, which meant it was always attempting to change ideas and behavior, striving to create active and informed listeners, as well as to entertain.,,2 By the end of the decade, this tension had increased with the development of the national networks whose corporately-sponsored syndicated programs exploited the medium's commercial potential to the detriment of its unique ability to educate and inform. American intellectuals feared syndicated programming would produce "a mass society - homogenized and centralized with little regard for individuals.,,3 These fears compounded in the face of emerging cross-media conglomerates which invoked suspicions of monopoly over the control and distribution of information. Media historian Michael Stamm argues that newspapers, such as Louisville's Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, entered into radio broadcasting to "create a new kind of media corporation that utilized multiple media to circulate information and generate profits." Going further, Stamm states those "multimedia corporations were central to the legal and political processes structuring the American public sphere in the twentieth century.,,4 With the realization of its immense profitability in the 1930s, the dilution of radio broadcasting in the United States from a civic-minded tool of cultural uplift to an outlet of entertainment was complete. In light of the above observations this work argues that, while a component of a regional media empire caught up in the heady early idealism of radio, station WHAS 2 David Goodman, Radio's Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), xv. 3 Bruce Lenthall, "Critical Reception: Public Intellectuals Decry Depression-era Radio, Mass Culture, and Modern America," in Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History ofRadio, ed. Michelle Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (New York: Routledge, 2002),41. 4 Michael Stamm, Sound Business: Newspapers, Radio, and the Politics of New Media (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 3. 2 made a valiant effort to maintain a civic responsibility to its listeners as radio evolved from utopian utility to a viable and lucrative commercial business. This work demonstrates that despite operation under the flagship newspapers of the Bingham empire, WHAS grew as its own separate entity under the exclusive supervision and guidance of original station manager, Credo Harris, and how such esteemed ownership and management ensured WHAS emerged on the other end of radio broadcasting's turbulent first decade. As a testament to the Bingham family's commitment to public service, not only did the family publishing fortune guarantee WHAS's survival, it promised a continual source of financial reinvestment in the medium's rapidly developing technology, even in the face of recurrent monetary losses. This commitment enabled increases in transmitting power, better facilities, and equipment which allowed the station to reach beyond Kentucky's farthest confines and serve broad swaths of a diverse listenership. Finally, this work suggests that through its 1927 affiliation with the National