A Detroit station airs what’s considered the first radio news broadcast: coverage of primary elections.
Radio’s commercial prospects were still unappreciated, as wireless was considered primarily a “narrowcast” point-to-point medium (see here). The few radio shows were mostly music, created and operated by radio-set manufacturers to drum up business: “software” driving sales of “hardware.” The Detroit News knew radio could also outrace newspapers in getting news to the public and could threaten their market dominance. It wanted in.
In a move that foreshadowed the computer age, the paper hired a teenager to build its setup and explain it to staff. It even instructed underage radio pioneer Michael Lyons to obtain government permission for the station in his own name, even though the station was conceived of, owned, and operated by the Detroit News and assembled in the newspaper building itself.
Lyons got permission to broadcast on August 20. He played music for ten days to work out the kinks. Station 8MK was poised to make history. The next day’s Detroit News trumpeted the achievement:
The sending of the election returns by The Detroit News’ radiophone Tuesday night was fraught with romance and must go down in the history of man’s conquest of the elements as a gigantic step in his progress. In the four hours that the apparatus, set up in an out-of-the-way corner of The News Building, was hissing and whirring its message into space, few realized that a dream and a prediction had come true. The news of the world was being given forth through this invisible trumpet to the waiting crowds in the unseen market place.
Station 8MK is now WWJ: all-news radio. You can listen to it live, on the Internet, 24-7.—JCA