Thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this week's program on Christmas Around the World events.
Christmas Radio:
Jeff: In many countries around the world, Wednesday this week, December 25, will be celebrated as Christmas Day. According to age old traditions, it is a day of family reunions and the giving of gifts, with a delightful family banquet and all of its special foods. It is a day when many Christian churches hold special services, often including special music with vocal solos and large choirs. It was on December 25, that the world-famous singer, the crooner of yesteryear Bing Crosby, first presented a song that hit the high spots in the music world. He sang for the first public occasion the hit song, White Christmas.
This event took place on NBC radio in the United States in a popular program series under the title "Kraft Music Hall." The year was 1941. And so, on this occasion, Ray Robinson in Los Angeles is taking a look at what else happened in the radio scene on December 25, throughout the years. Ray?
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Merry Christmas, everybody! Of course, the first-ever radio broadcast was made by the Canadian wireless inventor Reginald Fessenden on Christmas Eve 1906. But as far as Christmas Day is concerned, we can start way back in 1922 when radio broadcasting was still very new, and on Christmas Day in that year, medium wave station KGW in Portland, Oregon presented a special Christmas program featuring a local Boys Choir. However, on December 25 of the following year, 1923, the management of station KGW gave all employees the day off so that they could enjoy their own family events. At the time, station KGW was a low power operation at just 500 watts on the frequency 610 kHz. In 1937, this same station presented a very different Christmas program, in which they broadcast a series of more than 200 personal messages to isolated lighthouses and light ships scattered along the Oregon coastline. In 1941, on that very same day, KGW inaugurated a new 5 kW transmitter, and a new transmission tower, standing 625 feet tall.
In 1928, the BBC in London made its first round-the-world British Empire Christmas Broadcast. It was a program of Christmas Carols from Kings College at Cambridge University, and it was broadcast on shortwave for rebroadcast throughout the world, as well as by the famous medium wave station 2LO in London. The first royal broadcast was in 1932 when King George V read his Christmas Message from a temporary studio in one of the royal residences - Sandringham House in Norfolk. George agreed to deliver a Royal Christmas speech on the radio, an event that became an annual tradition thereafter, which has continued to this day. The king was not in favour of the innovation originally but was persuaded by the argument that it was what his people wanted. The broadcast from Sandringham was heard nationally in the UK, and also on the Empire Service of the BBC via shortwave transmitters at Daventry, and also via the Rugby station GBP.
It was unfortunate that the chair on which the king was seated collapsed during the broadcast, but somehow that endeared him all the more to his people.
By the Silver Jubilee of his reign in 1935, he had become a well-loved king, saying in response, "I cannot understand it, after all I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow. He suffered from chronic bronchitis, however, and was also a heavy smoker, and eventually, he succumbed to ill health in January 1936 at the age of 70. His son, King George VI, made his first Christmas Broadcast in 1937; and his granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II made hers in 1952. The first televised Christmas message was in 1957, and of course today it is carried on the Internet as well. The message has traditionally been written by the monarch personally, usually without input from staff, and if you want to catch King Charles III’s message this year, it is always broadcast at 1500 UTC.
Now, back in the year 1928, medium wave station 5CL in Adelaide, South Australia conducted a listener contest in December, and the winner was awarded an all-expenses paid summertime Christmas vacation on the island of Tasmania.
On Christmas Day 1931, two radio stations were officially inaugurated; one medium wave and one shortwave. The medium wave station was located in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, and it was launched with just 25 watts under the callsign 10AT. When the station changed to a commercial format soon afterwards, the callsign was changed to the more familiar CJAT. The shortwave station that was inaugurated on the same day in 1931 was the well-known Gospel station HCJB, ‘The Voice of the Andes’, on the outskirts of Quito, Ecuador, South America. The station had been founded by a musician graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, Clarence Wesley Jones, and the inaugural program was broadcast in English and Spanish from a studio in the Jones’ living room powered by a 200 watt tabletop transmitter operating on 50.26 meters, 5986 kHz. And from that small acorn, a mighty giant grew.
By the 1970’s, HCJB was one of the most powerful and most readily received shortwave stations in the world. The station ended its extensive worldwide shortwave transmissions on September 30, 2009, when its transmitter site at Pifo had to be dismantled to make way for Quito’s new airport. HCJB’s focus now is on ‘radio planting’, with over 350 local FM stations having been set up around the world. They do still broadcast on 6050 kHz but only with 1 kW through an antenna designed for coverage of Ecuador alone. In January 2003, HCJB Global began broadcasting on shortwave for Asia from Kununurra, on the north coast of Western Australia, and in 2014, the broadcast ministry changed its name to Reach Beyond.
Also on Christmas Day, 1931, the RCA shortwave communication station at Bolinas, California broadcast a special Christmas Program for relay across the Pacific. Four transmitters were in use for the occasion, and they were on the air under the callsigns KEL, KEV, KEZ and KWE.
During World War II in 1944, the new Radio Canada International made a special Christmas broadcast for Canadian troops serving in continental Europe. At the time, the new shortwave transmitter base at Sackville, New Brunswick was nearing completion, and one of the three RCA 50 kW transmitters was hurriedly pressed into temporary service for the occasion. Regular broadcasting from Sackville began a couple of months later, on February 25 in the following year 1945.
Also on Christmas Day, 1944, the inauguration took place of two radio stations in the Pacific. These were the shortwave station KRHO on land north of Honolulu in Hawaii, and the medium wave KRHO on board the ship Triton Maris in Honolulu harbor. The ship-board station was subsequently transferred to a landbased facility on the island of Saipan and given a new callsign, KSAI. On Christmas Day, 1958, Radio Lumiere in Haiti was inaugurated under the callsign 4VI. Today, Radio Lumiere still provides nationwide coverage throughout Haiti with three stations on medium wave at 660, 720 and 760 kHz, and on a network of local FM stations. Over in Australia, the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory was lashed by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day, 1974. Much of the city was destroyed, and the radio stations in the area were disabled. In fact when Darwin was subsequently rebuilt, it was given a new layout, and it became necessary for every building to contain a strong disaster shelter complete with all of life's necessities.
After the horror of the cyclone disaster subsided, local radio for Darwin was broadcast through a unique relay system on shortwave. The Radio Australia shortwave facility on the other side of the bay did not escape the disaster. The station was badly damaged, and recovery took many years. Then, due to financial and political pressures, Radio Australia’s transmissions from Darwin's Cox Peninsula were shut down in the late 1990’s.
We could talk about the two islands that are called Christmas Island, one in the Pacific and the other in the Indian Ocean, both of which were discovered and named on Christmas Day, though in different years. The so-named island in the Pacific was at one time on the air with a low-powered AFRS station under the callsign WVUU; and a station on the island in the Indian Ocean is on the air to this day under the callsign VLU2 on 1422 kHz medium wave carrying ABC Radio National 24x7.
That is all we have for the moment regarding Radio Events on Christmas Day, but I’ll be back in a few with the story of KWHR in Hawaii, which was also inaugurated on a Christmas Day. Back to you, Jeff.
Jeff: Thanks, Ray. Next week, Ray will have a similar feature looking at radio events that took place worldwide on New Year’s Day.
One of the longest running comedy series on domestic BBC Radio, broadcast from 1951 until 1960, was The Goon Show, with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. The show was also released internationally through the BBC Transcription Service, and was heard widely in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India and Canada, and in the United States it was carried on the NBC radio network from the mid-1950’s. The voice of Welshman Harry Secombe who played the character Neddie Seagoon is instantly recognizeable, and as well as an actor, he was a powerful singer. This is his rendition of the well-known Christmas hymn, Oh Holy Night.
