Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing the New Years Around the World program
Jeff: In our program here in Wavescan last week, we presented the story of Christmas Radio; that is, the story of interesting and important radio events that took place throughout the years on Christmas Day, December 25. Today here in Wavescan, we follow a similar theme; and on this occasion, we present interesting and important radio events that took place on New Year's Day, January 1, throughout the years. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Let's start by taking a look at the story of New Year's Day itself, going back to ancient Roman history and the year 46 BC. According to the encyclopedias, it was Julius Caesar who that year made some important changes to the previous lunar calendar, in order to synchronize it better with the solar year. Some months were changed and renamed, though the regular rotation of the seven day weekly cycle was not interrupted. His new annual calendar is identified these days as the Julian Calendar.
It was Julius Caesar who introduced January 1 as the first day of each New Year, with which we are quite familiar today. However, during the Middle Ages, several countries in Europe were observing different dates as New Year's Day, including March 25, as the beginning of Spring. By this time, the annual calendar was well out of step with the annual rotation of the year, and so Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar, now known as the Gregorian Calendar, in the year 1582. Some of the months were changed and renamed, though again, the weekly cycle of seven days remained unchanged. Once more, January 1 was recommended to be the beginning of the New Year. Nearly 200 years later, in 1752, January 1 was formally adopted in England and in the American colonies as New Year's Day.
On New Year's Day 1902, and was a very important day. This was the first occasion upon which both speech and music were intentionally transmitted in a large public demonstration. On this occasion, the controversial Nathan B. Stubblefield demonstrated the transmission of music and voice from one central location near the courthouse in Murray, Kentucky to five nearby receivers. It is thought that this demonstration may have utilized ground conduction, though indeed it was a wireless transmission. In 1948, a commercial radio station was inaugurated in Murray, and it was named in honor of Stubblefield with his initials; station WNBS, with 1 kW on 1340 kHz.
Exactly 20 years later to the very day, that is, on January 1, 1922, the Department of Commerce issued a list of current medium wave stations on the air in the United States, all 28 of them. On January 1, 1926, the first radio broadcasting station in Ireland was inaugurated, with 1.5 kW on 790 kHz. This station was launched under the callsign 2RN, very close to the Irish pronunciation of Eireann, the Gaelic name for Ireland.
The studios for this new station were located in Little Denmark Street, Dublin, and the transmitter was at the McKee Army barracks, out near Phoenix Park. Two years later, on January 1, 1928, radio broadcasting in Holland was inaugurated under the AVRO concept, a program-producing organization that was aired over the existing radio broadcasting system. This is the same system used to this day, with about a dozen program-producing organizations on the air over the Dutch national public service network of stations on medium wave and FM.
During 1938, the BBC in London introduced two new foreign language services into its international radio programming. The first of these was Arabic which went on the air on January 3, and the second was German which was inaugurated on March 29. Some nine years later, on January 1, 1947, all of the foreign language services in the international medium wave and shortwave programming from the BBC were amalgamated into the General Overseas Service. During the past 100 or so years, three different radio stations located in Winnipeg, Manitoba have been on the air under the same Canadian callsign, CKY. The second of these stations, a commercial enterprise, was inaugurated on New Year's Day 1950, with 5 kW on 580 kHz.
Then there was Europe No. 1 which was launched on New Year's Day, 1955. This station was located in the Saar, a German state bordering France and it was established to provide commercial radio coverage over France. This station broadcast on longwave with 400 kW on 182 kHz, and I can attest that even in the west of France along the Bay of Biscay, reception was very strong during the daytime. Like the commercial longwave service of Radio Luxembourg at the time, Europe No. 1 broadcast only in French.
We could think also of the radio scene in what was in earlier times in British Malaya. On New Year's Day 1959, the country split into two different entities, Malaysia and Singapore. The radio station in Singapore became Radio Singapore, and the radio station in Kuala Lumpur, on that same date, became Radio Malaysia.
In the post-war years, the radio scene in Nigeria consisted mainly of independent radio stations in the major cities during an era of turmoil and war; but on January 1, 1952, the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria assumed control of all radio stations throughout the country. On New Year's Day in 1971, cigarette advertising was banned on radio and television in the United States.
It had been banned on UK television since August 1, 1965, but tobacco companies quickly found a profitable way around that by advertising on offshore radio stations instead. But, I was surprised on a trip to Gibraltar in 1981 to find very old American TV cigarette adverts still being carried by GBC TV, so I guess it took awhile for such prohibitions to be enacted around the world.
In the late 60’s and in the 1970’s, I was an avid listener to the international service of Radio Sweden, in particular Sweden Calling DXers on Tuesdays, and at the weekends, The Radio Sweden Saturday Show and The Pops. The Saturday Show, featuring Roger Wallis and Kim Loughran, was always rather zany, and at the end of 1977, this was part of their discussion about New Year’s resolutions for 1978.
On the island of Taiwan, a new international service was introduced in 1979 with transmissions on 621 kHz medium wave at 500 kW, and on 5980 kHz shortwave. Over on the mainland, on New Year's Day, 1993, Radio Beijing became China Radio International.
And finally, a European country was divided into two entities, also on New Year's Day, 1993. Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Thus, Radio Slovakia became a new and separate entity on that date. At the beginning of the next year, 1994, Adventist World Radio began using a relay from the large shortwave station located at Rimavska Sobota in Slovakia, ultimately expanding usage to all four transmitters there. The 250 kW transmitter designated RS09 at Rimavska Sobota gave remarkably wide coverage to AWR programming.
There are probably more radio events that took place on various New Year’s Days, and if you know of another one – why not let us know? Just email wavescan@yahoo.com. But there you have it, the story of quite a few interesting and important radio events that took place around our world on New Year's Day.
(Wavescan)
