A decade of True Don Bleu airchecks

has been up on Tom Gavaras' Radiotapes.com for almost a month now. Don't be like me and take forever to enjoy them ... tune in now!

The Cedric Adams Video

Inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2002, Cedric Adams was an icon of radio, television, and print. Now, at last, we have a video that gives some sense of just how important he was to this community.

Network Ratings, by Minnesota Hall of Fame member, Jim Ramsburg

There was a time when most Americans knew Marie Wilson and Alan Reed of My Friend Irma, Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll, (Amos & Andy), and Fred Allen with his political pal from Allen's Alley, Kenny Delmar as Senator Beauregard Claghorn.  If they weren't known on sight, they were certainly known by their voices to millions of radio listeners.

It was a fascinating period in our culture when just four radio networks - connected by telephone lines to their hundreds of affiliated stations from coast to coast - dominated American media to a greater degree than any other concerted force ever had - or ever will again.

Jim's book, Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953, is an almanac of that period and offers a new perspective to fans of Radio's "Golden Age" and students of broadcasting history.  Bookseller www.amazon.com provides a  "Look Inside" preview on its page devoted to the book.   

The Trashmen in London
After all these years the Trashmen finally made it to the U.K. on April 7, 2012. Here's our favorite London correspondent, Tom Rivers, with the interview.

Steve Cannon 

The Cannon Tapes
As many of you may know, Steve Cannon and Tommy Mischke became good friends during Steve’s final years.  But we were all surprised when Tommy dropped off a cache of more than 100 reel-to-reel tapes of the Great One a while back.

Tom Gavaras has been transcribing and posting them to his site, RadioTapes.com, where you can now hear highlights of Steve’s career from WLOL-AM in the late 1950s, KSTP-AM throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, and WCCO-AM in the mid 1980s.   We will post links as more tapes are released.

Thanks to T.D. Mischke and Tom Gavaras for all their work preserving and sharing some of the great moments in broadcast history.

Twin Cities Television Chronology
Eight Decades of Twin Cities Television History  

The Twin Cities Television Chronology has been a work-in-progress for several years now. It is finally good enough to share with you. Thanks to Tom Oszman and his TCMediaNow site, we will be adding updates and material on a weekly basis ... stay tuned!

Pirate Radio!

Tom Rivers, radio correspondent for ABC News London Bureau, visited us a while back and brought along a couple compatriots from his pirate radio days in the 1960s. Here's the true story of one of the most exciting chapters in radio history.

Philco 95

The Philco 95 was the first radio on the market with diode AVC.
Here's our review of one that was recently donated and rebuilt.