Education by Radio (1933)

with private interests. Its university station WHA started telephone broadcasts in the fall of 1920, the same fall in which the first privately-owned telephone station, KDKA, started its broadcasts. For the decade following 1920, the annual budgets for the operation of WHA were extremely meager, and the construction and continued operation of WHA were possible only because of the vision, devotion, and determi¬ nation of the late Earle M. Terry, his student assistants and operators, and those members of the faculty and community who furnished the programs. WHA is heralded as the world’s first educational radio station. The radio broadcasting station WLBL of the department of agriculture and markets was first licensed for the broad¬ casting of market and agricultural information in 1922. The transmitter was originally located at Waupaca but in 1924 was moved to Stevens Point. Neither of these state stations has ever sold time for ad¬ vertising, yet both have pioneered in a number of state services. Under the Kohler and La Follette administrations — The two state stations WHA and WLBL are limited to opera¬ tion during daylight hours. The development of these stations and the state service they render, to such a high plane that the state might obtain the license to a cleared high-powered channel to which Wisconsin is entitled under the Radio Act, was strongly fostered during the administrations of Governors Kohler and La Follette. As the first step toward obtaining a cleared channel station for serving the public interests of the state of Wisconsin, the regents of the university and the commissioners of the depart¬ ment of agriculture and markets in January 1930, authorized consolidation of the two stations into a single higher-powered station to be located as centrally as the operating funds would permit. The regents voted funds to construct a 5-kilowatt station provided other state departments using the radio facili¬ ties to broadcast educational and informational material would join in meeting the greater operating expenses of a higher-powered rurally-located transmitter. In consultation with Governor Kohler and the budget director the following departments pledged funds for the operating budget: University of Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and Markets State Board of Health State Department of Education State Highway Commission Conservation Commission Accordingly, in April 1930, Governor Kohler signed a joint application from the regents and the commissioners of the department of agriculture and markets to the Federal Radio Commission for a license to consolidate the two state stations WHA and WLBL into a single 5-kilowatt station to be located on the state farm at Hancock, some 70 miles north of Madison and 25 miles south of Stevens Point. While negotiations were pending with the Radio Commis¬ sion in Washington, the editor of the Capital Times, which at that time owned and operated the Madison station WIBA, called up the chairman of the Wisconsin congressional repre¬ sentatives in Washington opposing the granting of the license. The congressional representative of the Stevens Point dis¬ trict saw members of the Federal Radio Commission and opposed the granting of a license for the consolidated station for any location save Stevens Point. To eliminate the political opposition from Stevens Point, the pledge of $2500 additional operating funds per annum was obtained and the application was amended to locate the station at Stevens Point instead of Hancock. Partly as a result of this opposition, the Federal Radio Commission held the state’s application under advisement from April until June and then set the date for a formal hear¬ ing for November 1930; and finally in June 1931, some four¬ teen months after the filing of the joint application, it denied the application. The strongest ground for the denial of the application was that the applicants [for lack of funds] had not made full use of the facilities already granted by the Commission. While the application was pending before the Federal Radio Commission, Governor La Follette succeeded Governor Kohler, and in the preparation of the university budget, which was submitted to the legislature in January 1931, provision for the operation of radio station WHA was omitted from the university budget with the definite understanding that a sepa¬ rate bill carrying an appropriation would make provision for the operating expense of the prospective consolidated 5-kilo¬ watt state station. The legislature adjourned before the Com¬ mission reached its adverse decision, with the result that the regents of the university found it necessary to continue the operation of WHA during the greater part of the fiscal year 1931-32 from the “Regents Unassigned” fund. At this point the Federal Radio Commission issued several new general orders requiring among other things more con¬ tinuous operation of its licensees. This made it necessary to remove the transmitter of WHA from its location on the top of the physics building on the university campus to a rural location to avoid interference with the electrical researches carried on in that building. When the situation was presented to the emergency board consisting of Governor La Follette and the Chairmen Mueller and Beggs of the finance committees of the senate and house, the board released moneys appropriated by the legislature of 1927 for radio towers, provided funds to move the transmitter to a rural location and to increase its power from 500 watts to 1000 watts, and also provided funds for the operation of the rebuilt station WHA during the fiscal year 1932-33. As a result of this support, the state of Wisconsin possesses in WHA, a 1 -kilowatt radio station equal to any 1 -kilowatt transmitter in the state, built at a cost to the state of $15,000. This is only 40 percent of the cost of a 1 -kilowatt transmitter as given in the “Report of the Advisory Committee on Engi¬ neering Developments of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education.” At about this same time plans to add additional stories to the Hotel Whiting in Stevens Point made it necessary to move the towers and transmitter of WLBL from the roof of this hotel. As a further step in the building up of the state’s radio facilities, Governor La Follette approved plans by the com¬ missioners of the department of agriculture and markets to rebuild this transmitter for the increased power of two kilo¬ watts on a rural location, and to provide it with leased wire [ 38 1