Radio Digest (July 1924-Apr 1925)

urn December 20, 1924 RADIO DIGES T— Illustrated WCBD— "Where God Rules Man Prospers9* " — : v ■■■■■■■■:■ ■:■.■':. :■..■/ :;■■:-:■;: ■'/'■.■.■■..■■ ill Wilbur Glenn V o 1 1 va , general overseer of Christian Catholic Apostolic church, leavingStation WCBD, which is owned by this sect. Interior of control room, showing operator at control board. This station will install a higli power transmitter, which will soon be heard. It will be one of the first of the 5KW type. ON THE shores of Lake Michigan midway between Chicago and Milwaukee two steel antenna towers stand above the city of Zion, founded by the late Dr. John Alexander Dowie. It is the home of Station WCBD. During the vicissitudes of its existence, this city has had many opportunities for service, but none have been greater than that afforded by employing Radio broadcasting to send forth the Gospel in word and song. The station occupies the geographical center of the city of Zion, which is laid out with eight boulevards diverging from the center and running to the limits of the city. Visitors are received every day in the year at both the Radio building and Shiloh Tabernacle, and are shown about by courteous guides. In. order to facilitate the broadcasting from Shiloh Tabernacle, which is contiguous to the station, a sound proof control booth for the announcer was placed in the rear of the Tabernacle, where the speaker's platform, choir, band and orchestra leaders and organists can easily be seen. A system of signal lights have been installed to enable intelligent control of the eight microphones operated from this booth. It is quite probable that many persons in the great invisible audience that listen to WCBD do not know of the painstaking care taken to provide the citizens of Zion with musical culture. All branches of music and the theory of composition are taught by a staff of competent teachers. Tuition is free, and at the present time, more than eight hundred students are enrolled. It is no easy task to prepare programs that will give pleasure to a host of invisible listeners, but WCBD seems to have been singularly successful in so doing — judging by the letters received. ^ The programs are made up of numbers by the Zion Junior choir of mixed voices of 150 children ranging from 8 to 12 years of age, Zion Male choir of 40 voices, Zion Women's choir of 20 voices, Zion band of SO pieces, Zion orchestra of 40 pieces, and the Zion White-robed choir of 500 voices. It is said that this choir is the largest that sings regularly every Sunday. In Roosevelt hall in the State Lake building, Chicago, Illinois, the Sunday services broadcast from Shiloh Tabernacle by WCBD are picked up by a receiver and then by means of a loud speaker the voice of Wilbur Glenn Voliva and the Zion organ recital with all its exquisite modulations penetrate to the most remote corner of the room where some Sundays as many as 300 persons assemble. That this is but one of the many gatherings of groups who tune in on WCBD when that station is on the air is evidenced by a daily average of 125 letters received from far and near from lonely farms, and lumber camps, from the shutins isolated by sickness and from fans in all sections of the country. "In these letters," says J. H. Depew, manager of the station, "we cannot but find encouragement and fresh impulse. They inspire the resolution to make the programs broadcast by WCBD even more worthy of the praise which has been showered upon us."