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Podcast: Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting
Episode: BW - EP131—004: Orson Welles Is The Shadow—WOR And Network Radio In The Fall Of 1937
Description: The voice at the top of this clip is that of former WOR chief engineer Jack Poppele. The station went online on February 22nd, 1922.
In 1934, WOR became one of the flagship stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System. The next March, Poppele was chiefly responsible for the creation of radio’s first directional antenna just as WOR increased its power to fifty-thousand watts.
In December of 1936, Don Lee’s west coast chain of networks joined Mutual, giving it coast-to-coast access. But in the fall of 1937 The Mutual Broadcasting System had no top-fifty rated shows.
Seventy-four percent of the U.S. population now...