By Rebecca Toov
You are listening to U of M Radio on your Historic Dial!
From 1938-1979, the Minnesota School of the Air brought educational programs into the classrooms of Minnesota and beyond over radio airwaves and through tape transcription. During the 1977-1978 season, School of the Air produced a series of radio “field trips” called Look What We Found, a program that introduced students to people and places in Minnesota. Join us this season as we revisit these radio field trips. Today’s episode takes listeners another way to go from Minneapolis to St. Paul!
Season 2: Episode 3. Another Way to Go From Minneapolis to St. Paul
You are listening to U of M Radio on your Historic Dial podcast. Welcome to Season 2: Episode 3.
Hi, this is Rebecca from University Archives. Today’s field trip in sound on the program “Look What We Found” is more of a staycation. On the November 17, 1977 episode, program announcers Walter, Patty, and Bill, gave a tour of the KUOM radio studios and interviewed the staff at the station. The title of the program, “Another Way to Go From Minneapolis to St. Paul,” notes that the radio station is in more than one place: the studio, in Rarig Center on the West Bank campus in Minneapolis, and the transmitter located on the St. Paul campus.
Before we listen to a guided tour of KUOM studios in Rarig Center in 1977, let’s look back at some other places on campus where KUOM was once located. As early as 1912, Electrical Engineering professor Franklin Springer began experimenting with wireless telegraphy, and by 1914 the department was offering coursework in radio transmission and operation. When Cyril M. Jansky, Jr. joined the department in 1920, he applied for an experimental license and began limited broadcasting under the call letters 9XI. On January 13, 1922, the department received a non-commercial radio broadcast license and was assigned the call letters WLB. After a new Electrical Engineering Building was built on campus in 1925, the department outfitted the building with a radio studio where broadcasting continued in the spring of 1926.
The April 17, 1926 edition of the Minnesota Alumni Weekly featured a description of the studio in the article, “U Has Complete Radio Plant.” The article stated that “The station has been under construction for some time, and consists of one room on the third floor of the Engineering building, fully equipped with a transmitter, microphone, and acoustical material. The walls are deadened and hung with heavy curtains. Wicker furniture and a grand piano are placed at the convenience of entertainers.”
In 1938, the University purchased a new transmitter that was erected on the St. Paul campus. A new home for the radio studio was made in Eddy Hall in 1939.
The University publication Minnesota Chats featured an article about the studio in Eddy on May 2, 1939 titled, “University Radio Station Busy in New Home.” The article stated, “The layout contains four studios for broadcasting, two of them large enough to accommodate casts of considerable size in dramatic or musical numbers, a main control room, a smaller control room adjoining the largest studio, ample office space, and air conditioning equipment made necessary by the fact that the quarters must be kept closed to eliminate outside disturbances.”
Radio station WLB – which changed the call letters to KUOM for K University of Minnesota in 1945 – operated from Eddy Hall from 1939 to 1974 when it moved into new studios in Rarig Center.
Okay, now that we are all caught up on the history of KUOM locations at the University we can return to 1977 to Rarig Center for the November 17, 1977 episode of Look What We Found, titled “Another Way to Go From Minneapolis to St. Paul.”
Broadcast Transcript
[Music]
Various voices: It’s fabulous! [unintelligible] I don’t know.
