Public broadcasting wasn’t some grand plan that just happened. Josh Shepperd traces the setbacks, minor victories and hard work that had to take place before the experiment that is public broadcasting took shape.

His book, “Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting,” identifies the universities that built the first educational program networks in the 1930s.

You learn, for example, that Carl Menzer served as engineer, announcer and station manager at the University of Iowa radio station in Iowa City in those early days. He was also a one-man show on the air, willing to go to great lengths to meet federal criteria for a full broadcast day, said Shepperd. “To meet requirements for on-air programming, Menzer took to playing his violin for hours on end over the air,” said Shepperd.

Later Menzer got the idea of having other Big 10 schools supply programming that the stations could trade with one another, later to be known as the “bicycle network” as programs were "pedaled" between stations. Between the 1930s and late 1940s, Menzer was responsible for exploring different ways to relay and exchange information between radio stations. He also helped found the University of Iowa’s TV station.

While NPR has soared in recent years as the driving news force on radio, radio was only penciled in at the last second when Washington passed legislation that led to establishing public broadcasting networks in this country. Shepperd noted that originally the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 only mentioned television. The word “television” was crossed out and replaced by ”broadcasting” on the original bill, said Shepperd.