Book Smart

Randall Davidson and the rest of his sixth-grade class regularly warbled along with Norman Clayton and Lois Dick, hosts of WHA’s weekly “Let’s Sing” radio program.

Today he is a state news anchor on that very station for “All Things Considered” and other Wisconsin Public Radio programs. Something of a history buff, Davidson started almost immediately upon his arrival at the station in 1990 to riffle through its past, which dates to 1916.

A plaque outside Vilas Hall, the station’s current headquarters, notes that it is the oldest continuing service broadcaster in the country. Beginning as 9XM (the title of the book refers to the way early announcers identified the station), WHA and Wisconsin Public Radio always have reflected the Wisconsin Idea in perhaps its purest form. The first broadcasts, Davidson says, were weather reports and farm market information, compiled by university specialists and initially sent in Morse code. Even the equipment came homemade from university laboratories.

In 1931 the station developed the School of the Air series, radio courses designed for K-12 classroom use, such as Davidson’s “Let’s Sing” memory. Originated by Edgar B. “Pops” Gordon of UW Extension, the program began its tenure as “Journeys in Music Land.”

One of the station’s most popular School of the Air offerings turned out to be an art program. “Let’s Draw” signed on in the 1930s and continued into the 1970s. When WHA television debuted in 1954, a move was made to switch “Let’s Draw” to TV.

Lectures by UW professors brought higher education to radio audiences via the “Wisconsin College of the Air” series, inaugurated in 1933 and continuing as the Sunday Afternoon “University of the Air.” Listeners around the state could sit in on lectures on Russian history by the late Michael Petrovich or learn about world literature from Philo Buck, professor of comparative literature.

WHA looked to campus for on-air as well as academic talent. Harold B. McCarty, a graduate student in theater, became the midday announcer in 1929. He later became program director and station manager, serving until 1966.

McCarty also had a good deal of administrative vision, Davidson says. It was McCarty who pushed for the development of a statewide FM network, making broadcasts possible across the whole of Wisconsin.

Not surprisingly, McCarty’s papers, which Davidson found in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, proved invaluable in researching the book.

He also interviewed a number of interesting people.

“I talked to the son of the station’s first program director, who hung out with his dad at 9XM in 1921 and knew many of the early staffers,” he says. “I also had the chance to speak with Milton Bliss, who hosted the farm program between 1935-50 — he’s currently the oldest student enrolled at UW!”

Today, Wisconsin Public Radio includes 28 stations from Superior to Milwaukee. Eighteen concentrate on “issues and ideas,” predominantly through listener call-in programs; the rest focus on “news and classical music.” The network also broadcasts worldwide on the Internet.

Davidson hopes that his book provides lessons in overcoming difficulty as well as in history.

“The station came close to disappearing altogether on more than one occasion,” he says. “I would like readers to come to appreciate the struggles the station faced in its early years.”