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WENR, "The The Voice of Service"
Chicago Radio Broadcasting Station 1924-1954
Bruce Eastmond with Karen Fishman and Suzanne Adamko
fewer budget restraints, and more restrictions against commercial sponsorship."
- Paul McCluer, former WENR announcer and donor of the WENR-KYW Scrapbook Collection.
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INTRODUCTION
"There is a history in all men's lives." - Shakespeare: King Henry IV
Try to imagine time turned back not quite a century; a time that you may know about only through stories told by parents or grandparents, books with yellowed pages, and black and white photographs. When viewed from the vantage point of today, this seems to be an ancient time, with simple lifestyles not yet touched by labor-saving appliances, atomic energy, sprawling suburbs, interstate highways, television, space travel, cellphones, CD players, personal computers, and the Internet. In this context, the transmission of voices and music through the air was considered by the general public to be nothing short of miraculous.
Much of the US population, especially in the Midwest area of the country, lived in rural areas and experienced the autonomy, hard work, and isolation of the family farm. Chicago, the commercial capitol of the region, was becoming wealthy and vibrant as it reaped the benefits of its strategic position as the land and water hub of a rapidly expanding country and its population swelled with an influx of European immigrants and fortune seekers from the farmlands. This was the Chicago of Carl Sandburg,
"Hog Butcher for the World,
Toolmaker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders..."
and the setting in which the story of the rise and decline of WENR, one of America's premier early radio broadcasting stations, begins.
References and Resources from this article
An Overview of Radio's Roots
E.N. Rauland's Vision
Samuel Insull Builds To Last
Nothing Lasts Forever