The John Hour refers to the public naming of "johns" (male customers of female prostitutes).
In October 1979, New York City mayor Ed Koch instructed WNYC, the city's public radio station, to read the names of convicted "johns". Koch intended to use this public shaming, swiftly dubbed "The John Hour", as a tool to reduce prostitution.
The first John Hour was broadcast on WNYC on October 23, 1979, read by announcer Joe Rice; it was also read on WMCA and published in the New York Daily News . [1] An uproar ensued. On October 26, The New York Times editorialized:
"This week's premiere of Mayor Koch's 'John Hour,' which broadcast the names of nine convicted customers of prostitutes, was a shabby show, in no way redeemed by its brevity. It took only about a minute for city-employed announcers to read the names over city-owned radio and television stations. But it was a mighty misuse of government power." [2]
After one broadcast, "The John Hour" was discontinued. [3]
In March 2008, New York governor Eliot Spitzer was exposed as a customer of a high-priced prostitution ring. In the wake of this scandal, Koch advocated reinstating "The John Hour". [2]
"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938 over the CBS Radio Network. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, though the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners.
Nevada is the only U.S. state where prostitution is legally permitted in some form. Prostitution is legal in 10 of Nevada's 17 counties, although only six allow it in every municipality. Six counties have at least one active brothel, which mainly operate in isolated, rural areas. The state's most populated counties, Clark and Washoe, are among those that do not permit prostitution. It is also illegal in Nevada's capital, Carson City, an independent city.
WPXN-TV is a television station in New York City, serving as the local Ion Television outlet. Owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains offices on Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and transmits from atop One World Trade Center.
Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States.
Whad'Ya Know? is an American comedy, interview, and quiz radio show. Hosted by Michael Feldman, it was created in 1985. During its radio run, it was produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed through Public Radio International. Feldman is accompanied on-stage by Lyle Anderson, phone-answerer; and the Whad'ya Know Trio with John Thulin on piano, Jeff Hamann on bass, and, on road shows, Clyde Stubblefield on drums. Jeffry Eckels was the original full-time bass player from 1987 to 2003. Feldman was also accompanied by Jim Packard as announcer from the show's beginning until his death following the June 9, 2012, show from New York City. Sara Nics was the show's announcer from October 13, 2012 to March 28, 2015. Stephanie Lee became the show's announcer in August 2015. The show was broadcast live with an audience from Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin. Periodically, the show was taken on the road and broadcast from various other locations across the United States. The show was broadcast weekly, each Saturday at 10:00 AM CT (UTC-6) for two hours, and repeated throughout the week by syndication. Since the beginning of 2009, the entire show has also been available over the Internet as a podcast. The show aired its final WPR/PRI radio broadcast on June 25, 2016, with prior episodes archived on the show's website. Starting in the fall of 2016, Whad'ya Know became available as a podcast.
Brian Lehrer is an American radio talk show host on New York City's public radio station WNYC. His daily two-hour 2007 Peabody Award-winning program, The Brian Lehrer Show, features interviews with newsmakers and experts about current events and social issues. Lehrer was formerly an anchor and reporter for NBC Radio Networks and has been in broadcast journalism for over 30 years.
WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that did business as "WNYC RADIO" until March 2013.
Sydney Biddle Barrows is an American businesswoman and socialite who became known as an escort agency owner under the name Sheila Devin; she later became known as "The Mayflower Madam". She has since become a management consultant and writer.
Fred Child is an American radio host. Since 2000, he has been the host of the classical music radio program Performance Today on American Public Media. He is also the announcer and commentator for the PBS program Live from Lincoln Center.
WFUV is a non–commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York. The station is owned by Fordham University, with studios on its Bronx campus and its antenna atop the nearby Montefiore Medical Center. WFUV first went on the air in 1947. It became a professional public radio station in 1990 and is one of three NPR member stations in New York City. Its on-air staff has included radio veterans Dennis Elsas, Vin Scelsa, Pete Fornatale, and Rita Houston.
CNA938 is an English radio station of Mediacorp in Singapore. Since mid-2019, the station runs as the complementary to its parent television counterpart in line with the latter's 20th anniversary. CNA938 broadcasts news and talk programmes from 06:00 to 23:59 SST daily, followed by an audio simulcast of CNA during overnight hours. CNA938 was officially similar and related to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service based in London and the New York Public Radio's WNYC-AM and WNYC-FM based in Manhattan, New York City.
WKCR-FM is a radio station licensed to New York, New York, United States. The station is owned by Columbia University and serves the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1941, the station traces its history back to 1908 with the first operations of the Columbia University Radio Club (CURC). In 1956, it became one of the first college radio stations to adopt FM broadcasting, which had been invented two decades earlier by Professor Edwin Howard Armstrong. The station was preceded by student involvement in W2XMN, an experimental FM station founded by Armstrong, for which the CURC provided programming. Originally an education-focused station, since the Columbia University protests of 1968, WKCR-FM has shifted its focus towards alternative musical programming, with an emphasis on jazz, classical, and hip hop.
New York Public Radio (NYPR) is the owner of WNYC (AM), WNYC-FM, WNYC Studios, WQXR-FM, New Jersey Public Radio, Gothamist, and the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. Combined, New York Public Radio owns WNYC (AM), WNYC-FM, WQXR-FM, WQXW, WNJT-FM, WNJP, WNJY, and WNJO.
Radiolab is a radio program and podcast produced by WNYC, a public radio station based in New York City, and broadcast on more than 570 public radio stations in the United States. The show has earned many industry awards for its "imaginative use of radio" including a National Academies Communication Award and two Peabody Awards.
WNYC-FM (93.9 MHz) is a non-profit, non-commercial, public radio station licensed to New York City. It is owned by New York Public Radio along with WNYC (AM), Newark, New Jersey-licensed classical music outlet WQXR-FM (105.9 MHz), New Jersey Public Radio, and the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. New York Public Radio is a not-for-profit corporation, incorporated in 1979, and is publicly supported through membership, development and sponsorship. The station broadcasts from studios and offices located in the Hudson Square neighborhood in lower Manhattan. WNYC-FM's transmitter is located at the Empire State Building. The station serves the New York metropolitan area.
WNYC is a nonprofit, non-commercial, public radio station licensed to New York, New York. The station is owned by New York Public Radio along with sister stations WNYC-FM and Newark, New Jersey–licensed classical music outlet WQXR-FM (105.9 MHz). It is a member of NPR and carries local and national news/talk programs. Some programming is simulcast on WNYC-FM and at other times different programming airs on each station.
The Takeaway was a weekday radio news program co-created and co-produced by Public Radio International and WNYC. Its editorial partner was GBH; at launch the BBC World Service and The New York Times were also editorial partners. In addition to co-producing the program, PRX also distributed the program nationwide to its affiliated stations. The program debuted on WNYC in New York, WGBH in Boston, and WEAA in Baltimore. At time of its last broadcast, the program had approximately 241 carrying stations across the country, including markets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Portland, Boston, and more.
Thomas H. Cowan was a 20th-century radio announcer, one of the first to broadcast from Newark radio station WJZ. He became known for his role in doing the play-by-play of the first Baseball World Series game to be broadcast, on October 5, 1921. (Evidence suggests he recreated the game from the WJZ studio, rather than doing live play-by-play from the ballpark. He became the chief announcer for the country's first city owned and non-commercial radio station in the United States, New York City’s WNYC, from its first broadcast in 1925. Throughout the years he was the announcer “for the myriad of parades, receptions and celebrations from the 1920s through the 1950s, especially early on when athletes and aviators came to town after making or breaking world records.” Since his career in radio spanned 40 years until his retirement in 1961 at age 77, he was the oldest active announcer in the radio community at the time.
Tony Marvin was an American radio and television announcer. He became a staff announcer for CBS, and later became most known as the long-time announcer for Arthur Godfrey.
WNYC Transmitter Park is a 6.61-acre public park located in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, where Greenpoint Avenue meets the East River shoreline. The site was acquired by the public radio station WNYC in 1935 as the site of twin antennas used for broadcasting. From 1937 to 1990, the city-operated station broadcast its AM signal from this location. Following the adoption of antennas in Kearny, New Jersey and atop the World Trade Center, the Greenpoint property sat unused. Construction on WNYC Transmitter Park began in August 2010 and the park opened two years later in September 2012.