Music radio is a radio format in which music is the main broadcast content. After television replaced old time radio's dramatic content, music formats became dominant in many countries. Radio drama and comedy continue, often on public radio.
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz ; above the medium frequency band (MF), to the bottom of the VHF band.
The Golden Age of Radio, also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows.
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave transmissions, but also on the longwave and shortwave radio bands.
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum, in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began with AM radio, which came into popular use around 1920 with the spread of vacuum tube radio transmitters and receivers. Before this, most implementations of electronic communication were one-to-one, with the message intended for a single recipient. The term broadcasting evolved from its use as the agricultural method of sowing seeds in a field by casting them broadly about. It was later adopted for describing the widespread distribution of information by printed materials or by telegraph. Examples applying it to "one-to-many" radio transmissions of an individual station to multiple listeners appeared as early as 1898.
Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio station, while in satellite radio the radio waves are broadcast by a satellite in Earth orbit. To receive the content the listener must have a broadcast radio receiver (radio). Stations are often affiliated with a radio network that provides content in a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast, or both. The encoding of a radio broadcast depends on whether it uses an analog or digital signal. Analog radio broadcasts use one of two types of radio wave modulation: amplitude modulation for AM radio, or frequency modulation for FM radio. Newer, digital radio stations transmit in several different digital audio standards, such as DAB, HD radio, or DRM.
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The station has described itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music".
Aircheck is the radio industry term for a recording that has dual meanings: a demonstration to show off the talent of an announcer or programmer to a prospective employer, and an archival record of content broadcast over-the-air made for legal archiving purposes. With evolving technology, the term came to be applied in the television industry as well.
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Cambridgeshire.
BBC Radio Leeds is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of West Yorkshire.
Shortwave listening, or SWLing, is the hobby of listening to shortwave radio broadcasts located on frequencies between 1700 kHz and 30 MHz (30 000 kHz). Listeners range from casual users seeking international news and entertainment programming, to hobbyists immersed in the technical aspects of long-distance radio reception and sending and collecting official confirmations that document their reception of remote broadcasts (DXing). In some developing countries, shortwave listening enables remote communities to obtain regional programming traditionally provided by local medium wave AM broadcasters. In 2002, the number of households that were capable of shortwave listening was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
Shortwave broadcasting in the United States allows private ownership of commercial and non-commercial shortwave stations that are not relays of existing AM/MW or FM radio stations, as are common in Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania except Australia and Latin America. In addition to private broadcasters, the United States also has government broadcasters and relay stations for international public broadcasters. Most privately owned shortwave stations have been religious broadcasters, either wholly owned and programmed by Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant charities or offering brokered programming consisting primarily of religious broadcasters. To better reach other continents of the world, several stations are located in far-flung US territories. Shortwave stations in the US are not permitted to operate exclusively for a domestic audience; they are subject to antenna and power requirements to reach an international audience.
Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration of two loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.
Radio broadcasting has been used in the United States since the early 1920s to distribute news and entertainment to a national audience. In 1923, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver, while a majority did by 1931 and 75 percent did by 1937. It was the first electronic "mass medium" technology, and its introduction, along with the subsequent development of sound films, ended the print monopoly of mass media. During the Golden Age of Radio it had a major cultural and financial impact on the country. However, the rise of television broadcasting in the 1950s relegated radio to a secondary status, as much of its programming and audience shifted to the new "sight joined with sound" service.
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting that uses frequency modulation (FM) of the radio broadcast carrier wave. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to transmit high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting offers higher fidelity—more accurate reproduction of the original program sound—than other broadcasting techniques, such as AM broadcasting. It is also less susceptible to common forms of interference, having less static and popping sounds than are often heard on AM. Therefore, FM is used for most broadcasts of music and general audio. FM radio stations use the very high frequency range of radio frequencies.
The NBC chimes are a sequence of three tones played on National Broadcasting Company (NBC) broadcasts. Originally developed in 1927 as seven notes, they were standardized to the current three-note version by the early 1930s, and possibly as early as 1929. The chimes were originally employed as an audible programming cue, used to alert network control engineers and the announcers at NBC's radio network affiliates. They soon became associated with NBC programming in general, and are an early example of an "interval signal" used to help establish a broadcaster's identity with its audience.
WFME is a currently silent non-commercial AM radio station licensed to New York, New York. The station is owned by Family Radio, a Christian radio network based in Franklin, Tennessee. The station ceased broadcasting on March 4, 2024.
Command Performance was a radio program which originally aired between 1942 and 1949. The program was broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRS) and transmitted by shortwave to overseas troops—but with few exceptions since it was not broadcast over domestic U.S. radio stations.
The Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts are a regular series of weekly broadcasts on network radio of full-length opera performances. They are transmitted live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network airs the live performances on Saturday afternoons while the Met is in season, typically beginning the first Saturday in December, and totaling just over 20 weekly performances through early May. The Met broadcasts are the longest-running continuous classical music program in radio history, and the series has won several Peabody Awards for excellence in broadcasting.
Electrical transcriptions are special phonograph recordings made exclusively for radio broadcasting, which were widely used during the "Golden Age of Radio". They provided material—from station-identification jingles and commercials to full-length programs—for use by local stations, which were affiliates of one of the radio networks.
