Documenting and Celebrating Public Broadcasting Station Histories

First Broadcasts

The first time a station goes on the air, they have no idea who's listening or watching. How do they determine what to broadcast? With several recordings of stations' first broadcasts in this collection, we can see a range of how stations handled this situation. Some chose to explain to any listeners what they were aiming to do with their new FCC license. Some chose to jump right into exemplary programming, to give the listeners a taste of what they could expect from the station. And still others were just testing their equipment out to make sure it worked.