Podcast Series: 	Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements
Podcast Title: 	From Newspapers to Television Programming: How News and Entertainment have Grown since 1950
Producer: 		Diza Baryshnikov (Class of 2026)
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Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator 
In the past few years, society has seen an incredible rise in artificial intelligence technology - a development that has forced almost all fields to adapt while sparking global debate about the role of artificial intelligence in our lives. In late 2022, Open AI released ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool that, as of August 2025, hit a benchmark of 700 million weekly users. As astutely noted by Stanford University’s 2025 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, “AI is rapidly moving from the lab to daily life.” 

However, artificial intelligence is just the latest technological change that has led society to readjust our ways of living. In the past century, changes in telecommunications, media forms, transportation, agriculture, computing, and health technology have redefined our systems and habits. 

In this podcast series, Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements, this Uni High Oral History Project sets out to understand how the rise of new technologies have impacted our lives over the past century.

From Uni High, I’m Diza Baryshnikov, a member of the Class of 2026.

This episode is From Newspapers to Television Programming: How News and Entertainment have Grown since 1950. In this podcast, we will hear from Central Illinois residents on their experiences throughout their lifetimes with different modes of news and entertainment.

An early technological advancement in the mass spread of information was the radio. The first scheduled radio broadcast in history happened in 1920, announcing the results of the Presidential election between Warren G. Harding and James Cox. Very quickly, people began to realize the power of radio to spread news and information over long distances to many people at once. Throughout the 20th century, radio technologies evolved and became a staple in American households. 

Urbana resident Margaret Lovell recalls listening to the radio as a child in the 1950s.  

Margaret Lovell
There was always a radio in the house. Which was a large box, and it had a dial on it, and it had a number of different bands. So now we think of radio as having AM and FM. This I think had different bands. And you could actually use this to listen to radio stations fairly far away, like different countries. Yeah, short-wave radio it was called. And we had one of those when I was little. And I wish I still had it because it was very cool.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Champaign resident John Dudley, born in 1931, grew up on a farm in eastern Indiana. He also remembers the large size of the family radio. 

John Dudley
We had a battery operated radio that actually was a big piece of furniture in the living room. You looked at it and listened to it.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Radio has also provided a way for the American people to process collective experiences and connect through moments in history. Champaign-Urbana resident Celia Elliot recalls her experience listening to the radio during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second on June 2, 1953. 

Celia Elliot 
One thing I remember about listening to on the radio was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second… When Dad came home from work, I reported that we had listened to the coronation of the new Queen of England and boy did she have an accent! My father thought that was really funny. I didn’t see why, but that was what really impressed me – was her accent.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Radio also served as a conduit for entertainment. Music and shows frequently aired on the radio to entertain listeners. Urbana resident Cope Cumpston describes her family’s radio culture during her childhood.

Cope Cumpston
The family would get together and we would listen to some radio shows. There were regular radio shows. They were stories that went on and on. But you had to listen when it was broadcast. It wasn't recorded where you couldn’t listen to it at any time. So the family would sit. We had this huge gumwood radio that was what, 4 feet tall, against the wall and we would all sit around it and listen. Sounds prehistoric doesn’t it?

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Retired University of Illinois professor Ann Reisner remembers listening to popular radio dramas, or plays, such as “The Shadow” which aired from 1930-1954, and Orson Wells’ Mercury Theater on the Air program, which included the famous “War of the Worlds” episode. 

Ann Reisner 
It's the precursor to things like Perry Mason and Gunsmoke and those kinds of drama’s, only the radio play would be things like ‘The Shadow knows, who knows what darkness lies in the hearts of men? The shadow knows’. And it would be like the half hour thing with sound effects and a cast voicing, well in the radio studio, it would be a cast voicing parts. And it would be done like a play only you couldn’t see anything physically, you couldn’t see anything, you could hear it all. It was great, it was really neat. Probably the best of the bunch was the Mercury Theater. That was Orson Wells. That was really high class drama, that was modern, or detective fantasy/modern, it wasn’t the fairly stilted plays of Shakespeare and other major playwrights that you had to go to a theater to see.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Listening to music on the radio stands out to Lovell.

Margaret Lovell 
Mostly then in those days it was individual artists, and I had crushes on just about every boy that was singing. So Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka. And I would find their photographs, I’d find their pictures like in magazines, and I’d cut the pictures out and I’d put them in my wallet.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Radio stations also reflected the social context of the times, as explained by Reisner. 

Ann Reisner
Well, it was extremely segregated. There were white stations and there were black stations and country music was also incredibly segregated. You had Charley Pride was probably the only black performer in the country western sphere that was also playing in the white sphere. I honestly can't remember if he predated television or not, but I remember the radio shows when I saw the people later on, on TV, they were all white. So, that's a huge difference. There was no such thing as instantaneous news. You would have 24 hour cycles and you would get your news in a half-hour block. Now if something was majorly important, like World War II, they’d interrupt the radio show, but other then that you got your newspaper once a day, you got your radio news once a day.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
In 1927, another technological invention would revolutionize modern life – television. According to the Library of Congress, only 9% of American households had a television in 1950. Paula Kaufman, the first Dean of Libraries and University of Illinois Librarian points back to the exact date a TV first appeared in her house and the excitement surrounding the purchase.

Paula Kaufman 
When I was 2, I actually do remember this, in November of 1948 my mother was very pregnant with my sister and my father brought home a television set, so they could watch the results of the Truman Dewey presidential election. And it was a huge piece of furniture with a tiny little screen in it. And black and white of course, but I mean that was earth shattering enough so that I do remember that.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Dr. Grant Henry, a retired school administrator who lives in Champaign, shares his childhood memories of watching TV while growing up in Sycamore, Illinois west of Chicago. His household didn’t have one yet, so a routine evolved to watch shows at his grandmother’s house. 

Grant Henry
We’d always sit around. But before we got our television we used to, on Tuesday nights and Thursday nights, we would go down to my grandmother’s house cause she lived, not a long time, long distance, but it but it was really like, it wasn't that far at all. So our TV nights were Tuesday and Thursday nights at my grandmother’s house. 

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Central Illinois farmer Dennis Wenger also recalls his family culture surrounding TV viewing when the technology was still a novelty. 

Dennis Wenger 
We had a TV, we got one channel, we got Channel 3 of Champaign, Illinois. And that's what our antenna would do. And I’d go to school and some of the other kids were watching a couple other stations out of Chicago, and we didn't have an antenna for that so I just had to hear about those TV programs. But we’d come home from school and we had favorite programs we watched on the television. It just became a household thing in evenings and family time and weekends, to have some popcorn and watch a program on TV.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Color television debuted in 1953, and by the late sixties, the majority of American households had a color television. Keith Kelley, a professor emeritus from the University of Illinois and Celia Elliot remember the transition from black and white to color TV.

Keith Kelley
Our neighbor, who was fairly wealthy, bought one of the first color television sets. And he had a big picture window. And so every time you drove by the house, you could see this color television set. And so, maybe a couple years after that we got our first color television set. And, I may be wrong, but as I recall, it wasn’t even color. I think there was some kind of screen you could put over the black and white television that would give it a semblance of color. And then a year of two after that, we got a color television set. 

Celia Elliot 
Well, the first televisions, of course, were black and white. The screens were pretty and small, and they depended on cathotubes technology. The televisions got bigger and the pictures got clearer when transistors came into use in electronics technology. We didn’t get our first color television until I was in high school. The colors tended to be not very realistic looking and nothing at all like our high-def color televisions we have nowadays. But, it was quite exciting to see color on TV.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Through television, people could follow politics and government happenings closely. Margaret Lovell recalls watching congressional hearings in 1953 and 1954. 

Margaret Lovell 
The very first historical event I remember was something called the Army-McCarthy, there was a guy named Joe McCarthy who was a politician, he was a Senator I think. And he went on this major hunt. He was convinced that there were communists in the United States government. And he and some of his cohort, his colleagues, would call people in to make them testify under oath about whether they had, were now or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. And there was a big impact on Hollywood because people who had been in the Communist Party in the 30s were famous actors and actresses and scriptwriters. And they were all kicked out of their jobs. So, very first big TV event that I remember that was like that were these congressional hearings – McCarthy, and there were others too ‘cause a bunch of them went after organized crime. There was just a boatload of using TV to get Americans afraid, basically. That’s what I thought.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Television would transform the “breaking news” experience bringing vivid visuals into people’s living rooms as Ann Reisner recalls. 

Ann Reisner
Kennedy being assassinated is probably the first, really watching that funeral, was a big, big deal to everyone who was alive at that time knew that Kennedy was killed and it was a very,very,very disturbing thing. People were shocked. People were very sad and people were afraid. And more than that senators and congressmen were afraid. Shocked and sad with Kennedy. But then Martin Luther King died and then JFK died and then now we’ve got our public figures being threatened. And the public figures were considered a source of stability and even those that were very, very deeply Republican were upset and saddened to a degree that I think we’ve become desensitized to. 

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Champaign resident Paula Kaufman shares her memories of breaking news television. 

Paula Kaufman 
Of course the Vietnam war. I was in college so I wasn't sitting and watching it, but it was really monumental. As was the whole civil rights movement. I mean we saw coverage of– in black and white– of the bombings, of the Birmingham church, all of the protests, the walking over the bridge in Selma, all of that, the buses that went down to the South, mostly to Mississippi, the disappearance of the three volunteers from New York who were killed. It was just so much. And then we watched the hearings or the vote on the civil rights movement. I mean I vaguely remember the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Wenger recalls an unforgettable television moment when the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986, killing all seven crew members on board. 

Dennis Wenger 
Oh, one of the most memorable, it was a sad event, was when the space shuttle exploded shortly after liftoff. I did happen to be at home. I can't remember what time of the day it was, but it was during the day. And for some reason we, I think the kids probably had the TV on, and they were saying, “Come and look at this.” And so just the actual, to see it live and to see it replayed maybe live. And you know, shortly after the live thing, it was hard to comprehend what you were actually seeing because you just couldn’t believe something like that could happen. 

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Television also expanded entertainment offerings and, much like radio shows, television shows quickly grew in popularity and “must see TV” became a thing.  Urbana resident Cope Cumpston recalls her family’s TV viewing experience in their 1950s one-television household. 

Cope Cumpston 
We never watched tv during the week. We watched it on Sunday night. That was the TV night. That was when all the favorite shows were on and there weren't very many. And Saturday morning we would watch cartoons as kids – and my father would sneak in and that was when they played the Lone Ranger and what, Daffy Duck, and the Road Runner.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Margaret Lovell remembers the shows she watched as a kid in the 1950s.
Margaret Lovell 
There were some kids programming that I remember watching. There was one, I don’t know what it was called, but you could send away and buy a piece of plastic that was actually tinted a little green. And it came with some crayons and also some other little plastic shapes and figures, and you would put it on your TV screen - this is a Saturday morning kids’ program -  and you would put it on your TV screen and then the announcer, the presenter whatever, would say, “Okay now, I want you to follow this line. I want you to draw down this line. And so, on the green plastic over your screen you would draw what he was drawing and then these little shapes, you would put these little shapes around it and make little pictures. He would direct you in making little pictures.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Paula Kaufman, also a child in the 50s, reminisces about her favorite shows. 

Paula Kaufman 
Well, as a kid, you were very limited in what you could watch because there was like one program a day that was specifically for children, and there was a national version called Howdy Doody– and I can sing you all the songs. Back when I was pre-school, the programs were 15 minutes long. So I would watch Kate Smith, and her 15 minute program, Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse, and a few others, and that was it. So, I mean there wasn’t a lot to watch. As I got older, television filled the days.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Just as listening to the radio became a communal family experience, so did television, as explained by Margaret Lovell.

Margaret Lovell 
I believe that my parents watched TV every evening. And because there was just one TV in the house, I can remember lying on the floor, looking up at the TV, my hands under my chin, and watching whatever they watched. So, we always watched the news, I remember that. That was like Walter Cronkite and – Huntley and Brinkley and you know, pretty well known at the time news presenters. And then the Ed Sullivan Show and Maverick and Gunsmoke, and Bonanza, lots of westerns in the time. 

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
One of the most popular television shows that aired from 1948 to 1971 was the Ed Sullivan Show which became an important part of American cultural history by hosting icons across the music, comedy, politics, and sports industries. Many performers even made their debuts on the show. Dennis Wenger shares his memories. 

Dennis Wenger 
There were different comedians he had on a regular basis that I thought were really funny. They had the mouse Topo Gigio. There was a lady who had a skit, I guess you would call it hand puppet. And her interactions with Ed Sullivan were pretty funny. And the guy that came on every so often, on the stage, and he would get spinning plates on sticks. And he would try to get as many spinning as he could at the same time, balancing them on there, and occasionally a plate would come off. Those stick in your mind, but that was the Ed Sullivan show, yeah.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
Aside from watching shows, TV also revolutionized how people listened to music. Keith Kelly, professor emeritus of Immunophysiology at the University of Illinois, recalls watching ABC’s American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark, a TV show featuring the latest musicians where teenagers would dance on air. The popular show debuted in 1957. 

Keith Kelly 
Oh! American Bandstand. As soon as we get out of school, about right now, there was a rock and roll show. And it was a bunch of kids in high school listening to the current records and dancing. I was, you know, 4 to 5, something like that.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
In the 1980s, cable television introduced a new form of music listening. In 1981, the popular Music Television network, or MTV, would broadcast their first music video, called “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. NCSA Administrator Colleen Bushell, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at the time, recalls the frenzy surrounding MTV, especially for young people. 

Colleen Bushell 
In the dorms, I can remember freshman and sophomore year and the culture would be that everybody would just have MTV on in their room all the time and it’s the same as TV in the past where it wasn’t like you could pick songs, you just had to listen to whatever they played. But, that really changed the way we would listen to music because we’d also see the videos as well.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
While television viewing has become a part of many American’s daily lives, Ann Reisner offers a critique on the medium.

Ann Reisner 
Newspapers were the first penetration of the public sphere into the private sphere. But it was far more dramatic when television came along because you had all these commercials coming into the private space where you used to be able to retreat and be alone. Now remember the radio was only in one room, so most of the time you were wandering around, you weren’t listening to it other than as background noise. With the television people just sat and stared at. And they stared at all those commercials coming in. And that probably affected our desire for material consumer objects in a way that is incredibly destructive.

Diza Baryshnikov, Narrator
News and entertainment have evolved from radio stories to television. We’ve had to reexamine our relationships with communication and media throughout the past century, and even more so today with the rise of on-demand streaming services and thousands of news channels and online media options. While this surplus of news and entertainment has posed challenges such as over saturation and questions of reliability, it has also led to incredible accessibility and diversity of media options. Each Central Illinois interviewee  has had a unique experience with this media, and together they provide a glimpse of the changes in news and entertainment since the mid-20th century. 

Thank you for listening to  From Newspapers to Television Programming: How News and Entertainment have Grown since 1950 an episode in the series, Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements, a student-produced podcast by Uni High’s oral history project team. All interviews featured in this podcast were conducted in Spring 2024 by Uni’s eighth-grade class. If you’d like to listen to previous episodes of Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements, check out the WILL website at will.illinois.edu/illinoisyouthmedia.