News Wars, 1938

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News Wars, 1938

Postby cart_machine » Wed Apr 29, 2015 2:39 am

Weekly Variety covered radio during the Golden Age and there was space devoted to international radio. Here's an item from 1938.
An earlier story revealed a news service called Transradio announced a rate increase to stations. UP's Pacific Northwest rep, Phil Curran, decided to raid the Transradio stations (presumably offering a cheaper deal) and signed up KMO Tacoma, KIT Yakima and KHQ and KGA Spokane. It also nabbed a Canadian station.

VANCOUVER SQUABBLE
British United Press Claimed by Both CJOR and CKWX
Vancouver, B. C., April 26.
Contract mix-up on wire services has local newscasters at each other's throats, with both CJOR and CKWX claiming to broadcast British United Press.
Vancouver Sun holds BUP contract and claims right to use its dispatches in twice-daily airings over CKWX, which station buys no news service itself, depending entirely on the Sun. CJOR pays plenty each month for news and is anything but happy at CKWX set-up in any case, but now states station manager brought broadcast rights to BUP when in east last month.
Fact that the Sun buys CP and AP service in addition to BUP is making it tough for CJOR to carry out threat of a squawk if Sun broadcasts any BUP news, as it is almost impossible to tag origin of the broadcast dispatches.

cArtie.
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Re: News Wars, 1938

Postby jon » Wed Apr 29, 2015 7:55 am

Even the concept of the Sun having a daily broadcast on a radio station is interesting in its own right. In early 1922, all three Vancouver newspapers had a radio station they called their own, after an epic battle to see who would be The First. By the end of World War II, most newspapers in Canada that had owned a station of their own had either closed it down or sold it off. Some openly admitted their fear that the federal government would take over all private radio stations in Canada.

By the 1950s, the Vancouver Sun was back to owning a radio station, CHUB in Nanaimo.

For newspapers in general, and the Vancouver Sun in particular, those newspaper-radio alliances are often to blame for the reduced coverage, or lack of it, of Radio "events" in newspapers. Other than for their "chosen" radio station, of course. Fortunately, most stations resolved that by buying ads in newspapers, which usually dragged the newspaper into actually writing an article about a station's launch, power increase, frequency change or major new staff announcement.

I've been running into this a lot as I try to research verifiable dates and relevant facts about stations launches and changes, given that local newspaper coverage from the time is usually the best source available.
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Re: News Wars, 1938

Postby J Kendrick » Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:07 pm

Interesting...
Public squabbles appearing in the newspapers over which local newsroom had which newswire company's teletypes in its newsrooms... three years after United Press (UP) became the first to offer its news service to broadcasters in 1935...
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