Twin Cities Broadcasting in the Analog Age: A Presentation for the St. Paul Radio Club Annual Banquet

Author-historian Jeff R. Lonto's presentation on the history of radio and television in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that he gave for the St. Paul Radio Club's annual banquet at the University of St. Thomas in 2014.

In his speech, he discussed the early experiments with radio at the University of Minnesota going all the way back to 1912, leading to the formation of station KUOM, the origins of legendary radio stations in the Twin Cities such as WCCO, KSTP, WDGY, WTCN and WLOL, the role Twin Cities stations played in the formation of the national networks such as NBC and CBS, early FM stations, the TV stations, the dominance of top-40 radio and other events, up to the 2009 conversion of all television stations to digital.

Presented is a full transcript of this detailed, colorful history. Lonto, founder of Studio Z-7 Publishing, is the author of local broadcasting realted books "Fiasco At 1280" and "It Happened On the Air," the writer of a regular column called "It Happened On the Air" for the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting Newsletter in the 1990s, and has written many online features about broadcast history and other pop culture-related subjects.