Indiana University’s 1940’s School of the Sky 1940’s

Lindsay Weisenberger - Indiana University

(link: https://lindsayrae1994.carto.com/builder/de6af028-2ac6-11e7-a07d-0ee66e2c9693/embed)

As seen on the CARTO map, School of the Sky was not introduced until 1947. It can be seen from the abundance of other radio programs in the midwest, before 1947, that Indiana University felt pressures from other radio programs to start their own program so they could fit in with the trend that was occurring in the Midwest. School of the Sky is a light orange colored dot that stands out among the majority grey dots on the map.

If given more time and resources, it would have been helpful to include the southern states and their radio programs in order to show the historical trend: the South had less access to radios than the North. However, the CARTO map shows us just how much influence other radio programs had on School of the Sky’s startup. It is important to mention that early adaptions of radio began in fairly big cities, such as Chicago and St.Louis. It is also worth noting that Indiana seemed to be a somewhat slow adapter of radio, but added more and more programs towards the late 1940s, which included School of the Sky. You can see from the map that School of the Sky was introduced to IU around the same time Indiana started to really adapt radio into local towns. This trend shows just how much pressure media adaption placed on Indiana University to adapt a medium of their own, which happened to be the educational radio drama, School of the Sky.

Hypothesis

Newspapers throughout the United States continuously reported on radio programs and their air times during the 1940s. It can be seen as a trend during this time period. This trend can also be seen throughout Europe, including Germany. And while several officials in Germany did not place a large importance on radio entertainment, the popularity of the new technology and form of entertainment only thrived throughout the 1940s.1 While Germany was contemplating the significance of radio entertainment, the United States saw its potential popularity and took advantage of it. Because radio drama was becoming so popular around the United States with many young children and adults during the 1940s, Indiana University was pressured into creating their own radio program so they could fit the media tends of the technologically advancing world. While the program was originally made for children in grades four to eight, an analysis done by Richard Strucker of six scripts found that the program may have been better suited for adults, which can be seen from the mentions of the program in several adult-targeting newspapers throughout the Midwest.2 The physical transcripts of one of the program’s scripts show just how much effort the group put into the programs so that they would be appealing to students whom were tuning in.3 As Indiana University’s program, School of the Sky, gained popularity, parents began to tune into the programs so that they could get a sense of what their children were learning in school. The question that I will attempt to answer through the use of a digital history map is this: where in the United States did we first start seeing radio programs pop up during the 1940s and in what areas did we see School of the Sky begin to pop up?

The Object

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The object I have chosen is a picture of President Wells who is sitting with a piece of paper in front of a radio-broadcasted microphone.4 The title of the picture is “President Wells speaking for the opening of the School of the Sky” and the image number is P0048605. It dates 1947 September 25th and it represents the opening of a radio program that was started at IU in 1947 called “School of the Sky”. President Herman B. Wells served as IU’s president from 1937 until 1962 and continuously receives praise for his efforts during his time as president.5 This is seen in the picture of President Wells and shows how much he cared for the school and the people involved in it because he took time out of his day in order to introduce a new radio show to its audience. This picture represents the credibility that President Wells had with his audience and shows just how important it was to have a public figure introduce the radio program in an environment that was surrounded by several other radio dramas and programs for audiences to choose from. It seems as though this is a consistent trend when introducing a new media program, meaning that a credible figure must be the one to introduce it.

The environment in which President Wells gave the introduction looks to be similar to that of where other broadcasts of School of the Sky, in the university’s radio department. There are several pictures that show a very similar environment of where School of the Sky was originally broadcast from that often show the cast and crew of the program.6

The Argument

Radio was introduced to Indiana University in the late 1930s, but it was not until 1947 that School of the Sky was established within the university. From a study on the U.S. Census concerning how America adopted the radio during the 1930s to the 1950s, Steve Craig outlines some very significant trends that happened with radio and its popularity within the country.7 In the study, an important finding shows that radio was significantly falling behind in radio adoption specifically in the South, giving insight as to why Indiana University, which is in the North central area of the United States, was able to create a radio program and have a great success and wide audience that lived outside of Indiana. Further, the percentage of households with radio in the United States jumped nearly forty percent between 1930 and 1940; this percentage includes both urban and rural areas, although urban areas were much earlier adopters than the rural. This seems to be the trend that is shown when researching popular radio programs in the 1940s and makes complete sense when considering the ability that Indiana University had to create a radio program knowing that an audience would have access to a radio. Once the digital history map is completed, we will see this trend in the map itself and the map will be a direct reflection of the accessibility to new technologies that certain areas of the country had during the 1940s.

The Digital Method

  • Use newspaperarchive.com

    1. Set time frame: 1940s
    2. Search key phrase: “School of the Sky”
    3. Search key phrase: “School of the Air”
    4. Search key phrase: “radio drama” “UK”
    5. Search key phrase: “radio drama” “US”

  • Use google.com

    1. Search most popular radio programs 1940s US
    2. Search most popular radio programs 1940s UK
    3. Search most popular universities in the united states
  • Find their radio programs of each listed above
  • Search through each individual mentioning (repeat search steps on newspaperarchive.com using “(insert radio program here)” as a key phrase to search)

  • Create spreadsheet in Excel (Data tabs: Grab this data from newspaper mentioning (some data may not be available, leave blank if this is the case to see what we will need in the end))

    1. Date
    2. Latitude
    3. Longitude
    4. Newspaper
    5. Program mentioned
    6. Station
    7. Origin Location of Program
  • Input data from each newspaper into excel
  • Use google maps to find location of newspaper (city) and copy and paste latitude and longitude from html into excel spreadsheet
  • Put data into CARTO maps.

Given more time and more resources, I would expand our search geographically to the Southern states in the United States so we could see if there was a gap between the northern states and the southern states and their accessibility to radio. I would need access to several different newspaper archives and would have to have a team of assistants who would help collect relevant data such as programs, dates, coordinates. Without assistants, the task would be very tedious and would take a long time for one person to complete if the end goal was for data to be collected from all over the United States, including the South, East, and West and some countries throughout Europe.

Bibliography

  • Nietzel, Benno. “Culture, Entertainment and Listening Habits in the West German Discourse on Radio during the 1950S.” German Politics & Society, vol. 32, no. 1, Spring2014, pp. 15-29. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3167/gps.2014.320102.
  • Strucker, Richard Andrew. An Analysis of Six Radio Scripts of the Indiana School of the Sky. Bloomington: School of Education Indiana Univerisity, 1952. Print.
  • Gerber, Fred L., prod. “Moslem’s Keep Science Alive.” The Indiana School of the Sky. Department of Radio Indiana University. Bloomington, Indiana, 26 Oct. 1949. Radio. Transcript.
  • “Archives Photography Collection.” Archives Photograph Collection – “President Wells speaking for the opening of the School of the Sky”. The IU Digital Library Program and Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 09 Feb. 2017.
  • Gros Louis, Kenneth. “Herman B Wells and the Legacy of Leadership at Indiana University.” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 103, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp. 290-301. EBSCOhost,proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.proxyiub.uits.iu. edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26825929&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
  • “Archives Photograph Collection.” Archives Photograph Collection - “Oscar winners in “School of the Sky””. The IU Digital Library Program and Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 09 Feb. 2017.
  • Craig, Steve. “How America adopted radio: Demographic differences in set ownership reported in the 1930-1950 US Censuses.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 48.2 (2004): 179-195.
  • “Genealogy & Family History Records.” NewspaperArchive®. N.p., n.d. Web. Mar. - May 2017.
  • Carto. “Predict through location - CARTO.” CARTO - Predict through location. N.p., n.d. Web. Mar. 2017.