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(Click
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Robert Gordon Duncan, the “Oregon Wildcat”
broadcast over Portland’s KVEP from 1929 until his station license was revoked
in 1930.
 Gerald Buckley, evening commentator on WMBC in
Detroit in 1930, exposed the corruption in city government and led a successful
recall election against Mayor Charles Knowles.
The night of the election, he was murdered by gangland assassins.
 A crowd
of over 50,000 attended Buckley's funeral on a rainy July afternoon – mostly faithful
members of his “Common Herd” audience.
 Father Charles Coughlin, the crusading radio
commentator of the 1930’s, was the forerunner of Rush Limbaugh and other modern
talk radio hosts. The controversial
catholic priest was heard nationwide from 1926 until he was forced off the air
in 1939.
 Another view of Father Couglin broadcasting over WJR in
Detroit.
 When
WDAS in Pittsburgh cancelled Coughlin's program after an inflammatory
anti-semitic1938 speech, a group of his fans picketed outside the
studios.
A Coughlin portrait photo.
 “Ol’ Man” William K. Henderson, the flamboyant
owner and program host of KWKH in Shreveport, tore up the airwaves nightly from
1925 to 1932.
 This is the label of Henderson's controversial recording, which he distributed in 1930.
Evangelical Minister Robert P. “Fighting Bob”
Shuler, pastor of the Trinity Methodist Church in Los Angeles, lost his license
for KGEF in 1932 for broadcasting slanderous attacks on public officials and
others. Shuler fought the decision unsuccessfully
for three years, which was ultimately taken as far as the Supreme Court.
 William Edward Riker and his fourth wife, “Mother” Lucille
Riker
This late 1920’s postcard view of Holy City, California, shows
the KFQU hillside transmitter location.
KFQU’s transmitter was located inside Holy City’s
observatory building.
 A DX Stamp issued by KFQU
Holy City’s streets, buildings and vehicles were resplendent
with Riker’s message signs and slogans.
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Today’s
provocative “Hot Talk” radio commentators are not a new phenomenon. The
first decade of broadcasting witnessed the rise of many equally strident and
controversial personalities who tested the limits of the government’s tolerance
and the public’s good taste. They were
the prototypes of today’s conservative radio commentators and talk show hosts
While early
radio was endowed with many colorful but otherwise harmless characters, a
handful of crusading firebrands used the airwaves to gain favor with the public
for their viewpoints. The early airwaves
were home to a number of hucksters, like the infamous Kansas goat gland doctor John
R. Brinkley. But radio also hosted a
number of other troublemakers and agitators who abused the power of the media to
try and influence public opinion. Let’s take a look at some of radio’s lesser-remembered
provocateurs.
The “Oregon Wildcat”, KVEP:
Soon after
the 1929 stock market crash, Robert Gordon Duncan acquired a small station - KVEP,
the “Voice of East Portland”, Oregon - from its financially distressed
owner. A populist firebrand vying for
the Republican nomination to Congress, Duncan used his station to broadcast
daily profanity-laced tirades. Calling
himself the “Oregon Wildcat”, he reportedly kept a gun at his side while on the
air. He railed against Sears &
Roebuck and the other “chain stores” that were running local mom-and-pop
retailers out of business. To bolster
his cause, Duncan sought “donations” from small retailers, and lambasted those
who rebuffed him for selling poor quality merchandise and cheating their customers. After losing the Republican primary to the
incumbent, Frank Korell, Duncan attacked the congressman on the air,
questioning his sexual orientation. If these
actions weren’t disruptive enough, Duncan also refused to sign off KVEP so the station
he shared his 1500 kHz frequency with could broadcast.
Letters
of complaint about KVEP flooded into the Federal Radio Commission, and a
license renewal hearing was scheduled.
Representatives of the American Legion, the Chamber of Commerce, local
churches, and other civic organizations joined forces at the hearing to demand
cancellation of KVEP’s license. Portland
judge J.C. Kendall complained, “There is a mad dog loose in the City of
Portland. For two hours every night we
have had a persistent series of talks so utterly indecent that they offend
every human sensibility.” On May 30,
1930, the Commission ordered KVEP off the air because of “profanity, obscenity,
and the vilification of particular individuals”. The
coup de grâce came in July, when Duncan’s creditors repossessed the station’s
equipment. If that wasn’t enough, he was arrested and
convicted of indecent broadcasting, violating the Radio Act of 1927. He was sentenced to six months in the county
jail and fined $500. After an
unsuccessful attempt to launch a magazine, Duncan ended up managing a golf
course, and died in 1944.
Gerald Buckley, WMBC:
Jerry
Buckley was one of early radio’s “good guys”.
The popular radio commentator on WMBC in Detroit began his career as a
radio crusader in 1928, campaigning for humanitarian and liberal causes like
old age pensions and jobs for the unemployed.
He referred to the followers of his nightly program as “The Common
Herd”. In 1930, Buckley began a campaign
against rampant corruption in the Detroit city government, emphasizing the ties
between Mayor Charles Bowles and the city’s numerous gambling houses being run
by organized crime. Buckley claimed that
Bowles took his orders from Public Works Commissioner Joseph Gillespie, who was
the “true mayor of Detroit”. After
Police Commissioner Harold Emmons raided the gambling houses while Bowles was
out of town, the mayor fired him and appointed Thomas Wilcox, a supporter of
Bowles’ “hands off” policies. Buckley’s
nightly tirades criticized Bowles, Gillespie and Wilcox, and decried the
unlawful graft taking place behind the scenes. Buckley’s program soon became Detroit’s most popular
program.
In 1930,
Buckley began to campaign for a recall election be held to remove Mayor Bowles
from Office. As support for the idea
grew, Buckley was offered a $25,000 bribe to “lay off” the mayor, which only
caused him to double his efforts.
Ultimately, a special election was scheduled for July 22. Buckley urged his audience to vote “yes”, and
when the ballots in the bitterly-fought election were counted, Bowles was removed
from office, 120,863 to 89,907 votes.
Two
hours after the recall results were announced, Buckley got a phone call from a
woman who promised a tip on a new story.
She asked to meet him in the lobby of the LaSalle Hotel, where the WMBC
studios were located. About 1:50 AM, as
Buckley waited in the lobby, three men entered the hotel and pumped eleven
bullets into his body.
As the
investigation into his murder mounted, Commissioner Wilcox attempted to smear
Buckley’s reputation with an affidavit claiming he was paid $4,000 in
“protection money” by a bootlegger, but the affidavit was quickly discredited
as being coerced. Ultimately, several
members of the notorious Licavoli Gang were arrested, but a conviction for
Buckley’s murder was never obtained.
A crowd
of over 50,000 attended his funeral on a rainy July afternoon – mostly faithful
members of his “Common Herd” audience.
One listener commented, “These days, I hardly know how to act when 6:00
comes. I feel as if I had lost a loving
friend. Jerry Buckley was the only man
in Detroit who was so strong for the common people. Will these people forget him? They will not.”
Father Coughlin, WJR & CBS:
Father
Charles Edward Coughlin, the crusading radio commentator of the 1930’s, was the
forerunner of Rush Limbaugh and other modern talk radio hosts. The controversial catholic priest burned up
the airwaves from 1926 until he was forced off the air in 1939. Pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower
church in Royal Oak, Michigan, he began his radio career as a radio preacher on
George A. Richards’ station WJR in Detroit, and in 1930 gained a national
audience when his program was heard on CBS.
Encouraged by the politically conservative and anti-Semitic Richards,
his topics soon changed from religion to politics, becoming increasingly
inflammatory. At first, Coughlin took aim
at communism and the KKK, but his attacks soon expanded to include mainstream
targets like the banking industry and Jews.
When CBS required Coughlin to submit his scripts in advance for network
approval, Coughlin refused and the network cancelled his program. But, backed by Richards, Coughlin established
his own 36-station hookup for his “Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little
Flower” program, with WJR as the key station.
Soon, Coughlin had a weekly audience estimated between 16 and 30 million
listeners. By 1934, he had to build his
own post office to handle the 10,000 letters he received daily.
On the
air, Coughlin faulted greedy bankers for causing the Depression, and pleaded
for Roosevelt to nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank and reform the monetary
system. When FDR ignored his advice,
Coughlin became one of his harshest critics, denouncing him as a “tool of Wall
Street”. In 1934, he created the
“National Union for Social Justice”, a nationalistic workers’ rights
organization, and in 1936 he backed an unsuccessful fringe presidential
candidate. In one of his broadcasts, he stated, "I
have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern
capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But, blow for
blow, I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's
happiness”
In the
later 1930’s, Coughlin increasingly targeted Jews while praising Hilter and
Mussolini. After one particularly
inflammatory and inciting 1938 speech, a number of stations dropped his program,
which incensed his faithful followers. At
WMCA in New York and WDAS in Pittsburgh, crowds of Coughlin’s fans protested
outside the studios, yelling anti-semitic statements, like "Send Jews back
where they came from in leaky boats!" and "Wait until Hitler comes
over here!" It was later
documented that Coughlin was receiving funds from Nazi Germany.
Numerous
political organizations petitioned the FCC to remove Coughlin from the
airwaves, but ultimately, it was the National Association of Broadcasters that
forced him off the air. In October of
1939, the NAB adopted a new industry self-regulation code that prohibited its
stations from discussing controversial issues in sponsored programs. The clause was specifically written to stop
Coughlin. Some NAB member stations, including WJR, WGAR and the Yankee Network,
threatened to quit the association instead of observe the code, but when
Coughlin’s contracts expired at the end of the month, most of his stations did
not renew. Although Coughlin continued
crusading for fascism through his “Social Justice” newsletter, his influence
was clearly diminished. Once World War
II began, he was all but forgotten.
Coughlin continued as a parish priest until his retirement in 1966. He died in Michigan in 1979 at the age of 88.
“Fighting Bob” Shuler, KGEF:
Robert
P. Shuler was another demagogue preacher, broadcasting from the Trinity
Methodist Church in Los Angeles over his station KGEF starting in 1926. At different times, his controversial
broadcasts denounced Catholics, Jews, blacks, politicians, the police and dozens
of other targets. He defended the Ku
Klux Klan; he condemned the University of Southern California for permitting
evolution to be taught on campus; he claimed that Catholics were “plotting to
murder Protestants in their beds”; he attacked the public library for lending
books “not fit to be read in heathen China or anarchist Russia”; he railed
against the YMCA for permitting dances for girls that lasted until early hours
of the morning. He announced that he had
damaging personal information about certain individuals, but promised to not reveal
it if they would send “donations” to KGEF. The Los Angeles Times wrote that
“'Fighting Bob' operates the most controversial religious radio station of all
time. Politicians fear him, criminals avoid him, newspapers deplore him, and
many ministers criticize him.”
Like
Buckley in Detroit, Shuler attacked the considerable corruption of the city
government, and its cooperation with underworld figures. In 1929, Shuler’s attacks against Los Angeles
mayor George E. Cryer caused the mayor to bring a libel suit against him. But after a highly contentious and
well-publicized trial, a jury found Shuler not guilty on one count and could
not reach a verdict on the second count.
In 1931,
Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner and
others petitioned the Federal Radio Commission to revoke KGEF’s license. In November, the commissioners voted to not
renew the license, due to the character of Shuler’s broadcasts and his use of
the station for personal attacks. KGEF
was just the second station to have its license revoked for cause – the first
being “Doc” Brinkley’s KFKB in Milford, Kansas.
Shuler appealed the decision based on his station’s property rights and
the right of free speech, but the D.C. Appeals Court upheld the FRC’s action in
1932. The court wrote that Shuler’s
broadcasts were “sensational rather than instructive”, and that, if the
airwaves could be used for such purposes, "radio will become a scourge and
the nation a theater for the display of individual passions and the collision
of personal interests." A further
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected in 1933.
After
two unsuccessful runs for political office, Shuler again began to broadcast his
tirades in 1943 over KPAS in Pasadena.
But no sooner had the broadcasts begun then the FCC, declaring that his
programs were hurting the war effort, directed the station to submit
transcripts of Shuler’s broadcasts, and he was forced off the air for the last
time. Shuler retired as the pastor of
his church in 1953, and died in 1965. William K. Henderson, KWKH:
William
K. Henderson was the wealthy owner of the Henderson Iron Works and Supply
Company in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Developing an early interest in radio broadcasting, he acquired part
interest in local station WGAQ in 1922, and then bought out his partners in
1925. Incorporating his initials, he
renamed the station KWKH and installed a powerful 10,000 watt transmitter on
the grounds of his estate, “Kennonwood”.
Blessed
with high power and a clear channel and broadcasting only at night, KWKH’s
signal blanketed the country. Henderson
was the station’s only disc jockey, interspersing recorded music with his
folksy commentary. He opened each
broadcast with the chiming of a clock and his catch-phrase “Hello World!” He alternately referred to himself as "Doggone"
Henderson, "Ol' Man" Henderson, or "Hello World" Henderson.
Before
long, his rustic chats increasingly turned into commentaries on social and
government issues. He castigated the
Federal Radio Commission for favoring the assignment of frequencies to the big
chain stations instead of independent local stations. He denounced the commissioners as “crooks,
skunks, and grafters”. Like Duncan, he
mounted a spirited campaign against the “chain stores” for running small retailers
out of business, and for the “ruinous and devastating effect of sending the
profits out of our local communities to a common center, Wall Street.”
Henderson’s
tremendous popularity hinged in part on his penchant for insulting his
listeners. They would taunt him in
telegrams, and he would fire back at them over the air in his coarse “country
boy” language. "People don't care
about gentle modest talk," he said. "They want it strong. They want
to hear you ride somebody. If not, why do they spend their good money for
telegrams? They want to be entertained. They razz me and wait for me to bawl
them out over the Radio. I never disappoint them if they sign their
names." People tuned in because
they never knew what he was going to say next.
He developed such a following by 1928 that “Radio Digest” magazine named
KWHK the South’s most popular station.
Not
surprisingly, Henderson’s mixture of political diatribes and personal insults resulted
in a flood of complaints to the Federal Radio Commission. One listener complained, "I listened for
about three hours to a tirade of billingsgate, semi-profanity and vulgar abuse
from the man who does most of the talking or announcing from this station. I had
listened to this man's peculiar, characteristic utterances several times before,
but this night, as near as I could judge, he was drunk and repeated his abusive
remarks over and over again. I listened in for the purpose of seeing how long
he would keep up this disgusting sort of thing and to the best of my
recollection it was almost three hours."
The Radio Commission began monitoring Henderson’s broadcasts, and sent
agents to Shreveport to record KWKH, but it took no action against the renegade
broadcaster.
Henderson’s
ability to fend off the authorities was due to his friendship with Louisiana
governor Huey Long. Henderson contributed
$10,000 to Long’s 1928 campaign and afforded him liberal amounts of free air
time on his station. In turn, Long warned
the FRC that it wouldn’t tolerate any sanctions against KWKH: "You're going to have to fight Louisiana
and other states too, buddy, and you won't get away with it. We are going to
expose you and not allow you to steal the air." He assured Henderson that the Louisiana State
Militia was at his disposal to protect KWKH against any threatened federal
intervention.
Long
successfully kept the FRC agents at bay until 1931, when a disagreement soured
his relationship with Henderson. Now armed with recordings of his transmissions
of “vile filth and profanity”, and evidence that the station was exceeding its
authorized transmitter power, The FRC called Henderson to Washington to argue
why his license should not be revoked. In 1932, after a series of lengthy hearings
that also exposed some financial improprieties with listener, his lawyers
informed him that his chances of keeping his station license were nil. By now nearly bankrupt, Henderson sold KWKH
for $50,000 to a group of Shreveport businessmen, who moved the station back to
town and affiliated it with the CBS network.
KWKH had become a domesticated station and Henderson’s radio voice was
silenced. His threats to start a Mexico “border
blaster” station never came to fruition.
No
off-air recordings are known to exist of W.K. Henderson, but there is a
surviving phonograph recording that he distributed in 1930 that allows us to hear
his Southern drawl and his tirades against the big broadcasting stations. Listen to it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP_8acCbpkA
"Neither Holy Nor a City":
Holy
City, California, was a now-forgotten religious commune and tourist
trap hidden in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California. It was
the creation of William Edward Riker, a white supremacist preacher and
con artist who led a quirky religious cult. After charges were
brought against him in 1916 (later dropped) claiming sexual abuse
of female cult members, Riker sought to move his operation out of San
Francisco to a more secluded location. In 1918, he purchased 75
acres near Los Gatos where he founded his Holy City commune, saying he
had been instructed to do so by God.
By the middle of the
1920's, Holy City had expanded to 200 acres and featured a service
station, restaurant, ice cream parlor, dance observatory, print shop
and airport. The town was festooned with signs and posters
proclaiming Riker's religious and racist views. One such sign
read “OUR CALIFORNIA BELONGS ONLY TO THE WHITE RACE MAN, IT MUST BE PURGED OF THIS DEADLY POLLUTING ORIENTAL DISEASE.”
In
1924, a radio station was added to the town's facilities. KFQU
went on the air with 100 watts, broadcasting popular programming and
Riker's personal messages. It operated for eight years, sharing a
frequency with other small Bay Area station. The station gained
notoriety because of its broadcasts of Riker's odd and sometimes
inflammatory programs.
Listener complaints about Riker's
messages and his character eventually made their way to the Federal
Radio Commission, which in May of 1931, denied the renewal of KFQU's
license. The grounds given for the denial were that it had
strayed too far and too often from its assigned frequency, and that
Riker had assigned the legal control of the radio station to a third
party. This latter claim was because of a contract that Riker had
signed in 1930 turning over all programming and advertising
responsibility to a San Francisco advertising agency. Riker
appealed the denial of his license, and a hearing was held before the
appeals court in Washington, D.C., on December 7, 1931. A
California congressman personally appeared as a character witness
arguing on Riker's behalf, but the court ultimately upheld the
commission's denial of his license renewal. KFQU left the
airwave in January, 1932.
The closure of his radio station did
not put an end Riker's long and controversial history. After
President Roosevelt failed to respond to Riker's letters or adopt his
“money bouncing” plan to end the Depression and turn the country into a
"paradise on short notice", he began writing a series of fawning
letters to Adolph Hitler, supporting his visions of white
supremacy, Then in the early 1940's, when he tried to convince a
group of visiting soldiers to abandon the war and support Hitler, the
FBI arrested him and charged with sedition. At his
highly-publicized trial, the young San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli
argued on his behalf that Riker was such a “crackpot” that his letters
were harmless. Riker was acquitted by the jury, but Riker refused
to pay Belli the remainder of his fee, and Belli then sued his former
client.
Riker ran for governor as a white supremacy candidate
several times in the 1940's and 50's, but gained few followers.
After a new highway bypassed Holy City in 1940, it faded as a tourist
attraction and most of its commune members drifted away. The town
mysteriously burned down in the 1950's, and Riker died in 1969 at the
age of 96.
Epilogue:
By the
mid-1930s, radio broadcasting had matured into a mainstream commercial
industry, and its gentrification had eliminated most of the outliers from the
airwaves. With the exception of Father
Coughlin and a few others, the radio medium had been tamed, with stations and
networks alike voluntarily avoiding controversy. In its 1941 Mayflower decision, the FCC declared
that radio stations needed to remain neutral in matters of news and politics,
and prohibited them from supporting any particular position or candidate. In 1949, the Commission upped the ante with
its implementation of the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to
give equal time to contrasting views on controversial issues. This effectively drove most political debate off
the air, except for a few carefully crafted “management editorials”.
The
Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, a victim of the new broadcast de-regulation
environment. This opened the floodgates
and controversy again began to flourish on the country’s airwaves, particularly
on today’s popular “hot talk” AM stations.
Although they may not be aware of it, today’s commentators are following
on the heels of the pioneer radio provocateurs of the late 20’s and early 30’s,
and are thriving in today’s environment of lax regulation and extreme political
polarization. Will history repeat itself
in some future era with the re-regulation of the media, or has broadcasting
been forever changed - for better or worse?
This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in Radio World Magazine, September, 2018
REFERENCES:
Duncan:
- Offbeatoregon.com: “Oregon Wildcat was Early Shock Jock” by Finn
D.J. John 2013.
- Pdxradio.com: “KVEP & The Oregon Wildcat”.
Buckley:
- “Radio Digest” Magazine, October, 1930, pg. 24: “Jerry Buckley, Radio’s First Martyr”
- Allanrmay.com: “Jerry Buckley, a Victory Short-Lived” by
Allan May, 1999
- Huffington Post: “Death of a Whistleblower” by Kevin Walsh,
2013
Coughlin:
- “Radio Stars” Magazine, March,
April, May 1934: “The Fighting Priest”
- “Broadcasting” Magazine,
7/15/32, 8/15/32, 9/15/33, 10/1/39, 10/15/39:
Coughlin articles
Shuler:
- “Broadcasting” Magazine,
12/1/32, “Shuler Loses Free Speech Appeal”
- “Fighting Bob Shuler and KGEF:
The Silencing of a Radio Crusader”, North Texas State University thesis by
Charles E. Orbison.
- American Broadcasting and
the First Amendment, by L. A. Scot
Powe, Lucas A.Jr Powe
- Wikipedia.com: “Robert P. Shuler”
Henderson:
- Wikipedia.com: “W. K. Henderson”; “KWKH”
- American Babel: Rogue Radio
Broadcasters of the Jazz Age, by
Clifford J. Doerksen: Henderson
- Oldtimeblues.net: “Hello World:
W.K. (Old Man) Henderson”
Riker: - "Broadcasting" Magazine, 1/1/32: KFQU license renewal denied
- Transcript of District of Columbia appeals court record, Riker vs. Federal Radio Commission, 9/14/1931
- Wikipedia: William E. Riker
- "The un-holy history of Holy City" by Katie Dowd, SFGATE 11/5/2018
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