Coming soon at Amazon.com the untold story of how Talk Radio, All News Radio and Talk Television developed from its early beginnings. Who first said, ” Go gargle with razor blades?”  Find out in A Man and His Medium.

The broadcasting industry is approaching the hundredth anniversary of the birth of America’s first commercial radio station, KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. KDKA signed on the air on November 20, 1920.Emerging through the haze of broadcasting history come the names of individuals who transformed the developing technologies of radio and television into broadcast programming that attracted hundreds of millions of listeners and viewers.

Entertainment programming inherited from the vaudeville stage came to the new radio medium. Long-form dramatic shows followed, including scripted programs like Lux Radio Theater and comedies that included Amos and Andy and Burns and Allen. There were westerns, such as Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger, and Roy Rogers, and dozens of crime shows, including the FBI in Peace and War, The Shadow, and Mr. and Mrs. North. It was radio’s Golden Age.

When television exploded in American homes during the 1950s, radio needed to reinvent itself by creating new, appealing programs and approaches in order to position itself for the future. Many stations adopted a rock ’n’ roll music format. Others took a more adventurous, riskier, and more innovative approach and created what later became All News and Talk Radio.

This is the untold story of Alan Henry, a young boy left on a relative’s doorstep at an early age, who, through self-reliance, grit, and imagination, grew to be among America’s most successful radio- and television-broadcast entrepreneurs, innovators, and executives. Alan Henry took high risks to help create programming that is today universal across all media. Over the decades, these formats have launched thousands of individual careers in radio, on television, on cable television, and on the Internet.

Alan Henry’s legacy has left an indelible mark on how Americans use the broadcast media in the twenty-first century.