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Show : 'Bootlegged' mike started it all By QUIG NIELSEN Radio in Utah started with a microphone "bootlegged" out of C Canada! 1 KSL, the West's pioneer radio : station, couldn't afford the royalties t for a microphone and equipment was scarce, so with one microphone they'd "bootlegged" from Canada X the new radio station in Salt Lake ; City went on the air in 1922. ' That microphone was the only i one the station possessed for some time, so "keeping uninterrupted programming on the air was a difficult and often impossible task." President Heber J. Grant of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Latter-day Saints was the first official voice on the new station. He spoke at the formal dedication conducted on the evening of May 6, 1922. Earl J. XJlade, one of the major radio pioneers of western America, writes in his Mayor Glade Recalls several fascinating incidents. "One night Utah Gov. Charles R. Mabey was delivering an address in the old Salt Lake Theater. The theater was packed and the address was being carried over the new radio station, using the single microphone owned by the station. ' "The governor exceeded his allotted time and a technician went up on the stage while the governor was still speaking, took the microphone and raced back to the studio for another scheduled program. pro-gram. The station was off the air while the technician ran between the two locations." When the U.S. Department of Commerce had jurisdiction over radio broadcasting in the United States, Herbert Hoover, then Secretary Secre-tary of Commerce, delivered a radio address from the Odeon Spanish Ballroom which was located on North Temple Street between Main and State Streets. "He was so pleased with the broadcast and with the response he received from various parts of the country that he had Sen. Reed Smoot arrange to get station manager Earl J. Glade over to the Secretary's temporary headquarters at Hotel Utah for.. .personal thanks and congratulations to the station." (Source: Recdrds of KSL; Glade, Mayor Glade Recalls. Quig Nielsen is an information officer for the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.) |