Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring, 1999 Page: 67
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RICHARD SCHROEDER
Texas Signs On: The Early Days
of Radio and Television
(College Station: Texas A & M University Press,
1998, 264 pp., $29.95)
Richard Schroeder
has written a detailed history
of the beginning of
radio and television broadcasting
in Texas. His
sources include more than
seventy personal interviews
with those who
participated in the birth
of these media in Texas.
He has also drawn from
station files, company
archives, local newspaper
articles, and historical society collections to produce a
meticulous account. But this is not easy, armchair
reading. The detail is too fine for that. The book is a
spin-off from Schroeder's doctoral dissertation at East
Texas State University (now Texas A & M University
at Commerce) in 1983. It is a history of radio and television
in Texas to I960, from "wireless" to color TV.
Schroeder documents the coming of radio in
the I920S to Amarillo, Austin, Beaumont, College
Station, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Greenville,
Houston, San Antonio, Waco, and across the border
into Mexico. He documents the coming of television
in the late I940s and early I950 to Austin, Dallas, El
Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Longview, San Antonio,
and Waco. For readers seeking information about
these specific places, the details are easily accessible
because of the chapter subheads. Schroeder identifies
the equipment used, the shows produced, the on-air
talent, and the station managers. He includes program
schedules as well as black and white photographs of
studio equipment and station personnel.
People and programs that made broadcasting
history in Texas feature prominently in the book. One
is "Dr." John R. Brinkley, who made a fortune using
his radio program to prescribe patent medicines to
ailing women and "goat-gland operations" to aging
men. Another is Gordon McLendon, who "re-created"
baseball games for the listening audience by
using sound effects in the studio instead of going to
the ballpark.Schroeder describes the first television program
in the South, when WBAP-TV broadcast President
Harry Truman's 1948 speech from downtown Fort
Worth to the approximately 400 television receivers
throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In those early
days, when all programming was "live," local restaurants
took reservations for "television parties," and
those who owned sets invited friends and neighbors
over for the evening to watch.
This book includes valuable oral history narratives
from broadcast pioneers. They tell their stories in
their own words, and Schroeder includes long quotes
from their conversations. He blends their personal
anecdotes with newspaper accounts to bring this history
alive. These pioneers shared many qualities, primarily
an ignorance of what they were doing but a
determination to go ahead and get the job done.
Research into Texas' early broadcast history is
difficult because so many station files have been discarded
over the years and what remains is highly
selective. Most of the written record is dominated by
men. Women are rarely included, although Schroeder
does mention a few in his book. One is Claudia Alta
(Lady Bird) Johnson, a significant person in the history
ofTexas broadcasting, although only her husband
is named in the index.
For those interested in the history of radio and
television, particularly in Texas, this is an important
book. Texas is often left out of national texts on broadcasting
history, and this book corrects that slight. But
the documentation and detail is extensive, so this is
not a quick read.
Suzanne Huffman
Southern Methodist University
WILLIAM H. WILSON
Hamilton Park. A Planned Black
Community in Dallas
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
I998, 256 pp., $39.95)
William H. Wilson's study of the development of
Dallas's African-American community of Hamilton
Park is unique. It combines the field of urban planning
with African-American social history and a comprehensive
examination of urban race relations. Using
traditional historical sources as well as oral history67
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Dallas Historical Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring, 1999, periodical, 1999; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35102/m1/69/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.