Pioneering Punches: The First Radio Sports Broadcast

On April eleventh, nineteen twenty one, Hey DKA, a radio station in Pittsburgh, broadcast the first live sporting event ever on radio, a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee. Here's the story behind how radio changed the sporting world today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I mean, there is your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Back in the eighteen nineties, Yermo Marconi developed a wireless communication apparatus using electromagnetic waves which now are known as radio wave and using that was the start of radio, and in nineteen hundred, the first wireless transmission was sent over a distance of about a mile. This was the beginning of radio, a huge accomplishment at the time. This was a great invention that was used by the military during World War One to communicate wirelessly over the battlefields. It was used to great success, and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company had the government contract for the United States to make this two way communication device that would be used throughout the war. But after the war ended, their contract was no longer needed, so westley House wanted to find a way to use this technology they had used for a profit for the public. So on November two, nineteen twenty, they received the very first commercially licensed radio station with the call sign k DA. You may realize every radio station to this day still has a call sign and ADKA is still around to this day in Pittsburgh. Now, what they did was they put an antenna on top of their largest manufacturing building to allow more coverage of their radio signal. And they just happened to have a guy that really loved him radios in their assistant chief engineer, Frank Conrad, who in his off time had been doing radio broadcasts out of his house, doing simple things as music, talking and giving sports scores. It was like his own little podcast in Westernhouse wanted him to head up the new radio station they had. As there was a crazy sweeping the nation for radios after the war, companies all over the country were trying to radios as wireless device as this great new technology that was only used by the military before, and so they were becoming more popular in homes. But the only problem was they needed something to listen to. And that's when Frank Conrad took over kate kad Ka radio station and started doing all different kinds of things to provide entertainment and information to the people around Pittsburgh, and being that they had the very first commercial license, they did a lot of First, they had the first broadcast of the election results between Harding and Cox, which allowed them to also have the first politician to ever reach it out radio waves. Then Representatives Alice Robinson and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover came on in January nineteen twenty one, and on March fourth, they actually aired the very first presidential inaugural dress, delivered by Warren G. Harding, And this is the moment it grew in more popularity. So they needed to keep trying new things. What did people want to hear? And they settled on having the very first live sporting event broadcasts over radio when Johnny Ray faced off against Johnny Dundee in Pittsburgh at the Motor Square Garden, with the Pittsburg Daily Post newspaper sports editor Florence Gibson calling the event it was a lightweight fight. Johnny Dundee were going to be an international boxing Hall of Fame. The Ray wouldn't have as strong of a career, but he would later train and manage some great fighters, and though they couldnot see the fight, the radio operators were able to give a blow by blow description of what was happening, giving people the realism and the imagination so they could feel like they were there at the time as it was happening live. Although the fight ended in no decision after ten rounds, the popularity of the event led to so much more. Three months later they were to have the very first heavyweight fight broadcast live. Then in August that same year, they would have the very first played by play baseball game, where the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies. In October that year, they would broadcast the very first football game where the University of Pittsburgh beat West Virginia. Not only did this show how much people enjoyed listening to these games that they weren't able to attend, actually allow Pittsburgh to become the sports capital of the country at the time, as they were airing all the local Pittsburgh sports at the time. This was very different and how far reached the radio happened because when KDKA Radio upgraded their system, they were able to reach almost all the eastern United States and even into Canada. So even though they were only airing Pittsburgh games, this was reaching across the country. After their success, hundreds of other radio stations came in. We're able to get licensed the next year and start the radio craze that took over the sporting world, which later led to the television broadcast that we see in love to this day. Without this start, who knows where we would end up with our love of sports, being able to watch and hear our teams wherever we're at today. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you got a topic that you would love for us to cover, please let us know. Contact us at Daily sportshi History at gmail dot com. We'd love to hear from you and love to hear your ideas for future episodes. And come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History