Agriculture Journalism, Electronic

Ann Reisner

Agricultural news and market programs on radio, and to a lesser degree television, have long served the farming community. More recently, the Internet has offered further options for targeted rural communication. Even before World War I, experimental wireless stations often included farm news and market reports (sometimes broadcast in Morse code) in their scattered program offerings. Station 9XM at the University of Wisconsin was one of these. Soon after World War I, when radios became the exciting new mode of entertainment in the rural areas, a rural audience in Illinois was willing in 1921 to listen to station KYW broadcast an entire season of the Chicago Civic Opera—and nothing else. Music and variety and other standard urban-based entertainment were the first rural radio offerings, but early on programmers realized that farm audiences had different music tastes and information needs. The “barn dance” format of square dance and fiddle (as opposed ...

Users without subscription are not able to see the full content on this title. Please, subscribe or login to access all content on this website.