Celebrating a century of radio in Tucson

For Tucson residents, radio’s 100th anniversary is more than a milestone in broadcasting. It marks the beginning of a local tradition that has carried news, music, sports and community conversation into homes across the region for a century. Tucson’s first station, KGAR, began broadcasting on July 10, 1926, giving the city its first regular electronic connection to the outside world and helping residents hear major local news, including the death of University of Arizona football star John “Button” Salmon.

Salmon was on his deathbed when he spoke the words that became one of the university’s most enduring traditions: “Tell the team to bear down.” He died the following day. In an era when radio was still new and newspapers were the primary source of information, many Tucsonans likely heard the devastating news through the city’s only station. KGAR’s arrival created a new way for the community to experience local events as they unfolded, even though its early programming was far more limited than what listeners expect today.

The station was launched by the Tucson Citizen newspaper, which used its daily editions to tell subscribers about KGAR’s programming schedule. That promotion reflected a divided media landscape in Tucson. Readers of the Citizen knew about the station and what it planned to broadcast, while people who subscribed to the competing Tucson Star did not receive the same information through their newspaper. The station was closely tied to the Citizen’s business and promotional efforts from the start.

Those first broadcasts were simple and entirely live. Records could not be played over the air in 1926, so every sound had to come directly through the microphone. A person spoke, sang or played an instrument, and that was the program. The broadcasting day lasted only a few hours, a far cry from today’s stations that operate continuously and fill their schedules with music, news, talk shows, advertising and syndicated programming.

Even owning a radio was a significant financial commitment. Few Tucson households had receivers when KGAR went on the air, and the Tucson Citizen ran advertisements for stores selling them. According to veteran Tucson broadcaster Ray Lindstrom, radios cost between $65 and $100 in 1926. He estimates that $85 at the time would equal about $1,600 today, placing the new technology beyond the reach of many residents. The station’s potential audience was therefore limited not only by its short schedule, but also by the cost of the equipment needed to listen.

The Citizen soon discovered that operating KGAR was not profitable. About a year and a half after the station began, the newspaper sold it to a local gas station for $10. The station’s unusual early ownership is part of the story Lindstrom now shares in presentations for groups around Southern Arizona. He has assembled a history of Tucson radio that traces the industry from that modest beginning to the much larger and more varied media environment of the present.

KGAR did not keep its original call letters forever. By 1941, the station had become KTUC, which continues to operate in Tucson as a conservative talk station. Over the decades, radio adapted as new technologies and entertainment choices emerged. Television’s arrival in the early 1950s put pressure on radio, but local stations found new audiences, particularly through Top 40 music. Lindstrom, who worked as a disc jockey at KTKT, remembers that station as one of Tucson’s most successful broadcasters. He also recalls playing the first Beatles record in Tucson in January 1964.

FM broadcasting later expanded its influence, especially because its sound quality made it well suited to music. Radio’s competitive landscape continued to change with the growth of satellite radio, online media and podcasts. Lindstrom describes the transformation as affecting not only radio, but newspapers, magazines and television as well. Each medium has had to adjust as audiences gained more choices and new ways to receive information.

Even with those changes, Tucson’s current radio landscape can be traced back to the small station that went on the air in 1926. Lindstrom’s centennial presentation offers local groups a way to look at that history through the people, businesses and technologies that shaped it. KGAR began with only a few hours of live programming, expensive receivers and the backing of one newspaper. A century later, its legacy remains visible in Tucson’s continuing radio stations and in the broader electronic media culture that grew from that first broadcast.