National Radio Day

With radio, you can hear stories, music, news, and voices from faraway places, bringing the world together in a powerful and immediate way

Music chosen by a DJ and played over the radio waves is a classic sound that can’t be beat. Keeping up with the news while driving in the car is a simple way to stay connected with the world. And educational programming for families is a joy for communities.

National Radio Day celebrates these and other ways that radio continues to impact the world for the better!

Individuals and communities in places all over the world can take National Radio Day as an opportunity to appreciate and celebrate what radio means to the world today. While some people might think that radio has passed its prime, it still acts as a strong force, especially for local communities.

The first person to identify radio waves was a German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1886. But it took about three decades for a practical receiver to be invented, which was due to the work of Italian inventor, Gulielmo Marconi. Though it started with a Morse code message from just a kilometer away, Marconi paved the way for the future of the types of messages that radio waves could carry.

In the early 1900s, radio began its commercial use and about 20 years later it became so popular that people were scrambling to buy radios to put into their homes.

National Radio Day has been celebrated in the United States and other places around the globe since the early 1990s. Some sources suggest that this date was chosen as August 20 in honor of the day that Detroit radio station 8MK (now WWJ) made its first broadcast in 1920 (although this was not the first station to broadcast in the US).

In 2011, NPR (National Public Radio) brought attention to the day, which allowed its popularity to grow significantly. Now, National Radio Day is celebrated all throughout the nation.