Hacking Radio History’s Data: Station Call Signs, Digitized Magazines, and Scaled Entity Search

Abstract

This article uses scaled entity search (SES), a data mining technique and interpretive framework, to study the historically dynamic role of local radio broadcasters in the United States. The authors model the technique by searching for more than two thousand individual radio call letters and discussing the call signs with the highest number of page hits, with critical attention to the meaning of those results within the 1.6 million page digitized corpus of the Media History Digital Library. They also detail the strategies of one of the top-trending stations, WCCO Minneapolis, to distinguish itself in the broadcasting marketplace through the trade press. The authors conclude that WCCO’s emphasis on various aspects of the local market through facts and figures, constructions of local market identity, and relationships with sponsors instantiated a larger trend on the part of local broadcasters to position themselves favorably to advertisers and other industry participants.