Today's Tidbit... WSUI And Football's Early Radio Coverage

Part of the fun of researching football's history comes from trying to understand how football fits within broader social and technological changes, particularly the media. You cannot understand football over the years without recognizing its symbiotic relationship with newspapers, radio, television, the internet, and the monies that came with each advance.

One way to examine those relationships is through documents that show the interplay at some time. Period documents are like insects trapped in drops of amber in that they do not change over time. One example of documental amber is the following brochure from 1925 or 1926, published by radio station WSUI.

Early radio stations had call signs that began with the letter W or K, depending on the station's location. Today, stations west of the Mississippi receive call signs beginning with K. However, the border separating K and W stations fell farther West in radio's early days, when WSUI, operated by the Engineering Department at the State University of Iowa, received its name.

The back and front cover of a four-page WSUI brochure from 1925 or 1926.