A Brief History of Music & the Spoken Word
The longest continuous network broadcast in the world began with one microphone, one engineer, and a Choir that wasn’t sure anyone was listening.
By Mack Wilberg · Monday, January 12, 2026
On the morning of July 15, 1929, a young engineer named Earl Glade climbed a ladder in the Tabernacle, taped a microphone to the rafters, and prayed for the best.
The first broadcast of what would become Music & the Spoken Word went out over a single station that day. The Choir sang. A young man named Richard L. Evans read a brief message from a notebook on his lap — no script, no template, just a few hopeful sentences and a closing benediction.
Almost a hundred years later, the broadcast is still going. The microphones have changed. The studios have changed. The world has changed. The format hasn’t: a piece of music that lifts, a brief message that comforts, a piece that closes, a benediction.
The continuity is the point. In a medium that values novelty above almost everything, Music & the Spoken Word values return — the same time, the same voices, the same instinct to send something kind into the week ahead.