KDKA Was First to Broadcast Election Returns on Radio

KDKA - the famous call letters from the now legendary Pittsburg station - was the first radio station to broadcast election returns. Don Moore writes:

"KDKA started up just in time to broadcast the election returns of the 1920 election...KDKA came on the air at 8:00 pm on election night, November 2. Election returns were phoned in to the studio from the Pittsburgh Post as they came off the wire services, and live banjo music filled the empty spaces. Estimates are that only about 2,000 heard the broadcast but they included some very influential people gathered in the homes of Westinghouse officials and at the Edgewood country club outside Pittsburgh. Many people telephoned in to ask the station give more election news and play less music."

Even though the 1920 broadcast was a first for commercial AM radio, according to Moore, there was precedent for using wireless technology:

"The first known incursion of politics into radio was during the 1906 mid-term elections. A few days before the election, the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Line contracted the Thomas E. Clark Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company of Detroit to send the election returns to its ships in the Great Lakes. The passengers may have been impressed, but it didn't help Clark Wireless, which went bankrupt a few years later."

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