![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Illinois Extension took over WILL’s farm programming in the 1930s. Extension services were set up at the U of I and other land grant universities, to bring practical knowledge to rural audiences. WILL Radio has relied on the University of Illinois Extension for its farm programming for much of its existence. ![]() Then the issue of hearing various experts offer opinions on how things should be done.” But also markets in our case, it was in addition to grain, and It was also cotton. “Farmers are always interested in the weather, so that would be one thing. “You know, I think it was a source of information,” says Easter of the role of farm broadcasting in farmers’ lives. Easter says he often heard farm reports from a San Antonio station while growing up on his father’s hog farm in Texas. That includes former University of Illinois president Bob Easter, who started his academic career as an agriculture professor. Market prices - bewildering for the uninitiated - are something that anyone who grew up on a farm might have memories of hearing. Currently, they can be heard every two hours every weekday, starting with an opening report from a market analyst just before 9 A.M., and wrapping up with the closing prices for the day, rattled off on the air by Todd Gleason at the beginning of the Closing Market Report just after 2 P.M. One part of WILL’s farm programming continues to be price updates on farm and related commodities: corn, wheat, soybeans, cattle and hogs, as well as fuels: crude oil, diesel and natural gas. As an educational station that for years aired no popular music at all, WILL concentrated its farm programs on information about growing crops, raising livestock and succeeding in the marketplace. Commercial radio stations provided entertainment to rural audiences, including such iconic programs as the National Barn Dance on Chicago’s WLS and the Grand Old Opry on WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. WILL’s ag programming has always been practical programming. 100 years later, agricultural programming remains a regular part of WILL’s schedule. Rural audiences were an important audience for early radio, which was seen as a way to bridge distances at a time when good roads and comprehensive telephone service were still spotty in the countryside. When WILL-AM made its first broadcast in April of 1922 (under the call letters WRM), it included a talk on dairy farming, “Turning Cream into Gold”. ![]()
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