WBKB is not my first Internet radio station. I’m not certain I could reconstruct the fault line backward, but when we began working on The Adventures of Mr. Magnificent!, I knew we would need both a radio station and a TV station. The TV side will be a reality of some sort, though our main staple right now is Sci-Fi Theater, where we showcase classic, public domain sci-fi films. I’m also thinking of reviving Movie Madness with Dr. Praxis as an animated show to run alongside the old movies we’ve shown you.

The radio station, however, has much more going for it than just Mr. Magnificent. We’re ready to open the virtual airwaves to outside podcasts and radio shows. While we don't have the budget to pay creators for their broadcasts, we are more than willing to provide a platform to play them.

That sense of independent, foundational show business is baked right into our name. I once jokingly told a friend that WBKB was named in her honor, but the truth is rooted in early media history. The letters pay tribute to Balaban & Katz (B&K) — A. J. Balaban, Barney Balaban, and Sam Katz. They were the perfect trio of entertainment pioneers: A. J. was the visionary, Barney was the businessman, and Sam was the lawyer. They began by building some of Chicago’s first nickelodeons, then branched upward and outward by constructing palatial movie theaters that many consider the first of their kind anywhere. Famous Players-Lasky, the forerunner of Paramount Pictures, bought a controlling interest in B&K in 1926, before being forced to sell the theaters off as part of the landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures antitrust settlement in 1948.

While Balaban & Katz were building physical palaces for filmgoers, broadcasting was building palaces of the imagination. Radio has been a massive part of our lives for over 100 years. For my parents in those pre-television days, radio was just as large an entertainment source as cinema. They tuned in to Superman, Batman, The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, Jack Benny, George Burns & Gracie Allen, and Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. Both of my parents have shared the memory of listening to religious music—likely Vespers on NBC—when the broadcast was suddenly interrupted by the announcement that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor.

For their kids, radio became the gathering place to hear the latest records from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and Jefferson Airplane and so on.

Eventually, radio couldn't quite escape the shadow of its younger sibling, television. But the dynamic between them was distinct: radio could do anything, television showed you everything. Radio could imitate a person walking on the moon; television showed us literal footage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepping onto the lunar surface.

Yet, even in a world dominated by screens, that imaginative medium endures. As I sit in a room surrounded by stacks of CDs* and DVDs—including several preserving classic broadcasts—I am more convinced than ever that audio shows still hold a vital place in our minds and hearts.

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