Originally named "UPI Audio," the United Press International Radio Network was a news service for
radio
Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...
and
television
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
stations from
wire service
A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency ma ...
United Press International
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ce ...
. It was the first such service offered by a major news agency and existed from 1958 to 1999.
A late 1950s offshoot of UPI's television footage service, "UPI Movietone," later known as
United Press International Television News
United Press International Television News, abbreviated as UPITN, was a television news agency, operating from 1967 to 1985. It was the successor to earlier UPI television news film operations United Press Movietone and United Press International N ...
or UPITN, "UPI Audio," began selling the sounds of newsmakers stripped from
newsfilm, plus the voices of UPI reporters and
stringers to client radio stations.
It was originally done on a piecemeal basis, with UPI's wire for broadcasters, known as the National Radio Wire, carrying lists of available material.
Over time, that list came to be called a billboard, and it moved several times a day. As the operation grew, it was expanded from dial-up
telephone
A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...
to feeds by
leased line
A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by ...
, the audio material, now branded as Audio Roundup was fed at specific times, usually at ten minutes past the hour.
In early 1966, UPI acquired the assets and key personnel of a similarly named (but previously unrelated) competing service, Radio Press International. Out of that merger came an audio service that at its peak served more than a thousand U.S. radio stations and many foreign clients, including other networks such as
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
,
RKO
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Kei ...
, Britain's
Independent Radio News
Independent Radio News provides a service of news bulletins, audio and copy to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom and beyond. The managing director, Tim Molloy, succeeded long-term MD John Perkins in November 2009. Perkins had been ...
and even
CNN
Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
in its early years when CNN, then headed by former UPI and UPTN executives
Reese Schonfeld
Maurice Wolfe "Reese" Schonfeld (November 5, 1931July 28, 2020) was an American television journalist and executive. Trained as a lawyer, he co-founded CNN with Ted Turner in 1980, and went on to establish Food Network in 1993.
Early life and ...
and
Burt Reinhardt
Burton Reinhardt (April 19, 1920 – May 10, 2011) was an American journalist and news executive, who served as executive Vice President of CNN from 1980 to 1982 and the second President of CNN from 1982 to 1990. In his capacity as vice presid ...
, effectively reunited UPI audio with UPITN video.
In the early 1970s, UPI Audio began offering a newscast at the top of the hour.
Soon thereafter, it added live sportscasts and business reports. Among UPI Audio's sportscasters of the late 1970s were
Keith Olbermann
Keith Theodore Olbermann (born January 27, 1959) is an American sports and political commentator and writer. Olbermann spent the first 20 years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and ra ...
and
Sam Rosen.
Unlike most commercial
radio network
There are two types of radio network currently in use around the world: the one-to-many (simplex communication) broadcast network commonly used for public information and mass media, mass-media entertainment, and the two-way radio (Duplex (teleco ...
s, which usually paid local stations to air their programming (and commercials), UPI charged stations cash for its broadcast services, allowing them to sell their own advertising within or adjacent to UPI broadcasts. It is the model that then-rival wire service
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City.
Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
also used when it followed UPI into the radio network field in the mid-1970s.
The service name was changed from UPI Audio to UPI Radio Network in 1983 to reflect the greater focus on live programming.
After a long period of changing ownerships, business models and bankruptcies, UPI declined into a shell of a news service by 1999, when its then-Saudi Arabian ownership was convinced by its handpicked CEO,
Arnaud de Borchgrave
Arnaud Charles Paul Marie Philippe de Borchgrave (26 October 1926 – 15 February 2015) was a Belgian–American journalist who specialized in international politics. Following a long career with the news magazine ''Newsweek'', covering 17 wars ...
, to exit the broadcasting business United Press had pioneered back in the 1930s. The rump UPI sold its client list of its radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival, the AP.
References
Additional sources
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Defunct radio networks in the United States
Radio stations established in 1958
Radio stations disestablished in 1999
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