Fan magazines enjoyed success because of the large and growing radio audience that was interested in the programs and personalities heard. The magazines were most successful from the mid-192os through the early 1960s. Fan magazines published a variety of content, including program listings and descriptions. A substantial portion of their content was devoted to radio personalities and included picture stories, hobbies, home life, and any relevant scandal or gossip. Most of the magazines included reader correspondence. Fan magazines helped audiences keep track of programming and stay interested, and they provided information for interaction among other fans.

The oldest group of radio fans are the amateur and ham radio operators. The American Radio Relay League's (ARRL) monthly magazine, QST, started publishing in 1916. QST was named for the international signal "QST," which means "attention all stations." Still published by the ARRL, QST has for years published product reviews and technical articles. Members share tips and tricks for operating and constructing radios. The difference between QST and popular fan magazines is the focus on radio technology rather than content. Because the magazine is published by an organized group, it reports news, legal and regulatory issues, and technical information and performs many of the functions of a trade journal.

Radio News

Cosmopolitan, McClure's, Munsey's, and other general interest magazines provided information about radio in the early 1900s, but it was not until the radio boom of the 1920s that exclusive mass-market radio magazines appeared. The need for a popular publication that served radio audiences was recognized immediately by early broadcasters. For example, KDKA distributed Radio Broadcasting News to about 2,000 newspapers. The magazine was developed shortly after the first broadcasts in order to provide background information and program listings that could be published in local newspapers. As radio's popularity increased during the first half of the 1920s, the number of radio magazines grew. By the mid-1920s, there were between 35 and 40 radio magazines serving an audience of nearly 1 million readers. Radio News claimed (May 1926) that the top five radio magazines, including Radio News, Popular Radio, Radio in the Home, Radio Broadcast, and Radio Age, had over half a million readers.

Radio News was one of the first magazines to capitalize on the radio boom and was founded by one of radio's greatest fans, Hugo Gernsback, who was familiar with both publishing and radio. He published a small radio magazine called Modern Electrics in New York in the early 1900s as a way to stimulate sales at his radio electronics store. In 1919 Gemsback started Radio News as a general interest radio magazine. Like many of the early radio magazines, the content of Radio News appealed to a broad audience of radio enthusiasts. Broadcasting was in its developmental stages, but the popular appeal of radio was already evident. Radio News was primarily a "booster" for radio, promoting radio to a developing audience of fans. Radio News called itself "Radio's Greatest Magazine," and its early content appealed to the amateur operators and listeners who fueled the early 1920s radio craze. Each issue had a Norman Rockwell-like cover with a scene that showed some aspect of radio in modern American life. The magazine was highly illustrated, and the content was diverse. Much of the content targeted amateur operators at a variety of skill levels by providing technical articles on home construction of radios and on the selection of components and equipment. There were regular features offering technical information and articles discussed receiving and transmitting radio signals. Radio News also held contests that challenged readers' technical skills with equipment construction and signal reception (DXing). The magazine even offered lessons in Esperanto, promoted as the international language of amateur radio operators.

Radio News promoted radio as a significant social force that served a variety of needs. There were articles about the people who had developed radio and were shaping its future and about the radio celebrities whose voices and sounds were being recognized across the country. The magazine provided station listings and discussed some of the new successful radio stations, including WRNY in New York, where Gernsback delivered a weekly Tuesday night lecture. There were cartoons, poems, and fictional articles in which radio was a central theme. Readers were encouraged to become knowledgeable about radio in a number of ways. Crossword puzzles required readers to know terms and call letters. There were frequent contests, which included submitting drawings of an "ideal" receiving set, composing four-line verses using standard circuit symbols, or identifying errors in the drawings that appeared on the cover of the magazine. Radio News sponsored a "radio play" contest and published the works of the winners and finalists.

Radio News also featured a significant amount of advertising. For example, the index of advertisers for the January 1925 issue lists 381 advertisers and includes 180 pages with advertising (out of 240 total). Equipment and services offered by all segments of the emerging radio industry were advertised. There was also a classified advertising section. Radio News used product names in some of its construction articles, although it discontinued the practice after Gernsback was accused of selling out to advertisers. In 1926 Radio News claimed that it was second only to Radio Broadcast (a successful trade magazine) in its volume of advertising.

Radio News enjoyed its greatest success during the chaotic early 1920s. Advertising revenues dropped significantly as the distinction between professionals, amateurs, and listening audiences became more clearly defined. In the early 1930s, Radio News narrowed its appeal to the amateur technical audience and continued publishing technical information until in 1959 it became Electronics World.

Radio Guide

The successful popular mass-market fan magazines that emerged in the 1930s served the audiences created by broadcasting. There were more than a dozen popular fan magazines published during radio's golden age, including Movie Radio, Radio Album, Radio Dial, Radio Digest, Radio Guide, Radioland, Radio Mirror, and Radio Stars. These magazines followed the example set by popular movie fan magazines, which focused on personalities, took readers behind the scenes, and always included pictures or portraits of stars on the cover.

Radio Guide is an example of this kind of fan magazine. Radio Guide was published weekly by M.L. Annenberg in Chicago beginning in 1932. By 1936 Radio Guide was printed in 17 regional editions and was selling 420,000 copies per week, and the content typified the radio fan magazine of the time. Part of the magazine offered stories and pictorials concerning radio personalities. One pictorial feature called the "Radio Guide Album" included a full-page picture of the cast of a selected network program. There was information and gossip about radio stars and often a short story.

Radio Guide regularly provided short reports about current radio news, shortwave information, and upcoming musical events. Regular features that appeared in the magazine included "Coming Events," "Hits of the Week," "Contests on the Air," "X-word Puzzle," and "Radio Boners." Approximately half of the magazine's content featured a programming guide with day-by-day listings of programs and the stations that aired them. The magazine marked high-quality programs with a star symbol placed next to the listing. Religious programs were identified with a bell symbol. The program section included a log of numerous radio stations, including foreign outlets, and a modest listing of shortwave programs for the week. Radio Guide remained an important source of fan support through the early 1940s and laid the groundwork for the same publisher's 1953 creation of the hugely successful TV Guide.

Radio Mirror, which started publishing in 1933, changed its name to TV Radio Mirror in order to serve the popular interest in television. Fan magazines continued to provide information about radio into the 1960s, but their general content shifted substantially from radio to television. As radio became a medium of music that largely served local markets, the need for mass-market radio fan magazines disappeared.

Web Fan Magazines

The shift from national networks to local programming and the use of syndicated programming have resulted in smaller, more specialized groups of fans for radio programs and fewer opportunities for successful national mass-market fan magazines. A few traditional fan magazines are published in large regional markets, such as the L.A. Radio Guide in southern California, but generally the current market for radio fan magazines is limited.

The primary means of reaching fans today is with webpages and e-zines (electronic magazines). E-zines are delivered through the internet and presented in formats that resemble traditional fan magazines. Subscriptions are ordered through a webpage. An example is Krud Radio, a fan e-zine that offers a humorous look at radio and arrives by e-mail. About.com is accessed through a webpage and offers a "Guide to Radio" that discusses radio news, conducts polls about a variety of radio topics, provides links to internet audio sites, and includes a chat room for discussing radio topics.

Webpages offer fans the same content found in traditional fan magazines but provide a level of interaction not found in traditional magazines. Talk show host Art Bell's webpage logged more than 5.5 million visitors between January 1997 and January 2000, offering program summaries, archives, a chat room, feature articles, links, a studio camera, audio clips, and more.

Fans sometimes establish "unofficial" webpages that target other fans. Howard Stern's show has a number of unofficial webpages. For example, "Heynow's Webpage" offers a collection of Howard Stern Rea!Audio files. Stern's associate, Fred Norris, known as the King of Mars, has an unofficial fan site that was started because "everyone else on the show has at least one stupid fan page, so why not Fred."

Internet directories of stations and programs are replacing printed directories in fan magazines. Lists of stations and links to internet audio are provided by a number of websites, including RadioLinks.net, Broadcast.com, Macroradio.net, RadioStations.net, Netradio.net, Darnell's Black Radio Guide, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) List of Radio Stations.

Amateur and ham radio operators are experiencing a similar change in their fan magazines. There are still a number of specialized periodicals that target amateurs, but the internet is becoming an increasingly important source of information. Most organizations and publishers that produce magazines for this audience also have webpages, including the ARRL. AntenneX, a successful magazine that specializes in antennae for amateurs, is now promoting its website, which logged over 2 million visitors between 1997 and early 2003. Ham Radio Online, offered by the Virtual Publishing Company, provides technical information, news, opinions, cartoons, on-line discussions, feature stories, up-to-the-minute reports on world disasters, and an on-line newsletter delivered by e-mail.

The internet has revitalized fan interest by providing sites where smaller and more specialized groups of fans can find the content of traditional fan magazines. In addition, the community of fans using the electronic magazines and websites enjoys a level of interaction that traditional magazines could never offer.