Bury Him by Radio

Early radio publications located radio funerals (or radio-assisted funerals) somewhere between vulgar displays and quirky, if touching, tributes. By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral broadcast in 1945, network radio had been in full swing for almost 20 years, and the idea of a radio funeral was less of a novelty. Situated in between the vulgar displays and the more elaborate production for Roosevelt were the various broadcasts honoring President Warren G. Harding. The president’s death on August 2, 1923, took the nation by surprise, and radio stations quickly assessed their place within the mourning landscape. Using archival press and trade accounts, as well as scholarship from radio studies and death studies, this article examines urban radio stations’ responses to Harding’s death and shows that broadcasters interpreted their roles according to conventional mourning rituals, creating a template for death coverage that could not hold. Radio navigated the tension between its secularity and the dominance of religious death rituals by acknowledging and reconciling sound’s potential collision course with respect and good taste. As tethered to conventional mourning rituals as some stations were, experimentation with studio production demonstrated that broadcasters could and would generate their own brand of funeral programming.