1920 in radio

Events

• January
• * The first informal and spasmodic broadcasts in the United Kingdom are made by the Marconi Company from Chelmsford in England. These broadcasts include both speech and music.
• * Radio 2XG, which opened the previous year, is forced to close down after Lee De Forest moves the station from the Bronx to Manhattan.
• 23 February–6 March – The Marconi Company broadcasts from Chelmsford a series of 30-minute shows repeated twice daily. These include live music performances.
• 15 June – Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba becomes history's first well-known professional performer to make a radio broadcast when she sings two arias as part of the series of Marconi broadcasts from Chelmsford in Britain.
• 20 August – Station 8MK in Detroit is the first in the world to broadcast regularly scheduled news bulletins and religious shows. The news in compiled from reports supplied by the Detroit News.
• 27 August – Sociedad Radio Argentina airs a live performance of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal from the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires. Only about twenty homes in the city have a receiver with which to tune into the broadcast.
• November – The Marconi broadcasts from Chelmsford cease after it is claimed they interfere with aircraft and ship communications. They resume in 1922 regularly as 2MT.

  Debuts

• 2 November – KDKA in Pittsburgh begins broadcasting as the first commercial radio station in the United States.
• 19 December – WBT in Charlotte begins broadcasting as experimental station 4XD.

  Births

• 14 January - George Herman, American journalist
• 21 January - Peggy Lee, American singer, songwriter, composer and actress
• 2 April - Ian Messiter, British panel game creator
• 12 June - Peter Jones, British comic actor
• 28 June - Irene Thomas, British radio quiz show player
• 15 October - Robert Rockwell, American actor