RADIO “BOOTLEGGER.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 296, 14 December 1931, Page 1

RADIO “BOOTLEGGER.”

Ostracised Citizen Blots Out U.S. Programmer. VANCOUVER, 8.C., December 4. For hours on end these winter evenings in Canada, United States Radio Broadcasting is overwhelmed by a super bootlegger of the air, who is having a marvellous chuckle at Uncle Sam. Old “ Doc ” Brinkley has made a fortune selling man and horse medicine through Kansas and Nebraska, and with his son, Johnny Boy, became a broadcasting sensation throughout the south-west of the United States. After enduring him for two years, the United States Government suppressed him as far as the use of the air was concerned, but not before the “ Doc ” had acquired a still greater fortune by his bizarre broadcasts. The case got national notoriety, and this was his cue for his latest move, which was to Mexico. On the south bank of the Rio Grande River, within a stone’s throw from Texas, the old man nightly “ takes the air ” with 65,000 watts, the highestpowered station on this continent. At will he blots out any programme from San Francisco, Vancouver, Chicago or New York, and it is safe to say that 30,000,000 curses are aimed at him nightly. But the “ Doc ” laughs and goes merrily on. The Mexican Government so far has declined a convention with Uncle Sam, who is just about worried to death, as the ostracised citizen jocularly rubs salt nightly into his radio wounds.