30 Interesting Things You Didn’t Know About Mass Media

In 1972, Canadian radio station CBC held a poll to find a national simile (an answer to 'As American as apple pie'). The winning response was "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances."

Radio GTMO, the Armed Forces radio station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has a vinyl collection of over 20,000 records, including some albums that exist nowhere else.

The first TV remote controls were called "clickers" and did not use batteries. They transmitted an ultrasound signal when the user clicked the button, striking a metal rod inside to send an audible signal to the TV.

The most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM), which during certain times in the 1930s broadcasted 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbors within the vicinity of the transmitter heard the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses.

In 1989, the Australian youth radio station Triple J played the song "Express Yourself" by N.W.A. Hip hop group on a continuous loop for 24 hours (360 times in a row) while the station went on a protest strike against censorship of NWA's song F*ck Tha Police.

In the 1940s, the Superman Radio Show had Superman fight their version of the KKK using real information about the Klan. This was a crippling blow to the organization, causing recruitment to drastically decrease. In response, the KKK ordered a boycott of the Radio Show’s sponsor, Kellogg.

Sitting close to the TV will not damage your eyesight. The myth spread after it was discovered that televisions made prior to 1967 emitted excessive radiation.

In 1937, a newspaper named Los Angeles Examiner published a full-page map predicting Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

All of our terrestrial radio and television broadcasts become indistinguishable from background noise at only a few light years away from the Earth thanks to the inverse square law.

The heaviest newspaper ever delivered was the September 14, 1987 edition of the New York Times. It weighed 12 lbs. (5.4kg) and contained 1,612 pages.