3 January – The BBC Empire Service, begun in 1932, transmits its first programme in a foreign language: Arabic.
13 March – CBS carries the first point-to-point news roundup, including Edward R. Murrow's first live report, as part of its coverage of the AnschlussinAustria. Over the next few months, the daily programme will evolve into the CBS World News Roundup, a permanent fixture on the CBS network.
6 May – The Caferadio copyright case is decided by the High Court of the Netherlands in favour of the composer Franz Lehár, who complains about a cafe owner allowing his customers to listen to a radio broadcast of Der Zarewitsch.[1]
12 September – Commentator H. V. Kaltenborn begins his famous marathon of news bulletins on the CBS network in the United States covering the intensifying Czech Crisis over the Sudetenland. The first bulletin is a summation of Hitler's closing address to the Tenth (and, as it would prove, last) Party Congress of the Nazi party in Nuremberg. Kaltenborn will eat and sleep in the studio, making periodic updates, until the signing of the Munich Agreement on 29 September.
30 October – Orson Welles's radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds (with script by Howard Koch) is broadcast on CBS from New York as an episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air. As this is a sustaining program and has no commercial interruptions, Welles centers the first two-thirds of the broadcast in the serious style of a series of news bulletins interrupting a live musical broadcast. This approach results in panic in various parts of the United States, although later research suggests its level has been exaggerated.[2]
12 November – France's Finance Minister Paul Reynaud uses a radio broadcast to try to sell his programme of reforms, stating that the country is "going blindfold into an abyss".[3]
^Gosling, John (2009). Waging The War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-4105-1.
^Overy, Richard & Wheatcroft, Andrew The Road To War, London: Macmillan, 2009 p.178
^ abcCox, Jim (2008). This Day in Network Radio: A Daily Calendar of Births, Debuts, Cancellations and Other Events in Broadcasting History. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN978-0-7864-3848-8.
