This is the municipal broadcasting system.

WNYC, New York.

In the city where more than 7 million people live in peace

and enjoy the benefits of democracy.

And good evening, WNYC listeners, and welcome to our 100th birthday celebration.

Yay, yes, that is Rhapsody in blue, bringing us in music from the 1920s that entered the public domain this year.

And this is actually just the beginning of a year of Centennial special programming that we hope will be historically interesting, forward-looking toward the next hundred years,

and so much fun to listen to that you can hardly stand it.

Tonight is the actual 100th birthday of the station.

WNYC signed on for the first time at 8.54 p.m. on Tuesday,

July 8th, 1924. When we get to 8th, tonight, we will bring you a reimagining of that very

first broadcast live from our theater, The Green Space, with on the Media's Brooke Gladstone, playing Mayor John Hyland,

WNYC's John Schaefer from Soundcheck and New Sounds and his inimitable gig alerts as the station's chief announcer

and the supremely versatile actor, Sarah Jones, in a variety of roles of other people on the airwaves at night. Also our president

and CEO LaFontaine Oliver as the city official who first pushed for the creation of WNYC.

Again, that's coming up at exactly 854. Until then, hello everyone. I'm Brian Lehrer, and I have the

honor of hosting this kind of pregame show before we send it to the Green Space Stage. So for the next hour and 52 minutes, I'll be joined by various other people you know from the station. And we'll take some phone calls, too, to talk about the life and times of WNYC from July 8th, 1924 to today.

And we've selected one piece of historical audio or one event recovered from each decade to

build the show around.

Spoiler alert, Bob Dylan, Marion Anderson, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and

Elmo are just some of the voices you will hear from different decades. So with that, let me bring

on three colleagues to start with who've been doing the work of archiving, producing, and picking

...