Harrison Boyd Summers

Who was Harrison Boyd Summers?

Harrison Boyd Summers was a broadcast historian, educator and a pioneer in audience surveys of radio listeners.

After several years as an advance man for the Chautauqua circuit, Summers was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Missouri in 1931. His first academic post was Kansas State College where he began conducting in 1937 the first large-scale radio audience surveys undertaken on a commercial basis.

He soon joined the industry he had been studying, holding positions in New York City radio and serving as a member of the Radio Research Council. He was director of public service programs for NBC's Eastern Division from 1939 to 1942 and manager of the public service division of the Blue Network from 1942 to 1946.

In 1946, Summers joined Ohio State University 's speech communication program where his teaching and research centered on station and network programming, policy and regulation of broadcasting, and audience research. He pioneered many aspects of broadcast education and served as dissertation advisor to a generation of Ph.D. candidates who entered the growing field of electronic media studies and research.

Summers edited Radio Censorship and the landmark reference work A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926-1956. He co-authored Broadcasting and the Public, an introductory survey text, with his son, Robert.