LABF To Honor David Gleason

• Lifelong broadcaster David Gleason will be honored with the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation‘s (LABF)’s inaugural “Excellence in Broadcast Preservation Award” in recognition of his outstanding dedication and commitment to preserving broadcast history. The presentation will take place at NAB Show New York next Thursday, Oct. 26, immediately following the panel session, Your Content is King: Preserve It!, on which Gleason will appear.

Working on his own time and with his money for the past 20 years, Gleason has built a massive online archive of broadcasting and cable trade publications, books, music magazines, technical manuals, directories, yearbooks, company and station publications, programming guides and more. The archive, housed at worldradiohistory.com now tops nine million pages — all readily available to the public — and searchable.

Gleason’s principal role in life has not been digitizing pages for the web, but radio. Beginning as an intern at an AM-FM combo in Cleveland, Gleason has spent the past 64 years in ownership, management, sales, programming, and engineering across 16 countries in Latin America and major U.S. markets.

“There is no stopping him,” said LABF Co-chairs Heidi Raphael and Jack Goodman. “What David has accomplished — virtually single-handedly — is extraordinary. He’s made an unparalleled contribution not only to the history of broadcasting, but to the story of the modern world as reflected and shaped by the media.”