Radio's First Record Review Program - Around the Disc with Peter Hugh Reed

From April 1929 through January 1931 music commentator and critic Peter Hugh Reed hosted Around the Disc, a forty-minute weekly record review program on WNYC.

Reed was the founder and editor of the American Music Lover, the longest-running independent magazine dedicated to the critical review of commercial musical recordings. Beginning in May 1935, it later was rechristened The American Record Guide. In that founding issue, Reed wrote that the monthly would aim to make itself a "handbook" on the best music for the home listener, whether on record or the radio. 

"There will be only one rigid editorial policy pursued in this magazine: to comment upon and to call attention to the all-around best music on records and radio. We will not seek to exploit one type of music above another, but instead will strive to present at all times a sane and unbiased survey of a noble and many-sided art."

One can only guess that his earlier broadcasts over WNYC helped to shape this goal which he maintained for more than twenty years as the magazine's editor. A quarter of a century later Reed was back on WNYC appearing with New York Times music critic Olin Downs and Duncan Robinson of the Berlioz Society on David Randolph's Music for the Connoisseur. They were part of a panel discussion on the composer Hector Berlioz.

Cover of the first edition of The American Music Lover magazine from May 1936.

(A. Lanset Collection)