• 1 January –
Federal Communications Commission approval of commercial
FM radio in the United States takes effect. • 29 March – 80 percent of North America's
AM broadcasting frequencies are reassigned to new channels pursuant to the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement. • c. May – 6 actors in
Norway who refuse to perform on state radio for the
Quisling regime during the
occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany have their work permits revoked. • 23 May –
Gustav Siegfried Eins, a British
black propaganda station, begins broadcasting to German troops in Western Europe through short wave transmitters in southern England, purporting to be an official German military station. • 27 May –
Fireside chat by the President of the United States:
Announcing Unlimited National Emergency (longest fireside chat). • 22 June – The invasion of the
Soviet Union by
Nazi Germany is reported on
Radio Moscow by
Yuri Levitan (who in the autumn is evacuated to
Sverdlovsk). • 26 June – The radio transmission that exposes the '
Red Orchestra' German anti-Nazi resistance group is intercepted by the
Funkabwehr. • 28 June – The first of four broadcasts from Berlin to the neutral United States by English-born humorist
P. G. Wodehouse, who has been interned in Nazi Germany, is made. The series, entitled
How to be an Internee Without Previous Training and comprising anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a civilian internee, including some gentle mocking of his captors, is in August broadcast to the United Kingdom by the German propaganda ministry. The broadcasts generate a reaction, including, on 15 July, a strongly worded riposte on the BBC by print journalist
William Connor. • 11 September –
Fireside chat:
On Maintaining Freedom of the Seas following the
Greer Incident. • 14 October –
BBC programmes in the United Kingdom are first interrupted by Nazi German propaganda transmissions. • 21 November – The live
blues radio program
King Biscuit Time is broadcast for the first time on
KFFA in
Helena, Arkansas; it will attain its 17,000th broadcast in 2014 making it the longest-running daily American radio broadcast. • 7 December – At 2:26 p.m.
EST (19:26
GMT), the
Mutual Broadcasting System in the United States interrupts its play-by-play commentary on the
New York Giants/
Brooklyn Dodgers NFL game to announce the
attack on Pearl Harbor. At around the same time,
NBC Red breaks into
Sammy Kaye's musical program,
NBC Blue suspends
National Vespers, and
CBS Radio interrupts a concert by the
New York Philharmonic for an announcement made by
John Charles Daly. Other sources suggest the first coverage on CBS is in its scheduled news program,
World News Today, at 2:30 p.m. EST when Daly reads the initial report and that the first report on NBC cuts into a play, a dramatization of
The Inspector-General, at 2:33 p.m. EST, lasting just 21 seconds. News of the attack is first broadcast in Japan at 11:30 a.m.
Japan Standard Time; however it has already been announced "shortly after" 7:00 a.m. JST that Japan had "entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn", after the attacks had finished. • 8 December – The President of the United States,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, delivers the
Presidential Address to Congress of 8 December 1941, commonly referred to as the "
Infamy Speech" to a
Joint Session of Congress at 12:30 p.m.
EST (17:30
GMT). Transmitted live over all four major American radio networks, it attracts the largest audience ever measured for an American radio broadcast, with over 81 percent of homes tuning in. • 9 December –
Fireside chat:
On the Declaration of War with Japan. ==Debuts==