The world’s longest running syndicated radio program is …

Here’s a clue. It’s produced in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Yes, you’re right, it has something to do with Mormons – the dominant group in this neck of the American woods. They produce a half hour weekly program called Music and The Spoken Word that’s been continually broadcast on radio since 15 July, 1929.

Featuring the incomparable Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the show aims to be inspirational without being religious. The radio program and its television spin-off currently air on close to 2,000 stations worldwide. It was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2010.

In all its 85 years, the show has featured just three announcer/hosts. The first, Richard L. Evans, lasted 41 years despite the danger he faced each week perched atop a rickety ladder in order to reach the one and only microphone suspended from the ceiling so that it would to take in the whole orchestra and choir.

The second announcer, J. Spencer Kinard, lasted just 18 years, while the third, Lloyd D. Newell who has had the luxury of his own mic and teleprompter since 1990, is still going strong.

The star of the show, though, is the 360 member Grammy Award winning Choir which we were lucky enough to hear live on a chilly Sunday morning as they recorded the show in a purpose built auditorium in the Conference Center – which in itself is a marvel – the largest of its type in the world. The fact that it seats 21,200 people is not so remarkable as the fact that each one has an unobstructed view of the stage because there are no support pillars.

Whether this is your kind of music or not, it is difficult not to appreciate the sheer power and precision of this finely tuned instrument known as The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. None of them are paid. They just do it for love.

Peter Saxon

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