Episode 3: Voices in the Air
Introduction
May 30, 1952. Memorial Day. Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
A man named Sid Collins sits down in a small wooden broadcast booth on the front straightaway. He puts on a headset. He clears his throat. A red light goes on in front of him.
Until this exact moment, the Indianapolis 500 had been on the radio every year since 1922. But the broadcasts had been short. Five minutes at the start. Five minutes at the finish. Periodic updates in between. Listeners in Indianapolis would tune in, hear the green flag, and then go work in the garden for two hours until the next update came on.
Today, that ends. Today, for the very first time, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has its own dedicated radio network. WIBC in Indianapolis is the flagship station. Twenty-six other stations across the country are also carrying the broadcast. Sid Collins is the chief announcer. He is twenty-eight years old.
He does not know it yet, but he will sit in this booth, or one very much like it, every May for the next twenty-five years. He will become the most famous sports broadcasting voice in the country. His phrase, "the greatest spectacle in racing," will outlive him by half a century.
And every voice you have ever heard call the Indianapolis 500, on radio, on television, on streaming today, traces back to Sid Collins, to this booth, to this Memorial Day in 1952.
Crystal Sets and Cornfields
Let's go back thirty years before Sid Collins ever put on a headset.
It is May 1922. The Indianapolis 500 has been running for eleven years. The cars are loud. The crowds are huge. But if you live more than a few miles from Indianapolis, the only way you know what happened in the race is to wait for the next morning's newspaper.
Radio is brand new. The first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA in Pittsburgh, only started broadcasting in November 1920 (Wikipedia, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network, 2026). So radio has existed as a public medium for about a year and a half on race day 1922.
But two tiny Indianapolis radio stations, with the call signs WOH and WLK, decide to try something. They are basically running on the same kind of equipment a ham radio operator would use at home (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020). They set up a transmitter somewhere near the track. And for the small handful of Indianapolis residents who actually own a radio in 1922, they broadcast fragments of the race.
It is crackly. It cuts in and out. It is mostly inaudible. But it is the very first time the Indianapolis 500 has been broadcast in any form. It is the seed of everything that comes after (First Super Speedway, n.d.).
Two or three years later, in 1924 and 1925, a Chicago station called WGN and a brand-new Indianapolis station called WFBM take over. They broadcast periodic updates throughout the race. Still no continuous coverage. Just little punches of information every twenty or thirty minutes.
Then in 1928, something bigger happens. NBC, one of the very first national radio networks, decides to carry the final hour of the Indianapolis 500 live. They send their biggest sports broadcaster, a man named Graham McNamee, to anchor it (First Super Speedway, n.d.). McNamee is already famous for calling the World Series and major boxing matches. This is the first time the Indy 500 gets a true national audience.
By the late 1930s, a network called the Mutual Broadcasting System is carrying the race nationwide every year, with their lead announcer Bill Slater coming in from New York each May (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020). The format is still chopped up. Live coverage at the start. Live coverage at the finish. Five-minute periodic updates in between.
The race is on the air. But nobody is yet calling the whole race, lap by lap, all the way through. That is still ten years away. And the person who is going to do it is a 26-year-old turn reporter named Sid Collins.
Sid Collins and the IMS Radio Network
In 1950, Mutual's chief announcer Bill Slater gets sick before the race. Mutual scrambles. WIBC, the Indianapolis station that has been producing the broadcast for years, puts a 26-year-old turn reporter named Sid Collins on standby. At the last minute, Slater shows up anyway, but he generously invites Collins to share the booth with him as co-anchor (First Super Speedway, n.d.).
That is Sid Collins' first national broadcast.
A year later, in 1951, Mutual decides to dramatically increase its advertising rates and the broadcast's main sponsor pulls out. With weeks to go before the 1951 race, there is a real possibility that the Indianapolis 500 might not be broadcast at all (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020).
WIBC steps in last-minute. Sid Collins anchors. Twenty-five other Mutual affiliate stations carry it. The race is on the air.
But the other four Indianapolis radio stations are angry. They feel cut out. WIBC is dominating, and they want in. They start exploring how to build their own network for the 1952 race.
This is where the story takes a turn. WIBC's sales manager, a man named Gil Berry, is already way ahead of them. In early May 1952, just weeks before race day, IMS owner Tony Hulman and IMS president Wilbur Shaw, who happens to be a three-time Indy 500 winner himself, announce that they are forming the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. In-house. Run by IMS. Headquartered in Speedway, Indiana (Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 2024).
WIBC is the flagship. Sid Collins, age 28, is the chief announcer. The other four Indianapolis stations are not invited.
That race, May 30, 1952, is the first broadcast under the new IMS Radio Network. Twenty-six affiliated stations across the country carry it (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020). The format is still the old chopped-up structure: live at the start, live at the finish, updates in between.
But Hulman and Shaw are not done. After 1952, the four left-out Indianapolis stations are still complaining. So the network reorganizes for 1953. Now all five Indianapolis stations are included. Announcers come from each one. And in 1953, for the first time in history, the Indianapolis 500 is broadcast flag-to-flag, meaning continuously from green to checkered, with no breaks except for commercials (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020).
That is the broadcast model that has been used ever since.
In 1954, the IMS Radio Network adds the Armed Forces Network. American soldiers in Europe can now hear the Indianapolis 500 live (IMS Museum, 2024). By 1955, all 48 states are covered. By the early 1980s, the network has 1,200 affiliated stations. At its peak, the broadcast reaches 100 million listeners worldwide (First Super Speedway, n.d.).
In 1955, a 21-year-old copywriter at WIBC named Alice Greene is asked to come up with a short phrase that announcers can use to signal an upcoming commercial break to the engineers at affiliate stations. Greene suggests: "Stay tuned to the greatest spectacle in racing." Sid Collins uses it. It catches on. It becomes the unofficial motto of the Indianapolis 500. Seventy-one years later, it is still the unofficial motto of the Indianapolis 500 (Speed Sport, 2024).
A 21-year-old copywriter, mostly forgotten, named the most famous sporting event in America.
Sid Collins anchored every Indianapolis 500 from 1952 through 1976. Twenty-five consecutive races. By the time he stepped away, he was the most listened-to sports broadcaster on Earth. He died unexpectedly in May 1977 after being diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was 54 years old. The man he had personally mentored, Paul Page, took over as Voice of the 500 the very next month (Wikipedia, Sid Collins, 2026).
But the network Sid built has lasted. Right now, more than seventy years after that first 1952 broadcast, the IMS Radio Network reaches over 20 million listeners worldwide every Memorial Day weekend.
How Radio Actually Works
OK, let's stop and pull back for a second. We have been talking a lot about radio. What is radio? How does the actual physics work?
Here is the basic idea. A radio broadcast starts with a sound, like a voice talking into a microphone. The microphone converts the sound into an electrical signal that mirrors the shape of the sound wave.
Then the radio station takes that electrical signal and feeds it into a much, much stronger signal called a carrier wave. The carrier wave is a radio wave with a specific frequency, the same kind of frequency you see on your car radio: 93.5, 1070, 99.9. Those numbers are the frequencies of the carrier waves the stations use.
The original sound wave gets blended onto the carrier wave in one of two ways.
AM stands for "amplitude modulation." That means the loudness, or amplitude, of the carrier wave changes to match the sound wave. AM radio is older. It can travel really long distances, especially at night. But it picks up a lot of static.
FM stands for "frequency modulation." The frequency of the carrier wave changes slightly to encode the sound. FM is newer. It does not travel quite as far as AM, but the sound quality is much higher and there is almost no static.
The carrier wave, with the sound encoded on it, gets blasted out of a giant antenna at the radio station. That wave travels through the air at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second.
In your house, or your car, or wherever, your radio has its own antenna. The antenna picks up the radio wave. The radio's circuitry decodes the sound wave back out of the carrier. A speaker converts the electrical signal back into a moving sound wave that your ears can hear.
That whole process, from microphone to speaker, takes less than a hundredth of a second. So when Sid Collins called the finish of the 1968 Indianapolis 500 from his booth at IMS, listeners in Maine, in California, in Germany, on shortwave radio in the South Pacific, heard him almost the exact same instant the words came out of his mouth.
Now, here is where it gets interesting for our story. WIBC's signal in Indianapolis is broadcast at 1070 kilohertz on the AM band. That is a 50,000-watt signal, which is actually really powerful for AM radio. At night, when the conditions are right, WIBC's signal can reach as far as Florida and Maine.
This is part of why the IMS Radio Network was able to spread so fast in the 1950s. WIBC alone could reach an enormous geographic footprint. Then the network re-broadcast the signal to affiliate stations who covered everywhere else.
Today, satellite radio (SiriusXM), internet streaming, and digital broadcasting have changed all of this. The physics of radio still works the same way (it is still a wave traveling through space), but the signal can be encoded as a digital data stream and beamed up to a satellite, or streamed through the internet, or pushed to a phone app.
But for every method, the core idea is the same: take a sound, encode it, send it through some kind of physical medium, and decode it back at the receiver. That basic engineering problem is what Sid Collins and his crew solved over and over again, every Memorial Day, from 1952 onward.
The Art of Calling a Race
So radio gets the voice from the booth to your living room. But what does the voice actually have to do?
Here is the thing about calling the Indianapolis 500 on the radio. Unlike most sports, your listeners cannot see anything. There is no video to fill in the gaps. So the broadcaster has to do something incredibly hard: they have to paint a moving picture, in real time, using only their voice.
Imagine the job. There are 33 cars on the start. The broadcaster has to know all 33 by sight, by helmet color, by car livery. They have to know which lap each car is on. They have to know who is leading, who just made a pit stop, who is in trouble, who is gaining, who is fading. They have to know all of this in real time, while talking continuously, while listening to four turn reporters in their headset, while watching the timing screen in front of them.
And they have to make it sound like a story. Because if you just read out numbers, your listener will turn the radio off.
Target: Mark Jaynes (current Voice of the 500) or recent IMS Radio Network chief announcer. Topic: What is the hardest part of calling the Indianapolis 500? Length: ~30 seconds. Fallback narration if clip is not available: "The current Voice of the 500, Mark Jaynes, has described the job as the most demanding sustained piece of broadcasting in American sports. Three hours of nonstop talking, 33 cars to track, four hundred laps' worth of strategy to weave into the story, and no commercial break long enough to catch your breath."
Sid Collins built the template for this. He called the race like a master storyteller, not a stat-reader. He invented phrases that have stuck around for decades. "Stay tuned to the greatest spectacle in racing." He treated his broadcasting partners like a jazz ensemble, calling on different turn reporters to handle different segments based on what each one's voice did best (Wikipedia, IMS Radio Network, 2026).
One specific moment defined Collins' career. On May 30, 1964, two drivers, Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald, died in a fiery crash on the second lap of the Indianapolis 500. The race continued. Collins had a few minutes before he was required to talk about it on air.
He had no script. He had no time to write one. So he just spoke from the heart. He spoke for about two minutes, live, on the radio, about Eddie Sachs as a person. About what Sachs had done in his career. About what his loss meant. About what it meant to be a race car driver, to know the risks, to do it anyway because you love it (Wikipedia, Sid Collins, 2026).
The network received over thirty thousand letters in the weeks after the race, from listeners asking for a written transcript of what Collins had said. Thirty thousand letters. To honor someone they had never met, called by a broadcaster who had just opened his mouth and let the truth come out.
That is what great sports narration can do. It connects the listener to a moment they could not see, in a way that lasts.
Here is what makes the Voice of the 500 different from almost any other broadcasting job in American sports. The Indy 500 is a long, slow, technical, three-hour event. There are stretches where nothing happens for fifteen minutes. The broadcaster has to fill that time, keep listeners engaged, keep telling the story. That is a completely different skill from calling a football game where the action comes in 30-second bursts.
After Collins came Paul Page, who anchored from 1977 to 1987 and again later (First Super Speedway, n.d.). Then Lou Palmer, whose calls of the 1982 finish are remembered as among the most poetic in the network's history (Field of 33, 2019). Then Bob Jenkins, an Indiana native who many fans regard as the warmest Voice the network ever had. Then Mike King for fifteen years from 1999 to 2013. Then Paul Page returned. And now, Mark Jaynes.
Every one of these broadcasters trained on someone who came before them. Every one of them learned the craft of describing a race they could see to listeners who could not. Every one of them stood in some version of the booth that Sid Collins built.
That craft, the craft of using words to paint a moving picture for someone who is not there, is the same craft that makes a great novel, a great podcast, a great documentary, or a great essay. It is one of the oldest jobs in human storytelling, and it is one of the most important.
TV's Long Climb
Now you might be wondering, while all of this was happening on the radio, what was television doing?
The answer is: not much. For a long time.
The very first television broadcast of the Indianapolis 500 happened on race day 1949. A local Indianapolis station, WFBM-TV, sent a single camera to the track. The broadcast was only available to viewers within a small geographic area around Indianapolis. Most American households did not even own a television in 1949 (Doctor Indy, 2022).
For the next sixteen years, TV coverage of the Indy 500 stayed local. There was no national television broadcast. The race was huge, but you could only watch it on TV if you lived near Indianapolis.
In 1965, ABC got involved. They started broadcasting the race as part of their Wide World of Sports program. But here is the key detail: the broadcast was tape-delayed. ABC would record the race live, edit it down, and air it later in the day. Listeners on the IMS Radio Network heard the race live. TV viewers heard the highlights hours later (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2020).
This happened for one main reason. Tony Hulman, the IMS owner, did not want live national TV coverage of the race. He believed that if people could watch the race for free on TV, fewer people would buy tickets and travel to Indianapolis. He wanted the live broadcast to remain the radio's job. He wanted the live experience to remain a thing you came to Indianapolis for.
This decision held for twenty-one years. From 1965 to 1985, the IMS Radio Network had a complete monopoly on live coverage of the Indianapolis 500. ABC's tape-delayed TV broadcast was a national event, but it was always after the radio had already told the story.
Then in 1986, that policy changed. ABC negotiated a deal to broadcast the race live for the first time. The 1986 Indianapolis 500 was the first live national TV broadcast in the race's history (Wikipedia, IMS Radio Network, 2026). It had taken seventy-five years.
Target: A veteran broadcaster who worked the same-day-delay TV era, or a current FOX broadcaster on the modern coverage. Topic: How did TV coverage of the Indy 500 change the race, and the broadcast craft? Length: ~30 seconds. Fallback narration if clip is not available: "Veteran broadcasters from the tape-delay era describe a very different television culture. Same-day delay made the race more like a documentary than a live event. When live coverage began in 1986, the energy and the production demands shifted completely. The race became a real-time spectacle on every screen, not just every radio."
ABC carried the Indianapolis 500 every year from 1965 through 2018, a 54-year run. In 1987, they brought in Paul Page, who had been Sid Collins' radio successor, to anchor their TV booth alongside three-time Indy 500 winner Bobby Unser and broadcaster Sam Posey. That trio became one of the most loved broadcast teams in American motorsports.
In 2019, NBC took over. In 2025, FOX took over and announced a multi-year national deal (FOX 59, 2025). The Indianapolis 500 now reaches more than seven million live TV viewers in the United States alone every Memorial Day weekend.
But here is what is amazing. The IMS Radio Network never went away. Even with live TV. Even with streaming. Even with satellite radio. The radio broadcast Sid Collins built in 1952 is still the way you hear the race live anywhere in the world. Twenty million listeners every year. Three hundred and fifty terrestrial affiliates. Shortwave to American forces stationed overseas. Sirius XM satellite radio. Streaming through IndyCar's website. Podcasts after the race.
The technology has expanded. The craft has not changed.
Today's Multi-Platform Spectacle
So what does it take to broadcast the Indianapolis 500 today?
In 2025, the IMS Radio Network team alone had more than twenty on-air contributors. The TV broadcast on FOX had even more. There were dozens of camera operators positioned around the track. There were sensors in the cars sending real-time telemetry to the broadcast graphics. There were drone cameras. There were in-car cameras. There were pit lane cameras. There was a helicopter (Grokipedia, IMS Radio Network, 2026).
The whole thing was being pushed to:
- 350-plus terrestrial radio stations
- SiriusXM satellite radio
- IndyCar's streaming platform
- The FOX live national TV broadcast
- FOX's streaming platform
- Social media in real time: clips, scores, replays, driver content
The careers behind this broadcast are not just announcers. Every one of those platforms requires specialists:
- Audio engineers mix the sound feeds from announcers, ambient track noise, car radios, and crowd into a clean broadcast track
- Video engineers switch between camera angles in real time based on what is happening in the race
- Producers decide what story the broadcast is telling each lap
- Graphics operators push live data, stat overlays, and replay graphics to viewers
- Pit reporters chase strategy and team interviews lap by lap
- Statisticians track every passing, every fuel stop, every gap on every car
- Social media producers clip moments and push them out within seconds
Target: A current production engineer, sound designer, or social media producer working the modern Indy 500 broadcast. Topic: What does the technical side of a modern Indy 500 broadcast actually look like? Length: ~30 seconds. Fallback narration if clip is not available: "A modern Indy 500 broadcast is built by hundreds of people working in parallel. Every camera, every microphone, every social media account is a separate workflow. The chief announcer is the most visible person in the chain, but they are sitting on top of an iceberg of technical work nobody in the audience ever sees."
What is striking is that all of these jobs trace back to Sid Collins' booth in 1952. They have evolved. They have specialized. They have multiplied. But the core question is still the same one Collins faced on Memorial Day 1952: how do you take what is happening on the track and put it inside the head of someone who is not there?
If you find that question interesting, broadcasting is a real career path. So is sound engineering. So is journalism. So is podcasting, which is what you are listening to right now.
Wrap-up
Here is what I want you to take from Episode 3.
The Indianapolis 500 is one of the most-broadcast sporting events on Earth. Every single piece of that broadcast, the radio, the TV, the streaming, the social media, traces back to people who decided they wanted to use their voices to tell stories.
Sid Collins started as a turn reporter on a local Indianapolis radio station. Paul Page started as a guy who wanted to be in broadcasting and got a job carrying equipment. Mark Jaynes started as a young announcer in a small market. None of them started where they ended up.
What they did have was a love for the craft of storytelling and a willingness to do the small jobs while they learned.
If you are a student in Indiana who likes to write, who likes to read out loud, who likes to record yourself, who likes telling stories, who likes podcasts, who likes the way radio sounds, broadcasting is a real and accessible career. Indiana has some of the best media programs in the country. Ball State University in Muncie. Indiana University's Media School in Bloomington. Butler University here in Indianapolis. Purdue offers strong communications programs. Every one of these schools has Indiana broadcast alumni working in radio, TV, podcasting, and sports media right now.
You do not have to start by calling the Indianapolis 500. You can start with your high school's morning announcements. You can start a podcast in your bedroom this afternoon. You can record yourself reading a chapter of a book and listen to how your voice sounds. Every person at the top of this field started with something small.
This week, find a story you want to tell. Tell it out loud. Record it on your phone. Listen to it back. Notice what you do well. Notice what you would do differently.
That is how Sid Collins started. That is how everyone you have heard tonight started.
Sources
Doctor Indy. (2022, July 23). Indy 500 on television – Part 1 (1949–1963). https://doctorindy.com/2022/07/23/indy-500-on-television-part-1-1949-1963/
Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. (2024). Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. Indiana University Indianapolis. https://indyencyclopedia.org/indianapolis-motor-speedway-radio-network/
Field of 33. (2019, May 7). My favorite IMS Radio highlights. https://fieldof33.com/2019/05/07/my-favorite-ims-radio-highlights/
First Super Speedway. (n.d.). IMS Radio History. https://www.firstsuperspeedway.com/articles/ims-radio-history
Fox 59. (2025, November 20). 'Now Stay Tuned': IMS Museum unveils exhibit on Indy 500 broadcast legends. https://fox59.com/news/now-stay-tuned-ims-museum-unveils-exhibit-on-indy-500-broadcast-legends/
Grokipedia. (2026, January 17). Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. https://grokipedia.com/page/Indianapolis_Motor_Speedway_Radio_Network
IMS Museum. (2024, August 5). Sid Collins. Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. https://imsmuseum.org/fame_inductee/sid-collins/
Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (2020, April 30). IMS Radio Network has brought Indy 500 action for decades. https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2020/04/30/ims-radio-network-informing-listeners-for-decades
The History of the Indianapolis 500 Broadcast. (n.d.). https://www.indymotorspeedway.com/500broadcast-history.html
Speed Sport. (2024, May 20). Indy traditions: 'Greatest spectacle in racing'. https://speedsport.com/indycar/ntt-indycar-series/indy-traditions-greatest-spectacle-in-racing/
Wikipedia. (2026). Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Motor_Speedway_Radio_Network
Wikipedia. (2026, March 11). Sid Collins (broadcaster). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Collins_(broadcaster)