United Press International Radio Network

Originally named "UPI Audio," the United Press International Radio Network was an audio actuality news service for radio and television stations from then-major wire service United Press International.

It was the first such service offered by a major news agency and existed from 1958 to 1999.

A late 1950s offshoot of UPI's television footage service, "UPI Movietone," later known as United Press International Television News or UPITN, "UPI Audio," began selling the sounds of newsmakers stripped from newsfilm, plus the voices of UPI reporters and stringers to client radio stations.

It was originally done on a piecemeal basis, with UPI's wire for broadcasters, known as the National Radio Wire, carrying lists of available material. Over time, that list came to be called a billboard, and it moved several times a day. As the operation grew, it was expanded from dial-up telephone to feeds by leased line, the audio material, now branded as Audio Roundup was fed at specific times, usually at ten minutes past the hour.

In early 1966, UPI acquired the assets and key personnel of a similarly named (but previously unrelated) competing service, Radio Press International. Out of that merger came an audio service that at its peak served more than a thousand U.S. radio stations and many foreign clients, including other networks such as NPR, RKO, Britain's Independent Radio News and even CNN in its early years when CNN, then headed by former UPI and UPTN executives Reese Schonfeld and Burt Reinhardt, effectively reunited UPI audio with UPITN video.

In the early 1970s, UPI Audio began offering a newscast at the top of the hour.

Soon thereafter, it added live sportscasts and business reports. Among UPI Audio's sportscasters of the late 1970s were Keith Olbermann and Sam Rosen.

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