From the Annals of Radio – In 1923, radio station WBAP in Fort Worth first broadcast a “Barn Dance” country music variety show  featuring a fiddler, a square-dance caller, and aged Confederate veteran Capt. M. J. Bonner.   The format relied on cornpone humor, lively music mixed  with the occasional tearjerker and stereotypical country costumes.   WBAP had been established by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram under Amon G. Carter in 1922 and was looking for a distinctive programming format which it found with the Barn Dance. This format quickly swept the nation and was  copied by  the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville and the National Barn Dance broadcast from Chicago among many others.