Listening to old recordings, there is a distinct accent that radio and television announcers used that is different from a modern-day "Standard American" or neutral accent. It seems that over the course of fifty years pronunciation has shifted. Is this a documented phenomenon? Or is it more a function of broadcast media being less focused on proper enunciation and diction?
(Possibly related, I've noticed some old books spell "Hello" as "Hullo". Is this a reflection of the same thing?)
Best Answer
You might find this article in Wikipedia to be elucidating, though I don't like the term itself, as "Mid-Atlantic English" to me signals the accents spoken between New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Anyway, it's true that there's a now-largely-disappeared dialect that was spoken both by the upper classes of the Eastern Seabord and by Hollywood actors and actresses wanting to appear upper class.