Cary Grant Sings the FCC Regulations

This is from the second episode of the NBC radio show The Circle, broadcast on January 22, 1939. NBC assembled a top-drawer cast — Grant, Ronald Colman, Madeline Carroll, Carole Lombard, and Groucho and Chico Marx — and put together a show in a round-table format, where all the stars were members of some sort of club. Much to everyone’s surprise, the show almost immediately flopped, only lasting a few months.

Click this: http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/175
and then listen to it.

Is the Move-in moving out?

I've been watching the move-ins for years now. A move-in is when a radio staiton moves from covering a rural area on the outskirts of a big city to a new town; where it can cover way more big city and ually way less rural. It trades hay bales for ad sales and it's good for buisness, but is it good for aAmerica?

I've been pretty matter-of-fact about it. It's at the cost of rural service, and on the technical downside it causes more interference and "RF haze" in the downtown areas. That's inarguable, but is it a problem? The FCC like many of us initially considered it a nominal problem. But after a couple decades of successive move-ins rural areas it's escalated from trend to pandemic. The FCC has had some terse things to say about move ins. and recently went as far as to reject one.

Clear Channel filed papers to move-n WJCD on Norfolk. The FCC said no.

On paper, the plan to move Tidewater's WJCD, Windsor, VA 107.7 FM to Norfolk looks no different from dozens of other FM move- ins we’ve seen recently. The WSNJ nove in on Philly, the WIFE move-in on Cincinatti etc.

Under the plan WJCD’s class A stick would move to Norfolk, and sister station WKUS, Norfolk 105.3 would change city of license to Windsor, 20 miles to the west. The bonus being that WKUS would actually stay put. WKUS would serve first local service to Windsor in while continuing to serve its existing Norfolk coverage area. Nifty right?

The FCC agreed with Clear Channel's estimate that the move would add about a million additional listeners to WJCD’s coverage area without creating any new unserved areas (supposedly). But it’s suddenly concerned about migration of stations from rural to urban areas. This is a totally new idea at the FCC. It appears not to be policy exactly, but they went as far as to comment. They found that the existing allocations configuration, with WJCD as a class A way out in Windsor, better meets their public interest objectives. Is it a trend? I kind of hope so.

LEE DEFOREST

I've put off this bio for some time while I decided if his place in radio history was as lame as I originally ascertained. After over a year of deliberating I have decided he is more lame than I originally thought. Perhaps I am too judgemental, and too hasty. But read on, you decide for yourself from my severely slanted essay...

Lee DeForest went to Yale University in 1893. He was bright, motivated btu not particularly technical. More of a gearhead than a bookworm. Once while being inquisitive he tapped into the electrical system at Yale and completely blacked out the campus one evening. It lead to his suspension. It was a hint of things to come. (Yale gave him an honorary degree in 1926)

While Flemming was off inventing the fleming valve, Lee DeForest was aping Reginald Fessenden. The clear cut-case was in 1903. DeForest makes a "casual" visit to fellow inventor Reginald Fessenden's workshop. He takes a look at Fessenden's invention of the Liquid Barretter detector. Lee steals the design and starts using it claiming it as his own. Fessenden actually has to sue him to stop him frokm using and selling it. And eventually gets an injunction against de Forest for patent infringement in 1906.

As a result Lee had to change all of his stations to use the silicon detector. But that was already patented too, but fortunately by another employee of the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, Mr. H.H. Dunwoody. (Dunwoody is worth a bio on his own) Spectacular pictoral peice here: http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/deforest.htm
Because of this incident, de Forest resigned from his own company in November 1906 and began looking for a better valve detector. One that he wouldn't have to pay royalties for. He started with the Fleming valves. He made some Fleming valves (design patented 1904), and, in a moment of inspiration, he added a third element. The diode became a triode. It's just another electrode between cathode a.k.a. (filament) and the anode (plate). If you're imagining a lighbulb with 3 filaments you're not far off. It's that fucking simple

It was wild. The third element regulated the current. It was a patentable change. But DeForest didn't even understand how it worked. He just knew that it worked, and that he didn't have to pay Fessenden or Dunwoody to use it. De Forest patented his audion, the first three-element valve in 1907. This did not stop Marconi (who owned the Flemming tube) from suing the crap out of him. It was obvious to the Marconi Co that the idea came form Flemming, and they wanted a peice. http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/radio/quality.html

De Forest had difficulty at trial since HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW IT WORKED! His lack of understanding was so incomplete he thought the vaccume tube needed some gas still in it! Not until Edwin H. Armstong wrote a paper on it did Lee have a clue what the third element did. Armstonr wasn't alone in the examination. Other experimentrs including Langmuir, and Van DerPol made contributions as well. ...In 1912 somebody got around to telling him.

By 1916 DeForest was in trouble. After Armstrong explained how his own toy worked, he sued Armstrong. Armstrong had invented the regenerative circuit in 1913. Why? Well, the United States District Attorney started sueing De Forest for fraud on behalf of his shareholders in 1913. Because he promised them a regenerative circuit and well... he didn't have one. So he patented some crap that was kinda iffy to come thru on that in 1916. Problem was Armstrong already patented that in 1914! Despite the obvious problem with the lack of time travel DeForest won the lawsuit. He had the motivation... he didnt' want his shareholders to murder him. DeForest later acquitted of federal charges. Armstrong got screwed royally. The phrase used politely in most boigraphies is something like: "The view of many historians is that the judgement was incorrect." http://www.ylem.org/artists/jpallas/hh/pioneers/deForest.html

In 1919 he was at it again. This time ripping off the work of Eugene Lauste, Theodore Case and Freeman Harrison Owens. (and by default the krauts they ripped off too) The De Forest Phonofilm process recorded sound directly onto film. It kept the sound in synch with the movie which before hand ...was really a bugger to figure out. Hollywood was strangely disinterested in the oft-sued inventor. So DeForest gave them the finger and premiered 18 short films on him own. Their debut was in 1923 at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. Some of the above sued DeForest again and by the Fall of 1926 the Phonofilm Company folded. [the Vitaphone system developed by Warner Bros is what we eventually adopted] It was about then DeForest had to sell his own home to pay legal debts.

Lee spent his golden years endlessly shilling for good press and perpetually writing and rewriting his own version of history. He was an inventor yes. He built on the work of others before him like all inventors do -yes. But he barely understood what he was doing and more often than not, he either made (or tried to make) meaningless modifications to defeat patents or just ripped off the work of him employees. http://www.leedeforest.org/ He began billing himseelf as The Father of Radio. He hired publicists and had a lionizing autobiography ghost-written in 1950. He lobbied hard for a Nobel Prize inPhysics but was denied. He was trying to build himself a legacy.

I give him credit for the following:
1. He started his own radio station 2XG
2. From 2XG he may have made the first report of a presidential election
3. From 2XG he may have also done the first radio advertisements.. even it was for his own products.
4. He was a effective proponent of music programming over wireless i.e. radio. at 2XG and later at 6XC.
5. He built several early radio staitons, some now heritage stations including WWJ
6. He invented the first synthisizer, an electric keyboard of sorts (the Audion Piano in 1915) it was derided by critics as the "Squawk-a-phone' but it was the inspiration behind the Theremin.

Stranded in Stereo Vol 4

YEAH!
Stranded in Stereo Vol. 4 is in the midst of updating and my big fat feature article on James Kochalka Superstar is FRONT PAGE TOP FOLD!
http://www.strandedinstereo.com/

A batch of reviews to follow.

KFYE makes a big change

This was just silly. Even Howard Stern couldn't have porn radio. But KFYE stunted it for a coupel weeks for a specific purpose. To offend and eliminate their current audience, and try to find a new one.

In Kingsburg California on 7/18/06 KFYE dropped it's Christian music format: the Christian music, the sermons and the Bible recitations were all gone. Then the porn format started. The brand name is actually "Porn Radio" the slogan: "all sex radio, all the time"

The playlist stick to that as much as possible using suggestive titles and lyrics including "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" by The Beatles, "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye and "Nasty" by Janet Jackson. Tamer songs are heated up by adding recorded moans and groans!

But it's a stunt, never intended to be a long-runnign format. KFYE was only playing songs in a continuous one-hour loop without advertisements. At the time PD Clifton wouldn't admit that it was a stunt, but it was pretty obvious. They dropped it about five weeks later for a very reserved Hot AC format.

Death threats between DJs

DJs, especially the pseudo-christian ulta-conservative kind are frequenty on the receiving end of death threats. You group fecalfiliacs, gays and pedophiles in the basket all three tend fto get a smidge offended. Veiling fascist tendencies in well-meant moralism can do that. [of course so does beligerantly syndicating Air America programming south of the Mason Dixon Line] But all politics aside, death threats are illegal. You can't do that on the radio. ...But it's happened oh-so-many times.

Take for example the relatively recent incident on 106.9 KIFR San Francisco's "Free FM" that reminded me of this in the first place.

DJ John London got on the air and [ironicly] offered $5,000 to anyone who would will Penn Jillette another CBS DJ. Before I tell you What Penn did, let me tell you this was not a joke. It wasn't even in the heat-of-the-moment. The next day he upped the bounty to $7,000... if he suffers.

So what did Penn do? Well Penn is more of a flaming Libertarian than myself so I'm sure that you are imagining something pretty bad. the truth is that he critisized Mother Theresa. Yep. Well wait a sec. It sounds bad at first, but until I heard a tape of what he said I withheld judgement.

Here are the basics. Penn called Mother Theresa a fraud. He claimed that Mother Teresa had set up refuges for dying people for her own peronal"sexual kicks.'' He followed that with the moral assessment that Paris Hilton was morally superior to the nun.

Apparently Penn had done a little reading on Ms. Theresa and found humor in the ironly of her squeaky clean image and her immoral and unrepentant actual self. I wont rehash it, there's plenty of reading out there. It should also be pointed out that at the time, Indian director T. Rajeevnath was actively courting Ms. Hilton to play Mother Theresa in a Bollywood flick. So in actuality very little of the offensive content originates in Penns balding head. But 100% of the death threats come from Mr. London.

But let me add that The World Famous Midget Master Blaster Television Spectacular managed to mock Ms. Theresa without either death threats or Paris Hilton: here

L. Ron Hubbard fights Nazi radio

I dont have much detail on this one... But it's deeply amusing.

I dont know if you've read any of L. Ron Hubbard's bogus autobigraphy that is so cherished by scientologists. But if you get the change, please do. I can assure you that it contains some off the best literary comedic fodder of the last century.

He claims that a couple years after dropped out [failed out] of George Washington University's school of engineering, L. Ron Hubbard was piloting a boat up the Alaskan coast line.

This was less than two years before Pearl Harbor, but even as a civilian Ron Hubbard claims to have been already begun fighting the Nazis. He stopped his boat at Ketchikan. In that small city he met the owner of KGBU-AM radio. Evidently the area had been experiencing mysterious interference in the station's transmissions. Ron immediately knew it had to be : it the work of a German spy! Hubbard made a full report to the FBI, thus thwarting the plot.

For some reason, the government still denies that this ever took place, but then they deny a lot of stuff we know to be true.

930 KGBO-AM later changed calls to KTKN-AM to avoid any association with the embarassingly stupid Scientologists. http://www.ktkn.com/ It's a solid talker, the kind that still runs Paul Harvey every day.

Ron's own webpage still befouls the calls of KGBU: http://www.lronhubbard.org/yachtsmn/mail2.htm

The Record Player

I have written about parts of the history of records many times. I covered the invention of shellac, paraffin, vinyl and all the speeds at which they spin. Today I cover the history of the record player that spun them round and round, the turntable. The device has been changed a lot by many different pairs of hands so I'll just his some highlights...

When Edison first invented audio recording, it was on a wax cylinder. (as opposed to when other engineers invented it) From the start, the recording device was also a playback device. It was hand-cranked and for all intents and purposes is was the great grandfather of all such devices that followed it. But like all things, the beta is many steps short of the production model.

It had huge design flaws, including irregular playing speed, the labor of manual cranking, and the wear that irregular torque can have on motorized parts and steel needles wore out quickly. It had no amplification, and was thus difficult to hear and the fidelity... well, it was the best there was at the time and it worked. It worked well enough that thousands of Americans were willing to turn the crank to wind it up. A battery-driven model didn't debut until 1887.

But Edison didn't patent the record player. Even though he had developed the cylinder, it was Alexander Graham Bell ( who was working on a similar model.) Bell made it to the patent office first in 1876. But at that time Edison wasn't seeing it's future too clearly. He still saw it as an office dictation machine. It wasn't until 1890 that he began to record musicians with the intent to sell pre-recorded music. But lacking a patent never slowed down Edison. He kept at it, and his name was on patents for almost every improvement to the device for the next three decades.

He added the aforementioned battery, then in 1895 Edison added a horn to amplify the signal. It was to be the only amplification until 1925 when electrical amplification as invented. The significance can't be emphasized enough. Previous to the horn, the records were essentially only listened to on headphones. More here.

The including irregular playing speed plagued the device until Emile Berliner worked on improving the playback machine with Elridge Johnson. Elridge Johnson patented a spring motor for the Berliner gramophone. The motor made the turntable revolve at an even speed and there was no more hand cranking. The spring was wound and then the record played. More here

It was this version that played records for us on the earliest experimental radio stations. But thank goodness it wasn't the one we were stuck with. Models continued to improve.  In my radio days, I used an old 3-speed direct drive GE model. But at the end the Technics 1200 had replaced it as that third speed (78 rpm) became totally unnecessary.

Longest Radio Quiz

While we're on the topic of radio trivia...

The longest Radio Quiz was delivered by Mr. Wilson Casey, of the radio station 1400 WKDY-AM in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He spent spent 30 consecutive hours asking trivia questions over the air. The trivia-thon began January 9th. He asked a total of 3,303 trivia questions. This is official, this feat is in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Wilson Casey is also known as the Trivia Guy. He's the host of Trivia Fun every weekday from noon until 1 p.m. The program features live, interactive entertainment as listeners scramble for open phone lines to answer his trivia questions. It is the only daily radio trivia program running today. www.triviaguy.com. He's also the author of trivia teaser books, and currently a syndicated newspaper columnist here.

Read a little Fybush on that.

On 01/07/2005 They changed calls to WSPG-AM dropping southern Gospel for a more salable sports talk format. I've been unable to confirm it, but I dont think Mr. Casey survived the change up.

RADIO TRIVIA ANSWERS!

Here are the correct answers.... If you feel your answer is still valid feel free to debate me. Very eloquently argued wrong answers may amuse me enough to put you in the winners pool.

1. What radio station in the U.S. currently has the largest coverage area over land?
A: WHOM 94.9 Mt. Washington ME, it also has the highest HAAT.
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/06/fm-super-casters.html

2. What U.S. Radio station has the facility ID 666?
A: WFTA 101.9 FM Fulton,MS
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/05/radio-666.html

3. Name any two of the five most powerful (highest wattage) U.S. radio stations.
A: Any of these would be correct:
#1WBCT 93.7 Grand Rapids, MI -320,000 watts
#2 WOOD 105.7 Grand Rapids, MI -265,000 watts
#3 WOMC 104.3 Detroit, MI -190,000 watts
#4 WNCI 97.9 Columbus, OH -175,000 watts
#5 WSLQ 99.1 Roanoke, VA -150,000 watts
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/06/fm-super-casters.html

4. Name any radio station owned by the YMCA.
A: KYMC 89.7 FM St. Louis
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/07/ymca-radio.html

5. Name two Class D radio stations still active today.
A: WHHS, WQAQ, WRTE, WBRS etc. There are a lot of right answers to this...
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/10/most-powerfull-class-d-ever.html
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/06/whhs-rises-from-grave.html
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/11/nestled-in-burbs-of-boston.html
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/09/assasination-of-fm-class-d-license.html

6. Name me two of the three "green-powered" radio stations in the U.S. (hydroelectric, solar and wind-powered) A: KTAO, WJFF, KBSJ ... KTHO is an acceptable substitute
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/11/solar-powered-radio.html
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/08/only-hydroelectric-radio-station.html
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/10/wind-powered-radio.html

7. Where did the most powerful transmission originate?
A: In Arecibo, PR a SETI array about 10 tera watts!
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2006/01/most-powerful-transmission-ever.html

8. What do the call letters WNBS stand for?
A: Nathan B. Stubblefield. bonus point for anything obscene I didn't already think of.
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2006/01/call-letter-origins-part-2.html

9. What radio man discovered that a 325 grain, .375 H&H Magnum will penetrate 73 carts?
A: Chuck Lakaytis, formerly of CML Broadcasting currently of Alaska Public Broadcasting in Anchorage, AK... it's possible there are other correct answers to this, but I doubt it.
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2006/01/goodbye-to-cart-machine.html

10. What public radio station experimented with multicasting 11 channels in (IBOC) HD?
A: WFAE 90.7 Charlotte, NC
http://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2005/08/multicasting.html

GOOD NIGHT, Mrs. Calabash

You have to love radio bios like this. Jimmy Durante started originally a saloon piano player. How great is that? Durante received his first radio job when the creators of Eddie Cantor's popular The Chase and Sanborn Hour contacted him to fill in for Cantor. He'd been a pretty successful vaudeville man and was considered a pretty safe pick. He turned out to be a little more than that. Durante was such a hit he was offered his own show. It was syndicated on NBC Saturday Nights for a little more than two years running 1954 - 1956. More here.

"Good night, Mrs. Calabash —wherever you are!" For years, Jimmy Durante ended his radio and television shows with that mysterious tag line. Some people thought Mrs. Calabash was a fictional character, but others were convinced she was real. Among those were the residents of Calabash, North Carolina believe otherwise. The folks in this town will tell you she was a real person, that Mrs. Calabash was really a local woman named Lucille "Lucy" Coleman. Here's the story... all apocryphal of course.

In 1940, Lucy was 28 years old and running a restaurant in Calabash, then a tiny seaside community bordering South Carolina. Durante and his touring vaudeville group supposedly stopped in for dinner. It may have been the genuine homespun friendliness of the young restaurant owner that prompted the gregarious Jimmy Durante to beckon Lucy over to his table for some short chitchat. "I'm going to make you famous," said Durante. It wasn't long afterward that this popular entertainer began signing off his radio shows with a similar message.

For years, audiences enjoyed this rather lighthearted farewell mystery. By the time of Durante's
Lucy Coleman died in 1989, nearly 50 years after meeting Jimmy Durante and nine years after Jimmy passed on. Calabash residents claim that Lucy had no desire to claim credit as the real Mrs. Calabash.
Their are other claimants of course... But I like that story best.

Ironic fortune cookie

High Fidelity AM radio

No not HD, IBOC dosen't actually work on AM you already know that.

Starting in 1934 U.S. frequencies above 1500 were allocated only to four experimental stations. the experiment was High Fidelity AM Radio. They broadcast with a signal 20 kHz wide for this improved AQH. The High Fidelity stations were converted to regular broadcasting(and regular call signs) with the NARBA frequency move.

But from December 19, 1933, until then The FRC allowed the three channels, at 1530, 1550, and 1570 kHz, too operate at double the Khz making high-fidelity broadcasting possible without interference from adjacent stations.

These stations were:

on 1530 W1XBS to which became WBRY (later WTBY, then WQQW; went dark in 1989)
on 1590 W9XBY to KITE(wenr dark in 1942)
on 1550 W2XR to WQXR (now 1560 WQEW-AM) which survives today
and also on 1550 W6XAI to KPMC (now 1560 KNZR-AM)

KITE-AM has a great history page here: http://www.qcwa.org/w9xby_station.htm
WBRY-AM history here: http://www.cosmos-monitor.com/hist/kc/w1xbs.html
a WQEW-AM page here: http://www.wackradio.com/wqew/index.html

There was actually a fight over 1530. There were two Kansas City applicants for 1530 kHz. The Unity School of Christianity, owner of WOQ, was seeking the channel as a means of staying on the air if it lost its fight to stay on 1300 kHz. The commission had attempted to deny WOQ a license renewal in 1931. The other Kansas City applicant was First National Television, Inc., operator of a radio engineering school and holder of an experimental television license, W9XAL. First National was partially owned by Arthur B. Church, the principal owner of KMBC.

There were only six applicants for all four licenses.
Unity School of Christianity, Kansas City,
American-Republican, Inc., Waterbury, CT
First National Television, Inc., Kansas City,
John V. L. Hogan, Long Island City, New York,
Pioneer Mercantile Co., Bakersfield, California,
Fred W. Christian, Jr., and Raleigh W. Whiston, Los Angeles,

Two weeks later, the Commission approved all except the Unity and Los Angeles applications. According to Broadcasting, "The fact that more applicants for the newly opened wave lengths did not appear has produced considerable surprise, particularly in the ranks of the Radio Commission."

RADIO TRIVIA QUESTIONS!

In response to the number one thing I am actually asked for, I am making a list of 10 Radio Trivia Questions. I am posting the questions today, and and answers next Friday. The week between I will spend on the road with the usual intermittent internet access.

The 5 readers to respond with the most right answers (or the first 5 readers to respond with all 10 correct answers) is the winner of the mix CD that I will take with me on the drive to North Carolina. It's a 6 hour drive to this particular corner and be assured that only a damn fine ELECTRIC COUNTRY BLUES MIX CD can be played on infinite repeat. As usual, submissions should be emailed to that42 at hotmail dot com.

*Hint: All answers can be found in the posts of this blog.

1. What radio station in the U.S. currently has the largest coverage area over land?

2. What U.S. Radio station has the facility ID 666?

3. Name any two of the five most powerful (highest wattage) U.S. radio stations.

4. Name any radio station owned by the YMCA.

5. Name two Class D radio stations still active today.

6. Name me two of the three "green-powered" radio stations in the U.S. (hydroelectric, solar and wind-powered)

7. Where did the most powerful transmission originate?

8. What do the call letters WNBS stand for?

9. What radio man discovered that a 325 grain, .375 H&H Magnum will penetrate 73 carts?

10. What public radio station experimented with multicasting 11 channels in (IBOC) HD?

The Uncle Don story

He's not my uncle Don. I don't even have an uncle Don. I'm speaking of that old urban legend. The one so old, it's rarely told. It's the one you tell to the young DJs to teach them to keep their yap shut in the booth whether they think the mike is on or not.

A flub committed while filming a movie or TV program could be eliminated merely by doing a new take or in the editing room. If someone say's "fuck" you can bleep it. In radio, especially early radio, everything was live and often unscripted. If you say "fuck:, it was already too late. This is such a tale. but let me first say There is no evidence of at all that Don Carney was ever penalized for anything he said as an on-air radio personality. His show was never cancelled. Period. Like Fatty Arbuckle, the whole deal is a humbug.

Don Carney had an incredibly long-lived broadcasting career. he began as an announcer at WMCA in the 1920s. He moved onto WOR where he broadcast six days a week, beginning in 1928 and continuing through 1947. After that, instead of retiring he got a gig at WOR as a DJ with a program of children's music. After that he semi-retired to Miami beach in 1948 and hosted a weekly children's show on WKAT which he did until his death in 1954. Radio Guide called him "a saint, oracle, and pal to 300,000 children." But the legend says there was an incident that marred this kindly purveyor of children's programming. Witness accounts vary, but here is the basic version:

Uncle Don ended each show with Floyd Neal to signing him off, a station break and intrtoduction for the next program. But this week Uncle Don twittered his usual cheery wind-up, and then, not realizing that the mic was still on, thinking he was off the air, he blurted out: "There, I hope that'll hold the little bastards."

Some sources put it in 1939 others in the early fifties. But really the legend preceeds Dons program by several years and appears ealiers with the flub being attributed to "Uncle John" Daggett of KHJ in Los Angeles, John "Big Brother" Keough of KPO in San Francisco and even the lesser known Graham McNamee even Uncle Whip of WIP. According to Snopes the earliest reference might be the 23 April 1930 issue of Variety"

"A wisecracking radio announcer in a Philadelphia station lost his job about two weeks ago as a result of a stern reprimand of the station by the Federal Radio Commission. Announcer had concluded a bed-time story for children and thought the power was off. For the benefit of the control room he added: 'I hope that pleases the little bastards' This went out over the air. Within 10 minutes several telegrams of protest, among them the Federal Radio Commission, had arrived. Others came later in bundles."

But the variety article mentions no data, no DJ and no station. It's utterly apocrophyal. The lack of verifyable details it typical of legends such as these. ... and never has the FCC or the FRC had the ability to respond in writing to a complaint in 10 minutes.... 10 months would be more believable.

Temporary Radio Stations

I dont mean the ones that go off air unexpectedly. Nothing lasts forever...

There is a lot of radio history to be read. Books, magazine articles, trade mags, newspapers... they heyday is loaded with periodicals. But there is one category of broadcasting stations has gone almost completely undocumented: temporary grants.

These were issued for special occasions, usually lasting a month or less, and were not reported in the FRC Radio Service Bulletin. Most temporary grants were long gone by the time the bulletin reached its subscribers, so it made sense to omit the temporary grants. There is little information about these grants recorded in the Commerce files, although at least seventy were issued in the period from January, 1922 to October, 1928. For temporary grants made through June, 1922, where wave length information is recorded, the wavelength assigned was always 360 meters.

The best existing source is a book with somme information on a number of those temporary stations operated by educational organizations. that book is S. E. Frost's "Educations's Own Stations" (published in 1937) which details:
Bancroft School, Haddonfield, NJ (WRAQ);
Gardenville High School, Gardenville, NY (WGHS);
Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA (WDBG);
Milton College, Milton, WI (WSAM);
Northern State Normal School, Marquette, MI (WBI).
[ISBN: 040503573X] still available through Ayers Publishing:
http://www.atlantic-cable.com/Ayer/ayer3.htm

Many went on to become fully licensed staitons in some form. Others were tied to events and when they were gone, all that was left was the original card files at the FCC offices.

For additional information on temporary stations:
United States Temporary Broadcast Station Grants: 1922-1928.

And of course Barry has the dirt here:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/tempstat.htm

All Hail NARBA!

Yesterday was quite polical. I promise to tone it down today, but the coming elections have me all fired up. But we all need to say our peice, that's how representative Democracies work. Everyone is continually trying to get their views represented. ... on with the radio geekery.

The acronym N.A.R.B.A. stands for the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement. It was an early radio treaty that came a little late for some. In 1941 the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti had to have a talk. The text is here.

The U.S. had been powering up some "super-power" AM radio stations, like WLW's 500,000-watt Special Temporary Authority. Mexico had begun it's now long-standing tradition of "Border-blasters." A coverage area "arms race" had begun. But it was a war that everyone knew was not winnable. More and more massively powerful stations led only to more and more adjacent channel and distant interference. It led to less radio, not more.

The planning for the meeting actually began in the 1930s. The U.S. entered the meeting wanting to reserve the ability to fight the border blasters not with power or HAAT limits, but the right to counter with it's own super-casters if need be.

I'm going to quote Mark Durenberger so I dont blow this part: "The NARBA language essentially stated that while 1-B stations were given a maximum authorized power of 50 kW, the 1-As would be authorized a minimum power of 50 kW. In this respect, the minimum vocabulary the U.S. endorsed as a signatory to NARBA would differ from the FCC's own 50-kW maximum language. In exchange for this subtlety, the United States gained a major concession from its neighbors. 1-A co-channel stations in adjoining countries could be located no closer than 650 miles from that country's common boundary with the United States. By geographical happenstance this language prohibited, with few exceptions, any co-channel operation on U.S. 1-A channels anywhere in North America. When the delegates returned home, the United States had its continued protection on 25 1-A channels. To answer the demand for more frequencies, the United States agreed to an expansion of the band to 1600 kc/s. "

In accordance with the treaty, clear channel frequencies were set aside across the radio dial, at a rate of about one per 100 kHz, and reserved 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490 mainly for local stations. It also officially expanded the upper limit of the AM broadcast spectrum from 1500 kHz to 1600 kHz. It required that most existing AM stations change frequencies, resulting in a massive shuffling of radio station dial positions. The new frequencies took effect at 3:00 a.m. Eastern on March 29, 1941. (hence the confusing change at WEVD in yesterdays schpiel) So on march 30th 1941 everyone had to change their radio pre-sets.

To implement the NARBA changes, the United States ordered a massive frequency shuffling. Most stations moved up the band, a step of 10 to 30 kc/s. As an interesting note, few stations did any more retuning than absolutely necessasary. As a result many AM transmitting towers are slightly taller than what is optimal for their present operating frequency.

N.A.R.B.A. is no longer in effect. It has been superseded by working agreements made in the early 1980s between the U.S. and Canada and between the U.S. and Mexico, and by an ITU-sponsored agreement covering all of the Western Hemisphere.

In 2000 Radio World did a great six part series that includes much of this historical treaty. It was titled Behind the Clear-Channel Matter.
Go here: http://www.nrcdxas.org/articles/

WEVD: Yiddish and Socialist

In 1932 the Yiddish newspaper, 'The Forward' purchased 1300 WEVD-AM in New York. Their goal was to expand the reach and availability of Yiddish Radio with their famous, long-running show, 'The Forward Hour'. I've previously written about modern Jewish and Yiddish cultural programming here and here.

By 1932, WEVD-AM had already had it's first life as a all-socialist radio station. What? Yeah, no kidding. At that time around the great depression socialism was pretty popular in the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of poor and unemployed Americans decided that rich people needed to share better. Wealthy people decided they should get better marketing for capitalism. A good solid effort was made to conflate socialism with communism; an technique that remained politically popular through the 1980s with president Ronald Regan.  (Nothing is new, just read more history)

So here is this huge socialist movement founding a New York City radio station. It was created in 1927 by the Socialist Party to honor its recently deceased leader, Eugene Victor Debbs. They ran the endeavor for only five years when the the leading Yiddish newspaper, The Forward took over. The Forward Hour, was a variety show that aired every Sunday morning at 11:00. Ironically, while hours of relatively obscure programs like Madame Bertha Hart's Talent Show have survived, only a few random moments of The Forward Hour remain. Among them is the show's remarkable theme song, with its musical allusions to the Socialist anthem "The Internationale" and "La Marseillaise." ... so it stayed red even then.

But later that Year N.A.R.B.A. changed everything. [more on NARBA tomorrow] In New York at the time on 1300 WEVD and WHAP were time sharing, possibly both as daytimers. But NARBA required a lot of stations change frequencies to cause less interference in Canada and Mexico. The two would have to move to 1330. WHAP became WFAB in 1932, which was then sold to WEVD and scuttled 1938. But WEVD and WHAZ shared 1300/1330 with yet another station: WBBR, of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the jehovas witnesses) up in Troy NY. WEVD operated 86 hours a week, yielding early mornings, 6-8 PM, and most of Sunday to WBBR, and yielding Monday nights. This arrangement continued into the 1970s, when WHAZ was taken out of the share-time and allowed to become a 1kw daytimer on its own WHEW!~

In 1979, WEVD-AM was sold to Salem Media and became religious WNYM. The WEVD calls and programming continued on 97.9 FM, which had been on the air since the 1950s. On the 1330 frequency Salem bought out WPOW in 1984, and in January of 1985 the two stations changed call to WWRV and the share- time ended.

In 1988, Emmis sold the 1050 frequency (now WEPN) and bought 660 from NBC, moving the WFAN calls and format to the former WNBC). The new owner, Spanish Broadcasting System, briefly operated 1050 as Spanish- language WUKQ before trading it to the Jewish Daily Forward. The Forward moved the calls and format of its WEVD-FM to 1050 AM, while SBS took over WEVD's 97.9 FM facility, which became WSKQ-FM.

The WEVD of 1050 AM was a shadow of it's former self. It eeked out a living as just another low-rated brokered ethnic station in the 1990s. In 2001 it then became ESPN sports radio. The rumors had begun months before and has caused a stir. You can read about it here.

In 1999 there was an application for a WEVD-LP in Dover, DE. I dont know what became of that. But nobody picks heritage calls by accident. This is too damn complicated. If you need to understand better go find the book "The Airwaves of New York" If you find one, let me know where. It's out of print. You can read a little more here, or for more on Mr. Debs, try here.

ALL TRIBUTE RADIO

It began on 02/02/2006, a new Low Power station 104.5 KCFL-LP in Fall City right outside Seattle, WA founded itself as a tribute to Chicago's WCFL. WCFL was a union owned radio station in Chicago with it's own rich history. So Rich I wrote it up last year in this post.

Only months ago this oddball archive format switched to become a tribute to KYA, complete with vintage KYA jingles. Their current site here. They snuck through in the very last LP FM window and now appear to be changing format to become a tribute to a new classic station every 6 months. I wish I knew more.If you look here you can see they intend to blanket NW Washington with repeaters...
They're already operating a number of these already.
KCFL 104.5 Fall City / Sammamish / Snoqualmie
KYAO 89.5 Ocean Shores / Westport
KATO 94.3 Aberdeen / Hoquiam
K233BU 94.5 Seattle/Bellevue/Kirkland (temporarily off the air)
K249DX 97.7 Redmond/Bellevue - coming August 2006

Those last two repeaters at least used to belong to Skagit Valley College radio station KSVR a bastion of weirdness in the valley. That is a tad sketchy. More here.

The Birth Of Radio Regulation pt 3

The Radio Act of 1912 required that all radio transmitters be licensed by federal government and that operators have a license. Seems straight forward enough. Just like a drivers license right? So why did things change? Why does the FCC even exist?

The problem was that the law didn't give the secretary of labor and commerce discretion on whether to issue a license or not. He couldn't refuse them and he couldn't even limit them. That was a teensy oversight in teh drafting of the law. Eventually there were too many radio stations.

It was really coming to a head in the early 1920s. In 1923 Secretary Herbert Hoover (before he was president) refused to grant license to an qualified applicant. Hence Hoover v Intercity Radio Co. went down. The court ruled he had exceeded his authority under the law and ordered him to grant the license.

But he kept it up. the law didn't afford him the authority to limit licenses, but they damn sure needed limited. And some broadcasters supported him. Without some kind of license limits, reception was just destroyed by interference. Hoover continued to act beyond his authority even after the 1923 lawsuit. He regularly issued wave-length assignments and times for broadcast.
http://www.hooverassociation.org/photoscommerce.html

He got suedby Zenith Radio Corp. again that year by WJAZ in Chicago and he lost evvery time beacuse what he was doing was outside the law. Broadcasting fell into chaos. If a staiton didn't like their license limitations... they sued Hoover. And in the end it was decided that he had to give out licenses, and his obligation when there was no available channel, was to license them for the one that caused the least interference... this was not good.

Around 1927 Congress woke up after the post-coital haze of voting themselves a pay raise worse off. Finally Congress acted. They drafted the Radio Act of 1927. It began the Federal Radio Commission. It's powers were broader it assigned wave lengths, assigned hours and at assigned levels of power as Hoover did but also regulated licensing and renewal and to a limited extent programming.

Thsi was the law that asserted that the RF spectrum belongs to the public and that licensed broadcasters merely use this public resource under an obligation to operate "in the public interest, convenience or necessity. " at all times.

It had taken more than a decade. But here was a system that could work. Then less than seven years later in 1934,the FCC was founded. The Federal Communications Act was approved, regulating radio, telephone and telegraph industries under one broadcast media-focused entity, the Federal Communications Commission. That act... was questionable. Like regulating guns, alcohol, explosives and tobacco in one commission. Why the hell do that?
Hoover stayed a popular figure in media. In 1927, the Bell System sent live TV images of Herbert Hoover, still just the Secretary of Commerce, over telephone lines from Washington, D.C. to an auditorium in Manhattan. It was the first public demonstration in the U.S. of long-distance television transmission.

The Birth of Radio Regulation pt 2

One of the first steps taken by the Department of Commerce was to divide terrestrial radio licences into 8 classes:

1-Public Service
2-Limited Commercial
3-Experimental
4-Technical and Training School
5-General Amateur
6-Special Amateur
7-Restricted Amateur
8-High Power

In the this era of broadcasting transmissions were mostly sent by shore stations that operated under Public Service licences. The rest were largely Government stations, broadcasting weather and time signals and the rest was just experimental. It was only later that the vast improvement in audio transmitters led to an expansion in the number of licence classes.

The largest number held Experimental licences, including famous stations like 1XE in Medford Hillside, MA, 8XB in Cincinnati, OH, and Frank Conrad's 8XK in Pittsburgh, PA (it became KDKA) . The government stations, included AGI, operated by the Army Signal Corps in San Francisco, WWV, operated by the Bureau of Standards in DC, and the Navy's NOF, and NSF, located in Anacostia, D.C. which I've written about before Here.

Modifications began immediately in earnest and in 1913 the the High Power class was dropped, and its stations absorbed into the other categories. At the time the threshhold of "high power" was constantly rising and quickly became meaningless. One of the strange things about the 1912 regulations is that they made no refernece to broadcasting. Much like early wireless and telegraph communication over wire the ideas were still somewhat corralled under a point-to-point way of thinking. The first license released was for KDKA for Westinghouse on October 27, 1920. But even then, KDKA's original application, and its initial licence, contained no reference to broadcasting. In the beginngin the station was only intended to be used as one of a group of radiotelegraph stations providing point-to-point service between company facilities in various cities. It was not "broadcasting" as it were. It was only days later that the station's audio transmitter was used to broadcast. As you may know, it was to announce the election returns on November 2, 1920. For the first few days these broadcasts went out under a temporarily assigned call of 8ZZ, on 545 AM. Shortly afterwards, the broadcast service began sharing the Limited Commercial KDKA calls with the point-to-point operation which was on 1330 AM. (imagine sharing calls now?)

So there it was. History did not record how or who managed to sneak broadcasting in under the wire into licensed legitamacy out of the ameteur arena. But it was someone probably inside KDKA and probably with the collaboration of someone inside the commerce department...
Things moved forward with gusto. The commerce department cranked out licenses like a machine. A group or corporation applied for a license by submitting Form #761. They were immediately assigned a callsign, which was hand-written at the top of the form. If everything was in order, a licence was issued. If the station equipment had not yet been inspected, the licence was issued provisionally. According to Mr. Mishkind "Licence periods for broadcasting stations through the early twenties ranged from as few as ten days to one year, with one year licences the norm for grants made until early January, 1922, six months the standard during mid-January, 1922" Every station got a serial number (the precursor to the facility ID) And was added to the directory after confirmation of their initial successful broadcast.

Try to remember at the same time that the Bureau of Navigation was also still licensing staitons in their own totally different way...

Things were more orderly what I would call "less bad" but still not good. That didn't get hashed out intil 1921. But Broadcasting would not become a separate licence until radio regulation was transferred to the FRC (Federal Radio Commission) in 1927. more on how that went down tomorrow.

The Birth of Radio Regulation Pt 1

In the Beginning there was nothing...

The Radio Act of August 13, 1912, provided for the licensing of radio operators and transmitting stations for nearly 15 years until Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927. From 1921 to 1927, there were continual revisions and developments and these still serve as the basis for current broadcast regulation. It required that all radio transmitters be licensed by federal government and that operators have a license. The Secretary of labor and commerce was given authority to assign broadcast wave-length bands and time periods when broadcasts could be carried. The secretary had no discretion on whether to issue a license or not.

It's available here in it's entirety: http://earlyradiohistory.us/1912act.htm

It set some standards that conceptually are assumed now, but at the time were debated. For example: "...the sending apparatus, to be referred to hereinafter as the "transmitter" This single like under the USE OF A PURE WAVE clause is the foundation of licensing transmitters individually and not for example coverage in sum over a licensed area.

The signal of distress was decreed to be three dots followed by three dashes followed by three more dots, what you think of as S.O.S.

their largest convern at the time was interference and appropriately the bulk of the document was comitted to limiting maximum output in certain situations: at sea, near shore, etc.

Wave conventions were writtin in to law as previously determined by the Berlin Convention as well. available here: http://earlyradiohistory.us/1906conv.htm#RegII

Sam Dickson gets blacklisted

Sam Dickson was one of San Francisco's best-known radio writers. He got his start in the early twenties at 1260 KYA-AM, (current calls KOIT-AM) writing shows that featured the station manager and the switchboard operator as principal characters. His program "Hawthorne House" was pretty popular. It was innocent enough, but it's not scripts that got him in trouble.

In 1929 Dickson conducted what ammounts to the first media penetration study. He did a survey for about radio advertising. Broadcast advertising was still very young and many who voiced objections to radio being put to such a use. It was still frequently argued that radio should be a subscription service.

Dickson's survey determined that 90% of the city's radio listeners didn't object to radio commercials. It also stated that almost all respondents claimed to patronized the few advertisers that were then on the air. The results got him blacklisted by every station in town.

Sam Dickson wrote under pseudonyms and for the national syndicators like NBC but in Frisco he was done. Eventually NBC discovered his true identity but his scripts for "Winning of the West" ,were so strong that he was allowed to remain as a staff writer. He continued with NBC as one of its most prominent writers up into the sixties, He also authored the book "SAN FRANCISCO IS YOUR HOME." available Here:

More here; http://users.adams.net/~jfs/nbc.htm

*Note KYA-AM is known for having had more owners than any other radio station in California. , most had the station for less 3 years and many of those less than one!