WICC

Radio has so many firsts. Every station clamors to be the first at something. The first on air, the first licensed, the first 24 hour operation, the first music program, the first DJ etc. WICC is the first station in Southern Connecticut. It's also one of the first stations in Connecticut as a whole signing on for the first time in 1926. It's call letters stands for Industrial Capital of Connecticut, which was actually true 60 years ago. [Today it's nothing to brag about.]

Connecticut is a largely rectangular state sharing Long Island sound with New York, then is boxed in by Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It's North/South orientation is narrow in respect to it's East/West measurement. It's hard to define a portion of CT as southern, but Bridgeport will do.


600 WICC-AM still maintains studios in both Bridgeport and New Haven in Southern Connecticut. Over the years they've been affiliates for The Yankee Network, The Colonial Network, The Columbai Broadcasting System (CBS), The NBC Blue Network, and the Mutual Broadcasting System. In it's early days, WICC broadcast from several different frequencies including 1060 kHz, 1400 kHz, 1130kHz, 1190 kHz and 1430 kHz. They didn't' move to the 600 kHz position until 1930. Until WCAC-AM in Storrs, shut down in 1935, WICC operated as a share-time.

My favorite bit of WICC history is that the worlds most over-sexed movie-star had a radio show there. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bob Crane.