The Last US States Without Radio

To be clear, there was no way in 1913 that the Department of Commerce could produce a canonically complete list of every U.S. entity with a radio transmitter, licensed or not. So I argue that even in 1913 there were probably a large number unlicensed radio stations excluded from this accounting. The Department of Commerce Report for July 1913 listed a mere 168 land radio stations, and just 22 special land stations. I list the latter ones below for reference:

CALLS	FREQ	CITY	STATE	Owner
9YI	-	Ames	IA	Iowa State College of Agriculture
1XA	600	Amesbury	MA	Wireless Specialty Apparatus Co.
8XA	-	Ann Arbor	MI	University of Michigan
3ZH	300	Atlanta	GA	Georgia School of Technology
9XB	Variable	Beloit	WI	Beloit College
6XR	-	Berkley	CA	Frank Rieber
1XB	Variable	Boston	MA	Wireless Specialty Apparatus Co.
1XH	-	Boston	MA	Holtzer - Cabot Electric Co.
1YH	Variable	Cambridge	MA	Harvard University
1XP	300, 550, 600	Cambridge	MA	George W. Pierce
1XC	-	Chelsea	MA	William J. Murdock Co.
8YD	300, 400, 600	Detroit	MI	William J. Meisenheimer
9YN	Variable	Grand Forks	ND	University of North Dakota
3XR	-	Hyattsville	MD	J. Harris Rogers
6YL	-	Los Angeles	CA	High School
2YN	-	New York	NY	College of the City of New York
2ZH	-	Nutley	NJ	Arthur A Herbert
3XC	480	Philadelphia	PA	Frank B. Chambers
3XJ	500	Philadelphia	PA	St. Joseph's College
3ZS	450	St. Davids	PA	Chas. H. Stewart
9YC	-	St. Louis	MO	Christian Brothers College
3ZH	-	Washington	DC	H.B. DeGroot

You will note a concentration around the major metropolitan centers of the day: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. But relatively speaking 9YN and 9XB were in the middle of nowhere. The population of Grand Forks for example was only about 13,000, Beloit was hardly larger.  That's about a mere 2% of the population of Boston at that same time. Educational institutions were the foundation of experimental radio technology in that era. So their stations existing outside what might be otherwise supported by the urban density of radio consumers.

But this distribution begets the question: What were the last places in America to have radio? Well if we go by something very very granular like zip code or township there are places today still unserved by local radio. (I can personally attest to the large areas of the Southwest today without any radio at all; local or otherwise.) But if we go by state, we get some more interesting data, as each state contains multiple MSAs; even in Nebraska —where cows outnumber people more than 5:1. 

While in 1913 there were only 48 states in the union, our Department of Commerce (DOC) source data includes territories. Cuba, Samoa, Guam, Peking (China) and Puerto Rico all also appear on the DOC lists. So if 13 states special land stations already constituted > 27% of US states, where are the other 168 land radio stations?  At that time less than half of US states had radio stations. Two years later that list of land stations had grown to 192, and the list of Special land stations had grown to 118, spanning 29 states.

Below is a chart of the 1913 and 1915  Land Radio Stations (abbreviated LRS for space) and their totals by state. You can readily see that while the total count grows the total number of states had not changed significantly. We see that the US radio footprint was geographically consolidated.

State	Abbreviation	1913 LRS	1915 LRS
Alabama	AL	2	1
Alaska	AK	29	35
Arizona	AZ	2	2
Arkansas	AR	-	-
California	CA	11	21
Colorado	CO	-	2
Connecticut	CT	1	2
District of Columbia	DC	3	4
Delaware	DE	-	-
Florida	FL	6	10
Georgia	GA	1	2
Hawaii	HI (TH)	9	12
Idaho	ID	-	-
Illinois	IL	1	1
Indiana	IN	-	-
Iowa	IA	-	-
Kansas	KS	3	3
Kentucky	KY	-	-
Louisiana	LA	3	4
Maine	ME	2	1
Maryland	MD	2	3
Massachusetts	MA	8	9
Michigan	MI	8	10
Minnesota	MN	3	1
Mississippi	MS	-	-
Missouri	MO	-	-
Montana	MT	-	-
Nebraska	NB	1	-
Nevada	NV	-	-
New Hampshire	NH	1	1
New Jersey	NJ	3	6
New Mexico	NM	-	-
New York	NY	13	16
North Carolina	NC	4	5
North Dakota	ND	-	-
Ohio	OH	3	5
Oklahoma	OK	-	-
Oregon	OR	3	6
Pennsylvania	PA	2	3
Rhode Island	RI	2	4
South Carolina	SC	1	2
South Dakota	SD	-	-
Tennessee	TN	-	-
Texas	TX	5	5
Utah	UT	-	-
Vermont	VT	-	-
Virginia	VA	4	5
Washington	WA	6	9
West Virginia	WV	-	-
Wisconsin	WI	2	2
Wyoming	WY	-	-

The difference between land stations and special land stations is mostly nuance. In 1913 the Department of Commerce described these special classes collectively as "experiment stations for the development of radio communications technical and training school stations..." But they established a call sign format for these sub-types "The first letter will be X, for experiment stations; Y, technical and training schools; Z, special amateur stations." All of these, at least generally speaking, are still radio stations. Many in each category later became recognizable, entertainment-focused radio stations. But many others ceased to exist entirely.

The year 1922 was the tipping point. There is a 1922 reference in a Radio World article identifying Mississippi as the last US state with no radio stations. In September of 1922, Radio News reported that the states of Kentucky and Mississippi got their first stations with WHAS, and WHAU respectively leaving only two states —Delaware and Wyoming, without radio stations. That Summer they excitedly reported that Wyoming was the last, after the sign on of WHAV in Delaware. Wyoming joined the club on October 3rd with the sign on of KFBU. More here.

But by November of that year WHAU in Corinth, MS shut down. Owned by the Corinth Radio Supply company, this had been the first, and only licensed radio station in Mississippi. So Mississippi slipped behind Wyoming and became the last US state with no radio stations, albeit only briefly. In 1923; the Department of Commerce licensed four more radio stations in Mississippi: KFNG, Coldwater; WCBH, Oxford; WDBT; Hattiesburg; and WCBG, Pascagoula, closing the issue. More here.

CABL to CPVR

Cable radio was invented before cable TV. The earliest claimant dates to at least December of 1922. [source] There were even more exotic experiments that preceded that by a few decades but it's over-charitable to call them radio. So the title goes to J. A. Gustafson the GM of the Fredonia Telephone Company in Kansas who wrote the below quote in an issue of Telephony Magazine:

“We have added a radio receiving set to our central office equipment and furnish radio service to our subscribers. This service is furnished over cable pairs that would otherwise be idle...To furnish this service we use a standard radio receiving set and three stages of amplification. A circuit is furnished to the subscriber at a monthly rental for the circuit only, and the subscriber buys his own loud-speaker or receivers."

Another very early cable radio experiment was in Dundee, Michigan. It was first offered as a luxury service at a whopping $1.50 per month. It was run by the Farmer's Telephone Company, who still exists. A similar system was built in Lorain, Ohio, but it only served about 700 homes. Cable radio took off overseas before it came to America.  Unlike a true radio, a cable radio doesn't need much in the way of components or even an antenna. Using amplifiers, and relays across twisted pair a "radio" would only need an on/off switch and a volume dial. since there was only one station there was no need even for a tuner. It was just a speaker with a variable resistor. So in a small urban foot print it can be cost effective for consumers. In south Korea they were building out large municipal systems as early as the 1940s. Similar systems popped up in Europe and the pacific.

In the U.S. the expansion was mostly with rural systems that operated like amplified speaker wire. Homes didn't need to have power in order to have radio. In the large rural southern regions that still hadn't been electrified that had commercial appeal.  One of the earliest urban systems in the U.S. was built by Muzak.  Muzak built it's own system in the 1940s in New York but took one in the chops when they carried a WOR-AM broadcast of the world series in 1941. The subsequent lawsuit was actually the start of retransmission fees. Patrick R. Parsons book Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television covers this ear in great detail. More here too.

In the U.S. the first cable radio stations started cropping up in the 1970s. Cable TV was increasingly popular and the notion of piping in some audio channels seemed like a natural progression. The first commercial cable radio station in the United States was probably CABL-FM 108. It was carried on the Theta Cablevision system, serving homes in the West Los Angeles area. They first went live on January 1st 1972. The station was run by Brad Sobel, a former pirate radio man. According to him in a Billboard article potential audience was between 4,700 and approximately 25,000 (based on information provided by Brad Sobel in an article in Billboard. He was also still involved with KIIS-AM at the same time. He was later an engineer at KIQQ-AM, KWTH-FM, KZPN-FM, KCRY-FM and a slew of others. Brad was an all around radio man.

Another early station was 95.9 CPVR in Palos Verdes, CA. Tom Hewitt built the station from scratch and two locals, Mark Speer and Brad Gardner started the non-profit youth organization that staffed it. CPVR began cable casting in March of 1972. It was carried on the Times-Mirror cable system. Numerous universities hosted cable radio stations. There is some difficulty identifying which is a true cable radio station and which is carrier current. Some used both systems at different times. Records are scant and these stations were dying off in droves by the 1980s. Even the somewhat successful WLHE in Woburn, MA signed off in 1987. (The station had been founded by Larry Haber.) There are some broadcasters still simulcasting on cable TV. But I know of none that are on cable exclusively. The closest is probably WHAV,  who is still carried on the PEG government channel in Andover, Haverhill and Methuen Massachusetts. They also broadcast under part 15 at 1640 AM in Haverhill. More here.