Another Radio Dial

 

I really like finding old radios that have presets will call signs on them. This one only has three but it still narrows down the era and the location. Lets dig into it. 

WJZ - I've written about this station many times in different contexts. There have been a few WJZs but we can still triangulate this easily enough.  Today 1300 WJZ-AM broadcasts sports radio from Baltimore MA, as they have since they dropped the WJFK call sign in 2008. Starting in June of 2021 they focused on a sports gambling format as "The Bet" which frankly used to be illegal but whatever, we don't really have laws anymore anyway. The more likely WJZ is New York's 770 WJZ-AM first signing on  in September of 1921 and finally dropping the brand in March of 1953 when ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres and flipped to MOR.  This 31 year window frame the timeline.

WRAK - The original 1170 WRAK-AM signed on in Escanaba, MI in March of 1923 at 50 watts. They operated at 100 watts and had a rocky start and were deleted four months later in June. It was then re-licensed in February of 1925 and deleted a second time in January of 1926. they were re-licensed again in February 1926. In 1928 the station relocated to Erie, PA. Somewhere in there they changed owners from the Economy Light Company  to Clarence.R. Cummins. Despite being a short-lived upper peninsula station, it leaves a legacy in the form of Economy Light & Power Company v. U.S. Supra. which helped defined legal navigability for water ways. C.R. Cummins I was also able to identify as the Assistant manager of the Colonial. He appears in 1911 and 1912 issues of variety magazine as the assistant manager of the Colonial and Columbia theatres in Erie, PA. But in 1912  the same magazine announces his move to the Aero Exhibition co. He appears in the John Elmer Reed book History of Erie Country, PA where he is described as an "amusement engineer." Cummins was born in Erie in 1882 to John M. and Mary E. Cummins. His father died in 1889. He got a degree in chemical engineering in Philadelphia. He returned to Erie and co-founded the Colonial Theatre. He went on to manage the Erie exposition and both local air auto shows.

WRAK was operating under a temporary authorization in 1927 because most stations were in 1927. The FRC has been formed and a slew of stations ht to file for formal licenses. By January 1928.  General Order 32, gathered up 164 stations and informed them all that they do not operate in the public interest. Many of these dissapeared forever. But WRAK lobbied to remain and managed to remain licensed but were reallocated on 1370 kHz at 30 watts and by 1929 had relocated to Williamsport, PA and moved to 1400 in 1941.  They were still operating at 100 watts in 1934, but were up to 250 by 1953. More here.

Perhaps the smallest of these three stations was WKOK-AM. Today it operates on 1070 from Sunbury, PA. It began as WJBU operated by Bucknell University, first licensed in 1925. In 1933 Bucknell sold it to Charles S. Blue to convert to commercial broadcasting. The license was reassigned in April, and the call sign was updated to WKOK in July. In 1936 it began a share-time arrangement with WBAX in Wilkes-Barre but that ended in 1939. In 1940 the FCC approved the NARBA changes. WKOK got an increase in power from 100 to 250 watts, and moved from 1210 kHz to 1240. The move to 1070 only came in 1961 but still operating as a daytimer, powering down from 10,000 watts to 1,000.  More here.

This made for an interesting set of stations. All of them had signed on by 1925, and all call signs are still in use today. Thankfully the highly directional WKOK and it's proximity to the relatively low power WRAK we can narrow the origin of this radio station to a few towns, probably on the west branch of the Susquehanna river: Selinsgrove, Sunbury, Lewisburg, Milton, and Williamsport.

WKOK at Fort Augusta

I am entertained by radio stations built in odd places, or radio stations that build odd places around them. The text on the postcard above reads "Model of Ft. Augusta on the grounds of Sunbury's Radio Station, River Front Drive, Sunbury, PA. The calls are not disclosed but that radio station was 1210 WKOK-AM. But FYI: The calls are on 1070 these days. (They were also on 1240 from 1941 to 1964.) They have been owned by the Sunbury Broadcasting corporation for 78 years.

The real Fort Augusta was a British fortification built in 1756 to protect against French and Indian raids in what was then claimed to be their westernmost settlement. It was dismantled in 1794. The remaining structures burned down in 1852. The commanders residence (the Hunter House) was rebuilt by his grandson.  In 1920 the State of Pennsylvania acquired the property. In 1931 the Hunter House was acquired by the state as well and it became a museum. The tract  serves as headquarters for the Northumberland County Historical Society (1150 North Front Street.)

That address was key to my stumbling upon this. The street address for WKOK-AM in the 1935 Broadcasting yearbook was also 1150 North Front Street. The WKOK-AM studios were then located in the basement of the Fort Augusta building. WKOK-AM didn't sign on until may of 1933 and was the first commercial radio station in Sunbury. Their license was the handiwork of Professor C.W. Halligan of Bucknell University. In 1924 he made a little experimental transmitter and went on air with 50 watts on 1420 under the call letters WJBQ-AM. In 1925 he changed calls to WJBU-AM and increased power to 100 watts. In 1928 he was shifted to 1210 and made to share time with WBAX-AM. Then as now running a station was difficult and expensive. On May 12th 1933 they sold the station and it's hardware to the Sunbury Broadcasting Corp. C.W. Halligan is an odd character, he wrote occasionaly for Popular Science and later worked for Bell labs. He may be the same one that headed up MITRE.

In 1947 Sunbury Broadcasting launched WKOK-FM on 94.1. It simulcasted the AM programming for years. In 1951 National Geographic stopped by to do a photo op with the station engineer who posed in the dry moat of the model fort. The stick on 94.1 Sunbury changed calls to WQKX in the 1950s. In 1973 they stopped publishing the Front Street address in the radio directories and went to a PO Box. I suspect that's about when they moved to their new location parting ways with the little fort in their front yard. The scale model is still at  1150 North Front Street and still replicates the original structure from drawings to one sixth scale.