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.

Leary Vs.Liddy

After being released from prison, G. Gordon Liddy was helped into a new career was a talk radio host by Timothy Leary, a man he had once thrown in jail. There could not be two more different men in all of America. They were an exponential order more adversarial than the Odd Couple. How they ended up doing debates together is a very odd tale. More here.

Dr. Timothy Francis Leary Jr. was a psychologist, lecturer, author and advocate for both the therapeutic and recreational use of psychedelic drugs.  George Gordon Battle Liddy was a lawyer and bagman for President Nixon who went down for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Both did some time in prison and that is the genesis of their improbable friendship. Both men ended up as inmates at Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution in California.

For his involvement in the burglary of the DNC offices, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. He was sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison in 1973. President Jimmy Carter commuted his sentence to 8 years in 1977. The commutation made him eligible for parole and he was released in 1977 having served 4 and a half years. More here.

Leary was arrested in 1965 for drug possession following a raid orchestrated by Liddy.  Following a similar arrest in 1968, he was sentenced to 10 years in 1970, with a further 10 added for a prior arrest in 1965 to be served consecutively. (The 1965 conviction was later overturned by the Supreme court) Leary escaped from jail and fled to Algeria and then Switzerland. The Swiss briefly imprisoned Leary but refused to extradite him. He traveled to Austria, Beirut and was eventually arrested in Afghanistan. Leary was released from prison on April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. More here.

By 1981 both Leary and Liddy had re-entered the public sphere as guest commentators on morning radio programs and talk shows. (Leary can be heard on some rare CBS transcriptions of the program "Rock Connections." ) After a speech at the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, Leary ran into Liddy. To exploit their opposing backgrounds and viewpoints Liddy joined with Leary for a series of debates at college campuses. Those tours continued through at least 1984. The debates were the topic of a documentary film in 1982 titled the Return Engagement.

In December of 1991Liddy did some holiday fill-in work on New York talk station WABC-AM. This impressed Mel Karmazin, president of Infinity broadcasting, owner of 1300 WJFK-AM which was simulcast in that era on 103.1 WJFK. That Spring Mel hired Liddy for the mid-day slot following Howard Stern. Within a year, it's popularity led to national syndication through Viacom's Westwood One Network and later on, Radio America, in 2003. Liddy's retired from the show in July of 2012 at the age of 82. I am curious if he we still was driving that 1985 black Volvo with the license plate "H20GATE."