Calling all WCPRs

There have been a lot of different WCPRs over the years. Today there are three: 1450 WCPR-AM in Coamo, PR which first signed on in 1967, also 97.9 WCPR-FM in D'Iberville, MS which signed on in 1992 and then my favorite: 740 WCPR the college radio station of Stevens' Institute of Technology. My research indicates that it was founded in 1961. There were also a few historic WCPRs, all to be untangled.

Sometimes listed at 530 AM, the station never actually had an FCC license. There is a legend of an SS Steven's and a related FCC raid of WCPR somehow using that floating dormitory to boost their signal. The boat was real, [SOURCE] but the rest remains an uncorroborated legend, though very colorful. If it helps you imagine it, the SS Steven's did have a radio room which may have been the origin of the tall tale where they "lost" their FCC license.

In 1967, the first year the SS Steven's housed students, WCPR was already broadcasting on 1450 Khz in Coamo, Puerto Rico. That means at the very least, those calls were not available. However at the time WCPR was using the call letters WSRN; confusingly also a carrier current station at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia  at the time. References between 1957 and 1966 in multiple publications confirm.It appears their WCPR calls were adopted in 1967

Not that there was any confusion in Hoboken. Generally speaking, Hoboken hasn't been a hotbed of radio broadcasting. RCA operated WJY from Hoboken in 1921, and it's not been home to a licensed transmitter since. Purportedly WCPR was using a retired one from WAAT-AM. However, I did find that Stevens was offering radio broadcasting courses as early as 1941 so amateur and unlicensed broadcasting are certainly on the table. 

Tying it to Stevens is the hard part. If I go back all the way to the 1920s I did find one amateur license, 2AIS operated in 1925 by H.A. Thompson at Stevens Institute. The calls go back to at least 1920 with other operators, also in Hoboken: George William Stewart and Fred Britton Llewllyn. The 1922, 1923, and 1926 listings of the Citizens Radio Call Book connect 2AIS to the "Stevens Radio Club" at 521 River Street. Perhaps this is the actual origin of WCPR, not that these things tend to have only one origin, true or not. (Back in 1915 the calls belonged to Fred Dawson of Arlington, NJ)

WCPR was always a carrier current station. The campus radio station at Steven's Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ was not even audible in the one square mile area of Hoboken. They were geographically situated such that they might be on the same radio dial as the biggest, most desirable non-commercial playlists in America: WFDU, WNYU, WSOU, WKCR, WHCR, WFUV, WFMU but they were only audible in select locations on that campus. 

But because the kids at WCPR were highly organized, they were reporting their top 5 to Billboard magazine in the early 1970s right along side what we'd later call "core" reporters like WWUH, WVKC and WLSU. That's pretty amazing. Back in the 1960s they rebroadcast WNEW off hours. Hey, when you're not broadcasting, there are no rules! [SOURCE] Then in 1976, a Brooklyn pirate radio station re-used their call letters! Was it out of ignorance or was it an homage? we may never know. But that pirate and the college station both appear in various books by the legendary Andrew Yoder.  [SOURCE] There are multiple sources but the very best is a column from Popular Communications. I quote all three relevant paragraphs below:

Tom [Macko] also goes on to tell about a station he heard last December. The station, Tom says, broadcasts on 1620 kHz from "some where in New York... Obviously it is a pirate station. I heard it playing rock music and conducting what were announced as transmitter tests. The station gave a phone number, which I called. A young man answered. We talked for a while but he said he couldn't answer some of my questions about the station's location and details. This was very interesting. Probably the FCC will shut down the station by the time this report gets printed."

You betcha! That's,exactly what happened to this rather ambitious pirate ambitious pirate station used the call letters WCPR. Actually it took a number of weeks before complaints of this unlicensed operation reached the Federal Communications Commission. And during that period,the signals of this pirate station, just above the normal medium-wave AM band, were heard as far north as New Brunswick, Canada and as far west as Illinois.

But, when the FCC did learn about WCPR's illegal operation,it took just one night of radio direction finding effort to pinpoint the station's location, in an apartment building in Brooklyn, NY. The transmitting equipment was confiscated and at this writing no decision had been made as to whether to charge the offenders with a criminal violation.

So that's four or more WCPRs detailed above. But I do have just one more which is perhaps just a misnomer: In the 1990s there was another WCPR which reported to CMJ for years. It was ostensibly based in "Peona, IL" later this was corrected to Peoria, IL. (Only one of those towns actually exists of course.) For a long time I was unable to identify that radio station. It could be our WCPR in Hoboken with incorrect metadata, or some other even more obscure carrier current station. A 1986 issue of "The Stute" does claim Stevens was reporting to CMJ at least in the late 1980s adding to the confusion. [SOURCE] In some issues both stations charts appeared side by side.

In a single issue of CMJ in 1999 I found the mystery station reporting under different calls in different parts of the issue: adds, metal chart, top 30 etc. The Peoria station was now using the call sign WRBU, That's was and very real carrier current station at Bradley University, a campus also home to the public station, WCBU. (Oddly today WCBU is operated by WGLT.) There is very little information online about this station. Today Streema lists WRBU as no longer streaming. A 2014 issue of the Scout [SOURCE] lists the station manager as Ethan Hoerr in a short article about campus group ads. Their social media posts peter out around November of 2022.  Other shows were posted later directly on YouTube but those also peter out. Below is the description they were using online around that time.

WRBU The Edge is Bradley University's Student owned and operated college radio station. Here at The Edge we strive to provide quality radio programming you won't hear on any other major station. Shows are developed and hosted by students that are unrestricted in format. This results in a wide range of programming that gives WRBU a creative and original edge over all other college radio stations (yes, pun intended).

Their old URL was buedgeradio.com and thankfully there are multiple captures on the wayback machine. But most importantly in addition to streaming, it confirms they were available on Channel 3 on Bradley Campus Cable and also on 97.7 FM on Bradley Campus in Peoria, IL —that's the carrier current signal. The station has at least two separate eras. It first started around 1968 at WBUR and ending in the late 1970s. Then it was rebooted in 1987 driven by faculty advisor Tom Richman. Early station managers include Jeremy Styniner. They are able to trace the station in that form back to the 1960s broadcasting 5 hours a day on carrier current. Bradley University also has it's own Amateur Radio Club with the calls W9JWC and a public television station WTVP which all may have shared staff and/or facilities at different times. Posts on their new website stop in April of 2022. It ends abruptly with two videos on the history of The Edge. The production value is decent, clearly NPR-inspired. It's quite good.

• PART 1 - LINK
  
• PART 2 - LINK

The problem with this 1980s reboot of WRBU is that all print sources already refer to it as WRBU. The video histories also refer to it only as WRBU even thought their CMJ reports list them at WCPR for another decade. The 2nd episode of the history confirms they were a carrier current station even in the early 1990s. On United Artists cable FM at 99.5 they could be heard in Bartonville, Maxwell, Bellevue and Norwood Illinois. This expansion, while driven by cable television increased their coverage wildly beyond their campus. In pictures I do see a CMJ poster in the background. A 1998 article confirms they were moving to a part 15 low power broadcast and that they were re-branding as "the Edge" and abandoning the call sign WRBU. My theory is that they attempted to update their calls with CMJ and realized that it was incorrect, and some limitation kept them at 4 letters. Why they didn't go with EDGE, I'll never know.

Looking at all the overlapping timelines, we can say definitely there were at least four WCPRs in 1998, its a very popular call sign. But being unable to connect the two stations WRBU and WCPR there is the possibility that there was just one more, unless this was always a typo, or yet another very clever pirate. As always... there's a mythos there.

WJY and WJZ: Fraternal Twins

First of all, WJY technically precedes WJZ. It's incongruous and that's because the first time the WJY calls  were used for only one day. RCA used them on July 2nd, 1921 for the Dempsey Carpentier fight. The transmitter, which had been borrowed from GE overheated in under 4 hours and crapped out. The canonical radio history text Airwaves of New York refers to this event as radio "pre-history."  But history it is indeed.


WJZ came next, a mere 90 days later, signing on October 1st 1921 at 833 kHz. It was the first officially licensed station in New York, though Westinghouse had already established WBZ in Boston and KDKA in Pittsburgh beforehand. Just 4 days later, WJZ aired the 1921 Worlds series played between the Giants and the Yankees. In other words they came out pretty strong.

In May of 1923, Westinghouse sold WJZ to RCA. On May 14th RCA immediately transferred the station from Newark, NY to New York City. Just one day later, time they debuted WJY on 740 AM.  Both stations operated out of operated from a pair of studio on the 6th floor of Aeolian Hall at 29 West 42nd St. Their transmitters fed an identical pair of antennas on the roof.

The original idea was that WJY was to feature more high brown programming and WJZ would feature popular music. But that's not what happened.  WJZ operated 24/7 (mostly) and WJY had to share time with WOR. And while they were sometimes on air at the same time, it confused listeners and WJY became a depository for the dregs that didn't get airtime on WJZ. It left them with an unavoidable second-class status beside the real super-station.

At the end of 1925 WJZ started using their new 50k watt transmitter from a new site in Bounb Brook, NJ. interference complaints left them at reduced power for another 10 years but the transition had begun. In July AT&T transferred ownership of WEAF to RCA as well leaving WJY the runt of the litter. That month it went off air. RCA continued to hold the license, but in 1927 they opted not to renew it. That year WEAF and WJZ moved to 711 Fifth Avenue and the national Broadcasting company was all under one roof. It's where they stayed until a 1942 rule-making by the FCC decided that no broadcaster could own more than one station in a market... time marches on.

Ship Owners' Radio Service WDT

WDT-AM signed on December 22nd 1921 in Stapleton, Staten Island. It was owned by the Ship Owners' Radio Service and operated on 360 meters. It was an early marine radio station broadcasting tide and weather information. At the time this was not exactly a ground-breaking service. In 1910 the Ship Act was passed aka the "Act to Require Apparatus and Operators for Radio Communications on Certain Ocean Steamers" This law required certain types of  ships, foreign and domestic,  to carry and use radio at U.S. ports. This was the beginning of marine wireless law and WDT followed that by a decade. What's unique is that station operated in the civilian radio band and had an FCC license to do so.

But the station was a share-time operation with WOR and WJY. How can a station provide timely information when they only broadcast for a few hours a day?  They can't. the station only existed for another two years. But that didn't stop the Ship Owners' Radio Service from expanding. A 1922 article from the Deseret News described 44 stations in their network:

"Forty-four ship radio stations operated and controlled by the Ship Owners' Radio Service increased the ship message rate from 4 cents to 8 cents per word for all classes of ship service, beginning July 1st. the radio ship stations owned by the Alaska Steamship Company, which are also owned by the Ship Owners' Radio Service, will not, however increase the present rate of 4 cents per word. "

But that article clearly refers to a telegraph service. The radio station WDT was another animal entirely. It was housed and operated by the Premier Grand Piano Corporation in June of 1923 and managed by Vaughn DeLeath, who was (at least back then)  a famous singer.  I'd like to connect the dots between her career and Premier  and WJZ but I got nada. DeLeath's career really only began in 1916, and she was performing live in New York on WJZ-AM by 1921. Then a trade magazine for Presto wrote similarly of her position in June that year:

"Miss Vaughn DeLeath, "The Original Radio Voice," managing director of Broadcasting Station WDT, made a very interesting and felicitous opening
address, welcoming the guests present and stressing the appropriateness of the linking of Station WDT with the Premier Grand Piano Corporation. Later on she participated in the program in her artistic manner."

An issue of the Pittsburgh similarly records her as WDT's managing director in August of 1923.

"The station W.D.T. is one of the most prominently known broadcasting depots in the east and is under the direction of Miss Vaugh De Leath.  She is the first director to introduce an entire Negro program and she takes great pride in hosting of such entertainment for which she receives much commendation."

One source, Allmusic, inexplicably claims she was managing a low power radio network. I cannot corroborate this, nor the claims that she was running WJZ.  On December 22, 1923, WDT signed off for the last time and sold of it's transmitter. A religious group led by Judge Joseph Frederick Rutherford bought the stations equipment to start their own station, WBBR... More here.  Ultimately the Ship Owners' Radio Service appears to have been short lived. Their only other known venture is a Crystal Detector that was manufactured by the Wireless Specialty Co. It was called the Sorsinc Stand Alone Crystal Detector, and I'm told it was identical to the Wetmore-Savage crystal detectors made by the same manufacturer.I hear there are some rare catalogs out there too but I've not seen them personally.

The Transatlantic WOR

I've written before about transatlantic broadcasts. The one most radio historians will jump at is the first one. Marconi sending a signal from Cornwall to Newfoundland in 1901. The signal wasn't confirmed to reach the United States and no reverse broadcast was attempted. But that was just a scant few dots and dashes. What about an actual radio program?

In 1the fall of 1922 on October 22nd at (360 meters) or 833 AM, WOR-AM attempted it. Paul Whiteman and his band played in the WOR studio on the sixth floor of the Bamberger building in Newark, NJ. The signal was successfully received by the BBC in London. The station had only been on air since that February. Engineer Jack Popple was elated of course as was then owner L. Bamberger & Co. a popular department store. At the time 360 meters was the only broadcast frequency permitted in New York due to the war effort. In fact they were forced to share time with WJY and WDT. Whiteman must have taken something away from the experience because in the 1930s be bought 1300 WTNJ-AM in Ewing, NJ. He's was also tied to WJZ-AM where he often performed on air.

But less than a year later, in April of 1923 the board of directors at L. Bamberger was tiring of the ventures costs. They were ready to turn the license over to the government. Engineer Jack Popple wasn't ready to quit though. He'd just got out of the military and had spent the last year as a wireless Operator for the Navy. He was a staunch wireless advocate. Popple spent the entire meeting arguing to hold off. He convinced them to stick it out for another year.
In that one year they moved to the frequency of 740 dropping the WDT time share and increasing their airtime. By 1926 WJY shut down leaving sole use of the frequency to WOR. I cant' say the question of shutting down never came up again. They struggled through the twenties, and the purcahse of Bamberger by Maceys might have complicated things. But by the time that Bill Paley set his sights on it in 1927 it was already a heritage station. Popple continued to work for WOR into the mid 1950s.