Historical Moments In Radio February 1996 WHO'S ON FIRST? With contributions by Barry Mishkind Historical Moments in Radio .. stories of the rich and exciting past on the a.m. radio dial .. You know, the fall of 1995 marked the 75th anniversary of the beginning of broadcasting. Or did it? Whenever broadcasters get together to discuss the beginnings of the industry, it soon seems to sound something like the famous Abbott and Costello routine. Trying to figure out "Who's on first?" often turns into a frustrating, even maddening attempt to put a label on a moving target. Well those words were written by a man living in Tucson, AZ who is devoting a goodly piece of his adult life to researching early radio stations. Recently he published an article in RADIO WORLD giving a fresh perspective on early broadcasting back in the 1920s and although we have talked on this subject several times in the past, I wanted to expose you to yet another angle on this historical question. So thanks to Barry Mishkind for letting me quote from his article. He wrote: Was KDKA's appearance in November, 1920 that of the first broadcast station? The question really is difficult to answer, even as one tries to define "broadcast." Did that mean operation on a regular schedule? A daily schedule? Perhaps we should measure continuous operation from some early date? or a station designed to be heard by the general public? Or licensed by the US government? Depending upon the criteria, many stations have strong claims for being first. And some of the contenders go way back. KCBS, originally identifying itself as "San Jose Calling", and then by the letters FN, and later 6XE, 6FX, SJN, and then KQW .. it was built by Charles David Herrold in 1909 in San Jose, California. Broadcasts of music from Herrold's School of Radio could be be heard every Wednesday evening. Lee de Forest proclaimed Herrold's station as "the oldest broadcasting station in the whole world." KCBS calls itself "the longest continuously broadcasting station in the world," by a factor of at least a decade. There were, however, transmissions of music via radio by the Belgian Post Office beginning in the same time period. WHA, originally 9XM in Madison Wisconsin was constructed by Earle Terry. The University of Wisconsin claims WHA "the Oldest Station in the Nation, in existence longer than any other." It certainly rivals KCBS. Over in Detroit, WWJ, originally 8MK, began operation on August 20, 1920. The next night it broadcast the results of an election. The station was owned and operated by the Detroit News. It promoted itself as "WWJ Radio One, Where it All Began, August 20, 1920." And then there is KDKA, originally 8XK. Built by Dr. Frank Conrad of Westinghouse in 1916, it began playing music after the wartime ban on entertainment was lifted. (Actually, ALL non-governmental stations were ordered off the air until the end of WWI. 8XK was one of the few stations transmitting from time to time to test military radio equipment manufactured by Westinghouse.) What is not in debate is that the Department of Commerce started issuing licenses for what would become the broadcast band, as we know it, in 1920. Experimental station 8XK in Pittsburgh, which was to become KDKA, was granted the first "Limited Commercial" license. During a delay in reception of the license, the station proceeded to broadcast the election returns on 330 meters (909 kHz) on November 2, 1920 under Special Amateur license 8ZZ. The broadcast itself was hardly unique, a number of other stations did election returns that very same night, and a few had been on the air even previously. However, the fledgling KDKA was different in that it inaugurated a regular daily schedule of transmissions. The parent company Westinghouse, had plans to start more stations if KDKA proved successful. It was .. and Westinghouse followed through with stations in Newark, Chicago and, later, in other cities too. I mentioned that Barry Mishkind authored this item .. Barry is devoting a goodly portion of his adult life to putting together a complete, no nonsense history of early radio stations. He is always on the look-out for new data on just about any of the stations dating back into the early 1920's. So if you have any old newspaper clippings from that era that help to pin down actual starting dates or other data about early stations or networks, please let Fred Vobbe or me know, and we'll see that they get to Barry Mishkind pronto. For Historical Moments in Radio, this is John Bowker.