Historical Moments In Radio August 1996 WDAE - First in Florida Historical Moments in Radio .. stories of the rich and exciting past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today we’re going to hear about another radio first. The first station in the state of Florida. Now, before you decide you don’t care, let me set the scene for you. Florida is a wonderful state. For 9 months of the year, there is no other state that can rival its climate .. and for those other three months, that’s what air-conditioning is all about. I don’t know of any other place where one can go for a walk or play tennis or gold in the morning or evening just about any day of the year without a jacket. But it is true that, during the July-August time period, it gets pretty oppressive here as it does in Texas or any other of the southern states east of the Rockies. But it took two major inventions to make Florida into the paradise it now is. The first was the railroad. When Mr. Flagler and Mr. Plant developed rail lines into Miami and Tampa, the population burst was enormous. People flocked to both of these idyllic seaports. And then when air-conditioning really came into its own, the population flood gates swung open again. Now, you might wonder why I’m going on and on about Florida. Well, let’s take a look at a 1938 advertisement from the National Broadcasting Company. It points out that the last populated county in the United States to be able to receive its NBC radio programs at night was Orange County, Florida. And it was proud to announce an affiliation with a city in that county that no one had really heard of outside of Florida. Orlando. Yes! Orlando was just a stop on the rail line from Jacksonville to Tampa. So much of everything you see south of Tallahassee has been developed since you were born! And with that as background, who in their right mind would have come into a city like Tampa -- known only for its world class cigars and seaport -- and built a radio station? Well, the Tampa Daily Times decided it could increase its circulation if it could attract more people to Tampa Bay .. and so, on May 15, 1922 .. 1922 mind you .. a license was granted by the Department of Commerce for a broadcasting station on Locke Street in Tampa to a station to be known as WDAE. 500 Watts was authorized. The remarkable thing is that WDAE was on the air before any other station in Florida .. before any station in Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tallahassee or St. Petersburg or even Miami. Well, in all fairness, I should tell you that a station in Miami, WQAM, now claims to have been on the air a full year ahead of WDAE. But I have in my possession a copy of a letter from the FCC written in 1971 and signed by the chief of the Licensing Bureau, that states in part, "WDAE was the first radio station to begin operations in the State of Florida as a broadcasting station." There is a book available in most Florida libraries, I imagine, entitled, WDAE. It tells a number of anecdotes about its early operations. And it lists several "firsts" that can be attributed to WDAE. For instance, WDAE was the first radio station in the U.S. and probably in the world, to broadcast a complete church service. That happened on June 4, 1922 and was a live remote from the First Methodist Church of Tampa. Who keeps track of such things? Well, the Associated Press announced the WDAE accomplishment world- wide, and asked for anyone to argue the fact. No one did. WDAE was the first radio station in Florida to originate news broadcasting. Well this one is easy. The managing editor of the newspaper that owned WDAE opened the station with appropriate ceremony and then reached over for the latest edition of the news paper and read from it. That occurred at 12:30 p.m. on opening day, May 15, 1922. WDAE was also the first Florida station to be given authority to broadcast weather bulletins directly from the U.S. Weather station in St. Petersburg, just 20 miles away. That was particularly useful in dispelling some of the mis-information about severe weather in this part of the country. In fact, since records have been kept .. something over 100 years, only one hurricane has ever hit Tampa .. and the temperature has never ever hit 100 degrees in Tampa .. that’s due to its Gulf Coast exposure. And those facts were broadcast over and over by the only dx station they had for many years along Florida’s west coast, WDAE. A few years ago, I reported on WSUN, another Tampa Bay fixture, and how it was first with a directional antenna system for a broadcasting station in the world. You may remember why they put in a directional array? It was due to a complaint by WTMJ in Milwaukee that WSUN was causing them interference. Even today, it is one of only two stations in the U.S. that I have seen, and I’ve seen most of them now, where one drives on a major highway between the towers of their directional array. So Tampa Bay is a definite must if you have a hankering to visit a new town and learn about radio. For Historical Moments in Radio, this is John Bowker.