WABC (AM)

WABC (770 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a conservative talk format known as "Talkradio 77". Owned by John Catsimatidis' Red Apple Media, the station's studios are located in Red Apple Media headquarters on Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and its transmitter is in Lodi, New Jersey. Its 50,000-watt non-directional clear channel signal can be heard at night throughout much of the Eastern United States and Canada. It is the primary entry point for the Emergency Alert System in the New York metropolitan area and New Jersey. WABC simulcasts on WLIR-FM in Hampton Bays, New York, on eastern Long Island.

Owned and operated by the American Broadcasting Company for much of its history, it is one of the country's oldest radio stations. WABC began broadcasting in early October 1921, originally as WJZ in Newark, New Jersey. From 1943 through 2007, the station served as the flagship for the original ABC Radio Network (and its direct predecessor, the Blue Network) and ABC's radio news service. While WABC has been a talk radio station since 1982, the station broadcast a Top 40 music format from 1960 to 1982. Starting in the 1960s to 1978, WABC was not only the dominant contemporary music station in New York City, but was also among the most-listened-to radio stations in North America, serving as a template for many other Top 40 stations around the country.

History

WJZ Newark (1921–1923)

In November 1920 the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company had established its first broadcasting station, KDKA, located in its plant at East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in order to promote the sale of radio receivers. This initial station proved successful, so the next year the company developed plans to set up additional stations in major population centers, including, in addition to the New York City area, WBZ, originally in Springfield, Massachusetts, and KYW, originally in Chicago, Illinois.

On September 30, 1921, Westinghouse was issued a broadcasting authorization for a station with the randomly assigned call letters WJZ, located at the company's meter factory at Orange and Plane streets in Newark, New Jersey, and transmitting on a wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz).

WJZ's studio and transmitter were initially housed in a shack located on a factory roof that was only accessible by ladder. The station later expanded to a larger studio on the factory's ground floor. The station began test transmissions around October 1, 1921, followed, beginning October 5, by broadcasts of the 1921 World Series baseball games. Announcer Thomas H. Cowan in Newark simply relayed the description phoned in from the Polo Grounds baseball field by ''Newark Sunday Call. (At first station announcers were identified only by initials; in Cowan's case as "ACN", for "Announcer-Cowan-Newark".)

The station soon expanded to feature a wide variety of live programming. A popular early feature was the "Man in the Moon" bedtime stories, written by Josephine Lawrence and read over the air by Bill McNeary (both were ''Newark Sunday Call'' employees). Beginning on November 27, 1921, a weekly 90-minute show presented by the Vincent Lopez band was aired.

When it began its broadcast service, WJZ was the only station in the New York City area transmitting on 360 meters. In mid-December 1921 station WDY, operated by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from Roselle Park, New Jersey, began sharing the wavelength, with WJZ now broadcasting on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and WDY operating on the other three nights. This soon ended when WDY ceased operations in mid-February 1922 and was merged with WJZ, with RCA now assuming half of WJZ's expenses. However, within a few months a large number of additional broadcasting stations began operating on 360 meters, and WJZ was stubborn about having to share "its" wavelength. In May 1922 a proposed time-sharing agreement among 15 local stations assigned more than half of the available airtime to WJZ, but the station did not feel this was sufficient, which in turn led the Radio Broadcasting Society of America to petition that WJZ's license be canceled for being uncooperative.

There were no formal standards in the United States defining broadcasting stations until December 1, 1921, when the Department of Commerce—which regulated radio at this time-issued a regulation specifying that stations making broadcasts intended for the general public now had to hold a Limited Commercial license that authorized operation on 360 or 485 meters. WJZ was one of a small number of stations that already met this standard at the time of its adoption. It was also the second-oldest of the two licenses previously issued for the state of New Jersey, preceded by RCA's WDY grant. However, WJZ was the first to go on the air, as WDY did not begin operations until 2 months after WJZ's debut.

WJZ had difficulty convincing New York City performers – who were not paid – to make the trek to Newark, so on February 5, 1922, a more convenient remote studio was opened at the Waldorf-Astoria, located on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. The American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) was unwilling to provide a telephone line to connect the Waldorf-Astoria studio to the Newark transmitter, so the link was instead made using specially prepared telegraph wires provided by Western Union. However, this expedient only provided marginal audio quality, and "the line was so noisy that when Newcomb Carleton, the president of Western Union, broadcast over it, his voice was completely drowned out".

On March 15, 1922, WJZ broadcast a studio performance of Mozart's Impresario, probably the first full-length opera broadcast in the New York City area. In October 1922, the station aired its second World Series, this time also feeding it to WGY in Schenectady, New York. Shortly after midnight on December 9, 1922, WJZ became the first broadcasting station confirmed to have been heard in Europe, consisting of a short program featuring greetings from the British consul in New York to British listeners and Vaughn De Leath singing her "Oliver Twist" song.

WJZ New York City (1923–1953)

Takeover by RCA

May 15, 1923, saw a number of simultaneous major changes. Most notably, on this day the station moved from Newark to New York City, and the ownership was changed from joint Westinghouse-RCA responsibility to full control by RCA. WJZ moved to studios on the sixth floor of the building where the Aeolian Hall was located, and station publicity heralded the upgrade: "Located in the heart of the city's musical and theatrical district, where entertainment of the highest order is ever available, this station will offer to the American public the most elaborate radio programs yet attempted and with a degree of faithfulness in reproduction that marks the beginning of a new era in radio broadcasting." This was also the day that the Department of Commerce implemented an expansion of the broadcast band, which now consisted of a range of transmitting frequencies from 550 to 1350, with WJZ assigned the sole use of 660. Finally, a sister station with the call letters of WJY operating on 740, was established, which shared the "Broadcast Central" Aeolian Hall studios, with WJZ providing more serious programming, and WJY's offerings considered more informal.

Program logs from May 15 to December 31, 1923, show WJZ aired 3,426 programs, including 723 talks, 67 church services, 205 bedtime stories and 21 sports events. Many of the broadcasts were musical and ranged from Carnegie Hall and Aeolian Hall recitals to harmonica and banjo solos.

As part of the move to Aeolian Hall, WJZ's transmitting antenna was constructed atop the building, but the location in the middle of New York City proved to be a poor choice. At the end of 1925, the station began operations from a new transmitter site located at Bound Brook, New Jersey

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