WJY was an AM radio station located in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, licensed to the

Radio Corporation of America The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

(RCA) from May 1923 to early 1927. It was operated jointly with RCA's primary New York City station, WJZ (now WABC). After RCA took over operation of a third New York City station, WEAF (now WFAN), WJY was discontinued as being no longer needed.

Station history

RCA was an early broadcasting pioneer, and would dominate the American radio and electronics industry for half a century. Its entry into the broadcasting field occurred on July 2, 1921, when a temporary longwave station located in Hoboken, New Jersey, also assigned the call letters WJY, was used for a ringside broadcast of the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight boxing match. In December 1921, RCA began regular operation of AM station

WDY WDY was an AM radio station located in Roselle Park, New Jersey, that was licensed to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from September 19, 1921 to February 20, 1923, although its broadcasting career only spanned the period from December 15, 19 ...

in Roselle Park, New Jersey, although WDY was shut down just two months later, when RCA began sharing half the cost of a Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing station, WJZ (now WABC), located in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Aeolian Hall at 29 West Forty-second Street. RCA explained that it was operating two stations so that one could provide "high brow" entertainment (WJZ), and the other "popular" programming (WJY). Although introductory reviews emphasized that the studios and transmitting equipment provided to WJY and WJZ were equally advanced, it was soon clear that the senior WJZ was the dominant station. WJZ was assigned exclusive use of its 660 kHz frequency, while WJY had to share its frequency, 740 kHz, with two other stations: WOR, operated by the Bamberger Department Store in Newark, New Jersey, and WDT, operated by the Ship Owners Radio Service in New York City. (WDT was deleted by the end of the year). In addition, when RCA started development of a radio network, which eventually evolved into the NBC-Blue network (later the

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

), it normally featured programs originating from WJZ. WJY's program offerings appear to have been very limited. Two months after its debut, its schedule was listed as consisting of a single weekly transmission from 2:30 to 6:30 on Sunday afternoons. In the summer of 1926, RCA purchased the American Telephone & Telegraph Company's (AT&T) radio operations, including its showcase New York City station, WEAF (now WFAN). WEAF's previous network operations were reorganized as the NBC-Red network, and its prominence was equal to WJZ, further overshadowing WJY. An article in the July 31, 1926 issue of ''Radio World'' noted that WOR, WJY's nominal timesharing partner, was now operating full-time because WJY was considered to have forfeited its hours. This report further referred to WJY as "R.C.A.'s weak sister station in New York City", and stated that it "hasn't been doing any broadcasting for a few moons". A month later, an article in ''Radio Digest'' quoted WOR management as saying that although their timesharing agreement allocated hours to WJY on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, that station had actually been silent since February 6, and despite assurances by WJY management that they would soon resume broadcasting, it had "remained totally silent". Now inactive, WJY appeared in the Commerce Department's 1926 end-of-year station list, but had disappeared as of the May 1927 listing. In a retrospective of his time as engineer-in-charge of WJY-WJZ,

Carl Dreher Carl Dreher (February 16, 1896 – July 13, 1976) was an American electrical engineer, two-time Academy Award-nominated sound engineer, and an author who primarily dealt with technical and scientific topics. Directly involved with two techno ...

contrasted the prominent status WJZ held within the company's operations as compared to WJY, which he noted "never amounted to much".''Sarnoff: An American Success'' by Carl Dreher, 1977, page 73.

References

{{Radio in New York City 1923 establishments in New York City 1927 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1923 Radio_stations_disestablished_in_1927 JY