What Was The First Radio Station in America?

In our high school history books, we all read KDKA Pittsburgh was America's first radio station. But this was using "commercially licensed" as the key words. While the federal government apparently gave the first commercial license to KDKA, there were plenty of stations already on the air by that time, with experimental licenses. There were also plenty of stations lost to history, getting their licenses, but not continuing to this day, because they either failed or their owners lost interest. So those don't count.

Here's a chart I put together, from what I've read over the years, of the earliest radio stations still on the air to this day, although others may had additional information...

--1907, 9BC Rock Island, Illinois, now WOC Davenport, Iowa, (both communities part of what we now call the Quad Cities), started experimenting, at first with Morse Code, although the station has not been on the air continuously to this day, due to World War I.

--1909, KCBS San Francisco, originally KQW San Jose, began broadcasting voice transmissions as an experimental wireless telephone service.

--1912, General Electric began experimental broadcasts as 2XI at its facility in Schenectady NY, although WGY didn't get its commercial license until 1922.

--1912, 9ZP Pierre SD got its experimental license to begin Morse Code transmissions. The station then started voice transmissions as 9CLS in 1916 and today that same station is 1060 KGFX.

--1915, University of Wisconsin's 9XM, now WHA Madison, got its experimental license, at first transmitting Morse Code. 9XM stayed on the air through WWI, providing weather reports to ships on the Great Lakes. But being owned by a university, it never sought a commercial license.

--1919, another Pittsburgh station, KQV, says it beat KDKA on the air by more than a year, signing on as 8ZAE, although it didn't get its commercial license until 1922.

--1919, CFCF Montreal would often say that it was "Canada's First Station," going on the air as XWA, "eXperimental Wireless Apparatus." By May of 1920, it had a regular weekly schedule, months before KDKA.

--1920, WWJ Detroit says it had what it says were the first regularly-scheduled newscasts and religious programs as 8MK, although those shows were not commercially sponsored.

--1921, WBZ Boston, originally in Springfield MA, says it got its commercial license on September 15, more than a month before KDKA.

--1922, WEAF New York, now WFAN, broadcast what may have been the first paid radio commercial when it was commissioned by a new apartment complex in Jackson Heights, Queens, near the just-completed #7 subway line, to air a ten minute talk advertising for tenants. But if the FCC was already handing out commercial licenses in 1921, wouldn't KDKA and those other early stations have broadcast some sort of paid advertisement before 1922? Or did those stations simply air a brief mention of a sponsor, not a full length radio "commercial"?

--Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad put 8XK on the air in 1916 from his garage in Wilkinsburg PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh. In 1919, a Pittsburgh music store agreed to give him a phonograph and records if he credited the business on the air. Some say that was the first radio commercial, although it was for trade, not cash. As 8XK grew in popularity, Westinghouse asked Conrad to help construct a company-owned radio station at its facility in East Pittsburgh, going on the air in 1920. The following year it got a commercial license as KDKA. So can we say KDKA was the successor to 8XK and KDKA should be credited with the first commercial broadcast? Or should we simply say KDKA was the first "commercially-licensed" station, which means it is only one of many American radio stations with "firsts"?

"Commercial Station" meant something different before radio was supported by advertising. RCA, for one, ran radio stations to sell radios. I'll get back to you on this. And I'm back. Try this. It's from Wikipedia but makes a lot of sense: "Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship." What is confusing is that there were no commercials, per se, at the beginning. My thinking is that "commercial" was used as in an area of town being "zoned commercial". I'm guessing that advertising was not referred to yet as commercials. It appears that such a station airs commercials because it's a commercial station, not the other way around.

WEAF was owned by AT&T, and if you think about it, phone companies sell time. Your phone bill was based on measured service. So they decided to apply that same business model to their radio station. You pay for time on their common carrier. AT&T was one of the founding partners of NBC.

I actually have a copy of that book...found it at a used book store.

Since a couple of non comms are mentioned...WSUI also claims to date back to 1919 with regular broadcasts. WSUI is 910 on the dial from the University of Iowa, in Iowa City.

DavidEduardo said:

That's the right track... keep in mind that early on there were amateur stations and "commercial" ones. Amateur stations were operated by radio clubs and organizations to promote and develop broadcasting.

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Individual ham radio ops played music on the air back in the early days of wireless telephony (before the FCC later outlawed it in the amateur service rules)....so a lot of ham radio stations were actually "broadcasting" before commercial broadcast licenses were issued.

Well, it's true that most of the original "commercially-licensed" radio stations went on the air to give you something to listen to, once you bought a radio. I realize now, they were commercial stations but at first they weren't looking to make a profit from commercial broadcasts, just from their products.

Those early stations were started by...

Radio manufacturers
KDKA Westinghouse
WGY General Electric

Department stores
WOR Newark - Bamberger's Dept. Store
WGBS New York - Gimbel Brothers Store, now WINS
WLS Chicago - Marshall Field (call letters standing for "World's Largest Store")

Battery manufacturers
WBBM Chicago - Malloy Battery Company (call letters standing for "World's Best Battery Maker)

Then newspapers started setting up radio stations to broadcast news and features they hoped would spur interest in their papers. So that's why it took AT&T's New York radio station, WEAF, to broadcast the first paid radio commercial. AT&T was already in the business of communication-for-profit. As The Big A and David remind us, they wanted to monetize their broadcasts, not just sell radios or batteries.

Gregg. said:

Department stores

WLS Chicago - Marshall Field (call letters standing for "World's Largest Store")

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HUH??? Wrong store! SEARS was the original owner of WLS (Sears WAS the World's Largest Store in Chicago at the time)....then Prairie Farmer Magazine bought it from Sears. Then ABC bought it from PFM in 1960 and flipped it to "top40" for its historical run as a popular music station...

Yes, my mistake. WLS was originally set up and owned by Sears, which called itself the World's Largest Store, even though Macy's in NYC also claims that distinction. Wikipedia says WLS originally had studios in Sears' mail-order headquarters on Chicago's West Side. It used the station's powerful signal to promote the Sears Catalog to rural families.

WBAX in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. claimed to have been the 6th commercially licensed station in the country. It still exists today, at 1240 kHz, which was not its original frequency, which may have been 1220. It carries network sports programming, and no longer has a staff of its own.

Sears at the time was mostly mail order from their catalog - sort of a precursor to Amazon. They were the largest store in total sales. Macy's was largest in retail floor space in their Herald Square store.

landtuna said:

Why would early radio broadcast in Morse Code? Was it a service for amateur radio only? I can't imagine the general public having an interest in learning code simply to listen to radio. Even the Hams I know don't seem to appreciate code any longer. It does have its uses though:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=206934082668164

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Radio was an outgrowth of wireless telegraphy, and those who participated in it, whether as a job or hobby, used it to communicate with each other. Many of these amateurs and experimenters contributed greatly to the development of radio that carried speech and music to "listen to." Don't forget, a former telegrapher named Sarnoff proposed the idea of what he called a "radio music box" to his bosses at American Marconi Wireless...and they knew there was no future in it.