WWJ
DETROIT - A 2020 CENTENNIAL STATION
By John F. Schneider, 2020
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WWJ
DETROIT - A 2020 CENTENNIAL STATION By John F. Schneider, 2020
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Copyright 2020 - John F. Schneider & Associates, LLC The
Detroit News station WWJ began test broadcasts on August 20, 1920 using
the call sign 8MK. A phonograph horn attached to the
transmitter’s microphone is picking up recorded music on a borrowed
Edison phonograph. Seen here (L-R) are “disc spinner” Howard
Trumbo, announcer Elton Plant and engineer Frank Edwards.
 In
1925, WWJ’s power was increased to 1,000 watts with a new Western
Electric 6-B transmitter (far left). The latest in broadcast
technology, it featured 100% Heising low-level modulation, a
water-cooled final amplifier tube, and crystal frequency control. Only
one of the transmitter’s two cabinets is visible in this image.
The assembly of audio control and monitoring equipment has grown
considerably in three years.
   Here
is the renowned sports announcer Ty Tyson (1888-1968) calling the
play-by-play action of a Detroit Tigers game in the late 1920s.
Tyson joined WWJ as an announcer in 1922 and broadcast a variety of
events before being recognized for his sportcaster abilities. He
broadcast the Detroit Tigers games on radio from 1927 to
1942, then on television from 1947-51, and then returned to
radio. Tyson retired in 1953.
 This
is an aerial view of the WWJ towers on the roof of the Detroit News
building, dated 1937. The Detroit River and Ambassador Bridge are
seen in the background. By this date, the main WWJ transmitter was
located on Eight Mile Road, and these towers were only used for
backup. They were dismantled in 1943 and their steel was donated
for the war effort.
    WWJ
outfitted this news truck in 1938, containing the latest technology
for live broadcasting and photojournalism. It contained a custom-built
100-watt
shortwave transmitter and receivers. A
reporter wearing a backpack transmitter could transmit back to the
truck for
rebroadcast to the WWJ studios via shortwave.
 WWJ’s
ultra-shortwave “Apex” station W8XWJ broadcast from 1936 to 1940 on
41,000 kHz. Here, Chief Engineer C.H. Messer attends to the
500-watt high fidelity AM transmitter in the Penobscot Building.
Carroll Leedy operates the control console. W8XWJ later became
W45D, one of the nation’s first FM stations (now WXYT-FM).
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It was
shortly after World War I that Clarence Thompson, a partner of Lee de
Forest,
formed a new company - Radio News & Music, Inc. in New York. His goal was to encourage newspapers to
broadcast
their news reports by wireless, using de Forest transmitters. The franchise offer – available to only one
newspaper in each city – offered the rental of a de Forest 50-watt
transmitter
and accessories for $750. Just one
newspaper signed up for the deal – it was the Detroit News, led by
publisher
William E. Scripp. He had been
interested in wireless since investing in Detroit experimenter Thomas
E.
Clark’s wireless company in 1904.
Scripp’s son, William J. “Little Bill”, was also an active
ham radio
operator, operating a station in the Scripps home. Scripp proposed
accepting the Radio News & Music offer and building a Detroit
News
radio station in 1919, but he met resistance from his board of
directors. It was not until March of 1920
that he was
given the go-ahead to sign a contract. The
de Forest transmitter was shipped to Detroit on May 28, 1920, but was
lost in
transit; a second transmitter was constructed and sent on July 15. This delayed the installation of the station
until August. Radio News
& Music hired a Detroit ham operator, 19-year-old Michael Lyons, to
install
the transmitter on the second floor of the News building and to
erect a
rooftop antenna. A license would
also be needed,
but broadcasting in 1920 was just an experimental activity and
broadcast
licenses did not yet exist. The handful of pioneer broadcasters then in
existence were operating
under a variety of license classes, including amateur, experimental,
and
“Commercial Land Station”. The News
decided that an amateur license was the most expedient option, and a
license
was quickly obtained with the call sign 8MK.
Scripps initially worried
about
the optics of a newspaper giving away its news reports for free over
the air, and
so he wanted the appearance of an arms-length relationship with the
station. For this reason, the 8MK license
was registered
in Lyons’ name. In a 1973 letter, Lyons
recalled: I'll
never forget the Tuesday we started broadcasting, and the reporters
would not
publish the fact, because they were afraid people would laugh at the
Detroit
newspaper. Besides, I was told, there was a chance the radio news would
deter
people from buying newspapers to get the news. 8MK made
its first transmission on August 20, 1920, on a frequency of 200 meters
(1500
kHz) - the bottom of the amateur band.
It was just a test of the new equipment, and so it was not
publicized. It’s estimated that no more
than 30 people
heard the broadcast that night. Elton
Plank, a 16-year-old office boy, was given the task of being the first
announcer because of his pleasing voice.
At 8:15 PM, Plank placed a megaphone against the
transmitter’s
mouthpiece and announced, “This is 8MK calling, the radiophone of the
Detroit
News”. He then signaled Howard Trumbo,
operating a borrowed hand-crank Edison phonograph, to play two records
- “Roses
of Picardy” and “Annie Laurie.”
Listeners were asked to telephone in their signal reports
to the
newspaper, and 8MK signed off the air. After
several more test transmissions verified the equipment was working
properly, 8MK made its first publicized
broadcast on
August 31, 1920, the night of the state’s primary election. A front-page announcement in the News
alerted the public to the upcoming broadcast: “Miscellaneous
news and music will be
transmitted from 8 until 9 o’clock so that operators may adjust their
instruments.
Election bulletins begin at 9 o’clock and will continue on the hour and
half-hour until midnight”. An
estimated
500 listeners heard that night’s broadcast.
After that
auspicious debut, 8MK began a schedule of two broadcasts per day, six
days a
week, featuring news and weather summaries from the pages of the Detroit
News combined with entertainment from phonograph records. Each day, the program schedule of the
“Detroit News Radiophone” was published on the front page of the
newspaper. Encouraged by the positive
results of his
radio experiment, Scripps transferred the 8MK license into the name of
the
newspaper and dedicated more resources towards his fledgling operation. A staff of three was assigned – two engineers
and a program manager. New program
concepts were tried: in September, there
was a remote broadcast of live dance music by the Paul Specht
Orchestra, and the
results of the Dempsey-Miske boxing match were announced.
The Brooklyn-Cleveland World Series baseball play-by-play
scores were sent out in October. On
November 2, 8MK broadcast the Harding-Cox presidential election
returns, the
same night as KDKA’s famous first broadcast.
Live Christmas carols were
broadcast in December. Lectures,
dramatic readings and poetry were added in 1921, and live music was
increasingly being heard. Although still
operating under an amateur license, 8MK was a commercial broadcaster in
all
aspects, operating from a business establishment with a paid staff and
professional content. In the
fall of 1921, new government regulations were issued that prohibited
amateurs
from broadcasting news and entertainment.
This meant that the Detroit News, along with
dozens of other
pioneer broadcasters, were required to apply for a new class of license
called
“Limited Commercial”. Subsequently,
in
November, 1921, the “Detroit News Radiophone” received a new license
with the
randomly-assigned call letters WBL, and it moved to the new shared
broadcasting
frequency of 360 meters (833 kHz). But
when listeners had trouble hearing the call sign correctly, a new call
sign was
requested, and the Detroit News station became WWJ on March 3,
1922. Scripps now
poured considerable resources in his radio operation.
A new WWJ studio-office suite was built on
the fourth floor of the building. A 290’ antenna was stretched between
the News
building and the Fort Shelby Hotel in 1921, and a 500-watt Western
Electric
transmitter was installed in 1922 – just the second factory-made
broadcast
transmitter in the country. With these
improvements,
WWJ was now being heard across the country at night.
By summer, there was a full-time staff of nine. Live broadcasts of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra began in February, and in May a new 16-piece WWJ Orchestra
was
organized, comprised mostly of symphony musicians.
Regular church services were broadcast on
Sundays. Star performers appeared on the
station, including Fanny Brice and Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians.
Nightly
news reports with running commentary were delivered by Albert Weeks,
billed as “The
Town Crier”. Children’s bedtime stories were being read nightly. As local
live talent was hired to broadcast on WWJ, some refused to believe
there was really
an invisible audience hearing their performances. They
were accustomed to the immediate feedback
of a live audience, but the microphone offered only silence. When future radio comedian Will Rogers made
his first ever radio broadcast over WWJ in October, 1922, he didn’t
believe that
people were really listening, “I don’t
think you can hear me,” he announced. “If
this isn’t the bunk, let me know if you can hear me.” To
his great surprise, he received letters and
postcards from all over the Midwest.
Even Henry Ford had heard him, using a receiving set he
had built
himself. Live
remote play-by-play broadcasts on WWJ began in October, 1924, when
Chief
Announcer Edwin “Ty” Tyson called a University of Michigan football
game from
the stadium. The
university allowed just this one broadcast
because the stadium was already sold out, but when they were flooded
with
ticket requests for the next game they agreed to allow regular
broadcasts. In 1927, Tyson broadcast
the entire season
of Detroit Tigers home games over WWJ. He
soon became one of the country’s foremost early sportscasters, and
called both
the 1935 and ‘36 World Series games for NBC. In 1923,
WWJ moved to 517 meters (580 kHz), sharing the frequency with the new
Detroit Free
Press station WCX (now WJR), and then in 1925 it moved to 850 kHz,
operating
full time with a new 1 kW transmitter. After
the company’s new parking garage was completed across 3rd
Avenue in
1926, the transmitter moved into the garage building, and two new
towers
suspended the antenna 265 feet above street level between the garage
and the
paper warehouse. (WWJ was shifted to
920 kHz in 1928, and then to its current 950 kHz frequency in the NARBA
Treaty
realignment of 1941.) As radio
entered its “golden age” in the 1930’s, backed by the ample resources
of the
Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, no expense was spared to make WWJ a
first-class
station. When the NBC Red Network was organized in 1926, WWJ became its
Detroit
affiliate. In 1936, a new showplace
five-story
studio building was built for a cost of $1 million, and an opulent 5kW
transmitter
building and new tall tower were inaugurated.
Both structures were designed by the famed Detroit
architect Albert Kahn. Frequent remote
broadcasts originated from a
fleet of remote trucks and the Detroit News aircraft.
“Radio Jake”, the WWJ Interference Engineer,
prowled the city in his own vehicle, solving interference complaints
for
citizens as a free public service. The Detroit
News had operated WWJ entirely as a goodwill service to the public. By 1928, it had reportedly invested $466,000
in the station, despite earning not a penny in return.
There was no way knowing if WWJ benefitted
the company through increased newspaper sales.
This was the conundrum of radio in the late 1920’s – it
was now an
essential public service, but had no clear source of revenue. It was not until advertising was permitted in
the early 1930’s that radio became a profitable medium. WWJ was continually
at the forefront experimenting with new broadcast technologies. In 1938, it transmitted a radio newspaper
during overnight hours to facsimile printers in local residences. In 1936, it inaugurated an experimental “Apex” high
fidelity AM station, W8XWJ, broadcasting on 41,000 kHz from the top
of the Penobscot Building skyscraper. In
1940, the FCC eliminated the AM Apex stations and instead allowed the
construction of the first FM (Frequency Modulation) stations on the old
42-48 MHz band. W8XWJ ceased operations that year, and it was
replaced in 1941 with Michigan's first FM station, W45D.(now
WXYT-FM). And in 1947, WWJ-TV took to
the airwaves (now WDIV). In
May, 1971, WWJ ended its MOR ("Middle of the Road") music format in
favor of news and talk programming, which has continued successfully
until today. The 65-year relationship between WWJ and the Detroit News ended in 1985, when The Gannett Company bought the newspaper and spun off WWJ/WJOI to a group of local businessmen. Then in 1989, they were purchased by CBS Radio, who invested in a major power increase to 50 kW in 2000. In 2017, CBS Radio merged with Entercom today’s owner of WWJ, which coincidentally also owns pioneer stations KDKA and KNX. The original WWJ de Forest transmitter was donated to the Detroit History Museum in 1959, where it can be seen on display today. Click HERE to visit the Radio Historian's complete library of WWJ photographs.
This article
originally appeared in the September 16, 2020, issue of RADIO WORLD REFERENCES:
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