The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. In 1932, RCA became an independent company after the partners were required to divest their ownership as part of the settlement of a government antitrust suit.
A terrestrial network is a group of radio stations, television stations, or other electronic media outlets, that form an agreement to air, or broadcast, content from a centralized source. For example, ABCTooltip American Broadcasting Company (U.S.), CBC/Radio-CanadaTooltip Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada), the BBCTooltip British Broadcasting Corporation (UK), the ABCTooltip Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia), ARDTooltip ARD (broadcaster) (Germany), KBSTooltip Korean Broadcasting System, and NHK (Japan) are TV networks that provide programming for local terrestrial television station affiliates to air using signals that can be picked up by the home television sets of local viewers. Networks generally, but not always, operate on a national scale; that is, they cover an entire country.
WSBN is a commercial AM sports radio station licensed to Washington, D.C., and serving the Washington metro area. It operates with 10,000 watts in the daytime and 2,700 watts at night using a directional antenna around the clock. WSBN's studios are on Jenifer Street in Northwest Washington. The transmitter is located off Black Rock Road in Germantown, Maryland.
WABC 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.
WFAN is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while its 50,000-watt clear channel signal can be heard at night throughout much of the eastern United States and Canada. WFAN's studios are located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of lower Manhattan and its transmitter is located on High Island in the Bronx. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WFAN is simulcast over WFAN-FM, and is available online via Audacy.
WGY is a commercial radio station licensed to Schenectady, New York, carrying a news/talk format which is simulcast full-time over WGY-FM. Owned by iHeartMedia, the station serves Albany, Troy and the Capital District of New York, and is a clear-channel station with extended nighttime range. WGY is one of the first stations in the United States and the oldest to operate continuously in New York State, having launched on February 20, 1922.
Radio broadcasting has been used in the United States since the early 1920s to distribute news and entertainment to a national audience. In 1923, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver, while a majority did by 1931 and 75 percent did by 1937. It was the first electronic "mass medium" technology, and its introduction, along with the subsequent development of sound films, ended the print monopoly of mass media. During the Golden Age of Radio it had a major cultural and financial impact on the country. However, the rise of television broadcasting in the 1950s relegated radio to a secondary status, as much of its programming and audience shifted to the new "sight joined with sound" service.
The NBC chimes are a sequence of three tones played on National Broadcasting Company (NBC) broadcasts. Originally developed in 1927 as seven notes, they were standardized to the current three-note version by the early 1930s, and possibly as early as 1929. The chimes were originally employed as an audible programming cue, used to alert network control engineers and the announcers at NBC's radio network affiliates. They soon became associated with NBC programming in general, and are an early example of an "interval signal" used to help establish a broadcaster's identity with its audience.
The Blue Network was the on-air name of a now defunct American radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945.
WOC is a commercial AM radio station, licensed to Davenport, Iowa, and serving the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois. WOC is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. It broadcasts a news/talk format, under the slogan "The Quad Cities News Leader." Its studios are located at 3535 East Kimberly Road in Davenport. Its transmitter is located at an antenna farm in Bettendorf, Iowa, near the campus of Scott Community College. WOC broadcasts with 5,000 watts with a directional signal to avoid interfering with other stations on 1420 kHz.
WTEM is a commercial sports radio station licensed to serve Washington, D.C. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station services the Washington metropolitan area as the flagship station of the Washington Wizards. WTEM is also the co-flagship station of the Maryland Terrapins, and is the Washington affiliate of Fox Sports Radio.
WTAG is a radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is owned by iHeartMedia and airs a news/talk format. WTAG's studios are in Paxton and it broadcasts from a transmitter in Holden, Massachusetts. The transmitter operates at 5,000 watts day and night. WTAG programming is simulcast on FM translator W235AV at 94.9 MHz, licensed to Tatnuck.
KDKA is a Class A, clear channel, AM radio station, owned and operated by Audacy, Inc. and licensed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Its radio studios are located at the combined Audacy Pittsburgh facility in the Foster Plaza on Holiday Drive in Green Tree, and its transmitter site is at Allison Park. The station's programming is also carried over 93.7 KDKA-FM's HD2 digital subchannel, and is simulcast on FM translator W261AX at 100.1 MHz.
The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network was an American commercial radio network which was in continuous operation from 1926 through 1999. Along with the NBC Blue Network, it was one of the first two nationwide networks established in the United States. Its major competitors were the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), founded in 1927, and the Mutual Broadcasting System, founded in 1934. In 1942, NBC was required to divest one of its national networks, so it sold NBC Blue, which was soon renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). After this separation, the Red Network continued as the NBC Radio Network.
The Broadcasting Company of America (BCA) was a short-lived subsidiary of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). It was formed in May 1926 in order to consolidate AT&T's radio station and network operations into a single organization. However, just two months later AT&T announced that the subsidiary was being sold to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). This sale took place on November 1, 1926, and RCA reorganized the BCA assets to form the core of National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) network operations, including its "Red Network".
The year 1926 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history.
The Eveready Hour was the first commercially sponsored variety program in the history of broadcasting. It premiered December 4, 1923, on WEAF Radio in New York City. As radio's first sponsored network program, it was paid for by the National Carbon Company, which at the time owned Eveready Battery. The host for many years was the banjo-playing vocalist Wendell Hall, "The Red Headed Music Maker", who wrote the popular "It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo'". Hall was married on The Eveready Hour in 1924.
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, 1921, through February 17, 1922. Despite being short-lived, WDY was the first broadcasting station licensed in the state of New Jersey, and one of the first in the United States. It also marked RCA's entrance into the broadcasting field, which the company would dominate in the U.S. for the next half century.
WJY was an AM radio station located in New York City, licensed to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from May 1923 to early 1927. It was operated jointly with RCA's primary New York City station, WJZ. After RCA took over operation of a third New York City station, WEAF, WJY was discontinued as being no longer needed.
WMAF, known as "The Voice From Way Down East", was a radio broadcasting station licensed to "Colonel" Ned Green's Round Hills Radio Corporation in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts from September 1922 until 1931. In the summer of 1923 it began rebroadcasting programs originating from station WEAF in New York City, which is generally considered to be first sustained radio network connection in the United States.
