November 7 Radio History

➦In 1932..."Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" was first broadcast on the CBS Radio Network.

➤In 1935...Broadcasting Magazine Flashback...

➦In 1937…"The Vaseline Program," aka "Dr. Christian's Office" and later simply "Dr. Christian," sbegan a run on CBS Radio. Jean Hersholt played the part of the kindly, elderly Dr. Christian who practiced on the air until 1954. Laureen Tuttle, Kathleen Fitz, Helen Kleeb and Rosemary De Camp played his nurse, Judy.  Sponsors of the show included Vaseline (petroleum jelly, hair tonic and lip ice).

➦In 1938...Radio station "W9XZY" broadcasted a facsimile of the St Louis Post-Dispatch by radio.

➦In 1938...the first broadcast of “This Day is Ours” was heard on CBS radio. Eleanor McDonald, played by Joan Banks and later by Templeton Fox, had all kinds of problems. Her child was kidnapped, she lost her memory, helped a friend find a killer, etc. The soap opera ran for two years.

➦In 1940..WBZ-FM Boston first signed-on-air.

The first WBZ-FM had its origins in a construction permit held by Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company to operate at 42.6 MHz; this facility signed on as W1XK from the Hull transmitter site of sister station WBZ-AM .  Westinghouse soon sought a commercial FM license, and on February 19, 1941 was granted a construction permit for W67B on 46.7.  W1XK left the air for good on December 28, 1941, and W67B signed on March 29, 1942. The call letters became WBZ-FM on November 2, 1943. Initially, W67B/WBZ-FM was largely separately-programmed, though in later years it became a simulcast of its AM sister station.

After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved the FM band to 88–106 MHz (later expanded to 108), WBZ-FM began to operate on 100.7 MHz on January 1, 1946 (while still operating on 46.7 as well).  The frequency again changed to 92.9 MHz on August 10, 1947 (the 100.7 frequency was reoccupied by WCOP-FM, now WZLX, in 1948).

WBZ-FM's transmitter moved to the WBZ-TV (channel 4) tower at the stations' new studios in the Allston-Brighton portion of Boston in 1948, with 92.9 operations from Hull ceasing on July 23, 1948 and the 46.7 operation shutting down on November 21, 1948.  The tower was destroyed by Hurricane Carol on August 31, 1954, after that point, WBZ-FM's operations were discontinued and the license surrendered to the FCC, which deleted it and a Springfield sister station, WBZA-FM (97.1), on November 22, 1954.  (The 92.9 frequency has been occupied by WBOS since 1960.)

After securing a new license for operation on 106.7 MHz, Westinghouse reactivated WBZ-FM on December 15, 1957.  On July 14, 2009, CBS Radio announced that it would re-introduce WBZ-FM as a sports radio station named "98.5 The Sports Hub" effective August 13, 2009.

➦In 1967...the non-profit Corporation for Public Broadcasting came into being when President Lyndon Johnson signed the authorizing legislation. It is the agency through which US government funding reaches public TV stations.

➦In 1994...WREK Atlanta operated by the students of Georgia Tech became the first radio station anywhere to simulcast their on-air signal on the Internet.

➦In 2005...Howard Stern was suspended for 1 day from his radio show after an alteracation with Tom Chiusano, General Manager of WXRK, New York, Stern's flagship station, owned by Infinity.

The argument, which took place following Stern's show, apparently centered around Stern talking too much about his forthcoming show on Sirius satellite.