➦In 1907...actress Fran Allison was born in Iowa. She played the folksy tale-telling Aunt Fanny for decades on ABC radio’s Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club. On TV she was a co-star (with Burr Tillstrom & his puppets) on Kukla Fran & Ollie.
She died of bone marrow failure June 13 1989 at age 81.
➦In 1928…WGH-AM in Newport News, Virginia began signed-on. The WGH call letters were not used from 9/1/83 to 12/10/84.
The earliest ancestor of WGH Radio was WPAB, granted a license by the Radio Division, Bureau of Navigation, United States Department of Commerce on December 4, 1926. The licensee was the Radio Corporation of Virginia in Norfolk. On December 6, 1926, WPAB signed on the air at 1040 kilocycles with a power of 100 watts. WPAB later became WRCV and broadcast programming mostly of a religious nature.
In January 1927, the Radio Corporation of Virginia put another station on the air, WSEA, which transmitted on the frequency of 1370 kilocycles with a power of 500 watts. In April 1927 WSEA began broadcasting from the brand new Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach but was dark by the middle of 1928, the Radio Corporation of Virginia having gone bankrupt. WSEA, however, had one shining moment on June 10, 1927 when Norfolk Mayor S. Heth Tyler became the first American to extend coast to coast radio congratulations to aviator Charles Lindbergh after his successful solo flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh heard the message on WSEA as he was passing over the Cape Henry Lighthouse.
Tom Little moved the WSEA allocation to Newport News and changed the call letters to WNEW (signifying its new city of license, Newport News) on August 8, 1928. Facilities were in the Tidewater Hotel at 2400 Washington Avenue in Newport News. The studio was on the ground floor, directly behind the front desk and switchboard for the hotel, and the transmitter and antenna were on the top floor. Shortly thereafter a new licensee, Hampton Roads Broadcasting Company, changed the frequency to 1430, and government authorization came through on October 8, 1928.
The WNEW calls lasted for only a few weeks, when they were changed to WGH ("World's Greatest Harbor"). It was also among the first 100 radio stations on the air in the United States. By 1928, however, the station was gone and the available WGH call letters were requested by Hampton Roads Broadcasting. An application to the Federal Radio Commission was approved on November 19 of that year and the station began identifying itself as "WGH" the next day.
In early 1959, a new era was ushered in with a switch to "Top-40" programming under the "Color Radio" banner. Late 1950's performers included Jim Stanley, Jack Fisher, Lou Nelson, Dick Lamb, Jack Krueger, Frank Drake, Bob Calvert, Dean Collins (who went on to WPGC in Washington as Dean Griffith and later to New York as Dean Anthony, one of the WMCA "Good Guys"), Don Owens, Roger Clark, Bob Calvert's alter ego (and the inspiration for Wolfman Jack) "Baron Bebop", Throckmorton Quiff, and Gene Creasy. Early newscasters included Ed Meyer, Dick Kidney, Pete Glazer, Bud Buhler and Art Merrill.
By 1960, the station was broadcasting at 5,000 watts from a non-directional daytime tower at the Newport News Small Boat Harbor, switching to the three-tower directional site in Hampton during the evening hours. Today, WGH operates with 20,000 watts by day and 5,000 watts at night.
➦In 1929… The radio program "The Rise of the Goldbergs," first aired with Gertrude Berg as Molly, was heard on the NBC Blue radio network. Later, the title would be shortened to The Goldbergs. Mrs. Berg, incidentally, wrote the first scripts for the 15-minute program and starred in the show — for $75 a week. The program continued until 1945 (it returned for one more radio season in 1949-1950). The show also aired on TV first on CBS, then NBC, the Dumont Network, and syndication – between 1949 and 1956.
➦In 1940..The iHeartMedia FM station now known as WRVE in Albany NY has a much longer history as one of the nation's pioneering FM radio stations. A by-product of the station being owned by General Electric with similarly pioneering sisters WGY (AM) and WRGB (TV), WRVE traces its history to W2XDA Schenectady and W2XOY New Scotland, New York - two experimental frequency modulation transmitters on 48.5 MHz, which signed on in 1939. The two were merged into one station with the W2XOY call-letters on November 20, 1940 with the station then taking the W57A designation, and finally the long-running WGFM call-letters in the mid-1940s.
