August 16 Radio History

In 1922...WEAF signed on.

WEAF Broadcast August 1922

The origins of WEAF go way back to 1919 when original owners, AT&T, inaugurated an experimental radio-phone station, 2XB, at 463 West St. in Manhattan.  Then, on May 18, 1922, the Commerce Department granted a license to AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary to upgrade 2XB.

Original calls, taken from an alphabetical list, were WDAM, however they were deemed too profane. On May 29, 1922, the next available calls were assigned: WEAF.

WEAF stood for "Water, Earth, Air, Fire", the four elements of matter.

On August 16, 1922, WEAF hit the air on 360 meters (or 833 AM on our present AM band.)

WEAF was the first station to offer commercials, with the Queensboro Corp, a real estate company, being its first sponsor on August 28, 1922.

During hours when they had time to fill, AT&T recruited their office personnel who could sing or play music.

In July 1926, RCA took over WEAF as the flagship for the Broadcasting Company Of America, a name soon changed to the National Broadcasting Company. The purchase price was $1 million.

On November 11, 1928, WEAF moved to 660 AM.

The move that solidified WEAF's position as the most pretigious of all broadcasters took place in the autumn of 1933, when NBC moved to 30 Rockefeller Plaza and became the "radio" that gave Radio City its name.

WEAF Transmitter 1932

In October 1943, sister station, WJZ, dropped out of the NBC Blue Network and establshed the American Broadcasting Company and eventually became WABC.




In August 1946, "Buffalo" Bob Smith began hosting WEAF's morning show, then left in 1951 to concentrate on "Howdy Doody."

Later in 1946, NBC came to an agreement with a small station in New Britain CT to relinquish that city's initials from its call letters and on November 2, 1946 at 5:30p, WEAF presented its last broadcast, entitled "Hail And Farewell," and at 6p turned into WNBC

Then on October 18, 1954, WNBC switched calls to WRCA, as a tie-in to their parent company, RCA.

On June 1, 1960, WRCA became WNBC once again.

In 1937....The American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA) was organized as a part of the American Federation of Labor. On September 17, 1952, the Television Authority and AFRA merged to create a new union, the present-day American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).


In 1939...“Lights Out,” radio’s “ultimate horror show,” was heard for the last time on NBC Radio. It returned to the air on CBS in 1942. The show’s most familiar trademark, guaranteed to put you under the covers on a dark night was “Lights out everybody!” followed by 12 eerie chimes of a clock.

The Memphis Commercial-Appeal

In 1977…At his Graceland home in Memphis, Elvis Presley took the book he'd been reading, Frank Adams' "The Scientific Search For The Face Of Jesus," and went into his bathroom. "Don't fall asleep in there," said girlfriend Ginger Alden, knowing he had a habit of nodding off. "Okay, I won't," he said. Ginger went back to sleep.

At 1:30 p.m. CST, Ginger awoke and saw Elvis was still gone. When knocking on the bathroom door produced no reply, she entered and found his lifeless body on the floor in front of the toilet.

Alden called for Elvis associates Joe Esposito and Al Strada, who arrived and called the fire department. An ambulance was dispatched. Daughter Lisa Marie and father Vernon arrived in the bathroom, but Lisa Marie was quickly removed. Elvis was rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital, where, after several attempts to revive him, he died at 3:30 p.m. CST. He was 42.

His autopsy was performed at 7:00 p.m. The official coroner's report listed "cardiac arrhythmia" as the cause of Presley's death, but this was later admitted to be a ruse by the Presley family with the help of autopsy physicians to cover up the real cause of death: a cocktail of ten prescribed drugs, taken together in doses no doctor would ever prescribe.


In 1989...WCVG, Cincinnati, Ohio dropped its "All Elvis" format in exchange for a business news format.

In 1995...Joseph Priestley "J-P McCarthy" died.

McCarthy was a radio personality best known for his over 30 years of work as the morning man on  WJR in Detroit.

He got his first radio job at Flint radio station WTAC. While at WTAC he frequently auditioned for WJR, a leading radio station in Detroit, with a 50,000-watt clear-channel signal that could be heard in much of the Eastern United States and Canada. After frequent auditions, McCarthy was hired by WJR as a staff announcer in 1956.

The position of staff announcer was merely straight forward announcing, and McCarthy aspired to do more in radio. When Marty McNealy, the host of WJR's Morning Music Hall, left for WKMH in 1958, McCarthy was chosen to replace him. The station promoted him heavily, and he was soon the #1 rated radio show in Detroit.

WJR did not pay particularly well, and J.P. was offered the opportunity to do commercials for Stroh's, the top brewery in Detroit. Station management would not allow it, and after some discussion McCarthy left Detroit for KGO in San Francisco, where he took the morning show from #6 to #3.

In 1964, Goodwill Stations sold WJR to Capital Cities Broadcasting and the president, Dan Burke, asked station manager Jim Quello why they lost McCarthy. After explaining the situation, Quello re-recruited McCarthy to return to WJR, with a raise and the right to do commercials for anybody he wanted. J.P. returned to WJR in December 1964.

Upon his return to Detroit, McCarthy not only hosted the Morning Music Hall from 6:15 to 9, but also the Afternoon Music Hall from 3:15 to 6. Eventually, McCarthy's duties were relegated to morning drive, and a noontime interview program, "Focus". It wasn't long before McCarthy's morning show was #1 in Detroit, a perch that he held for about 30 years until his death, a feat unmatched in Detroit radio.



J. P. McCarthy was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1992, the first Detroit broadcaster to be inducted.

While at the peak of his career he contracted Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a very rare blood disease.  J.P. McCarthy died of pneumonia in his sleep on the afternoon of August 16, 1995, with his entire family at his bedside. He was 62.

In 2003...DJ and General Manager, Dick Pike, died at age 78. Pike is best known for his work at WNOP-AM, a tiny, 1,000-watt, jazz-formatted Radio station licensed to Newport, Kentucky, that became legendary.