November 8 Radio History

➦In 1939...WQXR-FM NYC signed-on as W2XQR.

WQXR-FM is the outgrowth of a "high-fidelity" AM station, WQXR 1560 AM, which was founded in 1936 by John V. L. Hogan and Elliott Sanger. Hogan began this station as a mechanical television station, W2XR, which went on the air on March 26, 1929.

One of the station's listeners was the inventor of frequency modulation, Edwin Howard Armstrong. When Armstrong put his experimental FM station, W2XMN, on the air, he arranged to rebroadcast some of WQXR's programming. This ended in 1939, when Hogan and Sanger put their own experimental FM station on the air, W2XQR on this date, just down the dial from Armstrong at 42.3 MHz.

When the Federal Communications Commission began licensing commercial FM stations, W2XQR moved to 45.9 MHz and became W59NY; the special FM call signs were later dropped and the station became WQXQ.


➦In 1953...Buddy Holly and Bob Montgomery (billed as “Buddy & Bob”) appeared on radio station KDAV in their hometown of Lubbock, Texas, in the first of a series of Sunday country music shows.

➦In 2012....WXRK NYC changes call letters to WNOW-FM. The calls today are WBMP.

The station, first known as WMCA-FM, went on the air on December 25, 1948. It was co-owned with WMCA 570 AM by former New York state senator Nathan Straus. FM radio was not a successful venture for Straus, and he sought to either sell it or close the station down altogether.

Today WBMP-FM

In late 1950, Straus sold the station to the owners of WHOM 1480 AM, now WZRC, and WHOM-FM appeared on February 26, 1951, featuring a variety of formats, including ethnic, background music, classical, Spanish, and easy listening. By the early 1970s, WHOM-FM had a Spanish-language easy listening format.

Following the sale of the WHOM stations to SJR Communications, the FM station became WKTU, taking on an adult contemporary format that began on June 5, 1975. At that point, WKTU was positioned as a "soft rock" station and called "Mellow 92". Ratings were relatively low. The station held on to the format in spite of low ratings until 1978.

That June, when a station executive, David Rapaport (father of actor Michael Rapaport), visited New York's Studio 54 discothèque on half a dozen occasions, and was very impressed with the crowds there. He then got the idea that a disco-based station was needed, as several FM-based Top 40 stations were leaning disco in other markets.

As a result, Rapaport purchased 200 disco records and brought them into the station. Keeping the same air-staff, adding Paco from their Spanish-language AM station WHOM, and with no notice, the station abruptly flipped to a disco-based rhythmic top 40 format with the tagline "Disco 92" at 6 p.m. on July 24, 1978.

In fall 1978, the station rose from "Worst to First", unseating 77WABC-AM in the 18−30 age demographic.