➦In 1921...KDKA Pittsburgh aired the first tennis match on radio. Within eight months management figured out that sports on radio would bring in big sales revenues; so the Davis Cup match between Great Britain and Australia was aired on the radio.
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| WGY 1927 |
➦In 1927...General Electric's WGY in Schenectady, NY, began experimental operations from a 100,000-watt transmitter. Later, the FCC regulated the power of AM radio stations to not exceed 50,000 watts on “clear channels” frequencies.
WGY was the flagship station of General Electric's broadcast group from 1922 until 1983. It is the heritage clear-channel occupant of the 810 kHz frequency and has a signal which covers much of the Northeast by day and much of the eastern United States by night.
➦In 1957…The Everly Brothers made their second appearance on CBS-TV's "The Ed Sullivan Show" singing "Bye Bye Love" and introduced their upcoming single, "Wake Up Little Susie," a song that was initially banned by radio stations in Boston and elsewhere because it was about two teenagers who accidentally fell asleep together at a drive-in movie. The song, however, does not say that Susie and her boyfriend had sexual relations. In fact, it strongly implies that they did not. They simply fell asleep because they were bored by the movie.
➦In 1958...The Billboard Hot 100 is published for the 1st time, with "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson at #1.
➦In 1966...a ban of The Beatles records went into effect at some radio stations. United Press International story on the developing radio ban, appeared in a Camden, New Jersey newspaper, used the headline, “DJs Ban The Beatles for Lennon Remarks.” The News and Observer newspaper of Raleigh, NC used that same day used a more descriptive headline: “Stations Ban ‘Sacrilegious’ Beatles.” Another that day, The Republic newspaper in Columbus, Indiana, ran the headline: “Christianity Will Go, Says Prophet Lennon; Beatles ‘More Popular Than Jesus’?”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Capitol Records, which then distributed Beatles recordings in the U.S., had already issued a statement explaining that Lennon was “quoted out of context and misconstrued.” Rather, Lennon was being “conjectural” on the topics of Christianity and rock `n roll, said the spokesman, and “only intended the broadest comparison…. He definitely intended no irreverence.” Nonetheless, the radio bans of Beatles music continued.
➦In 1983...WHTZ 100.3 FM moved its transmitter to Empire State Building in Manhattan.
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