The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia

The first radio stations in our market, Philadelphia, had to find the way; the direction in which broadcasting would travel.

February 8, 1922 saw the federal licensing of the first station in the city, WGL (the 42nd licensed station in the country). Within a half year, another half dozen stations would hit the airwaves and one of them would be WCAU. The Bureau of Navigation, Radio Division of the United States Department of Commerce, licensed them.

The first record we can find of a listed broadcast is Tuesday, May 30, 1922. This is generally accepted as their first day of broadcast. Their schedule that day was from 7:30 pm until 10 pm. That day's programming started at 7:30 with sporting results. Then at 9 pm, there were piano selections played by Richard Myers. At 9:30, there were violin tunes by Thomas Barker. In 1990, a newspaper article gave the date of the first WCAU broadcast as May 22, 1922. We have never been able to independently confirm that.

However, the government's Radio Service Bulletin number 62, dated June 1, 1922 lists WCAU as a new station broadcasting news and concerts. This leads us to believe that WCAU may have been on the air before the believed date of May 30th. The station was originally owned by the Philadelphia Radiophone Company, and was located at 1936 Market Street in Philadelphia. Their frequency was 360 meters or 833 kilohertz. They were the 251st licensed radio station in the United States.

Our research has also determined that WCAU scheduled the dedication of its "new" City Line Avenue building on May 27, 1952. At that time, they referred to it as the station's "30th birthday." However, since Bill Paley, chairman of CBS was there, the birthdate may have been approximated for convenience.

On January 24, 1923, ownership was transferred to Durham and Company, who owned The Philadelphia Radiophone Company. Wilson Durham was an electrician and ran the station from the back of his Market Street shop, an electrical engineering and contracting business. WCAU received financial help from a group of Market Street merchants. They put down some "up-front" money and in return received mentions on the station. These plugs may have been the city's first commercial announcements aired over a Philadelphia radio outlet that wasn't pushing the merchandise of the station's owners (mostly department stores).

The station's first transmitter was built by Durham himself, right in his own store. By mid-year of 1923, the station had moved to 1050 on the dial with 250 watts. In February of 1925, WCAU was still operating with 500 watts but now at 1090 khz. Sometime in 1925 or early 1926, the station was sold to Isaac Levy and Daniel Murphy, two Philly lawyers for a reported $25,000. They became the Universal Broadcasting Company. Wilson Durham stayed with the station as a staff announcer (they were only on the air at night) and ran his regular business during the day.

Many Internet sites state that Durham sold the station in 1924. This is just not true. A government document dated February of 1925 showed Durham & Company as the owner. Why do these other sites date it as 1924? Well, a couple of decades ago, a Philadelphia newspaper published the sale date as 1924. The information was incorrect. This detail was picked up by one site and copied from site to site (sometimes word for word). That date is simply wrong.

On November 17, 1926, Dr. Leon Levy, a local dentist and Isaac's brother bought out Murphy. Both of the Levy brothers were founding members of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia.

In mid-1927, the station switched to the 1080 khz frequency and a year later to 1150. On November 11, 1928, the Federal Radio Commission standardized broadcasting and assigned each station permanent frequencies. Because of this, WCAU moved to 1170 on the AM dial and went to 1,000 watts of power. On June 8, 1932, WCAU applied for switching frequencies to 1020. The request was denied and 1020 became the frequency of KYW when they moved to Philadelphia from Chicago two years later. However, WCAU did get their approval to go to 50,000 watts.

Sam Paley, an area cigar maker saw his business greatly increase after spending an advertising budget on WCAU. Sam's son was William, an officer in Sam's company. Dr. Leon Levy was married to William Paley's sister. "Bill" went on to purchase the United Independent Radio network and re-christen it CBS.

On Sunday, September 18, 1927, the CBS Radio Network, then called the Columbia Broadcasting System started programming at 3 pm. WCAU carried that first broadcast and eight decades later; they are still a CBS Radio station. At that time, WCAU was considered by many to be the flagship station of the fledging radio network. Paley did all this with $500,000, mostly borrowed. The Levys were some of the original investors and founders of CBS.

On Tuesday, May 27, 1952 at the dedication of the "new" WCAU Building on City Line Avenue, Bill Paley said:

It was just 25 years ago, in 1927, when a WCAU salesman came to call on me at the Congress Cigar Company here in Philadelphia. The station was then located in a hotel in West Philadelphia. It had one studio, not a very large one, and its organization was housed in a few small rooms. I didn’t learn about this until I became a customer, for, to continue the story, the salesman sold me a “bill of goods.” The “goods” consisted of a 24-piece orchestra, a choral group, a male singer, a girl singer, a master of ceremonies, a guest artist, plus the time period, one hour once a week, and the bill for the whole package came to exactly $50. They didn’t give discounts in those days.
Before the opening show, I wired our LaPalina distributors telling them of our new radio campaign. I gave them the wavelength and invited them to send their comments and criticisms as soon as possible. As a result, I became WCAU’s first dissatisfied customer. That poor salesman. It took him a long time to make me understand why distributors in such places as Denver, Salt Lake City and Seattle weren’t able to hear our program.

For awhile, the WCAU studios were at 39th and Chestnut in West Philly and then moved to 1321 Arch (Broad and Arch Streets) in Center City Philadelphia. It became known as the Universal Building. In 1932, WCAU moved to new facilities at 1622 Chestnut, the first building in the country constructed expressly for radio use. A little less than thirty years later, they would re-locate just outside of the city's limits at City Line and Monument Road in Bala Cynwyd.

The Chestnut Street location had seven studios and a sound workshop for Leopold Stokowski. At least one studio was large enough to seat the entire Philadelphia Orchestra, which played live over the CBS Radio Network from WCAU. In fact in 1934 WCAU boasted that it originated 52 network programs every week.

In the mid-thirties, the newly re-named Federal Communications Commission created 25 kilowatt and 50 kilowatt clear channel stations. Only a handful received authorization for the 50,000 watts. WCAU was one of them because of the Levys and their connection with the now powerful Columbia Broadcasting System.

The Levys recalled that their studios and offices were one and the same. It was all in one room. Dr. Levy during an interview in 1948 said:

"We used the room as an office in the daytime and then covered the furniture and used the same space as a studio that evening…. The one-room studio-office was right next to the boiler room in the hotel (where the station was located)…. We'd try to soundproof the studio with drapes, but the heat from the boiler room would be so intense that we'd have to open the windows. Then you'd never know who would be peering in the window at you during a program."

The engineer who ran the equipment and handled the controls was up on the roof of the building. The program was originating out of the basement. Sometimes in those days, Levy mentioned, the control room operator would cut the studio from air. However, the people on the show, not knowing what was going on, continued with programming that no one heard.

There was one time when the basement lights failed. Dr. Levy ran out of the station and drove his car around to the side of the building and aimed the automobile lights into the window so that the show could continue.

WCAU radio entered the history books of broadcasting when, during June 1929, the station took part in the first broadcast from two radio-equipped airplanes, during which an airborne announcer over New York City introduced a speaker in the Philadelphia studio of WCAU.

There was a time, Levy quipped, when his station was off the air on Saturday evenings. He said, "Nobody in Philadelphia stayed home on Saturday night to listen to the radio, so there wasn't much sense in our broadcasting." In the spring of 1935, WCAU became the first radio station in the United States to sign a contract to purchase "full-service" broadcast rights for national and international news from United Press (a forerunner of UPI, United Press International). The UP agreement took effect starting on May 20, 1935. According to UPI, they were "the first news service to supply news to broadcasters." During the second world war, WCAU had the only the U.S. military accredited female war news correspondent from a local station, Katherine L. Clark.

Somewhere between 1926 and 1946 (probably 1934), the corporate name changed to the WCAU Broadcasting Company. In November of 1946, citing a desire "to confine our interests to network holdings," the Levys sold the station to J. David Stern and his newspaper, the Philadelphia Record. It sold for six million dollars, the largest station sale in radio history up to that time. The Record announced plans for the construction of a large broadcasting center on the southwest corner of Broad and Spring Garden Streets, encompassing the entire block south to Buttonwood. The plant was never constructed.

By February of 1947, the newspaper ceased operations (because of labor troubles) and its rights to purchase the WCAU stations went to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin newspaper, which at that time owned WPEN AM & FM and the construction permit for WPEN-TV, Channel 10. The Bulletin purchased WCAU AM & FM, sold off the less powerful WPEN AM & FM (WCAU-FM and WPEN-FM flipped frequencies) to Sun Ray Drugs and transferred WPEN-TV's construction permit (January 16, 1948) to WCAU becoming WCAU-TV. Isaac "Ike" Levy went on to also become an officer of the NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were married at Ike's Philadelphia mansion on Schoolhouse Lane.

Dr. Leon Levy and to some extent, his brother Isaac continued to run WCAU until 1949. It is believed that this was part of the contractual agreement to sell the stations in 1946.

In the summer of 1958, the WCAU stations were sold by the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin to CBS for twenty million dollars. Some websites refer to this sale as selling the stations back to CBS. This is simply NOT TRUE. CBS never owned WCAU (prior to the 1958 sale). The Levys owned WCAU and a major portion of CBS, but the two were totally separate companies. William Paley owned much of the network, but none of WCAU. There were business affiliations but ownerships were separate.

The 1958 price included both the stations (WCAU AM, FM & TV) and the land the building sat on (a prime piece of real estate). Since that time, the back lot where "Action in the Afternoon" originated from has been sold off for office space. Two years later, the Bulletin applied for and received a CP (Construction Permit) for a new radio station WPBS (We're Philadelphia's Bulletin Station).

By the middle sixties, WCAU radio was big with the telephone talk format, with voices such as Bob Menefee, Broadcast Pioneers member Ed Harvey and Jack McKinney around the clock. Reportedly, they had the biggest and possibly best-informed broadcast news department in the area (WIP might have argued that point).

WCAU went all-news radio in 1975 but abandoned that format three years later. Some reports state that the decision for WCAU to compete against KYW was a personal thing between Bill Paley and the broadcast division of Westinghouse.

Many industry people believed that CBS just didn't have their heart in the all news operation. Actually, WCAU still had telephone-talk but it was much more news oriented. Eventually, CBS was unwilling to spend enough money to beat KYW Newsradio. Money does talk. That's how WFIL beat WIBG.

Finally, WCAU realized that it couldn't beat KYW Newsradio at its own game. KYW had been all news since September of 1965. Now, WPHT (which used to be WCAU) and KYW have the same owners.

For several years, the station went through many different management types, and each time someone new took over, they tinkered with the format. More news, less news, all news. Listeners didn't have a clue what WCAU was airing and with that went the "dial habit." There were reports that because of its large payroll, the station was not turning a profit for CBS. In 1982, WCAU aired a syndicated live national talk program called "The Larry King Show," long before his CNN days.

By 1986, the station came back to what it did best, telephone-talk. A new crop of hosts became known to the Philadelphia market led by former Mayor Frank Rizzo. There was also Dominic Quinn, Steve Fredericks and Harry Gross.

On August 15, 1990, WCAU Radio became WOGL. The station at 98.1 on FM is WOGL-FM. (Previous to this August date, the FM station was WOGL, but changed their call letters to WOGL-FM so that AM could become WOGL.) The station was WOGL, not WOGL-AM. There are no six letter calls on AM anywhere in the United States.

The format flip plans were hush-hush and few at the station were "in the know." Almost three dozen employees were let go. The format change shocked many broadcast experts. However, it was a cost-cutting move. This change also affected the history of Philadelphia. With Frank Rizzo no longer having a platform, he decided that he would give running for mayor another shot in 1991. Rizzo held that office for two terms as a Democrat during the seventies. He switched parties in the eighties and ran as a Republican but lost. (It was close). However, the 1991 campaign would have a big difference. This time, the GOP political machine didn't support him. He bucked the politicians and won the nomination. He would die as a candidate. If WCAU didn't change formats, would Rizzo had run? Many say yes, but many think no.

Then on March 18, 1994, the call changed to WGMP, "the Game." The station as WOGL had kept some of its sports programming (from the WCAU days) and so it was decided to go "full time" with the sports theme. Much of the station's schedule was filled with syndicated sports programming, designed for smaller markets. They also kept the Phillies broadcasts and college basketball. The ratings were never what they expected and the format was dumped by new owners Westinghouse Broadcasting who purchased CBS.

On August 23, 1996, the call letters became WPTS and three weeks later, it became WPHT (on September 17, 1996). Again the station tried a talk format with local programming including Don Lancer in the evenings. Don was transferred from now sister station KYW. (Lancer has since returned to KYW). During August of 1998, much of the local programming was dumped in order to air syndicated talk shows. Except for the addition of Sid Mark to its lineup starting on December 29, 2000, the station has kept its 1998 flavor.

By the way, the WCAU call letters live on. When NBC took over WCAU-TV on September 10, 1995, they applied for a change in call letters. On October 6, 1995, the new call was approved and the TV station went from a six letter call (WCAU-TV) to a four letter call (WCAU).

Forrest Choate, a visitor to our website e-mails:

I grew up in the 20's in the Atlantic City area.... In 1937 at age 19, my family and I moved to California.... In late 1941 before Pearl Harbor I was drafted and assigned to the Signal Corps School at Fort Monmouth, NJ. While there I became friends with a fellow instructor and he had been at WCAU as an operator/engineer prior to being drafted.

I had been in a similar job at KDB in Santa Barbara, CA. This new friend and I went to Philly one weekend and he had a grand time showing off to me his skills as a patch-cord jockey in the control room at WCAU. ...A few weeks later we were each re-assigned and I never heard news of him again. After the war, I went back to AM radio for 5 years and then into a 32-year stint with NBC-TV in Hollywood (Burbank). Most of the time as a news camera person and Technical Director, retiring in 1982.

Just a few months ago I read a few paragraphs of reminiscences in a bulletin for Retired NBC people. These memories were from Greg Garrison, a director of many of the big live hour shows of the 50s and 60s. In these memories he gives credit to the Technical Director that pulled him through his first attempts at directing a live TV show. That TD that he praised so highly was Charlie Coleman. That is the same guy that took me from Fort Monmouth to Philly for a great weekend. Anyone remember him?

The e-mail address of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia is pioneers@broadcastpioneers.com