Alfred H. Grebe The station was first licensed, as WAHG, on September 20, 1924, to
Alfred H. Grebe & Company, for 500 watts on 950 kHz. It made its debut broadcast on the evening of September 22. WAHG was a pioneering station in New York, and was one of the first commercial radio stations to broadcast from remote locations including horse races and yachting events. In December 1926, WABC, a station located in Asheville, North Carolina, changed its call sign to
WWNC. Grebe took advantage of this to modify his station's call sign to one that reflected a change in ownership to the Atlantic Broadcasting Company, and it was announced that on December 17 "the new super power 5 kW station WABC, formerly WAHG, took to the air... from 113 West 57th St." debuting with a "gala concert". On March 26, 1925, a second station, WBOQ, standing for "Borough of Queens", had been licensed to A. H. Grebe & Company on 1270 kHz. Grebe's Atlantic Broadcasting Company eventually was licensed for four New York City-area stations: WABC, WBOQ, plus
portable stations WGMU and WRMU. The two portable stations were deleted on July 31, 1928, after the recently formed
Federal Radio Commission (FRC) decided that movable stations were too difficult to regulate. On November 11, 1928, WABC and WBOQ were formally consolidated as WABC-WBOQ, and the FRC's
General Order 40 moved the combined operation to a "clear channel"
frequency of 860 kHz. WABC-WBOQ became a part-time
network affiliate of the
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which wanted a full-time radio presence in New York City. CBS programming had earlier been heard on
WOR also on a part time basis. WOR remained independent for a few years, then helped form the
Mutual Broadcasting System.
CBS ownership After a short time broadcasting CBS programming three days a week, WABC-WBOQ was purchased by CBS president
William S. Paley, and became a full-time CBS Network
owned and operated station. WABC-WBOQ increased its transmitting power from 5,000 to its present 50,000 watts, the maximum permitted by the FCC. Studios also moved into the CBS headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue, on the corner of
52nd Street. The station featured a mix of local interest programming along with dramas, comedies, news, sports, and music programs from CBS's national feed. As time went by, WABC turned more and more to the national programming provided by CBS and its affiliates, and its broadcast day was influenced by CBS's growing interest in news programming. In 1939, the broadcasting operations were moved across 52nd Street from the headquarters to the new
CBS Studio Building.
New frequency and call sign On June 15, 1940, the generally unused WBOQ call sign was eliminated from the station's dual call signs, and it became just WABC. In 1941, due to the implementation of the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA), the station moved to 880 kHz. On September 8, 1946, the call sign of a station in Springfield, Illinois, was changed from WCBS to
WCVS. This allowed WABC in New York to change to WCBS on November 2, 1946, to identify more closely with its parent network, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). It also helped avoid confusion with the rival network of the
American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which began operation under that name in 1945. Control of the call sign WABC was retained by renaming a relay station from WEHG to WABC. Longtime, and unrelated, ABC radio flagship station on 770 kHz in New York was assigned the call sign
WABC in 1953, after operating since its beginning in 1921 as WJZ. Over the next 20 years, WCBS developed a series of radio soap operas, afternoon talk shows, and an all-night
easy listening music show, ''Music 'til Dawn''. It was hosted by Bob Hall and sponsored by
American Airlines. During this time, WCBS featured well-known personalities including
Arthur Godfrey, future CBS News President
Bill Leonard, author
Emily Kimbrough, and folk singer
Oscar Brand.
Fear on Trial controversy In the 1950s, one of the stations daytime hosts,
John Henry Faulk, was part of an anti-blacklisting wing (including CBS newsman
Charles Collingwood) that assumed leadership of the flagship New York chapter of the
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) broadcasters' union. After Faulk and WCBS came under pressure from anti-Communist group
Aware, Inc., Faulk and attorney Louis Nizer sued Aware, Inc. for libel, a case often considered one of the key turning points in the battle against
McCarthyism. Faulk was supported by fellow CBS broadcaster
Edward R. Murrow, who was tipped off to Faulk's plight by
Carl Sandburg. According to Murrow biographer Joe Persico, Murrow gave Faulk the money he needed to retain Nizer as his lawyer. Faulk finally won the case in 1963, in the meantime becoming a popular radio personality in his native Texas, and later, a national television personality as a regular in the cast of the country music/humor variety show
Hee Haw. WCBS fired Faulk because of declining ratings while he waited for the case to come to trial. Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson's book
The Murrow Boys asserted that WCBS executive Arthur Hull Hayes admitted on the stand the station's overall ratings, not Faulk's specifically, had slipped. The controversy became the subject of the 1975
CBS television movie
Fear on Trial, based in part on Faulk's autobiography of the same name.
Adoption of news format By the late 1950s and early 1960s, WCBS evolved into a
middle of the road (MOR) music and personality format, which included limited talk programming. Personalities included morning host Jack Sterling,
Bill Randle, and Lee Jordan. Like many MOR stations at the time, WCBS mixed in softer songs by rock-and-roll artists. Its ratings at the time were ordinary compared to the higher ratings at WOR and
WNEW, both of which also had MOR formats and more distinct identities. Through it all, the variety show
Arthur Godfrey Time remained a weekday mid-morning staple. Eventually, WCBS gained a foothold in local news coverage (WOR and WNEW's strengths), bolstered by its standing as CBS's flagship radio station. During the 1960s, CBS chairman
William S. Paley, concerned about the station's low ratings, started a process that led to the creation of a news radio format that would become known as "Newsradio 88". Paley hired Clark B. George, then vice-president and general manager of
WCBS-TV, to create the new format and turn the station's low ratings around. The format debuted on August 28, 1967 – although on
WCBS-FM, because a small airplane had crashed into and destroyed WCBS's AM antenna tower just a few hours earlier. Its original roster of anchors included
Charles Osgood,
Ed Bradley, Robert Vaughn and
Pat Summerall. Later anchors included veteran newscaster
Lou Adler, Jim Donnelly, Harvey Hauptman, Bill Lynch, and Gary Maurer. Initially, the station ran news only during
drive time periods, and maintained an MOR format during midday and overnight hours. Within a couple of years, it expanded all-news programming to much of the broadcast day, still excepting overnights. "Newsradio 88" began its transformation into an all-news format in 1970, when the overnight
American Airlines-sponsored
Music Till Dawn ended in January of that year, and completed the process in 1972, when Godfrey's weekday morning variety show came to an end. The station built a reputation as an all-news powerhouse during the 1970s, and continued with an all-news format until August 2024. Although
WINS usually received the higher
Arbitron ratings of the two all-news stations, WCBS typically had the better ratings in the suburbs because of its stronger, non-directional signal, unlike WINS's directional pattern. Its traffic reports and news coverage included more of
Long Island and
Westchester County than WINS did, and it occasionally allowed room for longer interviews and analysis pieces than WINS. The station was less tightly formatted than WINS, and formatted at half-hour cycles instead of 20-minute cycles. Also unlike WINS, WCBS did not change anchors every thirty minutes during its daily schedule. Instead, each solo anchor or anchor team on weekdays had a set shift from 5a.m. until 8p.m., with two anchors switching every one or two hours after that. On weekends, anchors also alternated every hour.
Adding other all-news stations WCBS's switch to all-news was the first move in CBS Radio's long-term plans to convert its group of AM stations to some form of news programming. Along with WCBS, the group was then composed of
KNX in Los Angeles,
WBBM in Chicago,
WCAU in
Philadelphia,
KMOX in
St. Louis,
WEEI in
Boston, and
KCBS in San Francisco. Once WCBS had been established in the format, CBS began to work on the rest of its AM outlets. KCBS, KNX, and WBBM all transitioned in 1968. WEEI adopted an all-news format in 1974, and WCAU made the switch a year later. The programming shift was a gradual one just as it had been at WCBS, with the stations running all-news most of the day while some local and network non-news programming remained at first. KMOX, which had been programming a
talk radio format for several years was left unaffected, though it later changed into a news/talk station. In Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, CBS-owned stations had a monopoly on the all-news format. In New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, CBS had to compete with
Westinghouse-owned stations, WINS,
KFWB, and
KYW, respectively. They had adopted all-news programming
before the CBS stations did. While the Los Angeles stations made the switch within days of each other, WCAU in Philadelphia did not switch to the format until 1975, giving KYW a ten-year head start with the audience. Many blame this as the primary reason WCAU did not succeed in competing with KYW. The all-news format on WCAU lasted only three years. In contrast, the other CBS all-news stations experienced success and stability with the format. In 1995, Westinghouse merged with CBS, making WCBS a sister station to its longtime archrival WINS. In October 2000, WCBS made another move, from CBS corporate headquarters at 51 West 52nd Street (the building known as "
Black Rock") to the
CBS Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street. Around this time, the station began referring to itself as "Newsradio 880". On December 2, 2011, the station moved operations to 345 Hudson Street, known as the
Hudson Square Broadcast Center, sharing space with CBS Radio's other New York stations.
Entercom/Audacy ownership On February 2, 2017, CBS agreed to merge
CBS Radio with
Entercom, at the time the fourth-largest radio broadcaster in the United States; the sale was conducted using a
Reverse Morris Trust so that it would be tax-free. While CBS shareholders retained a 72% ownership stake in the combined company, Entercom was the surviving entity, separating WCBS radio (both 880 and FM 101.1) from WCBS-TV. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17. As part of the agreement with CBS, Entercom was given the rights to use the brand and trademarks for WCBS along with sister stations WCBS-FM, KCBS (AM) in San Francisco, and
KCBS-FM in Los Angeles for a 20-year period after which Entercom (or succeeding entity) would be required to relinquish using those call-letters. Before the merger with Entercom, CBS Radio operated nine of the country's largest all-news radio stations: WCBS, WINS, KNX, WBBM, KYW, KCBS,
WBZ in
Boston,
WWJ in Detroit, and
KRLD in
Dallas. (As part of the Entercom transaction, and to gain regulatory approval of it, WBZ, along with several other Entercom stations, were sold to
iHeartMedia effective December 19, 2017.) On October 10, 2022, after Audacy had reached a new deal with
SAG-AFTRA, it was announced that the separate staffs and newsrooms of WCBS and WINS would be combined. Concurrently,
WNYL (92.3 FM) also became an FM simulcast of WINS. The move gave WINS an FM outlet, while WCBS remained only on AM radio and on an
HD Radio digital subchannel of 101.1 WCBS-FM.
End of all-news format, start of LMA with Good Karma Brands Since WINS added its FM signal, WINS had seen increases in listeners (especially among young adults) and revenue at the expense of WCBS. In 2022, before the addition of WINS-FM, the two stations were neck-and-neck in revenue earnings, with WCBS earning $30.9 million to WINS' $31.6 million. Following the addition, WCBS' competitive standing plummeted, earning just $29.7 million in 2023 versus WINS-AM/FM's $40 million. On August 12, 2024, Audacy announced that it would end the all-news format on WCBS effective August 26, citing that "the headwinds facing local journalism nationwide made it essential to strategically reimagine how we deliver the news for the most impact", and that it would therefore focus exclusively on WINS moving forward. Audacy entered into a
local marketing agreement (LMA) with
Good Karma Brands, under which the
ESPN Radio programming of
WEPN-FM would move to WCBS, and the station would change its call letters to WHSQ. Good Karma Brands had been operating WEPN-FM under an LMA with its owner
Emmis Communications, and did not plan to renew its contract when it expired at the end of August 2024. The station produced a three-hour retrospective special,
WCBS 880 News: The People, the Moments, and the Events that Shaped our Lives, highlighting the history of WCBS and featuring appearances by station alumni. The station formally ended its news format at midnight on August 26, 2024, preceded by a playing of "
Imagine" by
John Lennon and sign off by morning news anchor Wayne Cabot. Alongside ESPN Radio programming, WHSQ retained its rights to the New York Mets, as they are owned by Audacy. The rights to Rutgers Scarlet Knights basketball were transferred to WFAN. ==WCBS programming==