Early years The station first began broadcasting as WCAU in May 1922. It was a 250-watt station operating out of electrician William Durham's home at 19th and Market Streets. It is Philadelphia's third-oldest radio station, having signed on two months after WIP (now
WTEL) and
WFIL. In 1924, WCAU was sold to law partners Ike Levy and Daniel Murphy. Murphy later bowed out in favor of Ike's brother, Leon, a local dentist. The station began its long association with
CBS in 1927, when it was one of 16 charter
network affiliates of the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, a network airing CBS' first program on September 18, 1927. The network struggled to find advertisers, however, and
William S. Paley, who had previously purchased time on the station for an entertainment program promoting his family's La Palina cigars, bought the network with $500,000 of his family's money and renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System. Actor
Paul Douglas began his career at WCAU, where he worked as an announcer and sportscaster from 1928 to 1934.
Power boost and shortwave In 1930, WCAU initiated a
shortwave radio service, operating under the
call sign W3XAU. It is believed that this was the first license issued by the FCC for a commercial international shortwave broadcast station. Initially W3XAU simulcast WCAU programming, but eventually original programming was created specifically for international listeners. W3XAU, later WCAI, then WCAB, was closed down in 1941 as CBS consolidated various shortwave operations. The 10 kW shortwave transmitter was disassembled, and WCAU staff were told that it was sent to England to aid the BBC war propaganda efforts. However, the transmitter was actually sent to
Camp X, a secret
World War II paramilitary and commando training facility located near
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, becoming part of the Hydra
signals intelligence and communications program. A series of power increases brought the station to 50,000 watts, with a new 50,000-watt transmitter dedicated October 2, 1932. The Levy brothers eventually became major stockholders in CBS, and were members of the network's board for many years.
Studios and FM On December 26, 1932, WCAU moved to a new facility at 1622 Chestnut Street.
Broadcasting magazine called it "a thoroughly modern 9-story building ... erected especially for the WCAU Broadcasting Co." The building included 8 studios and "a special office for Leopold Stokowski, director of the Philadelphia Orchestra". The
call sign in its early years was
WCAU-FM and it broadcast at 102.9 MHz.
CBS ownership The Levys agreed to sell WCAU-AM-FM to
The Philadelphia Record in 1946. However, the
Record folded shortly thereafter, and its "goodwill", including the rights to buy WCAU-AM-FM, passed to the
Philadelphia Bulletin, which already owned
WPEN and
WPEN-FM, and had secured a
construction permit for WPEN-TV (channel 10). In a complex deal, the
Bulletin sold off WPEN and WCAU-FM, while changing WPEN-FM's call sign to
WCAU-FM and WPEN-TV's call letters to
WCAU-TV. The Levys continued to run the stations while serving as consultants to the
Bulletin, and it was largely due to their influence that WCAU-TV took to the air on May 23, 1948, as a CBS affiliate. The stations moved to a new studio in
Bala Cynwyd in 1952. In 1957, the
Bulletin sold WCAU-AM-FM-TV to CBS. This came because the
Bulletin had recently bought WGBI-TV in
Scranton, Pennsylvania and changed its call sign to
WDAU-TV to complement WCAU. However, the two television stations' signals overlapped so much that it constituted a
duopoly under
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules of the time. CBS had to get a waiver to keep its new Philadelphia cluster. In addition to significant overlap of the television stations' grade B signals, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of
clear channel stations with overlapping nighttime signals. WCAU was mentioned by name in episode 669 of the radio program Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, entitled "The Sudden Wealth Matter", which aired December 13, 1959. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is a radio drama that aired on CBS Radio from February 18, 1949, to September 30, 1962.
Talk and news In the 1960s, WCAU gradually began moving away from music programming, as most CBS stations. By 1967, it had become a
talk station with considerable strengths in news and sports. All of Philadelphia's major professional sports teams had WCAU as their flagship radio station at one time or another. Although the station's ratings were good, in the mid-1970s, CBS made a corporate decision to move WCAU to an
all-news format. All-news had earlier been established on
WCBS in New York City,
KNX in Los Angeles, and several other CBS AM stations. WCAU never caught up to established all-news rival KYW. By 1980, WCAU was making moves to reclaim its heritage as a talk and sports leader. However, 96.5
WWDB-FM had established itself as a strong talk station, and WCAU struggled for years to attract listeners and establish a consistent image.
Oldies and sports On August 15, 1990, CBS abruptly changed the WCAU call sign after 68 years, becoming WOGL. It dropped the talk format in favor of
oldies of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It was partially simulcast with its FM sister station, by then
WOGL-FM. In 1993, the AM station began running
sports talk after 7 pm. The station went full-time with the format March 18, 1994, with the calls switching to WGMP and the station now called
The Game. Once again it went against a deeply entrenched competitor,
WIP with a much weaker lineup of mainly syndicated personalities, and critically without any local professional sports rights, effectively leaving the format adrift with little support as CBS itself was distracted with the
acquisition of Group W/Westinghouse and a trade of WCAU-TV to
NBC for
KYW-TV.
Merger with Westinghouse The CBS/Westinghouse merger completed a year later, and 1210 was now a sister station to its long-time rival, KYW. With this move, the higher-rated KYW became the flagship station of
CBS Radio's Philadelphia cluster. Finding it a losing battle to continue to compete with WIP, CBS soon began to phase out its existing sports talk programming through the summer of 1996. Finally, on August 23, the station went all-talk once again as WPTS, calls switched merely a month later to avoid
radio diary confusion with
WPST to the north in
Trenton, New Jersey, landing on WPHT instead. Only a year later, WIP became a sister station to WPHT when CBS merged with its owner,
Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, which was then part of
Viacom.
Entercom ownership On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with
Entercom. Entercom already owned numerous radio stations around the country and wanted to add the CBS stations to its portfolio. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th. In 2021, Entercom changed its name to Audacy, Inc. In 2020, WPHT host
Ken Matthews was named one of the 100 most important talk radio show hosts (the "Heavy Hundred") in America by
TALKERS Magazine. ==See also==