1920s Effective December 1, 1921, the Department of Commerce, which regulated radio at this time, adopted a regulation creating a broadcasting station category, authorizing operation on the "entertainment" wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) and the "market and weather" wavelength of 485 meters (619 kHz). The first two broadcasting stations located in Chicago were
Westinghouse's
KYW, licensed on November 9, 1921, which moved to Philadelphia in 1934, and WBU, first licensed on February 21, 1922, by the City of Chicago, which was deleted on November 7, 1923. Therefore, although the third station licensed, WSCR is the oldest surviving Chicago radio station. Just weeks before the station's inaugural broadcast,
Walter A. Strong, business manager of the
Daily News, realized the station would need a manager. Strong knew a young woman,
Judith C. Waller, with some ad agency experience. He called her and said, "I've just bought a radio station; come down and run it." Waller protested that she did not know anything about running a station. Strong replied "neither do I, but come down and we'll find out". Waller was hired in February 1922. She went on to have a long and distinguished career in broadcasting. Waller remained in charge of the station until it was purchased by
NBC. At that point, she became the director of public affairs programming for NBC's central division, holding that title until her retirement in 1957. WSCR was first licensed on March 29, 1922, as WGU, with 100 watts on 360 meters, to
The Fair Department Store in Chicago. The call letters were randomly assigned. A joint venture between The Fair and the
Chicago Daily News, WGU's first transmitter was located atop the department store. WGU made its debut broadcast on April 12. There are questions whether anyone heard this initial half-hour broadcast, as technical problems forced WGU to shut down beginning the next day, while waiting for a replacement transmitter. Other limitations included interference from the tall buildings in the surrounding area, and the station's low power. WGU was briefly deleted on September 29, 1922, then relicensed three days later as WMAQ, jointly to The Fair Corporation and the
Chicago Daily News, still on 360 meters. The new call letters were randomly assigned from a sequential roster of available call signs. The WMAQ call letters were first heard on October 2, 1922, with the inaugural show featuring comedian
Ed Wynn. The station's longtime motto "We Must Answer Questions", was derived from this call sign. By early 1923, there were 20 radio stations in Chicago-area alone. Most of the smaller stations were eventually shut down, because of financing issues. Stations that survived for many years usually had a store, newspaper or organization behind them, which was willing to weather the early times when radio stations did not make a profit. WMAQ had the financial backing of the
Chicago Daily News and a very capable general manager in Judith Waller. At first all stations in a given region shared time on the single entertainment wavelength of 360 meters. In September 1922, the Department of Commerce set aside a second entertainment wavelength, 400 meters (750 kHz) for "Class B" stations that had quality equipment and programming. In May 1923, additional "Class B" frequencies were made available, with Chicago assigned the use of 670 kHz, and WMAQ was assigned, initially exclusively, to this new frequency. With a new location and new frequency of 670 kHz, WMAQ went on the air July 2, 1923, although it later had to share this frequency with another local station, WQJ, which was jointly owned by the
Calumet Baking Powder Company and
the Rainbo Gardens Ballroom on North Clark Street. Rainbo was one of the country's top ballrooms and Calumet's broadcasts brought the company much publicity for its products. By early 1923, the
Daily News bought out the Fair Store's 51% interest in WMAQ. The News moved the station and its transmitter to the tallest building in Chicago at the time—the
La Salle Hotel on West Washington street in the West Loop. Within four weeks after its move, WMAQ obtained the exclusive Chicago rights from
American Telephone & Telegraph to broadcast President
Warren Harding's address from San Francisco. WMAQ later broadcast both the 1924
Republican and
Democratic conventions by this same arrangement. By 1924, the station began broadcasting sporting events, airing the 1924
World Series and convincing
William Wrigley to carry all
Chicago Cubs home games from
Wrigley Field in 1925, the first time one station aired an entire season of Cubs games. Beginning in the fall of 1925,
college football games from the
University of Chicago were also broadcast. WMAQ was the first to carry an intercollegiate football game in the United States. WMAQ became a
network affiliate of the
NBC Red Network in January 1927. Wanting to expand its coverage area, WMAQ needed a new stronger transmitter. A site was purchased outside of the city, and in 1928, the new transmitter was constructed in
Elmhurst. In April 1930, WMAQ was organized as a subsidiary corporation with Walter Strong as its chairman of the board, and Judith Waller as vice president and station manager. A new radio show called ''
Amos 'n' Andy aired for the first time on WMAQ on March 19, 1928. The actors were no strangers to Chicago radio as their program originally aired on WGN as Sam 'n' Henry''. Their first appearance on Chicago radio is said to have been on
WLS in the late 1920s.
Charles Correll and
Freeman Gosden broke with WGN over
syndication rights. General manager Judith Waller saw the potential of the radio show and granted these rights to the duo as part of their WMAQ contract. Because WGN owned the rights to the characters Sam and Henry, Gosden and Correll made some revisions to their act and renamed the characters for their new program Amos and Andy.
1930s By 1930, the
Daily News began experimenting with
mechanical television broadcasting. A published announcement of March 30, 1930, indicated the equipment would be installed and operable within two months. The video signal was to be sent by the
shortwave radio station W9XAP, while the audio would be broadcast on the normal WMAQ radio frequency. WMAQ did not receive an experimental license from the
Federal Radio Commission to operate
station W9XAP until September 2, 1930. The first broadcast of the station actually occurred shortly before this was granted, on August 27, 1930. Only those with special receivers, primarily radio stores which had gotten them from the Daily News, could see the video portion of the broadcast. The station distributed 200 receivers in the city and suburbs. Those at the dealerships saw and heard Bill Hay, the announcer for ''
Amos 'n' Andy'', present a variety show, broadcast from the Daily News Building. The man behind this and other early Chicago television broadcasts was
Ulises Armand Sanabria, who 2 years before used the
WCFL Navy Pier transmitter to provide the video and radio station WIBO for the audio portions of the broadcast. Both the technical limitations and economic climate of the times brought an end to the station's experimental broadcasts in August 1933. It was the beginning of
WMAQ-TV, which would not return until after World War II. : WMAQ was here for the years it was owned by NBC. On November 1, 1931, the
Daily News sold WMAQ to the
National Broadcasting Company, In May of the next year, NBC moved the station from the Daily News Building to the
Merchandise Mart, where it had newly built a broadcasting center in 1930. WMAQ became a member of the
NBC Red Network, later known as the NBC Radio Network, and remained affiliated with NBC well into the 1990s, even after the station was sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting. On September 15, 1935, WMAQ again changed transmitter sites, and relocated to
Bloomingdale, with its power increasing from 5,000 watts to the maximum 50,000 watts. As part of the
Federal Radio Commission's 1928 implementation of its
General Order 40, the
Clear channel frequency of 1020 kHz, in use by KYW, was reserved for the mid-Atlantic United States. Preserving its clear channel assignment meant Westinghouse needed to move KYW out of Chicago, so KYW was moved east to Philadelphia in late 1934, leaving an unneeded transmitter building and site behind, which is where WMAQ relocated its transmitter. WMAQ's new daytime signal provided secondary coverage to most of Illinois, including
Peoria and
Springfield. It also provided a strong signal to much of southern
Wisconsin (with
Milwaukee getting a city-grade signal) and almost half of
Indiana. At night, it reached most of the eastern three-fourths of North America. WMAQ carried original local and network programming.
Marian and
Jim Jordan started at
WLS in 1927 with
The Smith Family. They came to WMAQ, doing a local show called
Smackout and later would move on to form
Fibber McGee and Molly. The program was produced at WMAQ from 1935 to 1939, when the show moved to California. During its first months on the air,
Fibber McGee and Molly was distributed over NBC's
Blue Network, which meant that in Chicago the program was produced at WMAQ but heard over
WLS, one of three NBC Blue Network affiliates in Chicago at the time. ''
Amos 'n' Andy'' was also a popular program that continued being broadcast from Chicago until 1938, when the program moved to Hollywood. Both of these shows moved production to the new
NBC West Coast Radio City.
Edgar Bergen was initially turned down for a radio spot at WMAQ. The station manager felt
ventriloquism would not work on radio. That turned out to be a mistake. Bergen received an offer from
Rudy Vallee to become a part of his radio show in late 1936. By May 1937, Bergen and his puppet
Charlie McCarthy had their own show on the
NBC Red Network. Radio from the Merchandise Mart centered around the many studios on the 19th floor. Only one studio, Studio F, was on the 20th. Like its
Radio City Rockefeller Center counterpart, there were
NBC pages (
Bob Sirott was one of them in the late 1960s) and a host of staff announcers. In 1947,
Hugh Downs (
Today Show and
20/20),
Garry Moore (''
I've Got A Secret) and Durward Kirby (The Garry Moore Show) were on the WMAQ staff, as was Mike Wallace, later of 60 Minutes fame. Dave Garroway (1913–1982) also arrived on the NBC airwaves via WMAQ with his 1160 Club'' playing
big band and
jazz music in the 1940s. Garroway was also responsible for organizing a series of local jazz concerts and establishing a Chicago lounge "Jazz Circuit" in 1947 which revived interest in the music genre. In 1948 and 1949, Garroway was voted the nation's top Disk Jockey by his peers in ''Billboard's
annual poll. Garroway would eventually host a number of television shows including the Today Show''.
1940s In the 1940s, radio stations like WMAQ began playing recorded music during some hours. For many years due to union constraints, all music broadcast on the network was live. Stations in large cities had to maintain full-time orchestras on their payrolls. The organ music which was a part of many of the radio "soap operas" was provided by union musicians. When turntables entered studio control rooms, the musicians were replaced by the turntable operator or "record turner". It was the job of the turntable operator (a member of the
American Federation of Musicians), to play any recorded music. The Musician's Union received jurisdiction over the turntables because it was reasoned that each turntable was responsible for five "live" musicians losing their employment. Not until the late 1960s did the union turntable operator leave the control rooms of NBC Chicago. After getting some announcing experience, Kent returned to WMAQ, this time on the air as a radio actor. In the mid-1940s, the WMAQ Radio live studios in the Merchandise Mart were converted to TV studios for use by a new television station. Channel 5 signed on the air on October 8, 1948. Its call letters were WNBQ. Those letters combined the initials for National Broadcasting, plus the Q from WMAQ's call sign. That same year, WMAQ also signed on an FM station at 101.1. WMAQ-FM (today
WKQX) largely
simulcast AM 670 for its first two decades on the air. It broadcast with 24,000 watts with its transmitter atop the
Civic Opera Building on North Wacker Drive. The popularity of the radio soap operas which began in Chicago made it necessary for NBC to construct six more radio studios on the 19th floor. WMAQ Radio moved to these smaller studios. Though the
NBC Blue Network was sold to
American Broadcasting System in 1943, it continued leasing Merchandise Mart space from NBC until its move to the
Civic Opera House in 1952. This freed up more space for WMAQ. The station was a leader in the use of helicopters for traffic reports. In 1948, it used a two-man crew in the air to report traffic on the July 4 weekend. The traffic team covered the Chicago area by air, landing to phone in their reports, which were put on the air. In 1949, the station suffered what could have been a crippling blow. Its main antenna at the Bloomingdale transmitter site collapsed. WMAQ was able to stay on the air, but not at its normal 50,000–watt power. While the main antenna was out of service, NBC found a solution with some history to it to get WMAQ back broadcasting at full power.
RCA had a tower in storage in one of its
New Jersey facilities that was used as part of its
1939 New York World's Fair exhibit. The tower, which originally came from NBC-owned
WTAM in
Cleveland, was shipped to Chicago and became the acting main antenna. It remains standing today at Bloomingdale site.
1950s In 1950,
The Chez Show originated from the
Chez Paree nightclub on North Fairbanks in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. It was one of Chicago's top night spots, as many popular celebrities could be found there, either as performers or as patrons. The original hosts of this weekday late-night interview program were Mike Wallace and his wife,
Buff Cobb. In 1951,
Jack Eigen (1913–1983) took over as host of the program, a position he held for most of the next 20 years. After the Chez Paree closed in the spring of 1960, the program became
The Jack Eigen Show and the interviews continued from WMAQ's Studio G, where there was room enough for a small audience, and from Chicago's Sherman House Hotel. The hotel's College Inn was another popular local venue for entertainment and entertainers. Beginning in 1956, the overnight hours were the domain of
Holmes "Daddy-O" Daylie (1920–2003), who brought his sense of humor, way with words and musical knowledge to WMAQ as he played cool jazz until dawn. "Daddy-O" was the first African-American hosting a regularly scheduled radio show on a Chicago network
owned and operated station. It was WMAQ's Dave Garroway who discovered Daddy-O tending bar in 1947 and suggested he train for work in radio. By 1948, Daddy-O was on the air on Chicago's
WAIT. When Garroway discovered Daylie, he was the host of the
1160 Club overnight on WMAQ, also playing jazz. Other performers who would go on to make their mark on local broadcasting got their "break" at WMAQ too. One of them was
Ned Locke (1919–1992), who hosted a Saturday children's radio show, ''Uncle Ned's Flying Squadron'', on the station in 1950. His radio work led to his being asked to substitute for the host of a popular weekday children's program on
WMAQ-TV. He went on to
WGN-TV, where he continued to participate in local children's television. Ned Locke is known best to Chicagoans as "Ringmaster Ned". He assumed that role on the successful and popular Chicago version of ''
Bozo's Circus'' in 1961.
1960s On May 4, 1964, WMAQ switched from a
beautiful music format to a
MOR-pop standard format, featuring music by artists such as
Andy Williams,
Nat King Cole, and
Jack Jones. On August 31, 1964, Channel 5 changed its call letters to
WMAQ-TV to match WMAQ radio, as the stations emphasized their common NBC ownership. When Floyd Brown joined the staff in 1965, his photo wound up on the cover of the RCA Employee magazine next to one of
Bill Cosby, who was starring in
I Spy on
NBC-TV. Floyd was the first African American hired as a network announcer. A radio veteran, having been involved at the start of
Gordon McLendon's
WYNR, his smooth voice, his upbeat personality, and his ability to discuss everything from Big Bands to Beatles to Chicago Bears, informed and entertained WMAQ listeners when he became a regular program host.
1970s During the early 1970s, WMAQ aired a format blending music, talk, news and sports, using the on-air name "67-Q". Although the station never shifted completely to
Top 40, by the early 1970s, WMAQ's
playlist had become comparable to today's
hot adult contemporary format. One of WMAQ's first sports talk programs was
Sound off on Sports, with Pat Sheridan (1920–2005). Many of the on-air personalities during this time period were well known to listeners from previous radio stations.
Clark Weber,
Jim Stagg (1935–2007), Joel Sebastian, Tom Murphy, and Howard Miller all spent some time working at WMAQ and previously at
WCFL. A 1975 format change to
country music saw WMAQ taking on
WJJD. The entire WMAQ air staff was replaced. Jim Hill (1929–2005), long-time staff announcer and radio host, moved into the
WMAQ-TV announcer's booth where he remained until retiring. The first song played under the new format was "
Your Cheatin' Heart" by
Hank Williams, Sr. The station's fortunes were helped in no small part by the "WMAQ Is Gonna Make Me Rich!" cash giveaway promotion. The giveaway was eventually used on other NBC-owned radio outlets. WMAQ also served as the flagship station for
Chicago White Sox baseball broadcasts throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the
Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. This was the era of the "Good Morning Guys", including Pat Cassidy, Lee Sherwood, Bob Tracy,
Jerry Taft, and
Tim Weigel.
1980s and 1990s . By early 1986, WMAQ had begun phasing out country music in favor of
talk programming, with the station completing its transition on November 17, 1986. Hosts on the station included
Morton Downey Jr. and
Chet Coppock. After 57 years, NBC disposed of all of the company's radio stations following RCA's merger with
General Electric, with WMAQ being sold to
Group W in 1988. This was Westinghouse's third stint at station ownership in the Chicago market, having founded
KYW before relocating that station to Philadelphia in 1934, and later with
WIND from 1955 to 1985. At 5 a.m. on March 1, 1988, Group W switched WMAQ to an
all-news format, patterned after its successful all-news outlets in New York (
WINS), Los Angeles (
KFWB) and Philadelphia (KYW). The slogan was the same as those other stations: "You Give Us 22 Minutes, We'll Give You The World". Long-time WMAQ morning news anchor Pat Cassidy (later with
WBBM) was on the air when the switch was made to all-news. The news staff included two veteran WMAQ reporters, Bill Cameron and Bob Roberts, holdover anchor Nancy Benson, Jay Congdon, Christopher Michael, Lisa Meyer, Larry Langford (son of the late Chicago Ald.
Anna Langford), Dave Berner, Mike Doyle, Jim Gudas,
Cisco Cotto, John Dempsey, Chris Robling, Mike Krauser, Corrie Wynns and crime reporter Doug Cummings. Chicago news veteran Jim Frank (formerly of WCFL and WIND) was hired as the news director, following a stint at
WIOD in Miami. Other news directors included Bonnie Buck (daughter of sports broadcaster
Jack Buck) and Krauser, who took the same position at rival WBBM after Viacom shuttered WMAQ and fired the staff. WMAQ was among the first Chicago AM stations to transmit using the Motorola
C-QUAM AM stereo standard, even though its format was all-news, not music. The station moved to the new NBC Tower in 1990 with television station WMAQ-TV despite their being owned by different companies. The studios for both stations had been designed by NBC before the sale.
Cameron and Langford, hosted by City Hall reporter Bill Cameron and police beat reporter Larry Langford, was cancelled in April 1999, but briefly returned in June 2000. An early harbinger of the future sports format was the evening
WMAQ Sports Huddle, which premiered in 1993 and competed with all-sports WSCR and
WMVP, as well as WGN's
Sports Central program. Westinghouse merged with
CBS in 1995, making WMAQ a sister station to its all-news rival, WBBM; the merger also paired former all-news rival stations in New York and Los Angeles. CBS' radio stations were spun off into
Infinity Broadcasting in 1998; CBS retained an 80% stake in the new company.
The end of WMAQ and launch of "The Score" Viacom merged with CBS in the spring of 2000, which put the combined company over
FCC limits on ownership in Chicago. To consummate the deal, Infinity decided to transfer
the format, branding and call letters of WSCR (1160 AM) over to WMAQ, and concentrate exclusively on WBBM's all-news format, while the former WSCR was put up for sale. Despite lower ratings for WSCR, Infinity management wanted to use the move to elevate WSCR's revenue performance to that of their New York City sports outlet
WFAN, which had become one of the highest-billing radio stations starting in 1995; a company spokesman also noted that WMAQ's annual billing of $20 million was "not functioning as a successful station" by comparison. While some WMAQ staffers were retained by Infinity and transferred to WBBM, up to 44 reporters, anchors, editors and writers were dismissed; this included
Chet Coppock, who frequently sparred on-air with WSCR staff and incumbent morning host
Mike North. Following the sign-off, WMAQ ran a loop of "Score" promos for six hours before starting a full simulcast of WSCR for a two-week transitional period. As part of this exchange, Infinity changed the WMAQ call sign to WSCR on August 15, 2000; changed the station's format to
sports radio; and re-branded the station as "670 The Score". The "Score" format, branding and call letters had its origins on the former
WSCR (820 AM), which launched on January 2, 1992; the second WSCR on the 1160 AM facility debuted on April 17, 1997. All three iterations of WSCR used the same studios at 4949 West Belmont Avenue in Chicago's
Cragin neighborhood—shared with
WXRT—from 1992 until moving to the NBC Tower in 2001, using the facilities that WMAQ had vacated a year earlier.
WSCR ; former ancient rival and now sister station
WBBM moved their transmission to the site in 2019. From 2001 to 2008, the station was the flagship for
Chicago Blackhawks hockey, until their move to
WGN. WSCR was also the radio home for the
Chicago White Sox baseball team from 2006 to 2015, until their departure to
WLS at the conclusion of the 2015 season. Viacom, which had acquired the shares in Infinity Broadcasting it did not already own on February 21, 2001, split into two companies at the end of 2005; Infinity became part of
CBS Corporation, and in preparation was renamed
CBS Radio on December 14, 2005. In 2010, WSCR's studios were moved to
Two Prudential Plaza, home to several other CBS Radio stations. The move was officially announced on November 11, 2015. The Cubs' first year on WSCR paid immediate dividends, as the team won the
2016 World Series, its first world championship in 108 years, and the first since the birth of radio and modern communications. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom (the forerunner of present-day Audacy). The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17. On January 31, 2018, Entercom announced that WSCR would become the new flagship station for the Chicago Bulls on February 3, 2018, after
Cumulus Media nullified its contract with the team to carry games on WLS after Cumulus filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy. ==See also==