Tennessee Radio History

[secondchoice]

I am making a list of “historical” Tennessee radio stations. So far I have WNOX was the first. I think WHUB Cookeville is the oldest continuously operated radio station. (WNOX was dark for a while). Who was the first FM (88-108 band) and what is the oldest continuously FM. IIRC the “Judge” owned WHUB for almost 40 years. Has anybody owned a Tennessee radio station longer? What is the oldest ownership now in Tennessee?

 

[K4WRF]

The WNAH Nashville owner Van Irvin has to be one of, if not the longest continuous owner to date, signed on in 1949.

As far as longest continuously FM operating in the state, that may be 104.1 in Jackson but not 100% sure. There were many stops and starts in FM band.

 

[robgrayson]

Taking a google-inspired jaunt over to the History Of American Broadcasting page, http://jeff560.tripod.com/broadcasting.html, I dug this up...

1941 US Fm Stations:

44.7 W47NV Nashville TN National Life and Accident Insurance Co.

1946 TN FM Stations:

Channel 261 (100.1 Mhz) WSM-FM, Nashville, TN National Life and Accident Insurance Co.

1948 TN FM stations:

94.7 WAPO-FM Chattanooga TN
98.1 WVUN Chattanooga TN
100.7 WTJS-FM Jackson TN
98.5 WKPT-FM Kingsport TN
93.3 WKPB Knoxville TN
97.3 WROL-FM Knoxville TN
99.7 WMCF-FM Memphis TN
103.3 WSM-FM Nashville TN

WMCF, now WMC-FM, was able to get grandfathered to 290,000 watts (H) 96,000 watts (V) somewhere along the way.

 

[Meepster]

Yeah. Nearly 300,000 watts! I'm surprised they don't mention that more often.
Too bad their ratings aren't "exactly" what they'd like for them to be.

 

[firepoint525]

99.7 WMCF-FM Memphis TN

WMCF, now WMC-FM, was able to get grandfathered to 290,000 watts (H) 96,000 watts (V) somewhere along the way.

Hey, Rob, when did the WMC stations drop their fourth letter? WMC-FM used to be WMCF, and WMC-TV used to be WMCT. Was WMC-AM ever WMCA? Do you see the pattern here?

The WMCT call letters are ironic, since those now belong to a radio station in Mountain City, Tennessee, at the opposite end of the state from Memphis! Mountain City is closer to Canada than to Memphis!

 

[robgrayson]

New Years Day, 1967, according to that font of reliable information, wikipedia, and both on the same day. The AM WMC was always WMC as far as I know, all the way back to 1923 (believe it or not, I don't go back quite that far). (WMCA, New York came into being in 1925.) As we know, kids, WMC was put on the air by the Commercial Appeal, hence WMC calls ("Memphis Commercial", not "We Milk Cows" as we referred to it when it played "Constant Country" or in Art Mehring-ese "the howdy hits").

Similarly, the old 680 AM, WMPS, was given their letters when purchased by the Memphis Press Scimitar. They had previously been christened WGBC, the "World's Greatest Bible Class", by their original owner, First Baptist Church. IIRC, grandfathered into the deal for owning the station was the long term commitment that FBC's Sunday morning services continue to be broadcast. In the 70's, that meant WHBQ was out of their Sunday morning public service programming a full hour before WMPS.

Ain't radio history fun?

 

[jharmon]

A wealth of wonderful information!

 

[bub]

The WNAH Nashville owner Van Irvin has to be one of, if not the longest continuous owner to date, signed on in 1949.

I'm not from Nashville but I'll venture to guess that the 2nd longest continuous owner, as far as Nashville proper is concerned, is Bill Barry of WAMB, which, btw, will be celebrating it's 40th Anniversary in 2011.

 

[knoxbob]

WLIK in Newport is still owned by the Wilkerson Family since it went on the air in 1954. Arthur put it on the air and Dwight is still running it today. That's 56 years.

 

[Brian Scott]

I know its been owned by several people, but does anybody have much info about WOPI in Bristol? Tennessee Ernie Ford worked there in the 40's.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

Yeah. Nearly 300,000 watts!

I used to hear them several times a year in Cincinnati after WKLO-FM Louisville signed off a 1AM...but that was over 40 years ago.

 

[w9wi]

Taking a google-inspired jaunt over to the History Of American Broadcasting page, http://jeff560.tripod.com/broadcasting.html, I dug this up...

It's dangerous to use those listings when looking for the longest *continuously-operating* FM. A lot of the stations on that list shut down sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The WSM-FM that exists today is NOT the same WSM-FM in that listing.

I'm away from my references but IIRC the first radio station in Tennessee was a long-defunct station operated for Woodmont Baptist Church by Jack DeWitt, who would later end up in charge of WSM.

 

[secondchoice]

Taking a google-inspired jaunt over to the History Of American Broadcasting page, http://jeff560.tripod.com/broadcasting.html, I dug this up...

It's dangerous to use those listings when looking for the longest *continuously-operating* FM. A lot of the stations on that list shut down sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The WSM-FM that exists today is NOT the same WSM-FM in that listing.

I'm away from my references but IIRC the first radio station in Tennessee was a long-defunct station operated for Woodmont Baptist Church by Jack DeWitt, who would later end up in charge of WSM.

The old WNOX 990 AM Knoxsville use to claim to be the first, back in the 1970's. There was a couple of frequency "shifts" back in the 1930's and and or 1940's that really makes this hard for the non historian to keep up with. I knew the folks at the old WHUB in Cookeville said that the station was "offered" a big signal back in the 1930's but the expense of buying and running a bigger transmitter made it impossible. At one time WHUB had listeners as far away as Ark. with less 100 watts.

 

[fybush]

There are a lot of urban legends out there to be careful about. Almost every station that dates back to the 1920s or 1930s but didn't end up with a clear-channel signal now tells a story about how "it was offered a bigger signal, but the owner couldn't afford the transmitter" or what have you. Those stories are, for the most part, excuses made up after the fact. The stations that did upgrade in the 1940s weren't "offered" bigger facilities. They lobbied hard for them, often using political connections or affiliations with powerful newspaper ownership to get them.

It's not hard at all to track the biggest of the frequency shifts. On March 29, 1941, nearly all AM stations on the air in the US and Canada changed frequency, and most of them did so according to a very well-defined pattern. Hit up the 1941 and 1942 Broadcasting Yearbooks at www.americanradiohistory.com and you can follow the moves. In a nutshell, everything on 720 and below (WSM, for instance) stayed put, while nearly everything on 740 and above moved up either 10, 20 or 30 kHz.

The "graveyard" channels moved en masse: stations that were on 1200, 1210, 1310, 1370, 1420 and 1500 moved to their now-familiar homes on 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490. Some of those stations were then able to move again to better regional channels later in the 1940s.

Here's the Broadcasting Yearbook section that outlines the 1941 shifts:

http://americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC-YB/1941/NARBA-BC-YB-1941.pdf

 

[fybush]

A little more on the 1941 NARBA shifts: In the case of Knoxville, WBIR went from 1210 to 1240, WNOX from 1010 to 990, and WROL stayed put on 620.

 

[muiscmike]

WOAN 600 came to life in Lawrenceburg in the mid 20s and split time with WERC in Memphis. It was owned by James Vaughn, the man who started gospel quartets to traveling in order to sell songbooks. He later turned over his share of the frequency entirely to WERC in Memphis.

 

[KyDXIn]

Yeah. Nearly 300,000 watts!

I used to hear them several times a year in Cincinnati after WKLO-FM Louisville signed off a 1AM...but that was over 40 years ago.

I've seen a listing where the Bingham family, who owned WHAS AM, was granted the 99.7 frequency for an FM frequency in the 1940s.

 

[Bat Fastard]

WOAN 600 came to life in Lawrenceburg in the mid 20s and split time with WERC in Memphis. It was owned by James Vaughn, the man who started gospel quartets to traveling in order to sell songbooks. He later turned over his share of the frequency entirely to WERC in Memphis.

I'll bet you already know this, but the call letters in Memphis at 600 were (and still are) WREC.

 

[muiscmike]

WOAN 600 came to life in Lawrenceburg in the mid 20s and split time with WERC in Memphis. It was owned by James Vaughn, the man who started gospel quartets to traveling in order to sell songbooks. He later turned over his share of the frequency entirely to WERC in Memphis.

I'll bet you already know this, but the call letters in Memphis at 600 were (and still are) WREC.

I do know that, but I was typing a quick reply. I think that WERC is in Birmingham, AL or at least it used to be.

 

[600kogo]

Scott, KFRO 1370 in Longview, Texas did not move at all and it was licensed in 1935.