Early History
The 660 AM frequency in New York originated as WEAF on March 2, 1922, owned by AT&T. In 1926 WEAF became the flagship station of the NBC Red Network, one of two radio chains operated by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). By 1928 WEAF was purchased by NBC's parent company, the Radio Corporation of America.
As a result of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement of 1941, WEAF became a clear-channel station and could be heard across most of the eastern half of North America at night. In 1943 the United States Supreme Court, citing antitrust concerns, ordered RCA to sell off one of its radio networks. The company decided to keep the Red Network, and it was rebranded as the NBC Radio Network after the Blue Network was divested to Edward J. Noble.
WEAF's call letters were changed to WNBC in 1946, then to WRCA in 1954, and back to WNBC in 1960. During the 1960s, WNBC relied less on network programming and adopted a talk format, followed by a switch to a middle-of-the-road music sound. The station spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s flipping between the Top 40 and adult contemporary formats, with varying success. By the middle of the 1980s WNBC played less music and relied more on personality-driven talk programs with hosts such as Don Imus, Howard Stern, Joey Reynolds, Alan Colmes, and Soupy Sales.
Read more about this topic: WFAN (AM)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“Todays pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase early ripe, early rot!”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)