Boston Radio in the Early 1920s by Donna L. Halper, Journalism Dept. Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts.

We take radio for granted today; it's just one of a number of ways to get music or news or sports, and not very many of us regard it as essential to our lives. But during broadcasting's early years, the public welcomed it with a mixture of awe and excitement. For the first time, people could find out about an event as it was happening, rather than waiting for the newspaper. Radio brought the famous singers and announcers right into people's living rooms--suddenly, anyone, whether rich or poor, could have access to the best entertainers. And just like many other cities, Boston was very much involved with the radio craze, as people of all ages flocked to department stores and radio shops to buy a receiver and start "listening in." In those early days, stations were called "radiophones" or "wireless telephones", and you needed headphones to hear what was being "sent through the ether." A fan of broadcasting was a "radio bug," and Boston had plenty of them. Boston also had eight daily newspapers, but at first, only a couple mentioned radio, since print journalists saw the new medium as competition. The Boston Traveler was the first local newspaper to hire a columnist to write about broadcasting, in early 1921. They chose Guy Entwistle, a respected ham radio expert (call letters 1AL) who was active in the American Radio Relay League and helped to run a technical school. Mr. Entwistle was typical of early broadcasting's fans, most of whom were ham radio hobbyists who knew Morse code, were able to build their own sets, and enjoyed trying to pull in distant stations. Unfortunately, in 1921, the technology wasn't advanced enough to overcome such problems as static and fading. There was no way to predict how good the reception might be from one night to the next; on some evenings (most stations only operated at night, and very few kept a regular schedule), signals might come in from hundreds of miles away, while other nights, atmospheric interference made listening to even the local stations almost impossible. FM did not exist yet, and most of the stations were clustered at 360 meters (about 833 kHz) on the AM band, which meant that they had to take turns. Since there were not that many stations on the air, it wasn't a big problem; the few stations broadcasting in 1920-21 shared that one frequency, with the typical broadcast being about an hour long.

The oldest surviving station in Massachusetts is WBZ, which went on the air in mid September of 1921, with a live broadcast from the Eastern States' Exposition. But WBZ was not a Boston station during its early years. Back then, WBZ was located 90 miles away, in the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing plant in Springfield; many people in the eastern part of the state couldn't receive the station very well, which is why WBZ finally opened a Boston studio, which it called WBZA, in early 1924. But in 1921, as you adjusted the dials of your radio, you would most likely have heard greater Boston's first and only station, 1XE, with studios in Medford Hillside, about four miles from Boston.

1XE had been broadcasting sporadically since late 1920, and it began maintaining a regular schedule in the spring of 1921. 1XE (the 1 stood for the New England radio district, and the X meant the station was still considered experimental, rather than commercial) was on the campus of Tufts College, but it was owned by AMRAD (the American Radio and Research Corporation), which had been founded by two Tufts graduates, Harold Power and Joseph Prentiss. 1XE broadcast some music concerts of phonograph records as early as January 1916, but prior to the official beginnings of commercial radio in 1920, 1XE probably sounded more like a ham radio station, sending weather reports and sports scores in Morse code and occasionally playing records. In addition to 1XE, there were two well-known pioneer stations which began regular broadcasts in 1920--8MK in Detroit, today known as WWJ, which first went on the air in late August, and KDKA in Pittsburgh, which did its first official broadcast in early November.

During the first half of 1921, interest in commercial radio slowly grew; like most early stations, 1XE was in a period of transition, as the staff tried to be kind to the hams who had supported them since their inception, while reaching out to a new audience that preferred music and news rather than Morse code. 1XE began using slogans (the station was 'the voice of the air', referring to the fact that no matter where you were, if you pulled in a signal on your receiver, it might very well be from Medford Hillside), they had live announcers, and a few of the performers were developing a following; yet like most stations of that era, 1XE would still offer police reports or sports scores in Morse code so the amateurs who were listening could get some practice. And despite not having a big promotional budget to compete with KDKA (owned by Westinghouse) or 8MK (owned by the Detroit News), 1XE managed to win over a considerable number of listeners throughout the east.

By autumn, several more stations were on the air, including a new Westinghouse station from Newark, WJZ, which broadcast the World Series for the first time. To its credit, Westinghouse got solidly behind radio, having put WBZ on the air from Springfield in mid September, and then adding KYW in Chicago in November. However, in an example of mis-reading public sentiment, Westinghouse management decided that what Chicago needed was an all-opera station. KYW ultimately had to change to a more diverse format, but the battle over whether radio should educate or entertain would continue for years to come.

The issue of who would finance early broadcasting was equally contentious, and it would soon cause endless problems for small market stations as they tried to compete with the big city broadcasters. In 1921, commercials--called "direct advertising" were forbidden by the Department of Commerce, which believed the new medium of broadcasting should be educational, so the pioneer radio stations usually had to rely on the efforts of volunteers, which included the announcers and the rest of the staff more often than not. Some of the big corporations like Westinghouse set aside a budget for a few staff members (engineers especially, given how often equipment broke) and were able to offer an occasional payment to a big star like Mary Garden, but in general, performing or working at early stations meant receiving no compensation--other than the appreciation of a growing number of listeners. And while performers from music schools were happy to offer their services, it took some time to win over the majority of the well-known entertainers. Big stars saw no value in performing for the "invisible audience" for free when they could perform on stage in front of actual paying customers. But as the radio craze intensified in early 1922, a few celebrities did consent to perform, believing it would bring them good publicity; they included opera star Madame Louise Homer (who sang from WBZ), and comedian Ed Wynn (who was heard on WJZ). However, most stations were still depending on the music schools, colleges and conservatories to provide entertainers. Fortunately for 1XE, many up-and-coming singers and comedians came to Boston to do live shows, and some were then persuaded to make the trip out to Medford Hillside. The benefit to these rising stars was that radio signals carried long distances, and being heard by people in a number of cities simultaneously could certainly be a career- booster. Despite the fact that 1XE transmitted with only 100 watts, it was received as far away as Chicago and St. Louis on a fairly regular basis, and several times, it was heard in London England. And now that more newspapers had radio pages, and four new radio magazines were being published, anyone who sang or played on a station might get a review from a radio columnist, resulting in even more free publicity.

1XE was assigned the call letters "WGI" in February of 1922 (those call letters stood for nothing in particular; the Department of Commerce assigned them in alphabetical order unless an owner requested certain specific calls). The little station in Medford Hillside was unique in a number of ways: not only was it the place where many entertainers began their careers, but it was unusual because it had a woman announcer. That woman was Eunice Randall, about whom I have written considerably (you can read more about her in my book Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting); she was also one of the few female radio engineers. During the day, she worked with the technical staff at the AMRAD factory, making radio receivers, and at night, she read stories to the children, read the daily stolen car reports for the Boston Police, or announced the evening's musical selections. Another unique aspect of 1XE/WGI was that some well-known news-makers were heard for the first time over the station's airwaves--these included economist Roger Babson (founder of the college which bears his name), who began doing a weekly business program in late 1921, and Boston's Mayor James Michael Curley, who found that radio was a useful way to reach a large audience when he wanted to get his message out. Since the station was located on the Tufts campus, an arrangement was worked out in early 1922 for some of the professors to broadcast a series of lectures, one of the earliest experiments with education by radio.

Sometimes, especially if a scheduled guest didn't show up, WGI would play phonograph records, usually bartered from a local record store in exchange for promotional mentions. But the majority of the music heard on all early radio stations was performed live (audio tape hadn't been invented and phonograph records were cumbersome to play on the early equipment, plus they didn't sound that good), and the talent level varied--as you listened in to WGI on any given night, you might have heard a high school glee club or a well-known Boston dance orchestra. There was no concept of "format" yet--some nights, you might hear classical music, some nights jazz, and some nights a lecture on philosophy. In addition to talks by Tufts professors, students from the Emerson College of Oratory sometimes gave dramatic performances, or a home economist discussed recipes. There was even a morning exercise program.

Once in a while, WGI did get a famous star from vaudeville or the theatre to perform; in April of 1922, for example, WGI broadcast a reading by the respected African-American actor Charles Gilpin, who was appearing on the Boston stage in "The Emperor Jones." The popular poet Amy Lowell also stopped by several times in 1922 to read her newest work. Among the entertainers who made new friends by performing at WGI were bandleader Joe Rines, singers Hum and Strum (Tom Currier and Max Zides), and children's show host Big Brother Bob Emery. And like modern stations, WGI took requests: not everyone had a telephone, but listeners would send postcards, called "applause cards" to their favourite station when they heard something they really liked. Although Boston's first station is all but forgotten today, (it went bankrupt in mid 1925 and its staff scattered to other stations), in 1921-22, you relied on 1XE/WGI. The station was even one of the first to have regular daily newscasts, including weather and traffic reports, at a time when few radio stations did such things at all.

Of course 1XE/WGI was not the only station you could hear in greater Boston. As the radio craze swept the country in 1922, more stations went on the air, some owned by large companies such as General Electric, which put WGY on the air from Schenectady. According to the Department of Commerce (there was no FCC yet), by mid April of 1922, there were nearly 170 stations in the United States, with more in the planning stages. And although WBZ's signal didn't come in very well, there were other signals to receive. South of Boston, in New Bedford, another ham radio pioneer, Irving Vermilya, had put his own station on the air in May of 1921, using the call letters 1ZE; his signal was heard in Boston and all over the east. By June of 1922, he was helping to run New Bedford's first commercial station, WDAU (which later morphed into WBBG and finally became WNBH, the call letters it still holds today; WNBH claims it was the 11th station in the country, but there is no truth to that claim).

Several new Boston stations came and went in 1922--WAAJ, which signed on in April, and WFAU, which signed on in June. These two small stations kept very irregular schedules, and lacked the resources to remain on the air for very long. Meanwhile, a few existing stations (most notably WEAF in New York, but several others, including our own WGI) were trying to cover their expenses by running some commercials; the Department of Commerce still disapproved, leaving most stations with no easy way to generate revenue. Despite the expense of operating a station effectively (not just trying to hire talent, but purchasing equipment, paying for electricity and telephone, doing publicity, etc), by October, the number of radio stations had grown to more than 230, increasing the competition for use of the permitted radio frequencies (the Department of Commerce added one more). Thousands of people were now buying radios ready-made, rather than trying to build them.

It was in the summer of 1922 that a major change occurred in the way radio was done in Boston. It all started when a new station made its debut, on the 31st of July. WNAC (still around today, but known as WRKO) did its first broadcast from studios on the 4th floor of the Shepard Department Store downtown. The new station did not have its call letters officially assigned when it went on the air--but even if it had, nobody would have referred to it as WNAC. In radio's early years, stations were often identified by their owner's name or their location; so WGI was known by the public as the "AMRAD station", or the "Medford Hillside station," and the new station in the department store was referred to as "The Shepard Station."

Having a station in a department store was not especially unusual; many stores had installed radio stations, with the hope that after people came in to watch the broadcast, they would buy phonograph records or radio receivers or a musical instrument. But what was interesting about this new Boston station was that it had a wealthy entrepreneur behind it--it was owned by local business executive John Shepard 3rd, whose family ran successful department stores in Boston and Providence (the Providence Shepard Store became the home of WEAN, which was run by his brother Robert). The Shepard station made an impact immediately because unlike WGI with its eager volunteers, John Shepard could pay for air talent, which meant WNAC didn't have to rely only on amateur entertainers from music schools. In May of 1922, when the station was still in the planning stages, Shepard had told Guy Entwistle in an interview with the Boston Traveler that he would avoid "canned music" (as music from phonograph records was called) and would offer some of the highest quality live talent. Shepard had the money to do it: he started by hiring his own orchestra, which he named after the restaurant in his downtown Boston store. When the new station went on the air, it had the Shepard Colonial Orchestra ready to play the most popular dance tunes. Over the next few years, that orchestra would have numerous well-known bandleaders and several equally well-known vocalists.

John Shepard 3rd was probably the first owner in greater Boston to hire performers who worked for him exclusively; even several members of WGI's staff, tired of volunteering, left to go to WNAC and make a respectable salary. He instituted some practices still in use today, such as "house names"--his women's show was done by "Jean Sargent" (not her real name), and when she left the station in 1925, her replacement was also named "Jean Sargent". But the most noticeable innovation was that WNAC could afford the technology necessary to broadcast from remote locations--the station provided Sunday church services from St. Paul's Episcopal Church (something that the elderly and shut-ins appreciated), and a daily inspirational message from a local minister or priest. Later, a rabbi was included, and then, in January 1924, in a gesture that was truly unique for its time, the Shepard station became the first in Boston to broadcast synagogue services, live from Temple Israel, where the popular Rabbi Harry Levi led the congregation. In today's multi-cultural universe, we have easy access to information about every religion, but back then few Christians had the opportunity to listen to a rabbi discussing Jewish belief; WNAC thus contributed to teaching tolerance. But it was not only religious programming that distinguished WNAC; it began doing remote broadcasts from local vaudeville theaters, solving the problem of performers who didn't want to come to a studio by allowing the studio to come to them. It was also WNAC which first experimented successfully with networking--the station was able for a brief period of time in early January 1923 to link up with WEAF in New York, showing that such things could be done. WNAC and WGI were friendly (or actually not so friendly--John Shepard was known to dislike Harold Power and vice versa) competitors in 1923, but where WGI's amateurish sound was quaint and somewhat charming in 1921-2, by 1923, there were stations like WNAC which could provide the audience with a steady diet of professional entertainment, and WGI couldn't keep up.

To complicate things, in July of 1923, a new station, WMAF, was put on the air in Dartmouth MA; owned by wealthy and eccentric Colonel E.H.R. Green, it basically rebroadcast the programs of WEAF in New York (Green's favourite station). But its signal was so powerful that it frequently drowned out little WGI; the over-modulation also interfered with WNAC, and John Shepard 3rd was not amused. He complained to the radio inspector, meetings were held, and the Colonel promised to operate at a legal power. Sometimes he did, but sometimes he didn't, and now the audience could not only hear stations with better talent, but they could hear stations with state of the art technical facilities and a loud signal. Meanwhile, WGI's parent company, AMRAD, was in financial difficulty, as its main backers withdrew their support.

The final blow to WGI was probably in the late summer of 1924 when their biggest star, children's show host "Big Brother" Bob Emery, left to become program manager of a new station in town, WEEI. Owned by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, WEEI went on the air in late September of 1924, and quickly went after WNAC. Edison had a budget for talent too, and now there was intense competition to see which station would be able to persuade the best known performers to be on their airwaves. Add to this scenario yet one more station--since late February of 1924, WBZ had opened its Boston studio (WBZA) at the Hotel Brunswick, enabling the station to compete for Boston talent. The Boston radio dial had become a very interesting place.

In the spring of 1925, WGI (by now re-named WARC) had left the air, but with most of its staff gone elsewhere, not many people noticed by that point. WBZA (it wouldn't be re-named WBZ till March of 1931), WEEI, and WNAC dominated the local scene. There were now a number of local bandleaders whose orchestras were heard regularly on Boston radio (Joe Rines and Leo Reisman were two of the most popular). The Shepard Colonial Orchestra was now the Shepard Boston American Orchestra (affiliated with the Boston American newspaper), led by Will Dodge, and nearly every station had its own group of entertainers. Even the big names were quite willing to be on the air now, as they saw how making a radio appearance enhanced their popularity. Many stations had studios with room for an audience, so the performers got the applause and instant reaction that was impossible in radio's earliest days. And while sometimes stations still held an amateur night (called "Opportunity Night") when anyone could come down to the studio and try out, by late 1925, the professionals had really taken over.

One other thing that had changed was the resistence to advertising: more stations were using sponsors to defray the cost of hiring and keeping good talent (but the Boston stations still lost a number of their best performers to NBC and CBS when the networks came on the scene in 1926-27). Another improvement for radio fans was that some of the local sports teams were heard on the airwaves- WNAC had been broadcasting some college football in 1923, and WBZ was the first station to do hockey, starting in 1924. Baseball had to wait till April of 1926, when WNAC began broadcasting some of the games; Boston Traveler sportswriter Gus Rooney was Shepard's first sports announcer, followed later on by local favourite Fred Hoey.

The Department of Commerce had opened up more frequencies on the AM dial to accomodate the hundreds of stations that were broadcasting, but the dial was very crowded and people were complaining that stations changed frequencies without notice or over-modulated. But at least you no longer needed headphones to listen in, and nearly every store sold radios: you could buy a nice looking five tube radio set for about $60--Popular Radio magazine was advertising the Freshman Masterpiece, which was "encased in a genuine mahogany cabinet", and some other brands were even fancier and more expensive. However, you could still get a one tube set for as low as $14, and some people still enjoyed building their own receiver.

Boston was definitely a radio town in 1925: just about every major newspaper had a radio page, and when a nationally known celebrity like variety show host "Roxy" (Samuel Rothafel) came to town, it was big news, as hundreds of fans lined up to meet him. Most Boston newspapers now had a radio editor whose job it was to comment on the programs, the performers, and the technical sound of the stations; some even did interviews with the radio stars. As you tuned your AM dial, WEEI was down at 630 kHz (or kilocycles, as they were called back then), WMAF was at 830, WBZ was at 900, and WNAC was found at 1070. You could easily hear the stations in Worcester, Fall River, New Bedford, and elsewhere, although few stations operated with more than 500 watts. The Edison company had a portable radio station, WTAT (later re-named WATT for obvious reasons) which it drove around Massachusetts, setting it up at conventions, state fairs, or electric shows; it used a frequency of 1230 kc. Boston radio had come a long way in a very short time, and despite its growing pains, it was providing a valuable service to its many listeners, who couldn't imagine being without it.

Donna L. Halper  is a media historian and radio consultant. She is the author of Invisible Stars:  A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting, and is on the Journalism Faculty at Emerson College in Boston.

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Copyright © 2002 by Donna L. Halper.
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