WFAA-AM went on the air for the first time on 26 Jan 1922, as one-half of a time-share for the same AM frequency with WBAP-AM -- an arrangement that lasted for almost 50 years.
If that frequency-sharing plan sounds weird, it's because it WAS, and only becomes completely clear if you read THREE articles on Wikipedia (summarized in the variables below): (
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I (Mama Blaster) remember those days. They were goofy. If you were really fast on the car radio pre-set button, you could hear the WBAP-AM cowbell and sign-off on 820, and catch the cowbell and WBAP sign-on at 570: [clanging cowbell] WBAP is ON THE AIR at 570 on your AM dial." I could never catch the cowbell if I had to spin a dial. I'm sure it made regulatory sense for WFAA and WBAP to share one, then two frequencies at the time, but it was unique to this market (as far as I know) and was very confusing.
From the WFAA Wikipedia article: (
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"WFAA (AM), which would eventually serve as the sister radio station to WFAA television, first signed on the air on June 26, 1922. The station had long participated in a time-sharing arrangement with Fort Worth radio station WBAP, which was maintained as the latter operated at various frequencies; it originally began in 1922, when WBAP (which first went on the air on May 2 of that year, nine weeks before WFAA began operations) transmitted at 630 kHz and continued until 1927, before resuming when that station moved to 800 kHz in 1929 and settling when WBAP moved its current frequency at 820 kHz in 1941.
In 1947, WFAA and WBAP began time-sharing on a second frequency, 570 kHz, which was formerly occupied by KGKO. Until WFAA (AM) began to transmit full-time on 570 kHz in 1970, WBAP and WFAA were engaged in the somewhat bizarre situation of having to switch back and forth between the 570 and 820 frequencies at various times of the day: WBAP broadcast on 820 AM from midnight to 6:00 a.m., with WFAA taking over the frequency space until noon; WBAP returned to the 820 signal for a few hours, before WFAA once again took over the frequency. WFAA had control over 820 during prime evening hours, when the 50,000-watt clear channel signal could often be heard as far west as California and as far east as New York (at the time, there were significantly fewer radio stations that were operating at night, reducing the likelihood of interference).
WFAA was the first radio station in Texas to join a national network (becoming an affiliate of the NBC Red Network in 1927, four years after it agreed to join the network), co-founded the Texas Quality Network, and was the first Texas station to carry educational programs, to produce a serious radio drama series, to air a state championship football game and the first to broadcast an inaugural ceremony (that of Texas Governor Ross Sterling in 1931). The station's original on-air staff members and reporters consisted of columnists and editors employed with The Dallas Morning News. . . . After maintaining an entertainment/variety format for many years, the station became a Middle of the Road (MOR) music station in 1970, before switching to a Top 40 format in 1973. On November 9, 1976, the station made its final format change, adopting a news and talk-based schedule (as "Newstalk 570").
WFAA (AM) was initially based its operations in a 9×9-ft tent on the roof of the Dallas Morning News' headquarters, before relocating to the newspaper's library. On October 1, 1925, it later moved to the 17th floor of the Baker Hotel at the southeast corner of Commerce and Akard Streets in downtown Dallas (which would be demolished in 1980), and then moved to facilities atop the Santa Fe Railroad Warehouse on Jackson Street on June 20, 1941 (the building still has the "WFAA" calls clearly painted along a panel on the top floor). On April 4, 1961, it moved to the WFAA Communications Center at Young and Record Streets. On July 2, 1983, its call letters were changed to KRQX."
From the very cool "Counting Stars and Kilocycles 25th anniversary of WFAA-AM" pamphlet (which is worth a read in its entirety just for the hilarious tales of the early-days of broadcasting in Dallas), courtesy of the americanradiohistory.com website: (
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"Twenty-five years in the life of an alligator is only a few fish more or less. Twenty-five years in radio is a lot of kilocycles. Antiquity is therefore relative, but it still carries its prerogatives. One of these is the right to reminisce.
That is the reason for this booklet. From the hoary heights of our twenty-fifth anniversary we are inevitably tempted to look backward to those dim years of the early twenties when WFAA started.
We hope the young will enjoy these anecdotes as a revelation of what preceded the radio they know today; that their elders will smile with us in memory of the days of iron announcers and crystal sets.
. . .
THE early -day WFAA staff knew as much about poly-cylindrical diffusion as a bullfrog does about radar. As a matter of fact, one of the best studios the station had in 1922 was a tent. Not an ordinary tent of course. This one was pitched not outside to ward off the elements but inside The News library to kill echoes. Other methods had failed to stifle the play of sound waves between unyielding walls, floor and ceiling. Even letting bookshelves' glass doors stand open so the "absorbing" volumes could deaden sound helped little. Then some budding scientist suggested the tent. It was wonderful. The only trouble was that this vast array of canvas, anchored inside a room with concrete floor and plastered walls, had all the stability of a string tied around a billiard ball.
One evening the Bel Canto quartet was singing religious numbers. As its members swung out on "Jericho", someone touched a nervous support and the tent came tumbling down. Up went the hands of these four mighty men of song and one arm of the piano accompanist. Supporting the studio thus, they finished the spiritual without a break, closed their program with that stout old number, "We'll Stand By Until the Morning."
Just for the record, WFAA began with penthouse studios and occupies penthouse studios now. There the similarity ends. The nine -by -nine shack which was hastily erected on the roof of The News building back in 1922 would draw sneers as a mop closet for the present porter staff.
. . . .
The original antennae stretched from a dizzying tower atop the three and one-half story News building diagonally across the block to a twenty -foot mast on the twelve -story Texas Bank Building. Studios did not occupy their first penthouse long. Even the lusty infant radio might have sickened had they done so. But long after studios had moved to the library (with its tent) and on, transmitting facilities remained on The [Dallas Morning] News roof.
. . . WFAA had quickly passed from its original power of 50 watts through 100 to the 150 top of its original equipment. Thousands of messages had come from listeners, but none from California. So, when Walter Dealey went there for a vacation, he took a receiving set. Early attempts to contact his station were in vain. Because of time differences, local California stations were going full blast long after WFAA had stopped broadcasting. In those days selectivity was virtually nil. Finally he wired Dallas: "Run all night Friday." So a radio enthusiast called his wife and his Grace Methodist Church choir. Another came with her blues voice and two SMU faculty members brought violins. There were others - a banker with his wonderful Swiss music box; a dance orchestra; a pianist. They played and sang all night. It was about 5 a. m. when Walter Dealey's wire arrived: "Good. Got you." That same night he also telegraphed A. Frank Hamm of Western Electric: "Rush 500 watt transmitter by express."
So WFAA, on September 29, 1922, became a Class B, 500 -watt station. It was assigned a wave length of 400 meters instead of the 360 formerly shared with other stations. Use of mechanical music was barred, for the station was a big boy now. The former cage antenna gave way to a flat top. Shortly afterward the station occupied its third studio. "We must have quiet," station personnel had insisted. "0. K., I'll give it to you," agreed the harassed structural engineer at The News. Accordingly he requisitioned space occupied by three editorial offices and went to work. . .
. . .
Although WFAA now broadcast its signal at a power of 500 watts, it still was operating in the days when receiving sets were home grown, many of them crystal with haphazard turn of copper wire wrapped about broomstick or pasteboard cylinder. Getting a program at all was an achievement. Getting a distant station was occasion for wild elation. . . .
Until 1929, when preparations were being made to launch the Southwest's first superpowered station, WFAA moved its broadcasting antennae only once. This was when the tall mast atop the News Building was gently toppled and shifted over to the Katy office building in 1923. On the September morning when the operation was to begin, Eddie Zimmerman, assistant engineer on duty, was stricken with appendicitis. Amidst the confusion, ambulance attendants waggled the heavy man across girders, down narrow stairways, finally to the elevator and the hospital for operation. Eddie never lived down his "elaborate plan to avoid work." But while antennae remained the same, studios changed often. From its last felt -padded studio at The News, the station moved to the Baker Hotel's seventeenth (or top) floor. Here was installed the first plate glass window so visitors might watch performers.
One who never failed to draw a group of well-wishers to this window was Jackson A. (Peg) Moreland, the ditty singer with a tambourine. "Peg" had lost a leg, but he scorned an artificial limb and made the wooden peg a trade mark known throughout radioland. The next move was to the hotel's third floor. This was a relatively magnificent layout with large reception room, a control room with a studio on each of its two inner sides, various offices and rehearsal rooms. . .
In the beginning of radio there were no networks. . . . AT&T officials set up a test national network of four stations, including WFAA. This broadcast President Calvin Coolidge's message to Congress December 6, 1923, and his eulogy of the late President Harding four days later. . . .
During the next few years many stations were temporarily linked together for simultaneous broadcasting of historic events. The largest number was when fifty-five joined to cover the welcoming of Charles Lindbergh home after his solo flight across the Atlantic. The News and WFAA underwrote the first regular network broadcasting west of the Mississippi River.
The National Broadcasting Company was organized in late 1926. On February 25, 1927, telephone lines especially engineered for broadcasting were brought into Texas. WFAA was the first Texas station to become affiliated with any national network. . .
When WFAA went to Washington in 1928, it sought three things-superpower, clear channel and acquisition of another station so that it might have full time. . . . WFAA soon afterward obtained permission to increase its signal to 50,000 watts and became the first newspaper -owned station in the United States to join the exalted superpowered field. It shared a clear channel with WBAP, Fort Worth. Two 300 -foot towers were erected near Grapevine to accommodate this maximum allowed radio power. . . . In 1938, these gave way to the famous vertical antennae, at that time the tallest man-made structure in the Southwest. It rises 653 feet into the Texas sky.
The last major physical expansion of the station was into its ultra modern penthouse studios atop the second unit of the Santa Fe Building, on June 23, 1941. This installation, a two-story unit with five studios, five control rooms and thirty other rooms and offices is the radio showplace of the Southwest, a monument to loyal listeners. Radio broadcasts, prior to occupation of these penthouse studios, had emanated from quarters of exigent sizes and shapes. Here, at last, were facilities whose treatment was governed only by the needs of radio, the first studios in the world designed with the new polycylindrical diffusion treatment. . .
June 26 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Radio Station WFAA. From its stumbling beginning two and one-half decades ago, through constant experimentation, trial and error, this station has become one of the giants of the radio world. WFAA has never lagged, never followed. It has led always. It has been first to give its listeners the latest and best. Its firsts in the provision of network facilities have been described as have its pioneerings in studio construction, Texas' initial vertical antennae. There are many others.
WFAA obtained the first FCC license for experimental facsimile broadcasting-back in 1938. It established Dallas' first frequency modulation station - KERA - in 1946. Many of these experiments have been expensive. Some will never pay for themselves in direct results. But they have all contributed to a listener confidence, built up over the years, which money alone could never buy.
This may be indicative: When Japanese bombs struck Pearl Harbor an angry, frightened, imperiled America needed unity as never before. WFAA offered its facilities, was made key station of the Southwest, and was instructed to report to the Southern Defense Command at San Antonio. The closest liaison followed with all governmental departments. It became even closer when the Eighth Service Command moved headquarters to the first unit of the Santa Fe Building in Dallas, connected to the studios by a tenth-floor bridge across a street. The friend, the "neighbor of the air" - in peace became the primary informant and counselor in emergency.
Because of its location, the geography of surrounding terrain and its power of 50,000 watts on clear channel, WFAA serves the largest primary coverage area in the United States, an area rich in resources and in the go-ahead of a restless, population.
It will continue to lead."