View Source: Detroit News Radiophone information (8MK WBL WWJ)

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<i>Contributed by Thomas H. White</i>

WWJ celebrates its 95th anniversary on August 20, 2015, so I
thought it would be a good time to bring up-to-date the
information I've found about this pioneer station.

Cynthia Boyes Young's "WWJ-Pioneer in Broadcasting", from
the December, 1960 (Volume 44, #4) issue of Michigan
History, provides the most comprehensive overview that I am
aware of about the establishment and early history of
8MK/WBL/WWJ. Young notes that the "The actual beginnings of
the Detroit News radio station... can only be partially
pieced together from the reminiscences of radio pioneers"
and "the actual sequence of events leading to the decision
to purchase the are obscure", but still her review is very
valuable for filling in many of the missing pieces. For some
reason it appears to have been largely forgotten -- I highly
recommend it, and have put a PDF copy at:
http://www.ipass.net/whitetho/radio/wwj/wwj_young.pdf

Another good general resource is Elton M. Plant's "Radio's
First Broadcaster", published in 1989.

The Detroit News had limited in-house experience and
expertise for setting up a radio station, so William E.
Scripps, publisher of the Detroit News, turned to outside
help. This is one of the areas where the chronology of
events gets vague, but in early 1920, Clarence "C. S."
Thompson, an associate of Lee ~DeForest, began promoting the
establishment of broadcasting stations by newspapers via a
company he founded called Radio News & Music, Inc. There was
a short article about its formation in the March 13, 1920
issue of The Fourth Estate, followed by a couple ads
promoting radio broadcasting for newspapers as "something
new on which to build for circulation and leadership",
which I've posted at:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1920nw.htm

There was also a short notice about the formation of The
Thompson Company advertising agency in the March 18, 1920
issue of Printers' Ink, plus, beginning in the same issue,
three advertisements for The Thompson Company and Radio News
& Music that promoted "Providing for the daily distribution
of News and Music by wireless" obtainable by a "Franchise
open only to one newspaper in each city":
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1920new.htm

It's not clear if these ads provided the link between the
Detroit News and Thompson's company, or if there had been
earlier contacts, but in any event the Detroit News became
the first -- and likely only -- newspaper client for Radio
News & Music. Reviewing the Detroit News' files, Cynthia
Boyes Young found a letter, dated May 28, 1920, agreeing to
lease a ~DeForest transmitter from Radio News & Music.
However, that seems to be the limit of Radio News & Music's
involvement, and it was the newspaper that arranged to have
the transmitter set up at its headquarters.

Michael D. Lyons, a prominent local amateur, was hired by
the Detroit News to do the initial set up of the transmitter
and antenna system -- Jeff ~McQueen uncovered additional
information about Lyons, "WWJ, A Jesuit and the Bomb", which
is posted at Barry Mishkind's site:
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/stations/wwj1.htm

Also, in 1973 Lyons wrote a short letter reviewing the
initial installation:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1973_8MK.htm

Frank Edwards then took over as the News' technical lead.
While the station was being set up, Elton M. Plant noted
that publisher "Will E. Scripps... was an avid fan. He used
to drop in at night to check on how we were doing, and ask
if we were getting out on the air. He was as boyish about it
as anyone could be. He was quite thrilled about the whole
setup. Apparently he could see in it, something more than
the rest of us".

The initial station licence was for a standard amateur
station, assigned the call letters 8MK. In his 1973 letter,
Michael Lyons stated that "The News and Music Company...
which supplied the transmitter was asked by the Detroit News
about patent infringments..." I suspect the station was
initially licenced as a standard amateur station because
although Lee ~DeForest had sold the commercial rights to his
radio patents to AT&T, he retained the right to sell
equipment for amateur and experimental use, so an amateur
grant would be a "licence of convenience" designed to avoid
any complaints from AT&T. (There were also no prohibitions
on an amateur station operating a broadcast service at this
time.) Things became more complicated when a year later the
News requested a Special Amateur licence (which would allow
operation on a less congested wavelength) and the Department
of Commerce responded by granting it a Limited Commercial
licence, with the callsign WBL. I assume that operating a
DeForest transmitter under a Limited Commercial licence
would have left the News on shaky ground with AT&T, but a
few months later the News bought a transmitter from AT&T's
Western Electric subsidiary, which would have eliminated
any concerns about infringing on AT&T's commercial radio
patents. It appears that, for the first few months, WBL used
the same DeForest transmitter at the same location that had
been used by 8MK, now operating on a better wavelength of
360 meters. And, overall, the station continued to be
identified as the "Detroit News Radiophone".

The Department of Commerce normally provided information
about standard amateur stations only once yearly, every June
30th, in its "Amateur Radio Stations of the United States"
publication. 8MK does not appear in the June 30, 1920 issue,
but is listed in the June 30, 1921 edition, with the owner
reported as "Radio News and Music (Inc.)", Detroit,
Michigan.

However, additional sources have varying information about
who was associated with 8MK. In the April 4, 1920 issue of
the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, C. E. Urban's "The Radio
Amateur" column (Fifth Section, Page 12 [whole page #49])
lists 8MK as newly assigned to Howard Bowman, 171 Kenilworth
Avenue in Detroit. Bowman appears to have been a Detroit
News employee -- the November 7, 1917 issue of The Fourth
Estate has a reference to "Howard Bowman of the Detroit
News". (Online issues of the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times are
available at:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=J-ba04ztB30C )
Howard Bowman is also listed for 8MK in the "Local Calls"
list on page 6 in the August 17, 1920 issue of a local
amateur radio publication, Detroit Radio News:
http://www.ipass.net/whitetho/radio/wwj/drn_19200817.pdf
However, page 4 of the next issue, dated October 30th, 1920,
now lists 8MK as "Detroit News (Fone), Cor. Second and
Lafayette Ave., Detroit, Mich."
http://www.ipass.net/whitetho/radio/wwj/drn_19201030.pdf
In addition, the May, 1922 Consolidated Radio Call Book
lists 8MK as "Radio News and Music, Inc. (M. D. Lyons),
Lafayette and 2nd Ave.", and, finally, in his 1973 letter,
Michael Lyons wrote that the license had been initially
issued under his name.
I'm not sure how much the name on the licence matters, since
the station was located in the Detroit News building, its
operations were funded and staffed by newspaper, and
beginning in August, 1920 the station, whether operating
under the callsign of 8MK, WBL or WWJ, was consistently
referred to as "The Detroit News Radiophone". The
transmitter was originally leased from Radio News & Music,
but given the newspaper's full responsibility for station
operations, the setup appears to be similar to a modern day
Local Marketing Agreement (LMA). (According to Young,
although initially leased, the newspaper eventually
purchased the DeForest transmitter.)

Fourteen months after the Radio News & Music advertisements
in Printer's Ink, the Detroit News began running its own
ads, proclaiming in the May 23, 1922 issue its status as
"The Pioneer in Radio", although the text of the ad seems to
narrow its claim to being just the first newspaper to
establish a broadcasting service.
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1922frst.htm

Cynthia Boyes Young's article also provides detailed
information about the reason behind the March 3, 1922 call
change from WBL to WWJ. It turns out it was merely for
phonetic reasons -- the News wanted a call sign that was
easier to understand through static and interference.
Accordingly, the paper requested a call change to either WWW
or WKL, but Samuel W. Edwards, the 8th district Radio
Inspector, assigned WWJ, with the note that "This is about
as good as we could do in the matter of call letters".  I
did some additional research, and it turns out that neither
WWW or WKL were actually was available at this time. WKL was
already assigned, and there was a policy against issuing
calls such as WWW with the same letter repeated three times,
so it appears that Edwards just did his best to conform with
the spirit of the request, by assigning the most
phonetically distinct of the small number of WW- calls still
available. But it's interesting that the News was
emphasizing its station's callsign at this early stage,
since most stations at this time were best known by their
sponsoring firm, and the call letters were generally of
limited importance.

I have also posted a number of scans of early Detroit News
pages containing articles about the station's start at:
http://www.ipass.net/whitetho/radio/wwj/wwjinfo.htm
View Source: Detroit News Radiophone information (8MK WBL WWJ)

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