1935 ***WGAR*** {RADIO STATION} CLEVELAND, OHIO ADVERTISING COVER SC# 599 STAMP!

Description

FEBRUARY 20, 1935 ***SCARCE*** (LARGE 9 1/2")  ~WGAR~ "RADIO STATION" CLEVELAND, OHIO {{{EARLY WGAR MICROPHONE VIGNETTE}}}  ADVERTISING COVER WITH "ADDRESS YOUR MAIL TO STREET AND NUMBER" POSTMARK PLUS 2 CENT (CARMINE) SCOTT# 599 "GEORGE WASHINGTON" (PERFORATED VERTICALLY) STAMP!
"85" year old Radio history!
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WHKW
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WHKW
City
Cleveland
,
Ohio
Broadcast area
Greater Cleveland
Northeast Ohio
Frequency
1220
kHz
Branding
AM 1220 The Word
Slogan
Cleveland's Christian Talk
Programming
Format
Christian
Affiliations
Bowling Green Falcons
Cleveland State Vikings
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Ownership
Owner
Salem Communications
(Salem Communications Holding Corporation)
Sister stations
WFHM-FM
,
WHK
History
First air date
May 15, 1924
Former call signs
WDBK (1924–27)
WFJC (1927–30)
WGAR (1930–90)
WKNR (1990–2001)
WHKC (2001)
WHK (2001–05)
WHKZ (2005)
Former frequencies
1450 kHz (1924–41)
1480 kHz (1941–44)
Call sign
meaning
Artifact of previous WHK (1220 AM) call sign
Technical information
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID
14772
Class
B
Power
50,000
watts
(unlimited)
Transmitter coordinates
41°18′26.00″N
81°41′21.00″W
Translator(s)
96.9
W245CY (Cleveland)
Links
Public license information
Profile
LMS
Webcast
Listen live
Listen live
(via
Radio.com
)
Listen live
(via
iHeartRadio
)
Website
thewordcleveland
.com
WHKW
(1220
AM
) – branded
AM 1220 The Word
– is a commercial
Christian
radio station
licensed to
Cleveland
,
Ohio
, serving
Greater Cleveland
and much of surrounding
Northeast Ohio
. Owned by
Salem Communications
, WHKW is a flagship station for
Cleveland State Vikings men's basketball
[1]
a local affiliate for the
Salem Radio Network
, and the Cleveland outlet for
Bowling Green Falcons football
and
Notre Dame Fighting Irish football
.
[2]
The WHKW studios are located in the Cleveland
suburb
of
Independence
, and the station transmitter resides in neighboring
Broadview Heights
. Besides a standard
analog transmission
, WHKW is available online.
History
[
edit
]
Early years
[
edit
]
WHKW began as WDBK on May 15, 1924, broadcasting with 250 watts of power. The station was owned by Stanley Broz, in the name of the M.F. Broz Furniture, Hardware and Radio Co., and was located at 13918 Union Avenue in Cleveland. The station moved to Boltan Square Hotel on Carnegie Avenue in 1925, and was using the slogan, "Broadcasting from Cleveland." In September 1927, Broz sold the station to William F. Jones, and WDBK was taken off the air. The station relocated to the
Akron Beacon Journal
building in
Akron
, and resumed broadcast operations in November 1927 as WFJC, the new call letters being derived from the owner's initials. Sam Townshend was listed as co-owner, and the first two announcers were Cyril Jones and Jerry McKiernam.
[3]
[4]
WGAR (AM)
[
edit
]
Not to be confused with Cleveland radio station
WGAR-FM
.
Jones sold the station to George A. Richards of
Detroit
in September 1930, and Richards moved the station back to Cleveland.
[5]
He obtained a new callsign based on his initials, and WGAR signed on the air on December 15, 1930. WGAR was part of the Goodwill Station group that included
WJR
and
KMPC
, both also owned by Richards.
In 1937, WGAR became Cleveland's
CBS
affiliate. On October 30, 1938, it broadcast
The Mercury Theatre on the Air
'
s
The War of the Worlds
, and it was left to a young staff announcer named
Jack Paar
to go on the air and calm Cleveland listeners by telling them that the program was only a dramatization. WGAR produced some programs for the CBS network, one of the notable ones being
Wings Over Jordan
, a popular Sunday morning CBS show that had the widest audience of any African-American broadcast.
1970s station logo as WGAR
Originally at 1450
kHz
, WGAR switched to 1480 kHz on March 29, 1941 during the
NARBA
frequency shift, and then to 1220 kHz on June 4, 1944. On July 4, 1947, WGAR increased its power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts
[6]
during daytime hours. WGAR was the flagship station for
Cleveland Browns
broadcasts from 1946 to 1949, 1954, and from 1956 to 1961; during the Browns' last run at the station (as WGAR), Bill McColgan provided the
play-by-play commentary
, while
Jim Graner
served as
color commentator
.
[7]
Richards died in May 1951, and WGAR was purchased in 1953 by People's Broadcasting Corp., a company that had been founded seven years earlier by the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation to serve rural communities. People's Broadcasting became
Nationwide Broadcasting
, a subsidiary of
Nationwide Insurance
in 1954.
WJR
itself was sold to
Capital Cities Communications
and
KMPC
was purchased by
Gene Autry
.
[8]
With the demise of network radio, the rise of television, and the emergence of Top 40 powerhouses like
KYW
,
WERE
and
WHK
in the 1950s, WGAR had to try various music formats as a result. The station settled into a middle of the road (MOR) format throughout this whole time, with literary professor Tom Armstrong in the morning slot for much of this period. Joe Black and Sid Andorn were also popular longtime personalities. The station's news director was Charlie Day. The station broadcast from studios in the penthouse suite of the Statler-Hilton Hotel on Euclid Avenue, downtown.
FM installations at 99.5
MHz
were launched in 1948, but
WGAR-FM
never saw more than a few hours of operation per week. By the late 60s, the FM broadcast automated easy listening music from 6 AM to Midnight from a few tape reels behind the master control room.
In 1970, Jack Thayer (later of the NBC Network all news station format) was brought in to manage WGAR, and both the AM and FM stations made several dramatic moves. Long only on the air for pure technical purposes, WGAR-FM then went to a 24-hour operation as WNCR, (Nationwide Communications Radio) and adopted a progressive rock format that was tapped two years earlier by
WMMS
. The AM side saw a format shift to adult contemporary and several MOR personalities, including "Emperor Joe" Mayer, Bob Vernon (Cosart),
Chuck Collier
(who remained with
WGAR-FM
until his death in September 2011),
[9]
and
Norm N. Nite
were retained for the new AM format by newly hired Program Director John Lund. The first announcer under the new format was a part-time/summer relief employee, Les Bagley, a student at Ashland College. Ron Parks was also soon hired, but the station's most noteworthy hire of this era was morning host
Don Imus
. John Lund soon left for New York City, and took Vernon, Nite, and Imus with him. They all moved to
WNBC
in
New York
(though Imus returned briefly to do afternoons on
WHK
after being fired from WNBC in 1977), he was replaced by
John Lanigan
. Lanigan, who himself was nearly as controversial as Imus, had a very successful run in mornings until he left for a radio station in
Tampa
prior to resurfacing at
WMJI
in 1985. Other air personalities included: Dave "Fig" Newton, The Real Bob James ( Pondillo), Kevin O'Neill, and Steve "Boom Boom" Cannon.
WGAR abandoned adult contemporary for
country music
on July 15, 1984. The station soon donated its entire collection of jazz recordings to
WCPN
, the new public radio outlet that was going on the air the following September. By 1986, WGAR was simulcasting with its FM sister station, which again carried the callsign
WGAR-FM
; the FM station broadcast under different callsigns from 1970 to 1984.
WGAR received the
George Foster Peabody Medal
"for distinguished service among regional stations during the year 1940."
[10]
WKNR (1220 AM)
[
edit
]
Not to be confused with Cleveland radio station
WKNR
.
Station logo as WKNR
In 1990, WGAR was sold to Douglas Broadcasting and
Cablevision Systems Corp.
WGAR-FM
(99.5 FM) continued on with the country format, and began identifying itself simply as "WGAR" without the "-FM" ending (note that the FM station officially remains WGAR-FM per FCC records). Meanwhile, the callsign for the 1220 AM facility was changed to WKNR, a callsign previously used by stations in
Detroit
and
Kalamazoo
. A five-minute sendoff produced by several WGAR (AM)/WGAR-FM staffers, including tributes by
Don Imus
and
Jack Paar
, aired on 1220 AM just before the changeover took place at Midnight on July 13, 1990.
[11]
Immediately after the tribute aired, the new WKNR briefly picked up a satellite-based
oldies
feed.
Starting in January 1991, WKNR soft launched an all-
sports
format by assembling several blocks of locally-based sports talk shows, recruiting Geoff Sindelar (from
WWWE
) for late afternoons, Greg Brinda (from
WERE (1300 AM)
) for early afternoons, Paul Tapie (from
WNCX
) and Thor Tolo for mornings, Bill Needle for late mornings,
Reggie Rucker
for evenings, and carrying
Sports Byline USA
in the overnight hours. Branded as "SportsRADIO 1220 WKNR", the station emulated the program lineup and even imported the jingles from
New York City
's
WFAN
, the first all-sports radio station in the United States, and like WFAN, also had sports updates every 20 minutes billed as "20/20 Tickers."
In 1992, WKNR became the flagship station for the
Cleveland Indians Radio Network
, taking over for long-time flagship
WWWE
. For several years in the mid-1990s, WKNR was home to the
Cleveland Indians
,
Cleveland Browns
(in a split arrangement with
WDOK
) and
Ohio State
football and basketball broadcasts.
[12]
The fortunes of WKNR, however, started to sour when the
Cleveland Browns
relocated after the 1995
NFL
season. Despite a successful outcry by the community and competing sports stations WKNR,
WHK
and
WWWE
, the intellectual property of the team was to lay dormant for three years, leaving a void in WKNR's play-by-play lineup. WKNR was left to carry
Cincinnati Bengals
football from 1996 to 1998. The station was then forced to overbid to beat
WTAM
(the former WWWE) into a renewal of its Cleveland Indians contract, effective with the 1997 season. While this allowed WKNR to air the
World Series
run of the 1997
Indians
, the deal put financial strain on WKNR –
Cablevision
's lone radio property.
On August 19, 1997,
Jacor
announced the purchase of WKNR from
Cablevision Systems Corp
.
[13]
Jacor
, which also owned WTAM, moved the
Cleveland Indians
broadcasts back to WTAM beginning with the 1998 season and the
Cleveland Browns
rights transferred to
WMJI
and WTAM for the 1999 season, leaving significant holes in WKNR's programming.
Jacor
swapped WKNR with Capstar Broadcasting’s
WTAE
in Pittsburgh in 1998 as part of a
Justice Department
settlement involving
Jacor
's purchase of Nationwide Communications, who had sold WGAR (AM) in 1990 and still owned WGAR-FM.
[14]
On July 13, 1999, Chancellor Media merged with Capstar Broadcasting to form AMFM Inc., at that time the nation's largest radio station owner with 465 stations. AMFM sold WKNR to
Salem Communications
on July 20, 2000 as part of a required divestiture when AMFM merged with
Clear Channel Communications
.
[15]
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