[QCWA] Fw: KDKA #1?

[N0UF]

Here are Donna's responses.

She offers speak at a meeting in the NE.

She could be a great speaker for a convention too.

73,
Bob N0UF
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh at donnahalper.com>
To: "N0UF" <n0uf at kc.rr.com>
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 12:15 PM
Subject: Re: KDKA #1?


> At 09:04 AM 3/14/2005 -0600, you wrote:
>>Hi Donna,
>>
>>This is what I forwarded to the reflector.
>>
>>Two questions:
>>If 8ZZ, 8MK, 1XE  or any of the others were licensed to do commercial
>>broadcasting, why would they eventually apply for a commercial license?
>>
>>Didn't a call sign with a number(call area) in it indicate an amateur 
>>license?
>
> First, feel free to forward any of my replies and thanks for the 
> opportunity to discuss these issues.  I give talks on early ham radio 
> history, and perhaps I can offer one for the New England region sometime. 
> Anyway, the rules about call letters were very flexible till February of 
> 1922.  Hams could and did use their stations to do what today we would 
> call commercial broadcasts.  For example, when 1XE broke down (as it often 
> did), a ham from Brookline (5 miles away) would be called upon to do the 
> broadcasts from his home station.  The only benefit to having commercial 
> call letters at first was that it distinguished you from being a ham 
> station-- a very arbitrary distinction given that some of the early 
> stations were owned and run by hams.  But as more companies and 
> corporations began taking over, they wanted the commercial license to mean 
> something more than just a formality.  They also lobbied to get the hams 
> out of doing the commercial broadcasts.  By February of 1922, hams were 
> relegated to 200 meters and down, plus they could no longer do broadcasts 
> to a mass audience, and they had to get commercial call letters.  Harold 
> Power of AMRAD (owner of 1XE) resisted till the very end, because he 
> didn't want his station drowned out by the bigger and more powerful 
> corporate stations, but once the rule went into effect, there wasn't much 
> he could do, so 1XE became WGI.  Interestingly, the first real commercial 
> license was NOT KDKA's-- it belonged to another Westinghouse station, WBZ. 
> See, at first, the rules were being made up as people went along.  Nobody 
> expected commercial radio to take off the way it did-- it was originally 
> expected to be a fad, a hobby like ham radio was.  In fact, the government 
> had so much contempt for the prospect of commercial radio that they 
> assigned call letters that had once belonged to ships-- ships that had 
> sunk!
>
>