Albany Times Union (Sunday)

WGY marks 100 years of making waves

50,000-watt station’s personalit­ies have brought drama, news, entertainm­ent to N.Y.

- By Pete DeMola Schenectad­y

It was a turbocharg­ed era of technologi­cal innovation, and entertainm­ent options seemed boundless.

With upgrades in audio technology, listeners had their pick of seemingly endless programs, many of them immersive offerings pushing the bounds of what was thought possible through pioneering sound effects.

Competitio­n for big names and advertisin­g dollars was brutal and a constant churn of publicity and big stars was needed to boost ratings.

This isn’t the modern day but rather the early 1920s, when radio emerged as the first broadcasti­ng force.

When listeners first heard voices crackle across the airwaves, it was almost impossible to overstate the significan­ce.

“To hear somebody’s voice and how personal it is, I think it must have been incredible to experience this,” said Diane Donato, a news anchor at WGY 810 AM.

The station is marking its 100th anniversar­y, a milestone celebrated with a new exhibit of more than 50 historical photos at miSci | Museum of Innovation & Science in Schenectad­y that opened Jan. 22.

For the past century, WGY has been at the vanguard of the radio industry, racking up an impressive number of firsts, from forerunner­s to remote broadcasti­ng to the first to conduct a two-way transmissi­on to England.

The station was also the first to broadcast the World Series in 1922 when the New York Giants defeated the New York Yankees.

And on a more whimsical note, WGY introduced the concept of an internatio­nal cat and dog fight:

The dog was located in Australia and the cat in WGY’s Schenectad­y studios. The dog and cat fight involved Skip, WGY’s unofficial mascot in the 1930s.

WGY’s shortwave stations did fairly regular broadcasts and communicat­ions with Australia.

“Apparently, Skip got excited one time when the mic was live and started barking, and that scared a cat in the Australia studio, which started yowling and hissing, hence the first internatio­nal dog and cat fight,” Hunter said.

A new era is born

WGY launched in 1922, the brainchild of General Electric engineers. Until that point, news was disseminat­ed through telegraphs and newspapers, hardly an immersive experience.

In a way, the state’s first radio station got its start as a marketing arm of GE, the technology and manufactur­ing giant that dominated Schenectad­y. Walter Baker, a member of GE’s radio engineerin­g department, initially floated the idea to his superior, who dismissed the technology as a passing fad.

“He thought it was a flash in the pan,” said Chris Hunter, vice president of collection­s and exhibits at MiSci.

Baker went over his head to the public relations department, who agreed that a radio station could be a valuable vessel for self-promotion after commission­ing a study on the company brand.

Once WGY began broadcasti­ng from the nowdemolis­hed Building No. 36 at GE headquarte­rs at the foot of Erie Boulevard, company brass had a general idea of a potential audience: A survey of Albany, Schenectad­y and Troy revealed 50 percent of households already owned early pre-tube crystal radios.

“There were people just waiting for content and they were the ones to provide it,” Hunter said.

The early days of radio were marked by experiment­al programmin­g, including radio dramas, which quickly stuck.

The programmin­g was billed as a groundbrea­king entertainm­ent experience. Producers used a combinatio­n of voice, music and sound effects to stimulate the imaginatio­n.

The result, Hunter said, was a “theater of the mind” concept not entirely unlike contempora­ry podcasts, which attract listeners through increasing­ly sophistica­ted and sleek production techniques.

The first radio drama was a three-act play, “The Wolf,” which landed in August 1922. After that came a series of 43 locally produced dramas, which typically ran in a serialized format once per week.

By this time, WGY was gaining a toehold with audiences, and its coverage area stretched into northern and central New York, as well as Massachuse­tts and Vermont.

“It was very exciting, particular­ly for people in rural areas,” said Rick Kelly, co-author with John Gabriel of “Capital Region Radio: 1920-2011.” “To hear another human voice flying through the air was really a revelation for people back in the 1920s.”

The powerful 50,000watt station dominated the airwaves.

“At first, I think they were trying 200,000 watts, but it was blowing everything out,” said Jeff Wolf, news and program director at WGY.

Before federal regulation­s, anyone could purchase a transmitte­r and start broadcasti­ng. Many did — including department stores and other businesses who invested in the technology for self-promotion. The result was often a cloud of noise that somewhat resembled today’s contempora­ry ubiquitous television commercial­s — or even spam.

The national mood was optimistic in the early 1920s. The nation was emerging from the dueling crises of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which combined killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Cities were becoming electrifie­d — both literally and figurative­ly.

In 1910, just one in seven households had access to electricit­y, a number that swelled to over 85 percent a decade later.

“People had just gone through a world war and pandemic and were looking to have some fun,” Hunter said. “Radio came along at the perfect opportunit­y.”

It was a boom time for Schenectad­y and inventions were flying out of “The House of Magic,” GE’s

research lab, at a rapid clip.

The advances fundamenta­lly changed how people lived, from refrigerat­ion to radio tubes to the forerunner of the loudspeake­r.

Remote broadcasts emerged. At the time, announcers lugging their gear to baseball games or news events was a developmen­t that was downright magical for listeners.

“This opened the world for people in ways that didn’t exist before,” Donato said.

The audience grows

As the industry matured, the race was on for who could attract the best talent. WGY would wrangle in visiting vaudeville performers from Proctors theater and convince them to appear on air.

Celebritie­s, too, took to the airwaves, including aviator Amelia Earhart and Harry Houdini, the magician who appeared on air in October 1926 just weeks before his death.

While the new technology resulted in competitio­n, theaters also saw radio as a way to broaden their audience and played along.

Networks eventually emerged, including RCA, which launched NBC. WGY became its first affiliate in 1926, giving them top access to entertaine­rs, including “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and Walter Damrosch, the longtime director of the New York Symphony Orchestra.

WGY also duked it out with the Westinghou­se Corp., which was also focused on conquering the radio market.

“GE took the technology and made it into something bigger, figuring how to mass produce and back-engineer what Westinghou­se had done and made it into a massively successful business,” Kelly said.

Once producers pinpointed which programmin­g struck a nerve with audiences, the quality improved and experiment­al concepts fell out of favor. Radio dramas continued into the 1950s before falling by the wayside due to another new medium: Television.

But in the 1930s, radio stations were not yet formatted, and each did a little of everything, from skits to live broadcasts and celebrity appearance­s.

Not even the Great Depression could put a dent in the industry.

“The only thing that increased in sales during the Great Depression were radios and refrigerat­ors,” Hunter said.

Through it all, WGY racked up firsts, including what could be considered the debut Amber Alert after kidnappers made off with the 6-year-old son of an

RCA executive from their Schenectad­y home in 1928. At WGY.com/100 you can find more firsts.

GE continued to own WGY into the 1930s, contractin­g management out to NBC before returning to local control by World War II, an era that saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt carried directly into living rooms via his “Fireside Chats,” a format he had fine-tuned during his single term as New York’s governor in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Fun and innovation

The decade also saw new personalit­ies arrive, announcers like Martha Brooks and Howard Tupper, who wowed listeners by broadcasti­ng live from a bobsled.

GE liked coming up with stunts, Hunter said, including flying a dirigible above headquarte­rs.

Brooks would often discuss and review consumer products on the air, a forerunner to the contempora­ry “unboxing” genre on social media in which people film themselves opening brand new items.

“Martha was doing a version of that in the 1940s and ’50s,” Donato said. “It’s an incredible way to communicat­e when there were no options to hear about these things.”

The station also came up with its own product lines. Levi Wholesale Grocers had a special line and distributi­on for WGY Food Stores, including coffee, tea, oatmeal and spices. WGY also expanded its roster of shortwave stations across the globe, setting up shop in Latin America and South America.

Portuguese-speaking announcers made Schenectad­y their home base and company maps depicted The Electric City as the center of the world.

By 1941, WGY estimated its audience at 1 million people.

During World War II, WGY served as a civic booster and a major community resource, taking on a public service role much like NPR today, Hunter said.

As war raged, WGY aired everything from patriotic broadcasts to public service announceme­nts. It shared civil defense informatio­n and war bulletins featuring dispatches from the front and interviews with local soldiers.

WGY continued to host a powerful signal and was the only station that could reach into rural areas, Kelly said, wiping out competitor­s.

 ?? Courtesy of Museum of Innovation and Science / WGY
World War II. ?? Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers an address over WGY in August 1932, a decade after the station went on the air. Elected president later the same year, Roosevelt used radio “fireside chats” to share his agenda through the Depression and, later,
Courtesy of Museum of Innovation and Science / WGY World War II. Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers an address over WGY in August 1932, a decade after the station went on the air. Elected president later the same year, Roosevelt used radio “fireside chats” to share his agenda through the Depression and, later,
 ?? Paul D. Kniskern, Sr. / Times Union Archive ?? Above: Al Lombardo broadcasts at WGY radio in 1978, one of many personalit­ies over the past 100 years.
At left is a copy of a photo showing Sonny Salad, a popular local child performer in the 1920s, which can be seen at an exhibit at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science.
Paul D. Kniskern, Sr. / Times Union Archive Above: Al Lombardo broadcasts at WGY radio in 1978, one of many personalit­ies over the past 100 years. At left is a copy of a photo showing Sonny Salad, a popular local child performer in the 1920s, which can be seen at an exhibit at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science.
 ?? Paul Buckowski / Times Union ?? Aviator Amelia Earhart visits the WGY studio in 1929. The photo is among the items on display at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science in honor of the radio station’s century of broadcasti­ng that started in February 1922.
Paul Buckowski / Times Union Aviator Amelia Earhart visits the WGY studio in 1929. The photo is among the items on display at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science in honor of the radio station’s century of broadcasti­ng that started in February 1922.
 ?? Paul Buckowski / Times Union ?? A copy of a photo shows a WGY transmitti­ng station from 1925, seen here in an exhibit at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectad­y.
Paul Buckowski / Times Union A copy of a photo shows a WGY transmitti­ng station from 1925, seen here in an exhibit at MiSci Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectad­y.
 ?? Times Union archive ?? WGY’s former studio is seen near Great Western Gateway in 1938.
Times Union archive WGY’s former studio is seen near Great Western Gateway in 1938.
 ?? Paul Buckowski / Times Union ??
Paul Buckowski / Times Union

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