a nostalgic look at a bygone radio era......
During the radio era before World War 2, there was quite a movement in the United States, and in other countries throughout the world also, to establish shortwave relay stations in an endeavor to give wider coverage to the programming from a local mediumwave station. At the time, television was an experimental concept and not a reality, and FM radio was still a distant dream. The standard mediumwave band was not overcrowded at the time, though the mediumwave signal generally gave only local coverage, particularly during the daylight hours. However, it was understood that shortwave transmissions could give wide area coverage within the country, and even internationally on a much larger scale.
Many mediumwave stations in the United States established shortwave relay transmitters during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s to carry their programming to distant listeners. In fact, printed documents from this era indicate that there were several hundred of these shortwave relay stations on the air in the United States during the past eighty years. Some of these shortwave stations were quite large, while many were quite small and temporary.
One of these shortwave relay stations that held a high reputation back during those early years was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This station was launched on behalf of the co-located mediumwave station WCAU, under the experimental shortwave callsign W3XAU. And again, even though a casual glance at the callsign might seem to indicate that it was an amateur radio station, this was not the case. Station W3XAU was indeed a professional station, relaying the programming from the mediumwave WCAU.
The X in a pre-war shortwave callsign indicated an experimental station, either amateur or professional, and in this case, indeed quite professional.
The mediumwave station WCAU was launched in 1922 as a very small operation located in the back room of a small radio shop in Philadelphia. Ten years later, following a couple of intermediate migrations, WCAU was established in a professionally built studio complex, the first building in the United States that was constructed specifically as a radio station. This facility was located at 1622 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.
Now, at the same time, a new 50 kW mediumwave transmitter was under construction also, and this was installed in a new transmitter building out at Newtown Square. The initial broadcast from this grand new, and we might add, quite powerful, WCAU was on September 19, 1932.
Before we leave the mediumwave scene and take a look at the shortwave events in Philadelphia, just a touch of humor from a re-run of the TV series, “Gilligan’s Island”. On July 5, 1992,
Gilligan and his six fellow castaways on a lonely and unidentified tropical island somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean tuned in their radio receiver and they heard a broadcast from a radio station that gave the identification announcement as “WCAU”. At the time, the real WCAU in Philadelphia had undergone a callsign change to WOGL, and so there was no real radio station on the air with the callsign WCAU at this stage.
And now back to the story. Not only was there a new suite of studios and offices, and a new transmitter facility back in 1932, but the relatively new medium of shortwave broadcasting was also under development. Early in the year 1930, a small locally made 1 kW shortwave transmitter with the callsign W3XAU was co-installed with the regular mediumwave unit in Philadelphia. It is claimed that this was the first license issued by the FCC for an international shortwave broadcast station as a commercial operation.
However, two years after the Newtown Square facility was inaugurated, a re-built version of the same 1 kW shortwave transmitter was installed alongside the huge 50 kW mediumwave unit. All of these developments took place during the era when the innovative William Paley of later CBS fame was at the helm.
Four years later, this same transmitter was re-built to a 10 kW capacity and two V type antennas were erected to provide coverage into Europe and South America. Station WCAU became even more ambitious for a truly international outreach with the erection of two large curtain type antennas for coverage into the same two areas, Europe and South America. At the same time, they made a request to the federal licensing authorities for 50 kW operation on shortwave. In fact, on several occasions in the late 1930s and early 1940s, CBS lodged similar applications, but on each occasion the request was denied.
With war clouds looming over Europe in 1939, the FCC took a hard look at the international shortwave scene in the United States and they issued a set of three new rules. This edict, issued on May 23, 1939, required that:-
1. All shortwave callsigns should be regularized
2. The power output of each shortwave transmitter should be increased to a minimum of 50 kW
3. Directional antenna systems should be installed
As far as the callsigns were concerned, this edict gave time for consideration and negotiation regarding desired call letters. Initially, the first new callsign chosen to replace the experimental call W3XAU was WCAI. This new callsign for the shortwave outlet, WCAI, proved to be only temporary. With information derived from a contemporary issue of Time Magazine, FCC news releases, and several other sources, it is learned that this temporary new callsign was in use for a little less than two weeks, beginning in mid August, 1939.
The FCC subsequently ruled that all callsign changes for the shortwave stations should become effective on September 1, 1939. However, some stations introduced the new callsign prematurely, and at least a couple were a little tardy in implementing the change. As far as W3XAU was concerned, the change from the initial WCAI to the subsequent WCAB was implemented on August 26, one week before the official date. It is probable that the call WCAI stood for “WCAU International” but there is no known logic for the subsequent call, WCAB.
As for the directional antennas, they were already in place. And the power increase to 50 kW? CBS Philadelphia had already applied on several occasions and had been denied. However, there was another factor involved; a new shortwave station for CBS was already under construction at Brentwood on Long Island.
Initially, the concept was for WCAB Philadelphia to supplement the new Brentwood facility. However, in view of the power restriction imposed by the FCC upon the Philadelphia transmitter, CBS finally considered it best to close this Pennsylvania station in favor of the new high powered facility under development on Long Island, New York.
Programming from the Philadelphia shortwave station was initially a tandem relay from mediumwave WCAU, though separate identification announcements were given over the air. However, when the station became a genuine international broadcaster, much of the scheduling was specifically prepared for the target areas, Europe & Latin America.
Programming in foreign languages was taken on relay from the CBS sister shortwave station W2XE in Wayne, New Jersey, and programming in English was often taken live from the CBS national network. This shortwave station was heard quite frequently throughout the Americas, over in Europe, and also in the South Pacific.
The first new transmitter at the new CBS shortwave station at Brentwood was officially inaugurated on January 1, 1941, and just one year later, the 10 kW unit in Pennsylvania was finally switched off. This nostalgic event took place at midnight on December 31, 1941.
However, that is not the end of the story. You will hear the sequel to this story here in Wavescan next week; and it is just as thrilling as any spy story you can read in any spy story book.
(NWS46 via Adrian Peterson/AWR)