Thank you to the staff of Wavescan for this week's feature on New York's WOR
Jeff: The 104 year-old medium wave radio station WOR in New York City is one of the most well-known stations in the United States, and indeed it’s also very well-known to medium wave DX-ers worldwide. It is a 50,000 watt Class A clear channel news/talk station on 710 kHz, currently owned by iHeartMedia. However, few people today are aware of WOR’s involvement in experimental shortwave broadcasting back in its earlier years. Ray Robinson has the story.
Audio Clip - WOR - Radio 710 available at: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wavescan/episodes/2026-05-23T17_00_00-07_00
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. WOR is one of the oldest continuously operating radio stations in the United States, and it’s the only station in the New York City metro area to have retained its original three-letter callsign. It was launched by Jack Poppele, of subsequent Voice of America fame, in February 1922. At the time, the station’s city of license was Newark, New Jersey and it was installed on the sixth floor of the fourteen-story Bamberger Department Store in Newark. Bamberger’s subsequently became a division of the Macy’s department store empire.
With a studio on the 6th floor and a showy antenna on the roof of its Newark store,
Bamberger's launched WOR to sell more radios.
In a shortsighted move on December 1, 1921, the U.S. Department of Commerce set aside a single wavelength, 360 metres (833 kHz), for radio stations to broadcast entertainment programs. The store applied for a license, which was granted two months later, on February 20, 1922. Its original transmitter was a 250 watt unit constructed by De Forrest, duly assigned to the 833 kHz channel, which quickly became congested causing stations in the same area to have to share time. WOR’s debut broadcast came two days later, on February 22, 1922.
The license application had requested the callsign WLB, but that had just been assigned to another station so they were instead granted the sequential call WOR, which had been relinquished by the Orient Line passenger vessel, SS "California". So the call, WOR, had meaning as the first two letters in the name Orient Line, but it had no meaning whatsoever for the Bamberger store. The purpose of the station for Bamberger’s was to help them sell more radio receivers, and for general publicity for the store.
Soon afterwards, the 250 watt transmitter was relocated from the sixth floor to the roof of the Bamberger building; and shortly afterward again, it was replaced with a more stable 500 watt Western Electric transmitter. By the summer of 1922, there were so many stations in the New York area that WOR was only on the air for a few hours per week. During the following year, 1923, WOR was allowed to move from the highly undesirable 833 kHz channel to the more open frequency of 740 kHz.
With an eye to capturing the New York metro market, new studios were opened at Chickering Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, though shortly afterwards, these were moved to a more prominent location at 1440 Broadway.
And when the station was just five years old in 1927, a more impressive purpose-built transmitter facility was constructed on a plot of land four miles west of Manhattan in Kearney, New Jersey. There, the power level was raised to 5 kW, and the frequency was changed to 710 kHz – the same frequency still used to this day.
In 1928, WOR began their first foray into shortwave usage by operating a mobile shortwave transmitter, W2XAQ, which they had installed in an aeroplane for a remote broadcast. After that, the 50 watt unit was installed at their new transmitter base in Kearney. As a no-longer-mobile experimental unit, its callsign was then changed to W2XCX, with the intent of installing a higher-powered unit in due course.
Early in 1933, it was announced that WOR was ready to install a powerful new shortwave transmitter. The transmitter itself was already constructed, the announcement stated, but the building was not yet readied for this purpose.
Then, the following year, in 1934, a much larger transmitter facility was constructed at more distant Carteret, New Jersey, 21 miles southwest of Manhattan, on a 34 acre property next to the Rahway River. The new building was planned to house several transmitters, including the 5 kW unit from Kearney, a new 50 kW medium wave unit, an air navigation beacon, and also the shortwave transmitter. The counterpoise system for the medium wave antenna was made up of 35 miles of buried copper wire spread over an area of some 10 acres, including beneath the flowing waters of the Rahway River.
WOR announced that both the new transmitter site at Carteret, and the new shortwave service from that site using the callsign W2XHI, would be inaugurated on December 1, 1934. However, the inauguration was postponed until March 4, 1935, when the President of the United States at that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, performed a remote opening ceremony for the new transmission site during a special event at the White House.
Audio Clip - WOR - 1440 Broadway https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wavescan/episodes/2026-05-23T17_00_00-07_00
But the fulltime shortwave service failed to materialize. Subsequent press releases indicated delay after delay, until finally in November 1935, the shortwave project was abandoned, without further explanation.
In 1936, WOR did conduct another significant remote broadcast from out in the Atlantic, where their old 50 watt shortwave transmitter had now been installed on the new luxury passenger liner, the "Queen Mary" (that’s right, the one that’s now permanently moored in the port of Long Beach, California).
In April 1937, radio monitors in the United States were surprised to hear WOR being relayed on shortwave by the Press Wireless station at Hicksville, NJ, initially under the callsign W2II. And, on several more occasions during 1937, the programming from WOR medium wave was again heard being relayed by PWI Hicksville. The Hicksville callsign for the later broadcasts was W2XGB. The shortwave channel was usually 17310 kHz, and PWI did issue QSL cards to confirm reception of these broadcasts.
On two occasions, the high-profile Jack Poppele of station WOR attempted to communicate with the planet Mars using the Press Wireless transmitters at Hicksville; once in 1924, and again in 1939. These attempts were notably unsuccessful, probably due to the fact that Mars is uninhabited, although to be fair, they didn’t know that at the time!!!
In the late 1930’s, WOR operated a high-fidelity shortwave transmitter on 11 metres under the callsign W2XJI. In spite of the low power for this experimental operation, which was just 100 watts, it was often heard in Australia and New Zealand when propagation conditions supported a maximum usable frequency that high.
The late 1930’s was also when early experiments in fax broadcasting took place, and WOR initially used their medium wave transmitter late at night for the broadcast of a fax newspaper, in parallel with a shortwave fax transmitter using the callsign W2XUP. Like the high-fidelity W2XJI, this also operated on 11 metres, and was similarly heard in Australia and New Zealand, where it was also occasionally reported with music programming.
The final occasion when a shortwave relay of WOR was noted was in September 1942, around the time when Hicksville was conducting experimental broadcasts in preparation for their planned relay of the new Voice of America. International radio monitors in New Zealand and Australia sent reception reports for these shortwave broadcasts direct to WOR in New York City, but official reply letters stated that they knew nothing of the relay of WOR programming over callsign WJQ on 10010 kHz from Hicksville. However, they helpfully suggested to keep on listening to the same shortwave channel, to hear WOR again.
Thus it was, that medium wave WOR was involved with shortwave broadcasting in five different ways:
1. Between the years 1928 and 1936, they are known to have operated their own 50 watt shortwave transmitter as W2XAQ/W2XCX on several occasions.
2. In the mid-1930s, they planned and prepared for a fulltime shortwave station, W2XHI, that never materialized.
3. In 1924 and 1939, WOR was involved in unsuccessful shortwave transmissions to the planet Mars via the facilities of Press Wireless, Hicksville.
4. In the late 1930’s, WOR experimented with high fidelity broadcasts on 11 metres under the callsign W2XJI, and with fax broadcasts on 11 metres under the callsign W2XUP.
5. In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, WOR programming was often noted being relayed on shortwave by PWI, Hicksville.
WOR began experimental FM broadcasting in 1939, and became one of the first licensed commercial FM stations in 1941. They were involved in early TV transmissions as well, launching WOR-TV in October 1949. The WOR transmitter site at Carteret, NJ was used for some 32 years, until 1967, when a new transmitter facility was constructed near Lyndhurst, NJ, almost adjacent to the old Kearney site, and the previous site down in Carteret became a community park.
Then 40 years later again, in 2007, another new transmitter facility was built for WOR at Rutherford, NJ, just a mile or two north of the Lyndhurst property, which became a golf course. These days, with studios at 125 West 55th Street in Midtown, Manhattan, WOR can be heard widely with their news/talk format with 50 kW on 710 kHz.
Audio Clip - WOR – iHeart https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wavescan/episodes/2026-05-23T17_00_00-07_00
They use a three-tower directional antenna array to protect KIRO which is also on 710 in Seattle. WOR has always been a reliable verifier of reception reports.
Back to you, Jeff.
