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| Classic QSL from WINB |
Thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White, for this week's nostaligic look at WINB.
Jeff: The oldest commercial shortwave station in North America still on the air today is WINB in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, which this month is celebrating 63 years of service. In its early days, this station was involved in a very famous law suit, which had a tremendous impact on the shortwave scene in the USA for several decades. With that story, here’s Ray Robinson once again, in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. You know, I’ve been to many of the shortwave stations in North America, but one I’ve never seen is WINB. Their transmitter site in Red Lion is in farm country in south central Pennsylvania, about 8 miles north of the border with Maryland, and it’s the kind of out-of-the-way place you don’t pass through on the way to anywhere else!
Back in 1950, Rev. John M. Norris Sr. and his son John Harden Norris together founded Red Lion Broadcasting and inaugurated a medium wave station, WGCB on 1440 AM, in a rolling rural area 2.5 miles east of the small town of Red Lion. The call letters of the AM station, WGCB, stood for “the Word of God, Christ and the Bible.” In 1960 they added WGCB-FM on 96.1 MHz, and also obtained a Construction Permit for a shortwave station at the same site with the call letters WINB, which originally stood for "World in Need of the Bible."
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| Continental Model 417B |
It took a couple of years to get this new shortwave station built, and it was eventually inaugurated in October 1962. The original transmitter, an air-cooled 50 kW Continental model 417B, is the same one they still use today. It was paired with a three-wire rhombic antenna 640 feet long, and 110 feet above the average terrain. Depending on which end is grounded, it can either be beamed 62 degrees north east Continental Model 417B, towards Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, or 242 degrees south west covering large parts of the southern United States and Mexico, which is the beam they favor today.
The transmitting equipment was installed in an old barn-like building that was previously used on a chicken farm. Contemporary radio magazines at the time carried reports that the new station was quite quickly heard in Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as, of course, in the United States itself. Despite the power of 50kW, WINB regularly put a good signal into Europe on 15185kHz.
Being launched in October 1962, it was too late to make the 1963 edition of the World Radio TV Handbook, so its first entry is listed in the 1964 edition, by which time the organization name (and the meaning of the call letters) had become “World Inter-National Broadcasters” – which has always headed their QSL cards.
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| QSL card signed by Rev. John M. Norris, Sr |
In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, WINB was one of only two religious shortwave stations which operated from the United States. The other was KGEI in California, which since 1960 had been owned by FEBC, the Far East Broadcasting Company. And that station was closed down in July 1994. A third religious broadcaster joined KGEI and WINB in 1974, when Family Radio bought the WNYW facility in Scituate, Massachusetts and relaunched the station as WYFR.
Red Lion Broadcasters has never produced any of their own programming for WINB, but instead has always operated WINB as a ‘brokered’ station, meaning they sell airtime to third-party program producers. And in the 1960’s, there was no shortage of religious ministries who wanted to buy airtime to get their messages out.
On November 27, 1964, the WGCB radio stations (including WINB) carried a 15-minute religious broadcast by Rev. Billy James Hargis, who criticized the liberal journalist Fred J. Cook. Mr. Cook had written a book which cast a poor light on Senator Barry Goldwater – the Republican nominee in that month’s Presidential General Election. Rev. Hargis also alleged that Mr. Cook was affiliated with Communists.
When Mr. Cook heard about the broadcasts, he demanded free airtime to respond to the personal attacks against him, but Red Lion rejected the request. He then filed a complaint with the FCC. The FCC ruled that Mr. Cook was indeed entitled to the free airtime under the ‘Fairness Doctrine’, but Red Lion again refused. The FCC then ruled that Red Lion was in breach of their licenses. Red Lion then filed suit against the FCC, arguing their First Amendment rights to free speech, and the monumental case was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1969, the Court decided the case unanimously in favor of the FCC. The upshot was that the renewal of Red Lion’s broadcast licenses was conditional on their agreement to abide by the ruling. The FCC also put a moratorium on granting more private shortwave licenses for over a decade until the Fairness Doctrine was challenged during the Reagan administration. It was finally repealed by the FCC in 1987.
In 1972, another 50 kW transmitter was procured, a used General Electric unit from medium wave station WGY in Schenectady, New York. It was originally intended that this additional transmitter would be converted for use on shortwave, although that project was never implemented. However, also in the early 1970’s, a second rhombic antenna was installed for coverage into Latin America.
In 1979, Red Lion further expanded their stable of stations by adding a television station, WGCB-TV, again at the same site, first signing on the air on April 28, 1979. It was the first completely new television station to sign on in South Central Pennsylvania in 26 years, and at the time, John Norris Jr. was the only individual in the United States to operate AM, FM, shortwave and television stations all in one location and under one ownership. WGCB-TV operated as a religious independent station, carrying programming from various televangelists.
In 1995, WINB’s Continental 417B transmitter malfunctioned, and the station was off the air while the unit was rebuilt. It took nearly two years for the station to become fully functional again, in January 1997.
YouTube audio, WINB 9265 kHz - Red Lion PA (USA) - Sign On in English & Program in Spanish & English - 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7AvgBcFypI
Later in 1997, the FM station on 96.1 MHz was sold to Pioneer Broadcasting, and the AM station, WGCB on 1440 kHz was also sold in 2006. John Norris (Jr.) died on September 28, 2008, at the age of 82. The FCC granted a change in control for WGCB-TV on November 5, 2008, to the estate of John H. Norris, and in 2009 the station began airing classic TV series. Red Lion eventually sold the TV station too in 2012, so WINB shortwave is now the sole surviving station.
In October 2003, WINB began carrying this program, Wavescan, and in fact used Wavescan for test DRM broadcasts to Europe in 2018 on 15670 kHz. Hans Johnson is now both their program broker and frequency manager, and their broadcast schedule depends on airtime sales. At the present time, they broadcast on the out-of-band 31 meter frequency of 9265 kHz, with a full instrumental version of the U.S. national anthem at both the beginning and the ending of their broadcast days. Their hours of operation are:
• on Mondays – Fridays from 3pm – 12 midnight Eastern / 1900-0400 UTC
• on Saturdays from 11am-11pm Eastern / 1500-0300 UTC, and
• on Sundays 8am – 12 midnight Eastern / 1200-0400 UTC
Sadly, Wavescan is no longer on their schedule, but Dr. Kim Andrew Elliott’s Shortwave Radiogram is, on Thursday and Friday evenings.
Radio station WINB in Red Lion, Pennsylvania is now the oldest commercial shortwave station on the air in the United States, and we congratulate them on celebrating 63 years of service this month.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Wavescan/Ray Robinson)
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