November 15, 1926…The First NBC Radio Broadcast, Part 1

The Bedrock History And Timeline…Please Start Here

Below is a history of how this all started and by understanding this timeline and these events, you will better understand the parts that follow. It’s a story that I will need to tell in several parts and am composing this in my head as we discover this fascinating history together and as you will see, there is a lot of history that leads up to the November 15, 1926 debut of NBC.

AT&T had constructed and licensed radio station WEAF in New York in June of 1922. It’s first ‘network’ ‘broadcast occurred on January 4, 1923, between WEAF in New York City and WNAC in Boston, Massachusetts. In early 1924, AT&T made the first transcontinental network broadcast, between WEAF in New York City, and KPO in San Francisco. By early 1926, the “WEAF Chain” had increased to nineteen cities in the Northeast and Midwest, as it slowly spread from its base in New York City. Through these efforts, from 1922 until 1926 AT&T was the most important company in the programming side of U.S. broadcasting.

A year before AT&T began radio, Westinghouse signed on WJZ in Newark, New Jersey in 1921 and operated the station till it was sold to RCA in 1923. That year would also see the debut of WRC in Washington DC which RCA built and was their first construction.

The first network broadcast by RCA occurred in December 1923, and involved only WJZ and the General Electric Co.’s station WGY at Schenectady, N. Y. The connection was made with Western Union telegraph wires. WRC would soon be linked in too.

RCA would have have liked to have used AT&T lines, but AT&T would not make them available to a competitor. The telegraph lines were not very good but RCA did the best they could with what they had.

By late 1925, in the midst of hard-fought battles over patent rights, AT&T abruptly decided that it no longer wanted to operate stations or run a radio network. In May, 1926, AT&T transferred WEAF and the network operations into a wholly-owned subsidiary, the Broadcasting Company of America.

Then came the bombshell announcement — AT&T was selling WEAF and its network for $1,000,000 to the “Radio Group”. The sale included the right to lease from AT&T the telephone longlines that had been found to be essential for linking together a national network. Moreover, the negotiations had also given the “Radio Group” the right to sell airtime, which was the subject of the long fought court battles.

Here, we need to explain the “Radio Group” which was proposed in a June 17, 1922 memo from David Sarnoff. It suggested RCA take the lead in the organization of “a separate and distinct company… to be controlled by the Radio Corporation of America, but its board of directors and officers to include members of the General Electric Company and the Westinghouse Electric Company and possibly also a few from the outside, prominent in national and civic affairs”.

The first effort from the “Radio Group” came shortly after AT&T began organizing its radio network in 1923. The three major companies that comprised the “Radio Group” — General Electric, Westinghouse, and their jointly-owned subsidiary, the Radio Corporation of America — responded with an expansion of their own efforts, which initially would produce a small radio network centered on WJZ (now WABC) in New York City, but would ultimately develop into the most dominant broadcasting company in the country…The National Broadcasting Company.

These are photos I took on the second floor at NBC, just outside the Broadcast Operations Center that commemorate the formation of The National Broadcasting Company on September 13, 1926, and the first broadcast on the NBC Radio Network just two months later.

Much more to come in the next several parts! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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