The First American Commercial Radio Station Started Broadcasting 102 Years Ago Today

Radios these days are one of the things we use to entertain ourselves when we're bored of binging shows and movies on our favorite streaming platform, watching YouTube videos, or even listening to podcasts.

In this day and age where there are many alternatives to radio, it is still one of the most accessible methods of communication and broadcasting in the world.

However, there was a time when none of the technology we currently have existed, and radio was all people got.

Here's the story of how America got its first commercial radio station broadcasting.

WWJ's First Broadcasting - A Quick Summary

Radio broadcasting was born in 1910 when Lee De Forest produced a program from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, per the Law Library. However, De Forest's broadcast and the ones succeeding in 1915 and 1916 were purely experimental as technology utilizing radio was still a novel idea during the 1900s.

It was only after the Great War that radio reached a point where it can be used for broadcasting audio through radio waves to radio receivers.

Most people consider WWJ the radio station that went on the air in America. According to the Detroit Historical Society, WWJ, which was originally known as 8MK, first went on the air through a broadcasting station on the second floor of the Detroit News building on Aug. 20, 1920. During this historical broadcast, 300 radio amateurs were potentially listening to the station go on the air for the first time.

The successful broadcast made Detroit News the first newspaper in the world to have a radio station.

However, WWJ's success was limited as its broadcast could only cover a transmission area of fewer than 100 miles.

The radio station then operated as a full-service radio station that kept the people of Detroit informed with the latest news and entertained with the latest tunes.

In fact, in May 1922, the Detroit News finalized a programming schedule for WWJ which included hints to housewives, music, weather reports, market quotations, baseball scores, and church services.

It also eventually became the first radio station in Michigan to broadcast a sporting event, the national election returns, and presented the first radio broadcast of humorist Will Rogers.

Thanks to WWJ's success in radio broadcasting, swift advancements in radio technology came quickly. By the end of 1924, 583 radio stations were broadcasting in various places in the US and more than 3 million people were tuning in.

Advancements in radio broadcasting technology came to a head in 1926, when the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), led by David Sarnoff, presented its first national broadcast.

Where is WWJ Today?

Surprisingly, WWJ is still up and running in 2022. According to The People History, WWJ is now known as WWJ Newsradio 950.

The station is now owned and run by the Columbia Broadcasting System, or CBS.