124-634: WLS (890 kHz ) is a commercial AM radio station in Chicago, Illinois . Owned by Cumulus Media , through licensee Radio License Holdings LLC, the station airs a talk radio format . WLS studios are in the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighborhood. The station's programming is also available in the Chicago metropolitan area via a simulcast on the HD2 digital subchannel of sister station WLS-FM . Its transmitter site
248-496: A 50 percent interest in WLS and combined the stations under the WLS call sign. In November 1959, ABC announced its purchase of Prairie Farmer and its half of WLS, giving ABC full ownership of the station. On May 2, 1960, at 6 am, WLS went with a full-time Top 40 format. Mort Crowley was the first disc jockey under the new format, and the first song played was " Alley-Oop " by The Hollywood Argyles , four weeks before it debuted on
372-440: A DJ, four months after he had started at the station's top competitor WCFL. Lujack returned to WCFL in 1972, but rejoined WLS in 1976, remaining with the station until 1987. In 1968, a mid-twenty-something Chuck Buell was recruited as the youngest on-air radio personality for a major market contemporary hit music station to date to host the early evening 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. show. An equally young Kris Eric Stevens soon followed
496-536: A charter affiliate. It was one of the 16 stations that aired the first CBS network program on September 18, 1927. Wanting to expand its coverage area, WMAQ needed a new stronger transmitter. A site for it was purchased outside of the city. In 1928, the new station transmitter was constructed in Elmhurst . It was also time to move the studios from the La Salle Hotel. Walter Strong, who by then had become
620-468: A creative and ratings pinnacle headlined by personalities Dick Biondi , Larry Lujack , John Records Landecker and Bob Sirott . Since 1989, WLS has been a full-time talk radio outlet. In the 1920s, Sears, Roebuck and Company was a major retail and mail order company. To get farmers and people in rural communities to buy radio sets from its catalogs, Sears initially bought time on radio stations. It later decided to establish its own station. Just before
744-504: A few months later to follow for the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. show. In 1972, John Records Landecker joined WLS, remaining with the station until 1981. Landecker returned to WLS in 1986, and remained with the station until its format was changed in 1989. Tommy Edwards joined the station as production director in 1972, becoming program director one year later, and later becoming a mid-day DJ. Bob Sirott joined WLS in June 1973, remaining with
868-499: A host of staff announcers. In 1947, Hugh Downs ( Today Show and 20/20 ), Garry Moore ( I've Got A Secret ) and Durward Kirby ( The Garry Moore Show ) were on the WMAQ staff, as was Mike Wallace , later of 60 Minutes fame. Dave Garroway (1913–1982) also arrived on the NBC airwaves via WMAQ with his 1160 Club playing big band and jazz music in the 1940s. Garroway
992-481: A local show called Smackout and later would move on to form Fibber McGee and Molly . The program was produced at WMAQ from 1935 to 1939, when the show moved to California. During its first months on the air, Fibber McGee and Molly was distributed over NBC's Blue Network , which meant that in Chicago the program was produced at WMAQ but heard over WLS , one of three NBC Blue Network affiliates in Chicago at
1116-443: A microphone by assisting with tuition for college broadcasting courses and holding workshops at the station where those with stars in their eyes were given the chance to display their skills in a "real world" setting. Herb Kent , a Chicago radio pioneer, first came to work in the mailroom at WMAQ as a young high school graduate in the late 1940s. He credits WMAQ and Hugh Downs, who was then a WMAQ staff announcer, with providing him with
1240-552: A more detailed treatment of this and the above frequency ranges, see Electromagnetic spectrum . Gravitational waves are also described in Hertz. Current observations are conducted in the 30–7000 Hz range by laser interferometers like LIGO , and the nanohertz (1–1000 nHz) range by pulsar timing arrays . Future space-based detectors are planned to fill in the gap, with LISA operating from 0.1–10 mHz (with some sensitivity from 10 μHz to 100 mHz), and DECIGO in
1364-517: A one-time move to WSCR in the event that the White Sox left the station. The move was officially announced on November 11, 2015. The Cubs' first year on WSCR paid immediate dividends, as the team won the 2016 World Series , its first world championship in 108 years, and the first since the birth of radio and modern communications. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom (the forerunner of present-day Audacy). The merger
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#17327758802941488-537: A part of his radio show in late 1936. By May 1937, Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy had their own show on the NBC Red Network . Radio from the Merchandise Mart centered around the many studios on the 19th floor. Only one studio, Studio F, was on the 20th. Like its Radio City Rockefeller Center counterpart, there were NBC pages ( Bob Sirott was one of them in the late 1960s) and
1612-671: A partner in the station, co-owned with the Daily News . In May of the next year, NBC moved the station from the Daily News Building to the Merchandise Mart , where it had newly built a broadcasting center in 1930. WMAQ remained there until a 1989 move to the NBC Tower . WMAQ became a member of the NBC Red Network , later known as the NBC Radio Network, and remained affiliated with NBC well into
1736-622: A pioneering program in which the school district provided elementary school students with distance education amid a polio outbreak-related school closure. Starting in the 1930s, WLS was an affiliate of the Blue Network of the National Broadcasting Company ( NBC ), and as such aired the popular Fibber McGee and Molly and Lum and Abner comedy programs (both produced at the studios of Chicago's NBC-owned stations, WENR and WMAQ) during their early years. When
1860-504: A record by The Beatles (" Please Please Me ") was on Dick Biondi's show on February 8, 1963. WLS was voted by broadcasters nationally as "Radio Station of the Year" in 1967, 1968 and 1969. John Rook was named "Program Director of the Year" in 1968 and 1969 as WLS was estimated attracting 4.2 million listeners weekly by Pulse research. WLS also produced the weekly Silver Dollar Survey from October 14, 1960, to December 22, 1967, broken by
1984-474: A single HD Radio channel using the in-band on-channel standard, simulcasts over the second digital subchannel of WBMX , and streams online via Audacy . Historically, this station carried the call letters WMAQ from October 1922 to August 2000. As the oldest surviving broadcast outlet in Chicago, it was co-founded and operated by the Chicago Daily News and became a charter affiliate of
2108-470: A station. Strong replied "neither do I, but come down and we'll find out". Waller was hired in February 1922. She went on to have a long and distinguished career in broadcasting. There are questions as to whether anyone actually heard the station's initial half-hour broadcast, as technical problems forced WGU to shut down the following day. It remained off the air while a new transmitter was ordered. One of
2232-470: A third Blue Network/ABC affiliate in Chicago, WCFL . Blue/ABC network broadcasts of addresses by labor leaders were also shifted away from WLS and WENR to WCFL, which was owned at the time by the Chicago Federation of Labor . In 1931, the station's power was increased from 5,000 watts to 50,000 watts, and the station began sharing the transmitter of WENR near Downers Grove, Illinois . In 1938,
2356-465: A tower in storage in one of its New Jersey facilities that was used as part of its 1939 New York World's Fair exhibit. The tower, which originally came from NBC-owned WTAM in Cleveland , was shipped to Chicago and became the acting main antenna. It remains standing today at Bloomingdale site. The station launched a new main antenna tower at Bloomingdale in 1951, which was considered to be one of
2480-696: Is a commercial sports radio station licensed to serve Chicago, Illinois , and the Chicago metropolitan area . Owned by Audacy, Inc. , WSCR is a clear-channel station with extended nighttime range in most of the Central United States and part of the Eastern United States. WSCR is the Chicago affiliate for the BetQL Network , Infinity Sports Network , the Fighting Illini Sports Network and
2604-501: Is a Cumulus subsidiary.) This lasted until August 30, 2020, when Westwood One shuttered its news service, and as of August 31, 2020, the station is once again affiliated with ABC News Radio. In January 2017, WLS and WLS-FM moved from its 190 N. State Street studios to its new studios in NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in Streeterville . In addition, the station became the new affiliate of NBC News Radio . On January 2, 2017,
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#17327758802942728-499: Is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base units is s , meaning that one hertz is one per second or the reciprocal of one second . It is used only in the case of periodic events. It is named after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857–1894), the first person to provide conclusive proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves . For high frequencies, the unit is commonly expressed in multiples : kilohertz (kHz), megahertz (MHz), gigahertz (GHz), terahertz (THz). Some of
2852-454: Is in morning drive time . And Brett Gogoel hosts an hour on the markets and an hour on local news topics in late afternoons. The rest of the weekday schedule is nationally syndicated conservative talk shows from co-owned Westwood One : The Chris Plante Show , The Dan Bongino Show , The Ben Shapiro Show , The Mark Levin Show , The Michael Knowles Show , Red Eye Radio and America in
2976-855: Is located on the southwestern edge of Tinley Park, Illinois in Will County. WLS is a Class A station broadcasting on the clear-channel frequency of 890 kHz with 50,000 watts, using a non-directional antenna fed by a Nautel NX-50 transmitter , with a Harris DX-50 serving as a backup transmitter. Both transmitters run in MDCL (Modulation Dependent Carrier Level) mode to improve efficiency. The station's daytime groundwave service contour covers portions of five states. At night, its signal routinely reaches 38 states via skywave . WLS participates as an Emergency Alert System primary entry point, serving northern Illinois and western Indiana . Weekdays on WLS, two local talk show hosts are heard: Steve Cochran
3100-477: Is the photon's energy, ν is its frequency, and h is the Planck constant . The hertz is defined as one per second for periodic events. The International Committee for Weights and Measures defined the second as "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium -133 atom" and then adds: "It follows that
3224-452: Is usually measured in kilohertz (kHz), megahertz (MHz), or gigahertz (GHz). with the latter known as microwaves . Light is electromagnetic radiation that is even higher in frequency, and has frequencies in the range of tens of terahertz (THz, infrared ) to a few petahertz (PHz, ultraviolet ), with the visible spectrum being 400–790 THz. Electromagnetic radiation with frequencies in the low terahertz range (intermediate between those of
3348-530: Is where WMAQ relocated its transmitter. WMAQ's new daytime signal provided secondary coverage to most of Illinois, including Peoria and Springfield . It also provided a strong signal to much of southern Wisconsin (with Milwaukee getting a city-grade signal) and almost half of Indiana . At night, it reached most of the eastern three-fourths of North America. WMAQ carried original local and network programming. Marian and Jim Jordan started at WLS in 1927 with The Smith Family . They came to WMAQ, doing
3472-742: The Prairie Farmer magazine in 1928. The station moved to the Prairie Farmer Building on West Washington in Chicago, where it remained for 32 years. For a few months after ABC's 1960 purchase of it and the format change, the "bright new sound" that began in May 1960 was broadcast from the Prairie Farmer Building. WLS didn't make the move to downtown Michigan Avenue's Stone Container Building , located at 360 North Michigan Avenue, until October of that year. Thirty years later, it would move once more, to 190 North State in downtown Chicago. It
3596-628: The CBS Radio Network upon their 1927 launch. Purchased by the National Broadcasting Company in 1931, WMAQ was a key station in the NBC Radio Network for nearly six decades, and later started affiliates WMAQ-TV (channel 5) and WMAQ-FM (101.1 FM) . A sale to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1988 resulted in WMAQ becoming an all-news radio station throughout the 1990s. Since 2000, the station has been
3720-676: The Federal Communications Commission forced NBC to sell the Blue Network, WLS maintained its affiliation with the network under its new identity, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Under this affiliation, some programs from the network that were not commercially sponsored or which were scheduled to cross the time that WLS and WENR shifted its use of the same frequency (such as baseball or football games) were transferred to air on
3844-690: The Harmony Team in the late 1920s. The popular contralto singer also played "Aunt May" on the Children's Hour show. The station shared time on the frequency with WCBD until the November 11, 1928 implementation of the Federal Radio Commission 's General Order 40 , at which point WLS began sharing time as a "clear channel" station with WENR . Sears opened the station in 1924 as a service to farmers and subsequently sold it to
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3968-601: The NFL on Westwood One Sports ; the flagship station for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bulls radio networks; and the home of radio personalities David Haugh and Matt Spiegel . The WSCR studios are located at Two Prudential Plaza in the Chicago Loop , while the station transmitter is in suburban Bloomingdale , diplexed with co-owned WBBM . Besides its main analog transmission , WSCR transmits continuously over
4092-569: The call sign an abbreviation for Sears' "World's Largest Store" slogan—WLS spent its early years as the radio outlet of the Prairie Farmer magazine. From 1928 until 1954, WLS shared their assigned frequency and overall broadcast operations with Blue Network -owned WENR until the Blue Network's successor, the American Broadcasting Company , merged WENR into WLS and eventually purchased it outright. The station's contemporary hit radio era from 1960 until 1989 saw WLS at
4216-449: The 0.1–10 Hz range. In computers, most central processing units (CPU) are labeled in terms of their clock rate expressed in megahertz ( MHz ) or gigahertz ( GHz ). This specification refers to the frequency of the CPU's master clock signal . This signal is nominally a square wave , which is an electrical voltage that switches between low and high logic levels at regular intervals. As
4340-400: The 1924 Republican and Democratic conventions by this same arrangement. By 1924, the station took an active interest in broadcasting sporting events, airing the 1924 World Series and convincing William Wrigley to carry all Chicago Cubs home games from Wrigley Field in 1925, the first time one station aired an entire season of Cubs games. Hal Totten , a Daily News sportswriter,
4464-468: The 1970s. In some usage, the "per second" was omitted, so that "megacycles" (Mc) was used as an abbreviation of "megacycles per second" (that is, megahertz (MHz)). Sound is a traveling longitudinal wave , which is an oscillation of pressure . Humans perceive the frequency of a sound as its pitch . Each musical note corresponds to a particular frequency. An infant's ear is able to perceive frequencies ranging from 20 Hz to 20 000 Hz ;
4588-419: The 1980s, WLS continued as a mainstream Top 40 formatted station. However, beginning in 1985, the station would begin to undergo major changes. In January 1985, the station began airing Sex Talk on Sunday nights, hosted by Phyllis Levy, a sex therapist. By 1987, WLS was airing adult contemporary music, liberally laced with oldies and standards , with talk programming at night. During the 1980s, Les Grobstein
4712-578: The 1990s, even after the station was sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting. On September 15, 1935, WMAQ once again changed transmitter sites. It relocated to Bloomingdale , with its power increasing from 5,000 watts to the maximum 50,000 watts. Clear channels were reassigned in 1934, with Illinois losing a frequency and Pennsylvania gaining it. Preserving its clear channel frequency for KYW meant Westinghouse needed to move it out of Chicago. So Westinghouse moved KYW east to Philadelphia in late 1934, leaving an unneeded transmitter building and site behind, which
4836-554: The 19th floor. WMAQ Radio moved to these smaller studios. Though the NBC Blue Network was sold to American Broadcasting System in 1943, it continued leasing Merchandise Mart space from NBC until its move to the Civic Opera House in 1952. This freed up more space for WMAQ. The station was a leader in the use of helicopters for traffic reports. In 1948, it used a two-man crew in the air to report traffic on
4960-433: The 2016-17 NBA season. Due to Cumulus's January 2018 Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the carriage rights were terminated in the filing. The Bulls moved to WSCR , taking effect immediately at the start of February, while the White Sox shifted to WGN several weeks later. In the 2015–16 season, WLS carried Notre Dame Fighting Irish college football and basketball games. In 2016, Notre Dame moved to WMVP . In 2023, WLS became
5084-580: The Hot 100. The station's jingles were sung by the Anita Kerr Singers . Ralph Beaudin was the station's president and general manager, and oversaw the station's transformation into a Top 40 station. Sam Holman was the station's program director and an afternoon DJ. Beaudin and Holman were both brought in from KQV in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania. Ed Grennan, an announcer on the station since 1959,
WLS (AM) - Misplaced Pages Continue
5208-600: The July 4 weekend. The traffic team covered the Chicago area by air, landing to phone in their reports, which were put on the air. In 1949, the station suffered what could have been a crippling blow. Its main antenna at the Bloomingdale transmitter site collapsed. WMAQ was able to stay on the air, but not at its normal 50,000–watt power. While the main antenna was out of service, NBC found a solution with some history to it to get WMAQ back broadcasting at full power. RCA had
5332-468: The Morning . Weekends feature shows on money, health, real estate, technology, travel and cars. Syndicated weekend programs include The Kim Komando Show and The Larry Kudlow Show , as well as repeats of weekday shows. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming . Most hours on nights and weekends begin with an update from ABC News Radio . Founded in 1924 by Sears, Roebuck and Company —with
5456-591: The Musicradio era. The broadcasts re-aired on Independence Day 2007, and there was a new Rewind in 2008. ABC-owned radio stations which were not affiliated with ESPN Radio or Radio Disney , including WLS, were sold to Citadel Broadcasting on June 12, 2007, with Citadel licensing the name ABC Radio for 2 years after the sale. Citadel was acquired by Cumulus Media on September 16, 2011. Cumulus Media terminated its affiliation with overnight radio program Coast to Coast AM on many of its stations, including WLS. In
5580-487: The Q from WMAQ's call sign. That same year, WMAQ also signed on an FM station at 101.1. WMAQ-FM (today WKQX ) largely simulcast AM 670 for its first two decades on the air. It broadcast with 24,000 watts with its transmitter atop the Civic Opera Building on North Wacker Drive. The popularity of the radio soap operas which began in Chicago made it necessary for NBC to construct six more radio studios on
5704-558: The Silver Beatle Survey on February 21, 1964, and the Super Summer Survey from May 5, 1967, to August 25, 1967. The survey nominally contained 40 current song listings, except for occasional weeks when it contained fewer current listings, usually 20, plus a special listing of some of the greatest oldies. From September 18, 1964, through December 25, 1964, the survey consisted of the top 30 pop hits, followed by
5828-601: The air in Chicago alone. Most of these smaller radio stations faded out because of money issues. The Chicago stations that are or had been on the dial for many years usually had a store, newspaper or organization behind them which was willing and able to weather the early times when many radio stations did not make a profit. WMAQ had the financial backing of the Chicago Daily News and a very capable general manager in Judith Waller. Waller remained in charge of
5952-476: The average adult human can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 16 000 Hz . The range of ultrasound , infrasound and other physical vibrations such as molecular and atomic vibrations extends from a few femtohertz into the terahertz range and beyond. Electromagnetic radiation is often described by its frequency—the number of oscillations of the perpendicular electric and magnetic fields per second—expressed in hertz. Radio frequency radiation
6076-462: The broadcast. The station distributed 200 receivers in the city and suburbs. Those at the dealerships saw and heard Bill Hay, the announcer for Amos 'n' Andy , present a variety show, broadcast from the Daily News Building. The man behind this and other early Chicago television broadcasts was Ulises Armand Sanabria , who 2 years before used the WCFL Navy Pier transmitter to provide
6200-483: The country adding the song and making the track Styx' first national Top 40 hit. During the 1970s WLS ran a Sunday night music interview program called "Musicpeople". In 1984, Steve Dahl and Garry Meier 's program was moved to WLS from WLS-FM, over the objections of the duo, who attempted to have their contract declared invalid. Nevertheless, Dahl and Meier drew higher ratings on WLS than they had on WLS-FM. Dahl and Meier left WLS in 1986, returning to WLUP. Well into
6324-424: The duo as part of their WMAQ contract. Because WGN owned the rights to the characters Sam and Henry, Gosden and Correll made some revisions to their act and renamed the characters for their new program Amos and Andy. Since WMAQ was affiliated with CBS at the time, Waller tried to convince the network to make Amos 'n' Andy a network program, but there was no interest. NBC brought the program to its Blue Network in
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#17327758802946448-736: The early 1970s, WMAQ aired a format blending music, talk, news and sports, using the on-air name "67-Q". Although the station never shifted completely to Top 40 , by the early 1970s, WMAQ's playlist had become comparable to today's hot adult contemporary format. One of WMAQ's first sports talk programs was Sound off on Sports , with Pat Sheridan (1920–2005). Many of the on-air personalities during this time period were well known to listeners from previous radio stations. Clark Weber , Jim Stagg (1935–2007), Joel Sebastian, Tom Murphy, and Howard Miller all spent some time working at WMAQ and previously at WCFL . A 1975 format change to country music saw WMAQ taking on WJJD . The entire WMAQ air staff
6572-424: The end of Radio 670, WMAQ, Chicago." After the NBC chimes were played one more time and a WMAQ jingle, the era for the station that was "First In Chicago" came to an end. Following the sign-off, WMAQ ran a loop of "Score" promos for six hours before starting a full simulcast of WSCR for a two-week transitional period. As part of this exchange, Infinity changed the WMAQ call sign to WSCR on August 15, 2000; changed
6696-440: The event being counted may be a complete cycle); 100 Hz means "one hundred periodic events occur per second", and so on. The unit may be applied to any periodic event—for example, a clock might be said to tick at 1 Hz , or a human heart might be said to beat at 1.2 Hz . The occurrence rate of aperiodic or stochastic events is expressed in reciprocal second or inverse second (1/s or s ) in general or, in
6820-574: The eyewitness report of the Hindenburg disaster by Herbert Morrison . Morrison and engineer Charles Nehlsen had been sent to New Jersey by WLS to cover the arrival of the Hindenburg for delayed broadcast. Their recordings aired the next day on May 7, 1937, the first time that recordings of a news event were ever broadcast. In the fall of 1937, the station was one of several Chicago radio stations to donate airtime to Chicago Public Schools for
6944-413: The fall of 1929, paying the duo a record $ 100,000 for the right to broadcast the program. By 1930, the Daily News began experimenting with mechanical television broadcasting. A published announcement of March 30, 1930, indicated the equipment would be installed and operable within two months. The video signal was to be sent by the shortwave radio station W9XAP, while the audio would be broadcast on
7068-421: The first time on WMAQ on March 19, 1928. The actors were no strangers to Chicago radio as their program originally aired on WGN as Sam 'n' Henry . Their first appearance on Chicago radio is said to have been on WLS in the late 1920s. Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden broke with WGN over syndication rights. General manager Judith Waller saw the potential of the radio show and granted these rights to
7192-508: The flagship station for Chicago White Sox baseball broadcasts throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. This was the era of the "Good Morning Guys", including Pat Cassidy, Lee Sherwood, Bob Tracy, Jerry Taft , and Tim Weigel . By early 1986, WMAQ had begun phasing out country music in favor of talk programming, with the station completing its transition on November 17, 1986. Hosts on
7316-465: The former WSCR (820 AM) , which launched on January 2, 1992; the second WSCR on the 1160 AM facility debuted on April 17, 1997. All three iterations of WSCR used the same studios at 4949 West Belmont Avenue in Chicago's Cragin neighborhood—shared with WXRT —from 1992 until moving to the NBC Tower in 2001, using the facilities that WMAQ had vacated a year earlier. From 2001 to 2008, the station
7440-449: The hertz has become the primary unit of measurement accepted by the general populace to determine the performance of a CPU, many experts have criticized this approach, which they claim is an easily manipulable benchmark . Some processors use multiple clock cycles to perform a single operation, while others can perform multiple operations in a single cycle. For personal computers, CPU clock speeds have ranged from approximately 1 MHz in
7564-413: The highest normally usable radio frequencies and long-wave infrared light) is often called terahertz radiation . Even higher frequencies exist, such as that of X-rays and gamma rays , which can be measured in exahertz (EHz). For historical reasons, the frequencies of light and higher frequency electromagnetic radiation are more commonly specified in terms of their wavelengths or photon energies : for
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#17327758802947688-735: The home for NASCAR , as the Chicago affiliate station for the Motor Racing Network , airing NASCAR Cup Series races, as well as both of the first NASCAR Chicago Street Races, The Loop 121 Xfinity Race and The Grant Park 220 Cup Race. In 2023, WLS also became the affiliate station for the Chicago Fire MLS team. KHz The hertz (symbol: Hz ) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle ) per second . The hertz
7812-629: The host of a popular weekday children's program on WMAQ-TV . He went on to WGN-TV , where he continued to participate in local children's television. Ned Locke is known best to Chicagoans as "Ringmaster Ned". He assumed that role on the successful and popular Chicago version of Bozo's Circus in 1961. On May 4, 1964, WMAQ switched from a beautiful music format to a MOR -pop standard format, featuring music by artists such as Andy Williams , Nat King Cole , and Jack Jones . The Jack Eigen Show continued to air late nights. A 1964 campaign asking listeners to vote for Elvis Presley or Chubby Checker
7936-616: The hyperfine splitting in the ground state of the caesium 133 atom is exactly 9 192 631 770 hertz , ν hfs Cs = 9 192 631 770 Hz ." The dimension of the unit hertz is 1/time (T ). Expressed in base SI units, the unit is the reciprocal second (1/s). In English, "hertz" is also used as the plural form. As an SI unit, Hz can be prefixed ; commonly used multiples are kHz (kilohertz, 10 Hz ), MHz (megahertz, 10 Hz ), GHz (gigahertz, 10 Hz ) and THz (terahertz, 10 Hz ). One hertz (i.e. one per second) simply means "one periodic event occurs per second" (where
8060-542: The last song was " Just You 'n' Me " by Chicago . WLS then became a talk station, with Sally Jesse Raphael as its first host. In the beginning of the talk format, WLS featured high-rated talk talents from around the country, such as Bob Lassiter from Tampa Bay , Stacy Taylor from San Diego and the station's biggest hit, Rush Limbaugh out of New York. After a few years, however, Lassiter, Taylor and some of their other national hosts were dropped in favor of more local hosts. Jay Marvin also had several stints on WLS, where he
8184-439: The last time with a live sign-off message from nighttime police beat reporter Larry Langford. The traditional NBC chimes were played with a late 50s-mid 60s historic ID that, although inaccurate with the current network association and sister station, was appropriate as it spoke, "This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company. WMAQ and WMAQ-FM , NBC in Chicago." An announcer then said the official last words: "The final broadcast,
8308-459: The late 1970s ( Atari , Commodore , Apple computers ) to up to 6 GHz in IBM Power microprocessors . Various computer buses , such as the front-side bus connecting the CPU and northbridge , also operate at various frequencies in the megahertz range. Higher frequencies than the International System of Units provides prefixes for are believed to occur naturally in the frequencies of
8432-481: The mid-1970s, WLS became conservative about introducing new songs, and many record promoters referred to the station as the "World's Last Station" to add new releases for airplay, usually only after the songs had reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 . However, in 1974, the station started playing the track " Lady " by the Chicago band Styx from an older album of theirs, resulting in other stations around
8556-631: The move to elevate WSCR's revenue performance to that of their New York City sports outlet WFAN , which had become one of the highest-billing radio stations starting in 1995; a company spokesman also noted that WMAQ's annual billing of $ 20 million was "not functioning as a successful station" by comparison. While some WMAQ staffers were retained by Infinity and transferred to WBBM, up to 44 reporters, anchors, editors and writers were dismissed; this included Chet Coppock , who frequently sparred on-air with WSCR staff and incumbent morning host Mike North . On August 1, 2000, after 78 years, WMAQ broadcast for
8680-582: The musicians themselves or sometimes by the WLS audio engineers. An example of these included Reunion 's 1974 song " Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me) ". Reunion changed the song's lyrics from "Life is a rock but the radio rolled me" to "Life is a rock/WLS rolled me". A similar version was made for competitor WCFL . Another "WLS-only" version was a combination of Captain and Tennille 's " Love Will Keep Us Together " and "Por Amor Viviremos", which featured alternating English and Spanish vocals. By
8804-569: The network was live. Stations in large cities had to maintain full-time orchestras on their payrolls. The organ music which was a part of many of the radio "soap operas" was provided by union musicians. When turntables entered studio control rooms, the musicians were replaced by the turntable operator or "record turner". It was the job of the turntable operator (a member of the American Federation of Musicians ), to play any recorded music. The Musician's Union received jurisdiction over
8928-408: The new NBC Tower in 1990 with television station WMAQ-TV despite their being owned by different companies. The studios for both stations had been designed by NBC before the sale. Amid stagnant ratings, WMAQ added more long-form news programming and some assorted call-in shows in 1998 and 1999. Cameron and Langford , hosted by City Hall reporter Bill Cameron and police beat reporter Larry Langford,
9052-426: The new call letters WMAQ, and to improve reception, its power was increased to 500 watts and it was assigned the clear channel frequency of 750 kilocycles . WMAQ's call letters were first broadcast October 2, 1922, with the inaugural show featuring comedian Ed Wynn . The station's longtime motto "We Must Answer Questions", was derived from this call sign. Early 1923 records show there were 20 radio stations on
9176-432: The new company. Viacom merged with CBS in the spring of 2000, which put the combined company over FCC limits on ownership in Chicago. To consummate the deal, Infinity decided to transfer the format, branding and call letters of WSCR (1160 AM) over to WMAQ, and concentrate exclusively on WBBM's all-news format, while the former WSCR was put up for sale. Despite lower ratings for WSCR, Infinity management wanted to use
9300-467: The normal WMAQ radio frequency. WMAQ did not receive an experimental license from the Federal Radio Commission to operate station W9XAP until September 2, 1930. The first broadcast of the station actually occurred shortly before this was granted, on August 27, 1930. Only those with special receivers, primarily radio stores which had gotten them from the Daily News, could see the video portion of
9424-455: The overnight hours were the domain of Holmes "Daddy-O" Daylie (1920–2003), who brought his sense of humor, way with words and musical knowledge to WMAQ as he played cool jazz until dawn. "Daddy-O" was the first African-American hosting a regularly scheduled radio show on a Chicago network owned and operated station . It was WMAQ's Dave Garroway who discovered Daddy-O tending bar in 1947 and suggested he train for work in radio. By 1948, Daddy-O
9548-479: The permanent station was ready, Sears began broadcasts on March 21, 1924, as WBBX with noon programs using the WMAQ studios. Sears broadcast test transmissions from its own studios on April 9, 10 and 11, 1924, using the call sign WES (for "World's Economy Store"). Sears originally operated its station at the company's corporate headquarters on Chicago's West Side, which is also where the company's mail order business
9672-400: The problems with reception of the station was the interference of tall buildings in the area and that it had only about 100 watts of power. The City of Chicago also operated its own radio station with similar call letters, WBU, sharing a frequency with Westinghouse 's KYW , which began in Chicago the year before. In an attempt to avoid confusion with the city's station, WGU was assigned
9796-479: The program, a position he held for most of the next 20 years. After the Chez Paree closed in the spring of 1960, the program became The Jack Eigen Show and the interviews continued from WMAQ's Studio G, where there was room enough for a small audience, and from Chicago's Sherman House Hotel. The hotel's College Inn was another popular local venue for entertainment and entertainers. Beginning in 1956,
9920-481: The publisher of the Daily News , had just finished construction of new building for his newspaper that included studio space for WMAQ. By September 1929, the station had moved to Daily News Building at 400 West Madison (today 2 North Riverside Plaza). In April 1930, WMAQ was organized as a subsidiary corporation with Walter Strong as its chairman of the board, and Judith Waller as vice president and station manager. A new radio show called Amos 'n' Andy aired for
10044-705: The quantum-mechanical vibrations of massive particles, although these are not directly observable and must be inferred through other phenomena. By convention, these are typically not expressed in hertz, but in terms of the equivalent energy, which is proportional to the frequency by the factor of the Planck constant . The CJK Compatibility block in Unicode contains characters for common SI units for frequency. These are intended for compatibility with East Asian character encodings, and not for use in new documents (which would be expected to use Latin letters, e.g. "MHz"). WSCR WSCR (670 AM ) – branded 670 The Score –
10168-440: The rights for his memorial services on August 10, 1923. At the time, it was AT&T's policy to sell the exclusive broadcasting rights for an event to one radio station per city. Shortly before the special event, AT&T would send telegrams to all radio stations, informing them of what event was to take place. The first radio station to respond was then granted the exclusive broadcast rights in that city. WMAQ later broadcast both
10292-564: The rules for capitalisation of a common noun ; i.e., hertz becomes capitalised at the beginning of a sentence and in titles but is otherwise in lower case. The hertz is named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894), who made important scientific contributions to the study of electromagnetism . The name was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 1935. It
10416-413: The specific case of radioactivity , in becquerels . Whereas 1 Hz (one per second) specifically refers to one cycle (or periodic event) per second, 1 Bq (also one per second) specifically refers to one radionuclide event per second on average. Even though frequency, angular velocity , angular frequency and radioactivity all have the dimension T , of these only frequency is expressed using
10540-544: The spring of 2012, it began airing its own Red Eye Radio . Longtime morning show hosts Don and Roma Wade retired in December 2012. They had been off the air since October due to Don Wade's cancer treatments. On September 6, 2013, Don Wade died of a brain tumor. Cumulus radio stations made a break with ABC at the end of 2014, when they no longer carried ABC News Radio . WLS and most Cumulus news/talk stations began running Westwood One News on January 1, 2015. (Westwood One
10664-502: The station added the on-air team of Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano from WGN (AM) ; the former marking his return to WLS for the first time since 1980. However, Sirott and Murciano were cut from the station's lineup, beginning January 1, 2018. On June 23, 2015, WLS announced that the station had picked up broadcasting rights for Chicago White Sox baseball starting with the 2016 season. In addition, WLS had also picked up broadcasting rights for Chicago Bulls basketball, beginning with
10788-563: The station as a DJ, having previously worked at WKBW in Buffalo, New York . Clark Weber joined the station as a DJ, remaining with the station until 1969. In 1963, Ron "Ringo" Riley joined the station as a DJ, having previously worked at WHK in Cleveland , Ohio. Dex Card joined the station in 1964, and hosted the Silver Dollar Survey countdown until 1967, the longest of the show's hosts. In 1967, Larry Lujack joined WLS as
10912-688: The station included Morton Downey Jr. and Chet Coppock . After 57 years, NBC disposed of all of the company's radio stations following RCA 's merger with General Electric , with WMAQ being sold to Group W in 1988. This was Westinghouse's third stint at station ownership in the Chicago market, having founded KYW before relocating that station to Philadelphia in 1934, and later with WIND from 1955 to 1985. At 5 a.m. on March 1, 1988, Group W switched WMAQ to an all-news format, patterned after its successful all-news outlets in New York ( WINS ), Los Angeles ( KFWB ) and Philadelphia ( KYW ). The slogan
11036-478: The station until December 1979. Other DJs on WLS during its top 40 era included Joel Sebastian, Gary Gears, J. J. Jefferies, Jerry Kay, Yvonne Daniels, Brant Miller , Tom Kent , Steve King , Jeff Davis, and Fred Winston. Some of the production directors responsible for the sound of WLS were Ray Van Steen, Hal Widsten, Jim Hampton, Bill Price and Tommy Edwards. In the 1960s, WLS was a major force in introducing new music and recording artists. The first US airplay of
11160-481: The station until it was purchased by NBC . At that point she became the director of public affairs programming for NBC's central division, holding that title until her retirement in 1957. By early 1923, the Daily News was convinced enough in the power of radio to buy out the Fair Store's 51% interest in the station. The Daily News moved the station and its transmitter to the tallest building in Chicago at
11284-495: The station's format to sports radio ; and re-branded the station as "670 The Score". All on- and off-air personnel were concurrently transferred to the new WSCR. In effect, the new WSCR (670 AM) licensed to Chicago became the successor to the previous WSCR (1160 AM) licensed to Chicago—which concurrently changed their call sign to WXRT (AM), then was sold that November to Salem Communications , and now operates as WYLL . The "Score" format, branding and call letters had its origins on
11408-506: The station's transmitter was moved to Tinley Park, Illinois. Changes were made regarding AM frequencies in 1941 as a result of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA); this moved WENR and WLS from 870 to 890 kHz. WENR and WLS shared their common frequency on a time-sharing arrangement until 1954, when ABC (then known as American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres) bought
11532-536: The tallest tower structures in the U.S. at the time. In 1950, The Chez Show originated from the Chez Paree nightclub on North Fairbanks in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. It was one of Chicago's top night spots, as many popular celebrities could be found there, either as performers or as patrons. The original hosts of this weekday late-night interview program were Mike Wallace and his wife, Buff Cobb . In 1951, Jack Eigen (1913–1983) took over as host of
11656-458: The third in the Chicago market to use the WSCR call sign and "Score" branding, adopting a format that originated in 1992 on 820 AM , and was heard on 1160 AM from 1997 to 2000. On April 12, 1922, the station first signed on as WGU. A joint venture between The Fair Department Store and the Chicago Daily News , WGU's first transmitter sat atop the department store. At the time, the station
11780-451: The time. Amos 'n' Andy was also a popular program that continued being broadcast from Chicago until 1938, when the program moved to Hollywood. Both of these shows moved production to the new NBC West Coast Radio City . Edgar Bergen was initially turned down for a radio spot at WMAQ. The station manager felt ventriloquism would not work on radio. That turned out to be a mistake. Bergen received an offer from Rudy Vallee to become
11904-701: The time—the La Salle Hotel on West Washington street in the West Loop. With a new location and new frequency of 670 kilohertz, WMAQ went on the air July 2, 1923. The new frequency however, was not at first clear channel . WMAQ had to share its schedule with another local station, WQJ, which was jointly owned by the Calumet Baking Powder Company and the Rainbo Gardens Ballroom on North Clark Street. Rainbo
12028-491: The tools and encouragement he needed. After getting some announcing experience, Kent returned to WMAQ, this time on the air as a radio actor. In the mid-1940s, the WMAQ Radio live studios in the Merchandise Mart were converted to TV studios for use by a new television station. Channel 5 signed on the air on October 8, 1948. Its call letters were WNBQ. Those letters combined the initials for National Broadcasting, plus
12152-565: The top 10 R&B hits. Thereafter, the survey changed its name numerous times (89 WLS Hit Parade, 89 WLS Chicagoland Hit Parade, WLS Musicradio 89, etc.). Starting with the July 20, 1970, survey, the number of listings dropped from 40 to 30, then varying from 25 to 40 starting June 26, 1972, then dropping to 15 by March 9, 1974, then increasing to a high of 45 by the end of 1975. No "take home" surveys were printed from March 13, 1972, through July 16, 1973 (these were limited to one poster-size weekly survey displayed at record shops). The year-end listing
12276-441: The turntables because it was reasoned that each turntable was responsible for five "live" musicians losing their employment. Not until the late 1960s did the union turntable operator leave the control rooms of NBC Chicago. For those who had aspirations of becoming broadcasters, WMAQ was a good place to get started in the medium, even if the job was not on the air. The station encouraged its young employees with dreams of working at
12400-480: The unit hertz. Thus a disc rotating at 60 revolutions per minute (rpm) is said to have an angular velocity of 2 π rad/s and a frequency of rotation of 1 Hz . The correspondence between a frequency f with the unit hertz and an angular velocity ω with the unit radians per second is The hertz is named after Heinrich Hertz . As with every SI unit named for a person, its symbol starts with an upper case letter (Hz), but when written in full, it follows
12524-403: The unit's most common uses are in the description of periodic waveforms and musical tones , particularly those used in radio - and audio-related applications. It is also used to describe the clock speeds at which computers and other electronics are driven. The units are sometimes also used as a representation of the energy of a photon , via the Planck relation E = hν , where E
12648-492: The video and radio station WIBO for the audio portions of the broadcast. Both the technical limitations and economic climate of the times brought an end to the station's experimental broadcasts in August 1933. It was the beginning of WMAQ-TV , which would not return until after World War II. On November 1, 1931, the Daily News sold WMAQ to the National Broadcasting Company . The arrangement originally began as NBC becoming
12772-589: Was WMAQ's first sportscaster. Beginning in the fall of 1925, college football games from the University of Chicago were also broadcast. WMAQ was the first to carry an intercollegate football game in the United States. WMAQ became a network affiliate of the NBC Red Network in January 1927. In September 1927, it severed its ties with NBC and joined the new Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as
12896-406: Was added as well. But quietly, with no warning, on August 23, 1989, at 7 pm, WLS stopped playing music altogether. Phil Duncan was the last DJ to play music on WLS, and as Duncan finished up his show, a voice in the back of the studio (that of then-WYTZ DJ Steven Craig) was heard saying "Goodnight!" (Craig unknowingly (and unofficially) became the last live voice on Musicradio WLS.) Appropriately,
13020-490: Was adopted by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) ( Conférence générale des poids et mesures ) in 1960, replacing the previous name for the unit, "cycles per second" (cps), along with its related multiples, primarily "kilocycles per second" (kc/s) and "megacycles per second" (Mc/s), and occasionally "kilomegacycles per second" (kMc/s). The term "cycles per second" was largely replaced by "hertz" by
13144-636: Was also responsible for organizing a series of local jazz concerts and establishing a Chicago lounge "Jazz Circuit" in 1947 which revived interest in the music genre. In 1948 and 1949, Garroway was voted the nation's top Disk Jockey by his peers in Billboard's annual poll. Garroway would eventually host a number of television shows including the Today Show . In the 1940s, radio stations like WMAQ began playing recorded music during some hours. For many years due to union constraints, all music broadcast on
13268-458: Was broadcasting on 833 kilocycles with a transmitter power of about 100 watts. Just weeks before its inaugural broadcast Walter A. Strong , then business manager of the Daily News , realized the station would need a manager. Strong knew a young woman with some ad agency experience named Judith C. Waller . He called her and said, "I've just bought a radio station; come down and run it." Waller protested that she did not know anything about running
13392-600: Was cancelled in April 1999, but briefly returned in June 2000. An early harbinger of the future sports format was the evening WMAQ Sports Huddle , which premiered in 1993 and competed with all-sports WSCR and WMVP , as well as WGN's Sports Central program. Westinghouse merged with CBS in 1995, making WMAQ a sister station to its all-news rival, WBBM; the merger also paired former all-news rival stations in New York and Los Angeles. CBS' radio stations were spun off into Infinity Broadcasting in 1998; CBS retained an 80% stake in
13516-579: Was described as an "eleventh hour decision", ABC canceled the planned format change due to convincing from local management. Throughout the 1990s, ratings began to grow, with the station occasionally ranked in the Top 10. On Memorial Day, 2007, WLS took a cue from sister station WABC and ran a special day of musical programming, "The Big 89 Rewind", featuring live visits from Larry Lujack, Tommy Edwards, Fred Winston, Chris Shebel, Jeff Davis, John Records Landecker, Tom Kent, and other DJs, sounders, and airchecks from
13640-498: Was hired as the first and only full-time Sports Director of WLS and broke the story of Cubs manager Lee Elia 's famous tirade on April 29, 1983, after a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers , which included 54 profanities. In June 1989, WLS announced it was going all-talk by the end of the summer. Rumors were that the change was to happen September 1. Air personalities were becoming more talk-intensive anyway and midday talk
13764-562: Was hired as the news director, following a stint at WIOD in Miami. Other news directors included Bonnie Buck (daughter of sports broadcaster Jack Buck ) and Krauser, who took the same position at rival WBBM after Viacom shuttered WMAQ and fired the staff. WMAQ was among the first Chicago AM stations to transmit using the Motorola C-QUAM AM stereo standard, even though its format was all-news, not music. The station moved to
13888-503: Was just a publicity stunt, but it was enough to start rumors in the broadcasting and record industries that the station was moving to a Top 40 format. On August 31, 1964, Channel 5 changed its call letters to WMAQ-TV to match WMAQ radio, as the stations emphasized their common NBC ownership. When Floyd Brown joined the staff in 1965, his photo wound up on the cover of the RCA Employee magazine next to one of Bill Cosby , who
14012-471: Was located. On April 12, 1924, the station commenced officially, using the call letters WLS (for "World's Largest Store"), and broadcasting from its new studios in the Sherman House Hotel in downtown Chicago. The station's transmitter was originally located outside Crete, Illinois . On April 19, the station aired its first National Barn Dance . Harriet Lee was a WLS staff singer as part of
14136-450: Was on the air on Chicago's WAIT . When Garroway discovered Daylie, he was the host of the 1160 Club overnight on WMAQ, also playing jazz. Other performers who would go on to make their mark on local broadcasting got their "break" at WMAQ too. One of them was Ned Locke (1919–1992), who hosted a Saturday children's radio show, Uncle Ned's Flying Squadron , on the station in 1950. His radio work led to his being asked to substitute for
14260-437: Was one of the country's top ballrooms and Calumet's broadcasts brought the company much publicity for its products. The Daily News was not able to buy out WQJ until 1927 to make the 670 frequency exclusively available for WMAQ. Within four weeks after its move, WMAQ obtained the exclusive Chicago rights from American Telephone & Telegraph to broadcast President Warren Harding 's address from San Francisco. It also had
14384-626: Was one of the few liberal voices on its political talk shows, which had mostly conservative viewpoints. The station served as the "flagship" broadcast outlet for the Sunday night, national political talk show, Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont . By 1992, WLS had such low ratings that ABC's national management was planning on flipping the station to a satellite-fed country format (management went so far as to distribute an all-staff memo and hosts being told they were about to be let go). However, in what
14508-458: Was renamed CBS Radio on December 14, 2005. In 2010, WSCR's studios were moved to Two Prudential Plaza , home to several other CBS Radio stations. The Chicago Cubs made WSCR the flagship of their radio network following the White Sox' departure to WLS. When the Cubs left WGN for CBS Radio following the 2014 season, the Cubs were heard on WBBM 780 AM. A clause in the Cubs' deal with CBS allowed
14632-513: Was replaced. Jim Hill (1929–2005), long-time staff announcer and radio host, moved into the WMAQ-TV announcer's booth where he remained until retiring. The first song played under the new format was " Your Cheatin' Heart " by Hank Williams, Sr. The station's fortunes were helped in no small part by the "WMAQ Is Gonna Make Me Rich!" cash giveaway promotion. The giveaway was eventually used on other NBC-owned radio outlets. WMAQ also served as
14756-826: Was retained as a DJ under the new format. Star disc jockey Dick Biondi , a 1998 inductee into the National Radio Hall of Fame , was brought in from WEBR in Buffalo, New York . Biondi remained on the station until 1963. Other DJs who were brought in for the station's new format included Bob Hale from WIRL in Peoria, Illinois , Gene Taylor from WOKY in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , Mort Crowley from WADO in New York City, and Jim Dunbar from WDSU in New Orleans , Louisiana. In October 1960, Art Roberts joined
14880-400: Was starring in I Spy on NBC-TV . Floyd was the first African American hired as a network announcer. A radio veteran, having been involved at the start of Gordon McLendon 's WYNR , his smooth voice, his upbeat personality, and his ability to discuss everything from Big Bands to Beatles to Chicago Bears, informed and entertained WMAQ listeners when he became a regular program host. During
15004-404: Was the 20 greatest hits of the year for each year from 1963 through 1966, increased to 89 from 1967 onward. Like many AM radio stations of the seventies, WLS edited many of the songs they played into a more "radio-friendly" or "radio edit" (a term still used today) format, usually 3–4 minutes in length. Other special editions of some Top 40 songs exclusively made for their broadcasting were done by
15128-595: Was the flagship for Chicago Blackhawks hockey, until their move to WGN . WSCR was also the radio home for the Chicago White Sox baseball team from 2006 to 2015, until their departure to WLS at the conclusion of the 2015 season. Viacom, which had acquired the shares in Infinity Broadcasting it did not already own on February 21, 2001, split into two companies at the end of 2005; Infinity became part of CBS Corporation , and in preparation
15252-631: Was the same as those other stations: "You Give Us 22 Minutes, We'll Give You The World". Long-time WMAQ morning news anchor Pat Cassidy (later with WBBM ) was on the air when the switch was made to all-news. The news staff included two veteran WMAQ reporters, Bill Cameron and Bob Roberts, holdover anchor Nancy Benson, Jay Congdon, Christopher Michael, Lisa Meyer, Larry Langford (son of the late Chicago Ald. Anna Langford ), Dave Berner, Mike Doyle, Jim Gudas, Cisco Cotto , John Dempsey, Chris Robling, Mike Krauser, Corrie Wynns and crime reporter Doug Cummings. Chicago news veteran Jim Frank (formerly of WCFL and WIND)
15376-531: Was the scene of the National Barn Dance , which featured Gene Autry , Pat Buttram , and George Gobel , and which was second only to the Grand Ole Opry (itself a local National Barn Dance spinoff) in presenting country music and humor. The station also experimented successfully in many forms of news broadcasting, including weather and crop reports. Its most famous news broadcast was
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