KDKA Tidbits
October 31, 2020KDKA Radio celebrates their 100th anniversary on Monday. For several months, they’ve featured a website special called The 100 Years Podcast. It features many of the people who have made the station what it is over the last 50 years or so – Jack Bogut, Greg Jenna, Barbara Boylan, and even re-airs of past anniversary shows. They are available on demand.
I assume there will be plenty of mention on the air Monday – especially after 100.1 starts carrying the KDKA programming at 5:00 a.m. Now, remember 100.1 is not actually “KDKA-FM” – that’s 93.7. But originally that was 92.9 FM which, before going easy listening in the 1970s, carried some of the AM as a simulcast. 100.1 will not serve much beyond Allegheny County and cannot be upgraded in power by much. It is an “FX” or an “FM Translator”. Now the heritage station joins many of its local counterparts who have translators merely to have a presence on FM with the hopes of attracting some of the audience who have all but abandoned AM radio.
Meanwhile former congressman and KDKA-TV anchor/reporter (back when the radio and TV stations were sisters) Ron Klink and Duquesne University President Ken Gormley will be hosting a re-enactment of the first broadcast of KDKA Monday evening at 7:00. The pandemic has changed the plans for this, of course. But you can find the event on YouTube. It will run until 11:00 p.m. Mayor Bill Peduto and David Conrad will be appearing on the program too. Conrad is the grandson of the late Frank Conrad whose curiosity with watch accuracy eventually led him to acquiring the amateur license 8XK – the forerunner to KDKA. However it was Westinghouse’s 8ZZ that carried that election night broadcast on November 2, 1920. The event is in conjunction with the National Museum of Broadcasting – a long-time local venture dedicated to preserving the industry’s history.
I hate to be a party pooper, but KD is not the first to celebrate 100 this year as others, including Detroit’s WWJ, apparently made it to air first. And we could spend the next 100 years arguing over who really was first, but it really seems pointless since no one will ever agree.
They’ve done this in Cleveland too, 50 kw WTAM 1100 has a translator covering the city areas. I thought it was strange to care about a tiny FM when you’re so big, but some of the change seems to be driven by phones, you may have AM in your car, but if you’re listening to the Indians game, you can continue listening on your phone’s FM tuner.
So far, their sound on FM sounds like their AM quality, but at least KDKA AM as a whole has sounded better this year.
Congratulations on the hundred years. There was widely heard broadcasting before 1920, but Pittsburgh gets recognition for kicking off broadcasting. Radio World has some good articles about the technical side that you don’t often hear, like how they set up a flat top aerial between a smokestack and a tower on a building hundreds of feet high, then ran a vertical wire to a counterpoise still high in the air, a method that would probably still be seen as good engineering even today.