Do you remember?

This year, WHK celebrates 85 years of broadcasting in Cleveland. The picture features Warren C. Cox, at the WHK transmitter control console atop the Stuyvesant Building in March 1922. Cox was the founder of 8ACS, which would later become WHK-AM.

In 1922, barely two weeks after President Warren G. Harding brought the first radio into the White House, Warren C. Cox was granted a commercial broadcasting license by the Commerce Department. In 1926, WHK received the first radio license from the federal government, signed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. In 1929, WHK produced a daily program providing instruction in arithmetic, one of the first forays into public education on radio.

Today, WHK is licensed to Salem Communications.

That was then

Broadcast Engineering magazine published a field report in its April 1987 issue about the Media Touch 2005 control system. The system offered automated or live-assist features to a radio station. It provided a control network that allowed control via a touch-sensitive color CRT screen. The touch screen provided the announcer with easy control of audio sources using a RS-232 databus. The unit was capable of linking with billing and traffic computers, providing integrated accounting and control. Features included a standard 32×6 audio input/output configuration; total harmonic distortion plus noise of 0.008 percent at +8dBm; and hum and noise of -88dBm at +8dBm.

Sample and Hold

Source: University of Southern California Media Lab, How to Make Music Radio Appealing to the Next Generation, 2006.