page_title: KYW (AM)
section_title: Origin in Chicago (1921)
hierarchical_section_title: KYW (AM) / History / Origin in Chicago (1921)
caption_attribution_description: English: Original caption: "SHE SINGS 100,000 CHILDREN TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT Have you listened to sweet lullabies that come floating over the radio? If not, you are missing something. Almost every night she sends out her lullaby music over The Westinghouse Electric Company's radio at Chicago. Photo shows Miss Forster singing for her audience of a hundred thousand."
context_page_description: KYW is a commercial AM radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest radio stations in America, having spent time in Chicago and Cleveland. KYW's unusual history includes its call sign of only three letters, beginning with a K, rare for a station in the east. It broadcasts an all-news radio format and is branded as "KYW Newsradio 1060". KYW is owned by Bala Cynwyd-based Entercom. Its studios are located in Center City, Philadelphia. The transmitter and two-tower directional antenna array are located in Lafayette Hill.
  KYW is a 50,000–watt Class A clear channel station. With a good radio, its nighttime signal can be heard in much of the Eastern United States and Eastern Canada. But it restricts its signal to the southwest to protect XEEP in Mexico City, which shares Class A status on AM 1060. It is also restricted to the northeast to protect WEPN in New York City, another 50,000–watt station, only one dial position away at AM 1050. The station's programming is also available via a simulcast on the HD2 subchannel of sister station WIP-FM 94.1.
context_section_description: In November 1920, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company established its first broadcasting station, KDKA, located at its plant in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to promote the sales of it radio receivers. This initial station proved successful, so in 1921 the company developed plans to set up additional stations in major population centers, including WJZ in Newark, New Jersey (now WABC in New York City), and WBZ, originally in Springfield, Massachusetts, and now in Boston. It also wanted to start a station in Chicago.
  The Westinghouse station was first licensed on November 15, 1921, as Chicago's first broadcasting outlet, with the randomly assigned call letters of KYW.  At first, it was jointly operated by Westinghouse and Commonwealth Edison, with Westinghouse later taking over as sole operator. Through the financial support of Samuel Insull, and the cooperation of Mary Garden, director general of the Chicago Opera Company, KYW's initial broadcasts consisted of the opera company's entire six-day-a-week winter season schedule. Ten microphones were installed across the Chicago Civic Auditorium stage, with equipment for switching between them as needed. After the close of the opera season, KYW installed a studio in the Commonwealth Edison building, and began producing additional programming. By fall of 1922 the station was operating for twelve hours a day.
  In 1927, Westinghouse affiliated its four radio stations (KYW, KDKA in Pittsburgh, WBZ in Springfield and WBZA in Boston) with the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) Blue Network, originating from WJZ in New York City, which had been transferred from Westinghouse to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1923. Westinghouse had been a founding partner of RCA, NBC's original parent company.
  In 1923, Westinghouse established a station, KFKX in Hastings, Nebraska, located near the center of the country. The station was designed to serve a dual purpose, of providing an agricultural service, and for testing the practicality of using shortwave transmitters to link together radio networks, with KFKX receiving much of its programming by shortwave from KDKA in Pittsburgh. In 1928 the project was abandoned, although it was announced that the KFKX programming was being consolidated with KYW. Westinghouse now controlled two stations in addition to KYW in the Chicago area: KFKX and WEBH. On September 1, 1928 the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) ordered that their operations should be consolidated. WEBH was deleted, and the other two stations were merged, with a dual call letter assignment of KYW-KFKX, although the latter call sign would be rarely if ever used.
  In 1929, KYW's transmitter was moved from the top of Chicago's Congress Hotel to west suburban Bloomingdale Township.
  On May 15, 1933, after the FRC requested that stations using only one of their assigned call letters drop those that were no longer in regular use, KFKX was eliminated and the station reverted to just KYW.
caption: "Miss Forster singing [a lullaby] for her audience of a hundred thousand" from Chicago (1922)[3]
exif: {}