WLS (AM)

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 has its radio studios in the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighborhood. Its non-directional broadcast tower 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 Nautel NX-50 transmitter. A Harris DX-50 serves 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 in the Emergency Alert System's primary entry point network, serving that function for northern Illinois and western Indiana. The station's programming is also available to listeners in the Chicago metropolitan area with an HD Radio receiver via a simulcast on the HD2 digital subchannel of sister station WLS-FM.

History

Founded in 1924 by Sears, Roebuck and Company—with the call sign an abbreviation for Sears' "World 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 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.

Sears ownership

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 bought time on radio stations, and then decided to form its own station. Just before the permanent station was ready, Sears began broadcasts on March 21, 1924, as WBBX with noon programs using the WMAQ studios. WLS was one of the original 50,000-watt Class I-A clear-channel stations which did not share its original frequency of 870 kHz with any other station during nighttime hours, when AM radio signals can travel long distances via skywave.

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 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 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 November 11, 1928, at which point it began sharing time with WENR.

Prairie Farmer ownership

Sears opened the station in 1924 as a service to farmers and subsequently sold it to 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 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 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 a pioneering program in which the school district provided elementary school students with distance education amid a polio outbreak-related school closure.

Blue Network

Starting in the 1930s, WLS was an affiliate of the Blue Network of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC),
Broadcasting 1935 Yearbook
', Broadcasting. 1935. p. 29. Retrieved August 20, 2018. 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 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).
Broadcasting 1946 Yearbook
', Broadcasting. 1946. p. 98. Retrieved August 25, 2018. 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 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, the station's transmitter was moved to Tinley Park, Illinois.

WENR

WENR has its origins in a 10-watt station started in late 1924 by E. N. Rauland, whose company manufactured the All-American brand of radios. On March 19, 1925, he received his license for WENR broadcasting 100 watts at 1130 kHz.
Radio Progress
'. August 15, 1925. p. 40. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
Radio Age
'. August 1925. p. 100. Retrieved August 24, 2018. By fall 1925, WENR was using a 1,000-watt transmitter designed by Rauland himself.
Citizen's Radio Callbook: A Complete Radio Cyclopedia
'. Vol. 6. No. 2. Fall 1925. p. 16-18. Retrieved August 24, 2018. The station shared time on the frequency with WBCN, owned at that time by the ''Southtown Economist'' newspaper. By 1927, the two stations had changed frequencies to 1040 kHz.

By 1927, Chicago investor Samuel Insull had purchased both stations, through his company Great Lakes Broadcasting. On September 1, 1928, WBCN was discontinued, and WENR began full-time operations on the frequency.Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce.
Commission on Communications
'. United States Government Print Office. May 8, 1929. p. 126-129. Retrieved August 24, 2018. In November 1928, the station once more changed frequencies, this time to 870 kHz, sharing time with WLS, and it became the first Chicago radio station operating 50,000 watts of power from a new transmitter in Downers Grove, Illinois. Insull moved his stations first into Chicago's Strauss Building, and then to his own Civic Opera Building.

In 1931, WENR was sold to the National Broadcasting Company for approximately $1 million. The station became part of NBC's Blue Network. NBC moved WENR's studios to the Merchandise Mart, its Chicago headquarters.

In the fall of 1937, the station was one of several Chicago radio stations to donate airtime to Chicago Public Schools for a pioneering program in which the school district provided elementary school students with distance education amid a polio outbreak-related school closure.

Changes were made regarding AM frequencies in 1941 as a result of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement; this moved WENR and WLS from 870 to 890 kHz. In August 1943, NBC was ordered to divest itself of the Blue Network and its stations; WENR and Blue were sold to Edward J. Noble. In 1945 the Blue Network would be renamed as the American Broadcasting Company. The station continued on at the Mart, as NBC's tenant, until 1952 when it moved back to the Civic Opera House. Paul Harvey worked as an evening newscaster on WENR from 1944 to 1951.

ABC ownership

WENR and WLS used the same frequencies in a time-sharing arrangement until 1954, when ABC (then known as American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres) bought a 50 percent interest in WLS and combined the stations.

In November 1959, ABC announced its purchase of ''Prairie Farmer'' and its half of WLS, giving ABC full ownership of the station.

The WLS Musicradio era

On May 2, 1960, at 6 a.m., 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 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.Childers, Scott
WLS The Bright Sound of Chicago Radio
, ''The History of WLS Radio''. Retrieved August 20, 2018.Childers, Scott
WLS' 50th Anniversary of Rock 'n Roll
, ''The History of WLS Radio''. Retrieved August 20, 2018. 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, 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.Biro, Nick.
Biondi Out in Chi, Mulls Other Offers
, ''Billboard''. June 1, 1963. pp. 4, 46. Retrieved August 20, 2018. 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