Radio Journeys 72 ... A Case of Dueling Radio Stations

It's been one of the most hotly contested titles in broadcasting: "The First Radio Station." At least four stations in North America have tried to claim it. The most famous of these, and perhaps the most widely accepted, is KDKA Pittsburgh, whose broadcast of election returns on November 2, 1920, has long been thought of as the inauguration of broadcasting. But history is more complex than that. There is WWJ in Detroit, whose amateur predecessor (The Detroit News' 8MK) had a daily schedule three months before KDKA. There is CFCF in Montreal, which received a government broadcasting license in May 1920. And then there is KCBS San Francisco, which traces its lineage to KQW and the early broadcasts of Charles Herrold, as early as 1909.

This week, in the third and final special on the origins of radio and broadcasting, we hear from two of these stations--KDKA and KQW--each asserting that it was the first. We hear KDKA's argument through an episode of "Adventures in Research," originally broadcast on December 30, 1944; and from KQW through a special local program presented on November 10, 1945, marking, ironically, the 25th anniversary of KDKA's purported "first."

It's a case of dueling radio stations, a tustle on the vintage airwaves, this week on Radio Journeys.