Call Letters Meaning on Wikipedia

[Donna Halper]

On 6/10/2019 12:05 PM, Gary's Ice Cream wrote:
> I had always heard that since WHDH started on Cape Ann and a fish company
> was somehow involved that the callsign stood for "We Haul Dead Haddock".

It was started in Gloucester, by the Matheson family, who did not own a 
fish company as far as I know.  The father, John J. Matheson, had indeed 
been a captain on a fishing vessel many years earlier, but by the time 
WEPS (1926) and WHDH (1929) went on the air, the family ran a radio and 
electronics shop.  WHDH made its debut in June 1929, and soon opened a 
Boston studio in the Hotel Touraine. But because the city of license was 
still Gloucester, the station had promised to serve the fishing 
community; so every day, in the midst of the music and news and sports 
from Boston, there would be a program for the Gloucester and Cape Ann 
fishermen, and that may be where the joke originated.


-- 
Donna L. Halper, PhD
Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies
Lesley University, Cambridge MA