What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates?

[Scott Fybush]

Here's what I wrote on the FB group:

It's tricky to try to do "same frequency" for anything before 1928. 
That's when the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40 created the 
basic pattern of classes and channels that we have now on the AM dial, 
modified somewhat by the NARBA shift of 1941. An extremely small number 
of stations near the bottom of the dial survived General Order 40 on 
their original frequencies (WLW, for instance), but none in New England.

The oldest surviving callsign in New England is, of course, WBZ, but it 
moved from Springfield to Boston in 1931.

Looking back at the first issue of White's Radio Log from 1924, there is 
only one callsign that survives today in its original COL, and nobody 
else here has mentioned it yet: WSAR in Fall River. It was on 254 
meters/1180 kc at the time. (It will turn 100 this July!)

General Order 40 moved WSAR to 1450, which is the pre-NARBA antecedent 
of today's 1480. It doesn't get much more stable than that.

Other familiar call letters from the 1924 White's include WABI in Bangor 
(which survived intact on AM until just a few years ago), WNAC in Boston 
(antecedent of today's WBIX and, in a way, WRKO), WTAT Boston (ancestor 
of WEEI and today's WEZE), WJAR and WEAN Providence (today's WHJJ and 
WPRV), WPAJ New Haven (WDRC Hartford) and WCAX (WVMT) Burlington.

So... the best answer I can give to your question would be WSAR, so long 
as you accept the constant pre-1928 frequency changes that almost 
everyone went through.

I agree with WTIC-FM as the oldest surviving FM callsign in New England. 
The 1944 Broadcasting Yearbook (the first after the FCC regularized FM 
callsigns) shows WTIC-FM and WDRC-FM in Hartford, but that WDRC-FM 
license is what eventually became today's WZMX 93.7, not the current 
WDRC-FM 102.9.

(Since this was back in the 42-50 MHz era, there's no "same frequency" 
at play here, of course.)

Boston had WBZ-FM, WGTR (actually in Worcester), WMTW on Mount 
Washington, WTAG-FM in Worcester, and WBZA-FM Springfield. Only WGTR 
(now WKVB 107.3) and WTAG-FM (now WSRS) have survived. There was no 
other FM at the time in New England.

 From that entire single-page list of commercially-licensed FM stations 
in 1944, the only others that have survived since without changing calls 
are WNYC-FM in New York, WBBM-FM in Chicago and WMIT in North Carolina. 
WNYE New York, KALW San Francisco and WBEZ Chicago add to that list on 
the noncommercial side - and since WNYE has had those same calls since 
it signed on as an "Apex" high-frequency AM station in 1938, it can 
claim the very oldest calls on FM anywhere in the country.

And the answer for TV is trivial - it's WBZ-TV, of course, which will 
turn 75 in June and has never been anything other than "channel 4," 
albeit only virtually now.

On 1/22/2023 4:05 AM, Kevin Vahey wrote:
> Scott made a strong case for WSAR in Fall River on Facebook
>
> WEEI and COL go back to 1924 but you have the shift from 590 to 850 in
> 1994 which blurs things.
>
> The post-WWII years had to be fascinating. with WHDH (850) and WLAW
> (680) building out massive transmitter locations in Needham and
> Burlington. The WHDH towers in Needham were for a short time the
> tallest manmade structures in New England.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 3:17 AM Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:
>> On 1/21/2023 4:48 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote:
>>> What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters
>>> and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates?
>>>
>>> I am thinking of WTIC in Hartford (1925) - WBZ was Springfield until
>>> 1931 - Boston was WBZA and then they flipped calls.
>> True about WTIC; I can't think of any station earlier with the same
>> continuous calls or COL.  Also true that WBZ was in Springfield at
>> first, although they did open up their Boston studio in February 1924.
>> And let's not forget WDEV in Vermont, which goes back to July 1931 and
>> those call letters are still in Waterbury VT, aren't they?
>>
>>
>> --
>> Donna L. Halper, PhD
>> Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies
>> Lesley University, Cambridge MA
>>