WABC (AM)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  WABC, broadcasting at 770 kHz from New York City, began its life on a factory rooftop in Newark, New Jersey, in October 1921 - accessible only by ladder. That shack above the Westinghouse meter factory housed a station called WJZ, and its first major broadcast was a relay of the 1921 World Series, with announcer Thomas H. Cowan simply reading descriptions phoned in from the Polo Grounds. Within months, the station would attempt the first full-length opera broadcast in the New York area. Within decades, it would be heard by millions of teenagers on transistor radios from the Catskills to Connecticut. How did a factory-rooftop radio shack become one of the most listened-to stations in North America? And how did the same signal that once carried Amos n' Andy and Little Orphan Annie end up as the launching pad for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?

• 2. Westinghouse and Early Ambitions

  ›

  Westinghouse had a simple theory in 1920: build broadcast stations, sell radio receivers. KDKA in East Pittsburgh was the proof of concept. WJZ in Newark was the expansion plan. On the 30th of September 1921, the Department of Commerce issued a broadcasting authorization for the new station, assigning it the call letters WJZ and a wavelength of 360 meters.

  The station's technical setup was primitive by any measure. Its studio and transmitter shared a rooftop shack reachable only by climbing a ladder. Programming expanded quickly, though. A bedtime story series called 'Man in the Moon,' written by Josephine Lawrence and read by Bill McNeary - both Newark Sunday Call employees - became popular with listeners. Beginning the 27th of November 1921, a weekly 90-minute show from the Vincent Lopez band aired each week.

  The frequency itself became a battleground almost immediately. By mid-December 1921, a competing station called WDY, operated by the Radio Corporation of America from Roselle Park, New Jersey, began sharing WJZ's wavelength. WJZ pushed back hard, resisting time-sharing arrangements. When a proposed agreement among 15 local stations gave WJZ more than half of available airtime, the station still refused, and the Radio Broadcasting Society of America petitioned to have its license canceled for being uncooperative.

  On the 9th of December 1922, WJZ made history of a quieter sort: it became the first broadcast station confirmed to have been heard in Europe. The short program featured greetings from the British consul in New York and singer Vaughn De Leath performing her 'Oliver Twist' song - a footnote that points toward the extraordinary range that 770 kHz would eventually command.

• 3. RCA, NBC, and the Blue Network

  ›

  the 15th of May 1923 was a day of transformations for WJZ. The station left Newark entirely, moving its studios to the sixth floor of the Aeolian Hall building in New York City. RCA assumed full ownership, ending the shared arrangement with Westinghouse. The broadcast band was expanded by the Department of Commerce, and WJZ was assigned the sole use of 660 kHz.

  The economics of broadcasting were still being worked out. AT&T had developed 'toll broadcasting' - the practice of selling airtime - while also forming a radio network it called the WEAF chain. RCA responded by building a small competing network centered on WJZ, but without the right to sell advertising, since AT&T claimed sole ownership of that right under a patent-licensing agreement.

  That standoff ended in the summer of 1926, when AT&T exited broadcasting entirely and sold its stations and network to RCA. The reorganized operation became the National Broadcasting Company. A second NBC network, known as the Blue Network, debuted on the 1st of January 1927, with WJZ as its originating station. WJZ moved to 760 kHz in November 1928, then shifted to 770 kHz in March 1941, when it was also designated a Class I-A clear-channel station - meaning no other station could legally operate at night on that frequency.

  The Blue Network carried programs that defined American radio's golden age: Lowell Thomas, Amos n' Andy, Little Orphan Annie, Death Valley Days, and the Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcasts hosted by Milton Cross, who would continue with the Met on NBC, ABC, CBS, and NPR until his death at the beginning of 1975. Fibber McGee and Molly began on the Blue before migrating to the Red. The WJZ transmitter that RCA built to operate at 500 kilowatts - far above the eventual 50-kilowatt legal limit - was sold to Britain for wartime use, broadcasting German-language propaganda as Soldatensender Calais, a fake German military station.

• 4. Birth of ABC

  ›

  A 1942 FCC ruling prohibited any broadcaster from owning more than one AM, one FM, and one television station in a single market. The ruling forced NBC to divest one of its two radio networks. On the 23rd of January 1942, the FCC approved the transfer of WJZ's license from RCA to a new entity called the Blue Network, Inc. On the 12th of October 1943, Edward J. Noble, then the owner of WMCA, purchased WJZ and the Blue Network.

  For a little over a year it was simply called 'The Blue Network.' On the 15th of June 1945, it was officially rechristened the American Broadcasting Company, after negotiations were completed with George B. Storer, who owned the defunct American Broadcasting System and still held the name. In November 1948, WJZ and the ABC network finally moved into their own building at 7 West 66th Street.

  The call letters themselves changed on the 1st of March 1953, when WJZ became WABC following FCC approval of ABC's merger with United Paramount Theatres. The WABC call letters had previously belonged to CBS Radio's New York outlets, which had taken them from an earlier owner called the Atlantic Broadcasting Company. CBS had switched those calls to WCBS and WCBS-FM on the 1st of November 1946 - clearing the path for ABC to take the letters years later.

  The old WJZ name found a second life elsewhere. In 1957, Westinghouse acquired a Baltimore television station and successfully petitioned the FCC to restore the three-letter call WJZ - this time as WJZ-TV, an unusual waiver of rules about retired callsigns. That Baltimore station, now owned by CBS, still carries those letters today.

• 5. Musicradio 77

  ›

  When Harold L. Neal, Jr. arrived as general manager with orders to make WABC profitable, the station was barely ranking in the top ten among New York music stations. WINS held the top spot. WMCA was a strong rival. WABC's early days as a Top 40 station were, by the source's own description, humble ones.

  The structural advantage that changed everything was engineering, not programming. WINS, WMGM, and WMCA all broadcast with directional antennas, meaning their signals weakened in the suburbs. WABC's 50,000-watt non-directional signal reached west, south, and northwest of New York City - exactly where the postwar suburban population was growing. By 1962, after WMGM reverted to its original WHN call letters and switched to a middle-of-the-road format, WABC hit number one.

  Program director Rick Sklar, later inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame, refined what 'top 40' could mean. Under his direction the station ran the shortest playlist of any contemporary music station in history. The number-one song played roughly every hour during the day and every 75 minutes at night. The station averaged about nine current hits per hour, with non-current songs no more than five years old. Sklar noted in his book 'Rockin' America' that he was deliberate about keeping the station clear of payola concerns. Disc jockeys delivered live commercials in their own style, so that ads blended into the entertainment. Chuck Leonard, one of the earliest African-American disc jockeys to staff a major mainstream station, was among the WABC air personalities of that era. Howard Cosell hosted a brief weeknight sportscast and a late Sunday interview program called 'Speaking of Everything.'

  In August 1964, several WABC disc jockeys broadcast from a window of The Beatles' hotel room at the Hotel Delmonico during the band's second New York visit. Dan Ingram, back in the studio, played WABC jingles to thousands of teenagers gathered in the street below, who sang along. Ingram later admitted the stunt violated FCC rules, though nobody at the station knew it at the time. WINS, jolted by what the station briefly branded 'W-A-Beatle-C,' dropped out of the Top 40 battle entirely in 1965, switching to all-news.

  By the 1970s WABC was consistently number one or number two in the market, often trading places with WOR. Philip Glass's 1976 opera 'Einstein on the Beach' included, in its background, a recitation of WABC's DJ schedule from the 1960s - a measure of how deeply the station had lodged itself in New York's cultural memory.

• 6. The Disco Crisis and the End of Music

  ›

  On the 24th of July 1978, a small FM station on 92.3 that had been called Mellow 92 abruptly switched to a disco-based format known as 'Disco 92' under the call letters WKTU. By December, WKTU had unseated WABC as the number-one station in New York City. Its first disco ratings showed 11 percent of the listening audience - a figure described as huge for any market, let alone New York City's. WABC dropped from roughly 4.1 million listeners to around 3 million, losing approximately a quarter of its audience in a matter of months.

  WABC's response was to start mixing in extended disco versions, some running over eight minutes. Regular listeners heard a station that seemed to be losing its identity. In late spring 1979, Billboard magazine reported that Rick Sklar had demoted program director Glenn Morgan to 'moving carts' rather than making programming decisions. Ratings dropped for four consecutive rating periods.

  On the 2nd of August 1979, Dan Ingram's afternoon drive program was playing the Donna Summer disco hit 'MacArthur Park' when disc jockey George Michael interrupted to announce that Yankees catcher and team captain Thurman Munson had died in a plane crash. The station carried Yankees games by then; baseball had become part of WABC's identity as the music format deteriorated.

  By early 1982, WABC's cumulative audience had fallen to roughly 2.5 million. Rival WNBC, long an also-ran, was now ahead with around 3 million. The format change was announced in February 1982. The official music era ended at 10:45 p.m. on the 9th of May 1982. On Monday, May 10, the station aired a farewell show from 9 a.m. to noon, hosted by Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy. The last song played was 'Imagine' by John Lennon, followed by the WABC 'Chime Time' jingle, a few seconds of silence, and then a talk radio jingle. The 22-year run as a music station was over.

• 7. Talk Radio and National Influence

  ›

  WABC's first talk ratings were worse than its final music ratings. Initial programming leaned on ABC's satellite talk network, and the local lineup was built slowly. Alan Colmes anchored overnights early on, playing some music into 1983 before dropping it entirely. The station kept conservatively oriented programming as it rebuilt its audience, adding an increasing number of right-leaning hosts through the 1980s, though liberals including Colmes and Lynn Samuels also had shows. By the late 1980s the ratings were strong.

  From 1984 to 1996, Bob Grant hosted a show that the source describes as a controversial, early 'right-wing' talk radio program. He was fired in 1996 for remarks about the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. He returned in July 2007, was removed again in December 2008, and came back once more as a weekend host in September 2009.

  Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated program was produced at WABC from 1988 until the early 2000s. His show served as the station's anchor program for two decades. Sean Hannity's show also got its start at WABC. Both programs eventually moved to crosstown rival WOR after Limbaugh and Hannity departed WABC at the end of 2013.

  On the 8th of September 2001, John Batchelor presented a four-hour program identifying Osama bin Laden as the probable perpetrator of the attack on the USS Cole. On September 12, Batchelor was invited to broadcast 'until bin Laden is captured.' The day bin Laden was killed, Batchelor and his executive producer were in Krakow; they continued on air and, with a hiatus in 2006, kept broadcasting national and international security coverage from that point forward.

  In 2004, WABC passed a quiet milestone: the station had now been a news and talk station for longer than it had been a Top 40 station, having marked 22 years in its talk format that year.

• 8. Red Apple and the Present Era

  ›

  On the 27th of June 2019, Cumulus Media announced the sale of WABC to John Catsimatidis for $12.5 million in cash, through his new company Red Apple Media. The sale closed on the 2nd of March 2020. Catsimatidis, who said he had grown up with the station and considered it iconic, stated he wanted to use it as a starting point for further radio investments.

  Under his ownership the station cut commercial breaks to six to eight minutes per hour, dropped most syndicated Westwood One programming in favor of local shows, and replaced brokered weekend content with locally produced programs. Dropping the brokered programming was estimated to have cost WABC roughly $2.3 million in revenue, but its weekend ratings rose by 347 percent. In July 2020, Red Apple acquired WLIR-FM on Long Island and converted it to a near-simulcast of WABC. Red Apple Audio Networks launched in January 2022 to syndicate WABC's programs to other stations.

  In Nielsen Audio's winter 2025 ratings, WABC reported a weekly cumulative listenership of around 415,000 - the highest among AM radio stations in the United States without an FM simulcast. Catsimatidis noted in 2023 that many listeners tune in for an average of six hours per day.

  In May 2026, Red Apple announced the Worldwide News Network, a radio news service with WABC as its flagship. The launch was timed to follow the closure of CBS News Radio on the 22nd of May 2026, with the new service going live May 23. Former WINS anchor Lee Harris was hired as WABC's vice president of news to lead it. The initial airstaff includes multiple anchors who previously worked for CBS News and CBS News Radio - a direct transfer of legacy network news talent to a station that first broadcast from a ladder-accessed rooftop shack in Newark more than a hundred years earlier.