HomeMy WebLinkAboutWTAW Before 1922 Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Ben Downs |WTAW General Manager
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Daniel Hayes | Transcriber
Transcript
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947. Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from the
Associated Press. Now, the big-
00:00:07 Speaker 2
WTAW joined with businesses from across the Brazos Valley.
00:00:11 Speaker 3
Aggies win 74-72! Here's your ride!
00:00:16 Speaker 4
16.20 WTAW.
00:00:19 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the first 100 years. I'm Tom Turbiville. So, how do we know that WTAW went
on the air with those call letters on October the 7th, 1922? And how do we suspect that under the
call letters 5XB, we were even a thing well before that? Well, because general manager Ben
Downs likes to keep stuff around.
00:00:44 Ben Downs (BD)
It's sad that we don't have any more information from the very early days. I guess when
something's only five years old, you toss it out, but if it's 100 years old, you wish you had kept it.
We have talked about whether we were on the air in 1919 or 1920 or 1921. We do for 100% sure
know that we were on the air in 1922, but there's kind of a mystery about whether 5YA and 5XB
were experimental stations that were in existence before that. But in looking at the license, the
actual from the Department of Commerce license, there's a line in here that required by this
acting secretary of Commerce, Mr. D.B. Carson, that says, satisfactory proof has been furnished
that this station was actually operating August 13, 1912, which is a date I don't think any of us
have on our radar screen. But there's a 1912, and the Secretary of Commerce said, yep, they were
there then. Can't find any proof of it, though.
00:01:51 TT
Suffice it to say we've been around a while on WTAW, the first 100 years.